Rupert Murdoch

BREAKING: Fox News Switches Parties

Posted by on April 28, 2009 at 4:39 pm. 2 Comments :

In a stunning and unexpected development, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and the CEO of its parent corporation News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, appeared at a hastily assembled news conference this afternoon to announce that they are abandoning their long-time affiliation with the Republican Party in favor of a political organization that more closely reflects their conservative values.

“We are not leaving the Republican Party,” Ailes told the press. “The Republican Party left us. After more than a decade of dedicated service to right-wing propaganda, the Republicans, and their supporters have drifted away to the point that there are hardly enough of them left to justify their own network anymore.”

Murdoch elaborated that…

“Recent polling shows that a mere 21% of the nation identify themselves as Republican. I’ve got a bloody network and newspapers to run, mate. I can’t be bothered with struggling to gain a bit of market share from that measly bunch.”

Murdoch is already trying to recover from news that his New York Post lost more than 20% of its readers in the past year. Consequently he has been broadening his rhetoric to be more inclusive. For instance, as reported in his own Wall Street Journal this week…

“[Murdoch] said complete nationalization of the biggest banks might have been a good thing; it would have allowed the government to break up the banks’ businesses and sell them as smaller entities. That way, ‘there would be no more too big to fail firms,’ he said.”

That is quite a departure from the sermonizing of Glenn Beck who would likely argue that that way there would be Socialism. Apparently they still have some kinks to work out.

The switch comes on the heels of Sen. Arlen Specter’s surprise jump to the Democratic Party after serving five terms as a Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Some view Specter’s move as an embarrassment to Republicans as they seek to regain their footing after losing badly in the last two election cycles. Others view it as an inevitable result of of the shrinking ideological spectrum within the Republican Party. Still others regard it as the hysterical act of radical Socialist who has been masquerading as a Republican for 30 years while leading a sleeper cell of covert Marxist revolutionaries bent on the submission of free people throughout the world.

But while some say some stuff and others say other things, associates inside the Specter camp, who have asked for anonymity to keep from being pointed and laughed at by strangers on the street, are saying that the Senator is merely hoping to hang on to his senate seat regardless of any consideration for politics or principles. An independent analyst was quoted as saying, “Duh!”

As for News Corp and Fox News, the new relationship, that they are still in the process of finalizing, will serve their interests better than those they have cultivated in the past. First on the agenda is the acquisition by News Corp of the Christian Broadcasting Network. CBN’s chief, Pat Robertson will be brought along in the newly created post of Senior VP of Editorial and Evangilism. The remaining News Corp enterprises will be re-branded as Fox Christian Ministries.

Although Specter’s jolt may have expedited the move by Murdoch and company, the move might have been predicted by many observers. Fox News has been drifting to what might be called a sort of Tele-Conservangilism™. Its message has increasingly been disseminated as if from a pulpit, complete with saints (Bush, Palin, Gingrich, and Pope Reagan) and a long list of demons (ACORN, Soros, Gun regs, Abortion, Muslims, Communism, FEMA camps, Fairness Doctrine, Taxes, Global Warming, Evolution, and, of course, the “mainstream” media). The anointed preachers for the movement were, and will continue to be, familiar names like Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, and Beck.

Look for Ailes to unveil the new party insignia in the next few weeks. Reports are presently leaking out that suggest that the top contenders all have something to do with tea.

News Blights: The SPINCOM Edition

Posted by on April 27, 2009 at 6:20 pm. NO Comments :

Item 1: The Fox Network has announced that it will not carry President Obama’s press conference on Wednesday, the 100th day of his presidency. ABC, CBS, and NBC have all committed to carrying it. Note that this is the Fox broadcast entertainment network, not the cable news channel, which has declined to air the presser. Still, there is some irony in that Fox has chosen to air an episode of the series “Lie To Me” instead. That’s something with which Fox should be familiar. Note also that the Fox News network has previously declined to air several Obama press affairs, even when the other cable news nets carried them.

Item 2: Newspaper circulation data for the six months ending March 2009, shows that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post suffered the worst decline (-20.55%) of all of the top 25 papers measured by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. That does not compare well to the New York Times that declined only 3.55%. The New York Daily News fared worse (-14.26), but still not as bad as the Post. The Wall Street Journal was up a fraction.

Item 3: A study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found the nightly newscasts devoting nearly 28 hours to Obama’s presidency in the first 50 days, about twice as much as Bush and Clinton. Of course, they weren’t facing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression when they entered office. The study went on to report that 58% of the Obama stories on ABC, CBS and NBC, contained some positive elements. That’s a little more than half, so it could be regarded as fair and balanced. But the network that turned that phrase into a logo had only 13% positive analysis. Slanted much?

Item 4: Speaking at the Milken Global Institute Conference, Rupert Murdoch articulated a position that may come as a surprise to many, including the clowns on his news network. As reported in his own Wall Street Journal: “He said complete nationalization of the biggest banks might have been a good thing; it would have allowed the government to break up the banks’ businesses and sell them as smaller entities. That way, ‘there would be no more too big to fail firms,’ he said.” But Glenn Beck said that that way there would be Socialism!?! Rupert’s in big trouble now.

