Bill O’Reilly

Fox News Inspires KKK Threats

Posted by on November 7, 2008 at 10:17 am. 2 Comments :

Just in case anyone still thinks that Fox News is merely an overtly biased right-wing mouthpiece for Republican issues and people, here’s a story of what trafficking in hate and lies can lead to in the real world:

“The white co-owner of a Palm Beach restaurant told her black employees they’d be fired if they voted for Barack Obama, and on the night of Obama’s victory, she wrote ‘KKK’ on their timecards and in notes she posted in the back of the restaurant.”

The owner of the restaurant claims that her actions were not meant to be taken seriously, but that is disingenuous at best. I cannot fathom how such behavior could be characterized as a joke. And in a startling attempt to defend herself, she sought to shift the blame:

“I think I got crazy with FOX News, watching too much FOX News.”

This is the sort of ugliness that is entirely predictable when you put unrepentant, racist provocateurs in the anchor seats of major television networks. It is what should be expected when those anchors invite other confirmed racists on their shows to affirm their repulsive views.

Throughout the past presidential campaign, Fox News led the rightist media in peddling racial hate. Let’s recap:

  • E.D. Hill: A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?
  • Liz Trotta: [N]ow we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh… Obama … well, both if we could.
  • Fox On-Air Graphic: Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking On Obama’s Baby Mama!
  • Bill O’Reilly: I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.
  • Bill O’Reilly: The question is: Did Martin Luther King really think of America as a bad country or a good country? Did he despise it the way Jeremiah Wright does? Or did he respect it? And that question is very difficult to answer precisely.
  • Bill O’Reilly: I 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.
  • John Gibson: Do your duty. Make more babies [or] Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic.

Then there is also Sean Hannity’s close association with neo-Nazi Hal Turner and proud bigot Andy Martin. And Fox News “broke” the false story of Barack Obama attending a Madrassa in his youth. This lead to accusations of Obama being a Muslim that persisted throughout the campaign. Fox also led the charge against Rev. Wright with barely concealed racial overtones. This list could go on and on.

The bottom line is that when a concerted campaign of distrust and disparagement, focused on racial hatred, is part and parcel of a major news enterprise, only a fool would fail to anticipate that it would instigate behavior like that described above. Sadly, I don’t see it receding much as Fox News continues to engage in their repugnant brand of pseudo-journalism, and they continue to employ the worst offenders.

Update: It isn’t only Fox News that is inciting threats: Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama.

“The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.”

News Corp Suffers 30% Decline In Income

Posted by on November 6, 2008 at 3:43 pm. 2 Comments :

In its quarterly earnings report released yesterday, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation reported a net income decline of 30 percent:

“Fiscal 2009 profit will drop in the ‘low to mid teens’ in percentage terms, New York-based News Corp. said on a conference call yesterday after U.S. markets closed, citing falling advertising sales and the stronger dollar. The company previously forecast a gain of 4 percent to 6 percent.”

This drop needs to viewed in the context of a broader Wall Street sell off. However, News Corp, parent of Fox News, is significantly under-performing the stock market indexes. For the past 52 weeks, News Corps’ stock price is down 63 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is off only 36 percent. [Ironic Note: Dow Jones is also owned by News Corp]

News Corp is also under-performing its competitors. CNN parent Time Warner is down 48 percent and NBC/MSNBC parent General Electric is off 54 percent. The fact that News Corp is faring so much worse than its nemesis GE must be gnawing away at folks like Bill O’Reilly, who frequently cites GE’s stock woes as evidence that NBC/MSNBC is evil and unpopular. Now that Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow have lifted MSNBC’s ratings above his own, will O’Reilly now concede that Fox News is even more evil and less popular?

In the conference call for the earnings release, Murdoch indicated that…

“The revised guidance is a clear reflection of the fiscal environment. We expect that to continue through fiscal 2009.”

Even though Murdoch had previously predicted a prolonged downturn, he is still managing to blame it on Barack Obama. A few days ago he said that Obama’s policies were “crazy” and would be “a real setback.” Since he is on record as far back as May 2008, with his view that we are in for 18 difficult months, it’s hard to figure how he lays these hardships on Obama who won’t even take office until next January.

In addition to the bad earnings news, Murdoch announced that there will be severe job cuts at News Corp. These cuts will occur even as new multimillion dollar contracts have been given to O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. At least some of Murdoch’s employees will have a little job security. However, none of them will have a holiday party this December as financial constraints have resulted in the party’s cancellation.

Season’s Greetings Rupert, et al.

Barack Obama’s Victory: A Mandate For…..