Item 5: Last year the New York Times published a story about the media using retired military analysts that were provided and trained by the Pentagon to speak approvingly about the war in Iraq and other war on terror operations. In addition, some of these allegedly neutral analysts were also on the payroll of defense contractors with vested interests in the war effort. None of these associations were disclosed by the media. Subsequent to the story in the Times, the same media virtually blacked out any reporting on the controversy. Last week the author, David Barstow, won a Pulitzer prize for the article. Guess what? The media somehow failed to report on Barstow’s award, even when reporting on the Pulitzer’s announcement of other winners.

Fox News Confidential: The Truth Behind Its Secret Mission

Posted by on April 24, 2009 at 3:29 pm. 9 Comments :

Ever since October of 1996, Fox News has been regarded by serious media analysts as a somewhat less than objective mouthpiece for conservative propaganda. From the start they adopted a posture that appeared to be bent on shilling for Republicans by drenching their reports with partisan disinformation.


[Purchase FreakShow stickers at Crass Commerce]

The intent couldn’t have been more transparent. This was a network birthed by the planet’s most notorious practitioner of tabloid piffle, Rupert Murdoch, who adorned it with a spritz of soft-core porn, and masqueraded it across America’s TV screens as if it were actually news. Murdoch plucked Richard Nixon’s former media advisor, and Rush Limbaugh producer, Roger Ailes, to run the network. He then set out to populate the incipient Fox News schedule with devout rightists like Cal Thomas, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rita Cosby, and Matt Drudge.

As outwardly obvious as it appeared that Murdoch was building a megaphone with which to shout directions at what he perceived as a malleable population, there may have been another purpose entirely. While promulgating a self-serving, corporatist doctrine, steeped in imperialistic adventurism, is undoubtedly an attractive bonus for Murdoch and company, the prospect of reshaping the media is a much juicier plum. However, the new shape that Murdoch had in mind was more focused on creating negative perceptions of media than on advancing its quality.

The real mission of Fox News is [cue trumpets] to so thoroughly tarnish the practice of journalism that majorities of the public would recoil in disgust at all of it. Murdoch and Ailes knew that the introduction of a single cable network would have a difficult time enshrouding the whole of the mediasphere in their veil of lies. So rather than try to change people’s minds, they would endeavor to poison the relationship that people have with the press.

Consider this: If it were really the primary goal of Fox News to have an influence on political discourse, they could have launched the channel with a proudly partisan theme that celebrated their conservative outlook. They could have honestly put their views on the table and fought it out in the public square. That is how a sincere enterprise with faith in their convictions would behave. Instead, they chose to dress themselves up as “fair and balanced,” an objective they never intended to pursue. Then, while swimming in a swamp of their own bias, they aggressively attack their competitors as biased. At some point the community of news consumers will throw up their hands and surrender, convinced that the baby is just as contaminated as the bathwater. And that is precisely what Fox intends.

Ailes brought two operating philosophies to his post at Fox. First was the conviction that he could reproduce the structured chaos of talk radio populism on television. He had previously attempted to do this with America’s Talking, an NBC cable network that later became MSNBC. Secondly, he sought to make extensive use of the tricks he learned in the political realm – a craft that appreciated the value of packaging.

One of the lessons Ailes learned in politics was the potency of negative campaigning. He produced the infamous Revolving Door ad that attacked Michael Dukakis. And while he did not make the Willie Horton ad, he did take up the issue in the campaign and exhibited the ruthlessness of his character by stating that…

“The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.”

What most outsiders don’t know is that negative campaigns are not engaged in solely to damage the prospects of an opponent. Its underlying purpose is to discourage voters overall. A good campaign manager knows that his opponent will fire back and the race will eventually be perceived as dirty and unworthy of the voter’s consideration. By shrinking the voter pool, it makes the campaign’s job easier as there are fewer people to persuade and they can direct their efforts to getting their own supporters to the polls.

Sound familiar? That’s what I am proposing Ailes and Fox News are doing by dirtying up journalism and shrinking the audience for news. Since they can’t badger every other network, newspaper and Internet site to bend to their Paleolithic version of reality, they will throw metaphorical feces at everyone, including themselves, to prove that no one can be trusted. The result is that broad swaths of the public opt for ignorance over what they’ve been convinced is garbage. And as an ancillary benefit, Fox is left with a congregation of right-wing zealots who will happily sing from the network’s hymnal.

The initiative to discredit the press, as executed by Fox, goes far beyond the insertion of partisan viewpoints. To be successful they need to to utterly demolish the institution and rip off every last shred of dignity. To that end, they wrapped their programming in a superhero, comic book theme, complete with bright, primary colors, clanging bells, and incessant visual and aural sirens going off for no apparent reason. The omnipresent “Fox News Alert” will trigger at the first sighting of a missing white girl or an alleged violation of presidential body language. All that’s missing is the exploding thought bubble with the word “BLAM” in large block letters zooming the screen.

Delivering this cartoonish caterwaul is a collection of media misfits that hardly instill confidence in their presentation of the news. And I’m not talking about obvious clowns like Hannity, O’Reilly and Beck. I’m not even talking about beauty pageant winners (Gretchen Carlson, Miss America, 1989), O.J. Simpson groupies (Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren), or organ-grinder monkeys (Steve Doocy), although these characters do play significant roles in this commedia. I’m referring to the managers of Fox’s news production.

Bill Sammon, the Washington managing editor, is an overt partisan who came to Fox from the Washington (Moonie) Times. Besides his daily spew of slanted stories, he has written books like, “Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media.” That book was published in February of 2006, just nine months before Republicans were witted straight out of both houses of Congress.

Major Garrett, the senior White House correspondent for Fox News, is another Moonie Times alum and an author as well. His February 2006 book (that must have been a desperate time for the right-wing hype machine), “The Enduring Revolution: The Inside Story of the Republican Ascendancy and Why It Will Continue,” also presaged a Republican revolution that was something less than enduring, hardly ascending, and most definitely not continuing.

Neil Cavuto, the VP of business news for Fox News and the Senior VP and managing editor of the Fox Business Network, is a master of spin. When the market goes down, it’s because Obama flashed covert gang signals to ACORN volunteers who relayed the distress call to George Soros who exercised his omnipotent power to force everyone on Wall Street to sell. When the market goes up, it’s a bear market rally, unless Obama had a hangnail and stayed in his room all day, in which case the advance is due to traders relieved that the President was AWOL. Cavuto’s most distinctive skill as a TV anchor is his ability to interrupt any guest with whom he disagrees before they can express a complete thought. He is also credited with inventing the punctuation named for him, the Cavuto Mark. It is something like a question mark, but it permits you to make ludicrous assertions without assuming any responsibility. For instance: Do Democrats cause cancer? Or: President Obama…the Anti-Christ? You see, he’s not really asserting anything – he’s just asking.

To complete the picture, Fox has to employ a supporting cast that is as destructive to the news medium as their standard bearers. That’s why folks like Dick Morris, Bernie Goldberg, Ann Coulter, and Karl Rove, are booked repeatedly. It’s why ambush interviews by Stuttering Jesse Watters are regular features. And it’s why they turn to experts like Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzlebacher, Ted Nugent, and Hooters waitresses, for analysis on everything from tax policy to Constitutional law.

The notion that Fox News would deliberately sully the noble calling of the fourth estate, of which they are allegedly a member, may seem speculative, paranoid, even Beckish. After all, where would they have gotten such an outlandish idea? Perhaps it came from observation of the government theory practiced in Republican bureaucracies. For instance, the dreadful performance of FEMA’s hurricane response that let thousands suffer and die in New Orleans; or the failure of the SEC to oversee and forestall fiscal calamities like AIG or Bernie Madoff; or billion dollar overruns in Defense Department procurements; or intelligence mishaps that lead to jets crashing into skyscrapers and unjustifiable invasions of foreign countries. The list goes on and on.

It is these sort of examples of government negligence and/or incompetence that lead to the inescapable conclusion that they are also intentional. That’s not to say that anyone in public service had a specific desire to cause harm. It is simply the recognition that certain schools of political thought embrace a philosophy that maintains that “government is the problem”, as Ronald Reagan famously declared, and that the best way to illustrate that is to allow bureaucracies to devolve to the point where they can only fail in their missions. Thereafter, advocates of this philosophy can argue that government’s inherent flaws require that it be curtailed, and even “reduce[d] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” as colorfully articulated by Grover Norquist.

Roger Ailes is not only a practitioner of this school of thought, he is one of its architects. He served as a consultant to Reagan in the eighties and worked closely with Norquist as well, in the Reagan administration and as a lobbyist on behalf of the tobacco industry. Consequently, it should surprise no one that Ailes would seek to apply these methods, honed in politics, to his current profession.

So, if Ailes, Murdoch, et al, do indeed have an interest in besmirching the reputation of the press, they clearly have the background for it. Murdoch has already contributed to disillusionment with media via his sensationalistic tabloids. And Ailes has put theory into practice by demonstrating that the public can be persuaded to oppose institutions they see as deficient, even if they were purposefully fashioned as such. Although, it needs to be said that they didn’t have a particularly tough job, as the media has long been held in ill repute. But they can, and did, move it along quite nicely. Despite the media’s shortcomings, the responsible position would be to strive to reform and improve it, not to kick it while it’s down.

In the end, it can only be detrimental to the health of our society if we cannot shape the media into an honest, independent observer of our institutions and the people managing them. That’s hard enough to do under any circumstances, and it doesn’t make it any easier when self-serving, politically-vested corporations conspire to inflame distrust and disaffection for the media in order suppress the emergence of an informed citizenry.

At this point, Fox is having a fair measure of success. By this I am not referring to their Nielsen victories. Topping the list of cable news channels is still a rather inconsequential achievement relative to the TV universe (not to mention the national electorate that has roundly rejected the Fox “Nation”). Their success comes in their prime directive: Driving Americans away from even reputable sources of news. The hard-core partisans are lining up along traditional battle lines, and everyone else is tuning out.

In order to counteract the Fox offensive, the conscientious caucus of the press needs to step up. They need to defend their own integrity. They need to initiate reforms that make them worthy of such defense. Then they need to hold a giant mirror up to Fox to reflect back the noxious rays of ignorance. There needs to be a concerted effort to report honestly on the state of the media itself and Fox’s role in it. And they need to be specific. There is simply no reason why ABC News or the Washington Post cannot come right out and say that Fox News is a fraud. There’s plenty of documentary evidence to support it and, besides, Fox says it about them every day.

If we don’t want people to opt out, they need to be shown the value in remaining engaged. They need to have their faith in the press restored. The alternative for most people would be to disconnect, focus on their narrow, parochial concerns, and wallow in ignorance of the world around them. And given the choice of that or the fantastical perversion of reality peddled on Fox, they would be making the right decision.

Addendum: In the past few days, I have been questioned as to why Fox would engage in a plot that might harm its own business – particularly when Murdoch is such a well-known greedy opportunist.

First of all, I don’t buy the portrayal of Murdoch as someone who is only interested in money. If that were true, he would not be taking $50 million dollar annual losses on the New York Post for the past ten years. And he would not have started a business news network from scratch, and purchased the Wall Street Journal when newspapers are suffering an historic decline. Yes, he loves his wealth, but no, that’s not all he loves. He is a confirmed conservative ideologue, and his business decisions reflect that.

Secondly, I don’t think he sees this plan as being detrimental to his affairs. How would harming the news industry hurt him if that isn’t the business he’s in? He is in the entertainment business, and as long as Fox News continues to schedule programming that is more fiction than fact, more drama than data, he believes that he’ll do just fine.

The Fox Nation Launches A Dud

Posted by on March 30, 2009 at 2:16 pm. 7 Comments :

This morning there was a disturbance in the Force. The Fox Nation debuted amidst fanfare and the gnashing of teeth at tea parties everywhere. However, reports of the Fox News secession movement appear to have been a little overblown (by me, mostly). The reality of the Fox Nation is significantly less substantial than previously predicted.

The Fox Nation is apparently not an attempt to abandon the Union (although my satirical representation of it as such was actually taken seriously by some right-wing conspiracy theorists across the InterTubes). It is merely a low grade, right-wing, knockoff of the Huffington Post. The partisan character of its Fox News parentage, however, is plainly visible. The “fair and balanced “ collection of articles featured at the top of its page (see picture above) present the President as “scary” and promote the rightist triumvirate of Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Beck (oh my). Digging down further we find a plethora of partisanship in reporting:

  • Chris Dodd’s cavalcade of scandal
  • Lobbyist scandal to ensnare Murtha?
  • Dick Morris: Obama soft on terror, hard on charities
  • Daily Beast: Who did Pelosi’s face?
  • Affirmative Action for Muslims in the White House?
  • Stacked!! Obama fills town hall with supporters
  • Hannity holding Tea Party on Tax Day
  • WaPo interrogation story ‘rife with misinformation’
  • Video: Bill Maher smears US troops
  • Limbaugh ratings skyrocket after Democrat attacks

Of course the headlines on Fox Nation must not be taken too seriously. For instance, the article about Obama stacking his town hall with supporters doesn’t actually produce any evidence of that being done. In fact, it reports that invitations were sent to many groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. With regard to the Huffington Post, Fox Nation takes a swipe at them as well, with an article derogatorily titled, “Huffington Post to rummage through your trash.” The actual article is about a new investigative journalism venture by HuffPo, not some dumpster diving sensationalism. We’ll leave that to Fox. Recall also that O’Reilly has compared Arianna Huffington to Nazis. I don’t expect it will be long before he and the rest of the Fox lineup will escalate their war against HuffPo as a competitor the way they have with NBC.

Obviously the intent of Fox Nation is to inject a negative tone whether or not anyone ever clicks through to the articles. And it’s revealing to take a look at the heavily right-weighted array of news sources employed on Fox Nation – including four owned by Rupert Murdoch:

  • New York Post (Murdoch)
  • Wall Street Journal (Murdoch)
  • Fox Business Network (Murdoch)
  • The Sun (Murdoch)
  • Townhall.com
  • Michele Malkin
  • Andrew Breitbart
  • Washington Times
  • NewsBusters
  • National Review
  • Conservative Express
  • NewsMax
  • Matt Drudge

In the end, the Fox Nation is nothing more than a dressed up version of the Fox Forums that already pollute the web. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a potential threat to civil discourse and domestic tranquility. Fox Nation aggregates the Fox audience under a single banner that gives them an identity and a flag to fly. The comments section is as ideologically monochromatic as you would expect from the Fox stable of so-called “news” enterprises. It is also overtly hostile to anyone not sufficiently attuned to neo-Dark-Age conservatism. The community, hyped as “a place to call home,” is as rabidly anti-Obama as it is bewitched by Beck.

It’s still early, and perhaps this is just the first phase of the eventual division of America. It goes without saying that Fox has as its purpose to be divisive and that Fox Nation is in alignment with purpose. It just remains to be seen how far they will go. And for this reason it remains important to keep an eye on future developments.

This just in: Fox News Senior VP Bill Shine says of Fox Nation, “We’re calling it a mix between the Huffington Post and Drudge.” Hmmm.

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post Attacks Jon Stewart

Posted by on March 17, 2009 at 3:44 pm. 4 Comments :

In another example of Rupert Murdoch using his financially disastrous New York Post to whip people with whom he disagrees, the Post’s Page Six published a ridiculous hit piece on Jon Stewart.

The article points an accusatory finger of shame at Stewart for the sin of talking to his brother:

JON Stewart, the scourge of Wall Street and bane of CNBC, may have had a secret weapon in his corner to help him prep for his grudge match with “Mad Money” host, Jim Cramer – his older brother.

As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, Stewart’s brother, Larry Leibowitz, is head of US Markets & Global Technology at NYSE Euronext.

In effect, the Post’s Richard Johnson is criticizing Stewart for conducting research. You know, the sort of thing that reputable journalists are supposed to do. If you have a big interview coming up, you study the subject so that you are prepared to address it intelligently with your guest (assuming your guest is intelligent). Johnson, not surprisingly, wouldn’t know anything about this because it is, as I said, done by “reputable” journalists.

What’s more, Johnson’s assertion that Stewart was coached isn’t even borne out in the article. He simply states that Stewart has a brother in the financial business, but offers no proof that they ever discussed Cramer. However he does attack the brothers for engaging in some sort of undefined conspiracy:

“What a routine they have. One brother pretends to kick Wall Street’s butt by crucifying Cramer on his show, while the other brother is down on Wall Street kissing it.”

For good measure, Johnson closes the article by disparaging Cramer’s ratings, without bothering to mention the conflict of interest that he has as an employee of a corporation that also runs Fox News, a competitor to Cramer’s CNBC.

Fox News Fires Up Financial Fear

Posted by on March 6, 2009 at 3:01 pm. 2 Comments :

It’s been going on for months. Conservatives have been pointing their fat finger of blame at Barack Obama. Somehow, perhaps by mystical Voodoo spells, Obama managed to cause a global economic collapse even before he was elected President. Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh declared that…

“Barack Obama has been the controlling political authority on the economy for six months.”

Sean Hannity places Obama’s omnipotent dominance back even further, to May 2008. Never mind that in the first half of 2008, Republicans were insisting that the economy was in swell shape thanks to the financial acumen of their beloved George W. Bush. But all of that must now be swept aside because a new culprit must be found guilty of having soured what everyone now concedes is a disastrous economic meltdown.

To further that end, Fox News conducted a poll (pdf) to ascertain the mood of the public and their views on the leadership of the new President. Unfortunately for Fox, the poll revealed that broad majorities of the people support Obama and his policies. Democrats and Independents are distinctly separating themselves from Republicans, who are the lonely naysayers of the nation.

One question in particular stood out as I was studying the results:

Do you think all the doom and gloom talk and constant focus on the economy is actually making the economy worse, or is the talk not making much of a difference?

Making
economy worse		 Not making
a difference
Total 55% 38%
Democrats 44% 47%
Republicans 69% 28%
Independents 57% 36%

You’ve got to hand it to Fox, the domain of doom and gloom, for asking a question about “all the doom and gloom talk.” Their incessant chatter bemoaning the Obama administration and agenda is the core of their programming. No wonder Republicans in the poll are so far removed from other respondents. It is well documented that Fox has a disproportionately large majority of Republican viewers. But if Fox is truly interested in an inquiry into economic gloominess, they need look no further than themselves and their own on-air propaganda spewers:

Rupert Murdoch: …the downturn is more severe and likely longer-lasting than previously thought.

Bill O’Reilly: …our financial system is rigged and Americans should be very wary about buying stocks in this environment.

Glenn Beck: Be wary of anyone who says you should just leave your money in the stock market, because they are proving themselves incapable of seeing a real worst-case scenario.

And for good measure, Rush Limbaugh: The market is plunging. Investors are shorting it. They’re not putting money in the market. The economy is getting worse. This is being done on purpose, I believe, just as they are trying to sink the stock market.

Add to this list the names of Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Steve Doocy, Bill Sammon, Megyn Kelly, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Karl Rove, etc. Virtually every Fox News contributor is contributing to the doom and gloom. And what’s more, the hard times ahead are all the fault of Obama, who has only been president for six weeks.

At a deeper level, it needs to be noted that the main thesis that these pundits peddle is simply wrong by any objective standard. They are promulgating the falsehood that Wall Street is an indicator of the nation’s economic health. It’s not! The stock market is a facility within which to assign value to shares of corporations and commodities. That value is the result of traders negotiating with one another with the purpose of generating profits for themselves. Anyone who tells you that the price of a stock at any given moment is an actual representation of a company’s worth is a liar. The only thing it represents is what a broker was able to get for that stock at that moment. If you have any doubt, just consider whether you believe that General Motors is actually worth less than $1 billion today, but was worth over $9 billion just six months ago – with the same products, the same people, and the same plants.

Wall Street isn’t tanking because of some random chatter in Washington, DC. If that were possible than Fox News is more at fault than Obama. Stocks are declining for the reason they always decline: dismal corporate earnings, collapsing markets domestically and internationally, and four million Americans unemployed and not consuming.

So let’s get this straight once and for all. The interests of Wall Street are unique and distinct from the public interest. The manic volatility of the Dow Jones index is no more an indicator of the state of the national economy than an eBay auction for a Hummel figurine. And Obama didn’t cause the decline on Wall Street by articulating a vision for improving the real fundamentals of the economy – productivity, consumption, and jobs. Progress in those areas is what will lead to the recovery that Wall Street needs.

Jon Stewart On CNBC

Posted by on March 5, 2009 at 10:16 am. NO Comments :

Further evidence that the only substantive review of the media takes place on Comedy Central. This is a must-see Daily Show clip wherein Jon Stewart mercilessly takes apart CNBC.

As a reminder, even though Stewart couldn’t name another business network (he eventually came up with Bloomberg), there is another one. And it’s much worse than CNBC.

The Fox Business Network was launched about a year and a half ago. At the time the chairman of News Corp said:

Rupert Murdoch: “…a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly than CNBC.’ That channel ‘leap[s] on every scandal, or what they think is a scandal.'”

Obviously Murdoch didn’t know what he was talking about. CNBC has long been a good friend to business. But FBN was created for that purpose. And, by the way, Murdoch also owns the Dow Jones index, which he acquired along with the Wall Street Journal.

Also, don’t miss Stephen Colbert’s amazing take on Glenn Beck’s asinine “War Room” (be sure to watch both videos).

Starve The Beast: The Wrath Of The Right

Posted by on March 2, 2009 at 9:45 am. 11 Comments :

We are now a month into the administration of Barack Obama. It’s a month that seems to have been packed with a year’s worth of activity. From the first day in office when Obama issued executive orders permitting more openness with presidential records and Freedom of Information Act requests, to announcements of major policy agendas for an economy on life support and the still soul-sapping wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has been busy, to say the least.

At the same time, they have had to deal with the opposition of an increasingly obstructionist Republican minority and a media that is overtly hostile. Last year, prior to the election, Fox News was already fortifying its right flank. New multimillion dollar contracts were handed out to Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Hannity’s show shed the dead weight of alleged liberal Alan Colmes. Glenn Beck was brought in to shore up the daytime crowd. Neil Cavuto, a bully who is every bit as obnoxious as O’Reilly poisons the economic news, and he is also managing editor of Murdoch’s Fox Business News. And just this week Bill Sammon, author of a shelf full of bitterly partisan books, was promoted to VP and Washington Editor for the network.

The result is a full court press of some of the dirtiest political assaults ever waged by what is advertised as a “news” network. Fox News is shamelessly pushing a campaign to characterize Obama as a Socialist – a committed opponent of America and its values – from 6:00 am with the crew of Fox & Friends, to after midnight with broadcasts and repeats of their primetime neanderthal shoutcasters. They get their marching orders directly from Rupert Murdoch who last September said that…

“[Obama’s] policy is really very, very naive, old fashioned, 1960’s socialist.”

Even worse, these rightist dissidents come very close to openly advocating acts of violence and armed rebellion. Glenn Beck’s ominously titled “War Room” was an hour long descent into fear mongering that posited nothing short of the decline of western civilization. The upshot of this Terror Hour is that America’s days are numbered, so you had better start stockpiling guns, hoarding food and water, converting your dollars to gold, and barricading your secluded compound in the Wyoming wilderness (move over Ted Kaczynski). And, of course, it’s all Obama’s fault.

Another result of this Apocalyptic programming surge is higher ratings for Fox News. The core primetime schedule on Fox has enjoyed a rare uptick in audience growth. For the past three years, Fox, while number one in total audience, has been the slowest growing network in cable news. CNN and MSNBC produced consistently stronger growth. Particularly MSNBC, which was once a struggling also-ran, but which now challenges Fox’s powerhouses and routinely beats CNN. But the numbers for this February are another story.

Total Day: FNC +29%, MSNBC +17%, CNN +2%.
Primetime: FNC +28%, MSNBC +23%, CNN -30%.

What accounts for the turnaround in Fox’s fortunes? Well, first of all, they are benefiting from their previous slack performance. In other words, they were able to record higher comparative rates of growth because their prior year numbers were held down due to some rather unique circumstances. To understand the current numbers, you need to remember what was going on a year ago.

In February of 2008 the Democratic Party was in the middle of a hotly contested presidential primary. Early in the month it was already apparent that McCain would win his Party’s nomination. Consequently, audiences viewing campaign news were disproportionately composed of Democrats. Amongst the biggest draws were the televised debates. Democratic candidates, you may recall, had forsworn Fox News as a host for their debates. So the two Democratic debates held in February 2008 were carried by CNN and MSNBC, and both drew audiences many times greater than their regularly scheduled programming. Democrats also shunned Fox for other TV appearances and interviews. It had gotten so bad that Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, made a veiled threat in December of 2007:

“I think the Democrats are damn fools [for] not coming on Fox News.”

We know the problem still existed in March of 2008 because that’s when Wallace debuted his Obama Watch: a clock that would record how long before Obama appeared on Wallace’s show. It was a childish prank on Wallace’s part, but it clearly showed that the Democratic embargo of Fox News was having a real impact. For CNN and MSNBC, who had the guests and the event programming that appealed to the most motivated news consumers, it meant higher ratings. Fox, on the other hand, had depressed numbers because their most loyal audience – Republicans – already had a candidate, so there was no campaign drama to keep them tuned in. Comparing those numbers to February 2009 would, therefore, be favorable to Fox by producing a greater percent difference.

So some of the good news for Fox was really just a matter of perception. But that’s not the whole story. They are actually having a pretty good year, particularly post-inauguration. All the networks have suffered some falloff from January, but Fox has retained more of their recent gains than have their competitors. I can only offer some informed speculation as to why that would be.

First, Fox has more new programming that may be piquing the interests of their viewers. The new programs include a retooled Hannity, minus Colmes, and Glenn Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue. Beck has found his home at Fox. His ratings have significantly increased over what he had at HLN, and he has also improved the time period he fills on Fox. As for Hannity, dumping Colmes was obviously popular amongst the Foxian pod people. It’s just that much less non-approved, pseudo-liberal noise they have to sit through.

Secondly, by heating up the aggressive tone, Fox has fashioned a hearth around which despondent conservatives can huddle. In 2006 they suffered the loss of both houses of congress. Now they have lost the presidency as well – and to what they view as an unpatriotic, Muslim, elitist, intent on driving the nation to Socialism in a Toyota hybrid. So now they congregate in the warm red glow of the Fox News logo that provides them the comfort that comes from numbing propaganda and the righteous smiting of perceived enemies.

This doubling down on rancor has had mixed results for Fox. While it endeared them to their base, and those they could frighten into submission, it also cost them dearly on a broader financial scale. The stock of Fox News parent, News Corp, is down 70% for the last 52 weeks. To be sure, the economy, particularly for media companies, was difficult, to put it mildly. But News Corp competitors Time Warner, Disney, and even the Washington Post were only down in the 45-55% range. News Corp suffered its worst loss ever of over $6.4 billion. And going forward, they advised Wall Street that income will decline another 30% for fiscal 2009.

In examining the reasons that Fox would perform so much worse than similar enterprises, one would have to consider the possibility that people have become disgusted with the obvious one-sided manipulation and the non-stop, phony news alerts that are Fox’s shock in trade. But I believe that it would also be fair to conclude that the direct actions taken against Fox News by Democrats last year are at least partially responsible for Fox’s inordinately more severe decline. The ratings disparities year over year document the effect that a sustained campaign of snubbery can produce.

Starve The BeastWith the stepped up efforts of Fox to sling ever more buckets of mud, it is more imperative now than ever that Democrats act affirmatively in their best interests. They must resist the siren call of televised glory and begin to discriminate between those who are fair practitioners of journalism and those who seek only to engage in slander and slime. In two previous installments of my Starve The Beast series (part 1 / part 2), I described how complicity with Fox News is not merely a waste of time, but is demonstrably harmful. This is even more true today, as the evidence above illustrates. The message that Democrats and other progressives must take to heart with all deliberateness and determination is: STAY THE HELL OFF OF FOX NEWS! Since it hurts us when we appear and it hurts them when we don’t, the way forward is crystal clear. It makes absolutely no sense to lay down before lions who are determined to devour you.

Now, I don’t want to approach this from a purely negative standpoint. While constructing a united front in opposition to Fox News is an absolute necessity, there are some positive steps that can be taken as well. Other news organizations must be pressured to present a more balanced picture of current events. And, where possible, true liberal voices must gain access to the televised public square. Media Matters long ago documented the imbalance of conservatives and Republicans on the Sunday news programs. That ideological discrepancy has continued apace since Obama’s inauguration. Now it’s time to do something about it. It’s time to make a case for TV to offer a more equitable representation of liberal views – the views of the majority, the winners.

Political activism has always been shaped in part by access to polling. It is an irreplaceable asset for anyone managing a campaign for a candidate or an issue. Similarly, TV survey data is critical in analyzing media performance and prospects. This data is distinct from conventional polling. Remember, networks don’t care about the public. They care about a subset of the public that is attractive to their customers. And their customers are not viewers – they are advertisers. While there are many sources for political data, there are few for media data – and most of those are press releases from vested corporate interests. There is little that we can do with ratings data that has already been massaged to advantage one particular party.

If progressives want to have some influence on programming, they must be able to anchor their arguments with original research and facts. For this reason, it is no longer enough for sites like Media Matters or Talking Points Memo or Daily Kos or News Corpse to merely document right-wing media abuses. If we want to help shape the editorial direction of the Conventional Media, we have to offer authoritative presentations to map a path to bigger audiences and ratings victories. We need to speak to the needs of the news providers and give them a business case for adopting a truly balanced programming model. To do this we need access to the raw data that is at the heart of television marketing.

So who amongst the lefty netroots will step forward and subscribe to Nielsen Media Research broadcast and cable data? I’m going to rule out News Corpse because I can’t afford it. But I do have 14 years of experience in media research and would be willing to help produce analyses and presentations. Just as progressive authors and bloggers offer informed advice to advance political goals, we need to be able to make a persuasive, market-based case for the sort of programming reform that we want to see. We need to be able to show the networks that it is in their interest, financially and ethically, to develop programming that is honest and in keeping with the principles of an engaged and probing press. We need to be able to counter the false impressions relentlessly pushed by faux news enterprises that tout themselves as the popular voice of the nation. It seems that a day does not go by that Bill O’Reilly doesn’t boast about his ratings. The funny thing is that he also condemns the source of those ratings with the delusional paranoia that only he can muster:

“The bottom line on this is there may be some big-time cheating going on in the ratings system, and we hope the feds will investigate. Any fraud in the television rating system affects all Americans.”

So O’Reilly thinks that the system he so proudly cites for affirmation of his massive popularity, is also engaging in big-time cheating for the benefit of his foes. If he’s right, and Nielsen data is not to be trusted when they report that his competition is catching up, than why should we trust it when it reports his success. In truth, the only cheating going on is on the part of the self-promoting networks and the egomaniacal personalities they employ. It is their selective and misleading interpretations that are distorting the reality of viewer behavior.

Suffice it to say that we would be in a much better position to dispute the spin that’s being peddled if we had access to unfiltered Nielsen data. We could mine that data to develop solutions and strategies to present to news programmers. Then we may begin to have some influence over news programming, personalities, and content.

This is as important an endeavor for progressives as the strategies we promote for politicians. I would argue that it’s more important. Especially in a media environment where prominent news enterprises are openly fomenting a near-militaristic antagonism to our representatives and our values.

Fox Business Network Is On The Case

Posted by on February 26, 2009 at 3:10 pm. 2 Comments :

Last year the Fox Business Network filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Treasury Department documents related to the Toxic Assets Relief Program. After filing the request, FBN launched an advertising campaign promoting their tireless efforts on behalf of the American people.

I have no problem with the FOIA requests, in fact I support them. They are an important part of a transparent democracy, and news enterprises have always used them to provide a complete picture of what our government is doing on our behalf. They do it in the interests of journalism, not some disingenuous grandstanding as protectors of the people. It is unseemly for a network to puff itself up simply for doing its job. Bloomberg also has FOIA requests pending, but they aren’t banging the drum about it.

Now the puffery is ascending to new highs of absurdity. Fox News executive vice president Kevin Magee is patting himself and his network on the back for being champions of the people. He is engaging in a sustained campaign of self-flattery that he paradoxically says “is not a wild publicity stunt.”

Magee: “One of the ways that we want to differentiate ourselves is to tell our audience that we are trying to protect their interests. We think that’s a wide-open field. CNBC seems to always be the friend of the CEO and that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. It has served them well.”

This statement is a direct contradiction of what his boss said when FBN debuted:

Rupert Murdoch: “…a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly than CNBC.’ That channel ‘leap[s] on every scandal, or what they think is a scandal.'”

So it is FBN that has always sought to be “the friend of the CEO.” Now, in the midst of a Wall Street driven economic collapse, they want to pretend that they are the network of the people. What a crock! The truth is, they are engaging in pure self-promotion. FBN has tried to cultivate the image of being a business channel for Main Street, not Wall Street. But from the beginning, that pretense has been as phony as their “Fair and Balanced” sloganeering for Fox News.

On top of all of this, FBN wants to claim as their victory something that is not really a victory and with which they had little to do anyway. Documents referenced in the FOIA request have already begun flowing. Over 1,200 have been released, 300 of which were previously undisclosed. FBN’s attempt to take credit for this is plausible only if you completely forget that President Obama, on his first full day in office, issued an executive order requiring agencies in his administration to cooperate with FOIA requests. This explicitly reversed a Bush executive order that mandated withholding information if at all possible.

Emerging from the secrecy-obsessed world of George W. Bush may feel strange, but FBN should recognize that they haven’t moved any mountains. They are just in a new era of openness that makes news gathering a little easier. It is more than a little pathetic that somebody else loosened the top of the jelly jar and FBN thinks they’ve grown new muscles.

Rupert Murdoch Won’t Apologize For Racism

Posted by on February 24, 2009 at 12:46 pm. 1 Comments :

The overtly racist cartoon published last week in the New York Post stands as evidence of the intractable racism that still infects the right-wing media.

Today, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the Post as well as its parent News Corp, issued what he regards as an apology:

“Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.”

“Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you – without a doubt – that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.”

So Murdoch spoke to a number of people and now he understands the hurt that was caused. But he still is only apologizing to those who “felt offended” – as if they were responsible for the pain. What’s more, he characterizing those who were hurt as simpletons who misinterpreted the intent of the cartoon.

What Murdoch does not do is apologize for racism. His new found understanding doesn’t include a grasp of the hatred that is embodied in the insults and violence expressed in the Post’s cartoon. He doesn’t comprehend that his so-called apology has little meaning when it exists in a vacuum unsupported by his actions. After all, he has done and said nothing about his editor’s defense of the cartoon. Col Allan, in his response to the controversy, complained that…

“…there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past — and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback. To them, no apology is due […and that the cartoon…] is a clear parody of a current news event.”

Apparently it was not so clear as Mr. Allan thinks. If Murdoch has to emerge from his lair a full week after publication, what is clear is that there has been public repulsion to the cartoon that is not going away quickly enough for the media mogul. But he probably won’t have to worry about business at the Post (Well, not more than usual since it has lost millions annually for over a decade). His readers have risen to the occasion to support the cartoon and its message. The vast majority of the comments attached to the online apology either defend the cartoon or berate Murdoch for apologizing. And amidst this rush to embrace hate are comments like this one:

New York Post Cartoon Comment

That comment is representative of many of the comments posted on the paper’s web site. Who will apologize for that?

Murdoch’s bully boy, Bill O’Reilly, has repeatedly hammered web sites like Daily Kos and the Huffington Post for what he says is hate speech. He attributes every comment on those sites to the name at the top of the page. In reality it is just an open forum where people speak for themselves. More often than not, objectionable content is quickly smacked down by other commenters. But in O’Reilly’s mind it is still the site’s responsibility. So I wonder if he will show some consistency and condemn the New York Post for comments like the one above. Especially since it is not an aberration, but the consensus.

Actually, I don’t wonder at all. In fact I wouldn’t be too surprised if Osinko turned out to be O’Reilly himself. After all, it was O’Reilly who ventured into Harlem and…

“…couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship […] There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, “M-Fer, I want more iced tea.'”

Osinko – O’Reilly / O’Reilly – Osinko — Hmmm…..

New York Post Cartoon