Posted by on November 5, 2008 at 9:14 am. 3 Comments :
America’s Barack Stickers and T-Shirts

America Is Back!

History was made on November 4, 2008, when Barack Obama overwhelming won election to become the 44th President of the United States of America. Forty-five long years after Martin Luther King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, the manifestation of that dream has come to pass. The fulfillment of this dream is a declaration that we can come back from the dark days of division that characterized the past eight years, and much of the past two hundred. And it is evidence that the people, when inspired, will rise up to take back their country. Barack Obama is merely the reflection of our own hopes and dreams. We are America, and…

America’s Barack

However, if the media, led by Fox News, is to be believed, then the next administration should provide some surprises. Obama was castigated by John McCain, McCain’s supporters, and the omnipresent rightist press, as a Muslim and a Marxist. His patriotism was challenged. Television anointed experts told us that Obama would raise our taxes and ruin our economy. And this dangerously risky, untested, neophyte, even palled around with terrorists.

But America voted for him anyway. Does that mean that a majority of American voters have just given a mandate to the President-elect for an agenda of Godless Socialism? Rejoice Pagans, for the day has come that the United States has affirmed its commitment to spreading both wealth and heresy.

Either that or the vacant ideologies of limp-brained, bile-spewers like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc, has been fiercely rejected, repudiated, and denied.

Time will tell.

And The Winner Is … Keith Olbermann’s Countdown

Posted by on November 4, 2008 at 11:29 am. 11 Comments :

It has been a long campaign, but the tally is finally in. Last week Keith Olbermann’s Countdown beat the O’Reilly Factor every day in the key 25-54 audience demographic. Here is the five day average for the primetime cable news programs:

Program Viewers
Countdown 1180
Rachel Maddow 1063
O’Reilly Factor 1020
Hannity & Not Hannity 1011
Larry King 631
Campbell Brown 533

I have been reporting on the performance of the cable news programs for almost three years. Most of that time I have made the case that Fox News is an old world dinosaur that is consistently underperforming the competition. Although it was also the number one news network, it was either losing viewers or growing slower than CNN and MSNBC. This year alone saw year-over-year gains of 70% for MSNBC, 66% for CNN, but only 36% for Fox. The trends all pointed to an eventual takedown which I predicted would occur before the end of this year.

Well, it’s November, and my prediction has been validated. There have been multiple occasions in the past few months where MSNBC beat Fox intermittently. The Foxbots all clung to the belief that these were irrelevant blips that would amount to nothing. But now Countdown took an entire week of regular programming (meaning there were no guest hosts or preemptions). This is as clear a signal as there can be that the landscape is shifting.

In addition to Olbermann’s success, the new Rachel Maddow show burst out of the gate to great acclaim and ratings. She beat Fox’s Hannity & Not Hannity 3 out of 5 nights, and took the whole week prize as well. For the week, the one-two punch of Olbermann and Maddow delivered a nightly win to MSNBC on 3 out of 5 nights, and a tie for the full week in primetime.

As always, time will tell if these numbers endure. But they affirm the audience migration away from Fox News. Plus Fox has a much smaller percentage of viewers in the 25-54 demo (27%) than either CNN (38%) or MSNBC (42%). This means that advertisers will drift away from Fox’s older skewing audience. But it also means that the next generation of news consumers is forming their bond now with with other networks, particularly MSNBC.

The Race Tightens – For Cable News That Is

Posted by on October 29, 2008 at 1:44 am. 3 Comments :

The election season has been a boon to the cable TV biz. All three of the news networks have enjoyed higher ratings. But the distribution of the audience expansion has not been exactly equal.

Fox News, the long-time leader, retains its position and moves up from fourth to second. CNN has a respectable showing by bumping up four steps from ninth to fifth. But MSNBC pulls off the master stroke by leaping from twenty-third to ninth, marking its first appearance in the top ten.

Much of the strong performance of MSNBC has to be credited to their powerhouse prime time lineup grounded by Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. But the real difference was made by the launch of Rachel Maddow’s new program, which has burst onto the air to great acclaim and audience appreciation. Her program seems to have revitalized the whole prime time schedule. As a result MSNBC is more frequently having nights like last night where the three hour block from 7:00pm to 10:00pm was number one, beating both CNN and Fox.

It is because of performance like this that Bill O’Reilly is whining about the Nielsen ratings being fixed. He just can’t bring himself to accept that more people are tuning him out and Olbermann in. To O’Reilly, any evidence that he is not the popular icon he imagines himself to be, must have been forged by his enemies who conspire against him from their underground lairs. As for Maddow knocking out both Larry King and Hannity and Colmes, after just a few weeks on the air, there is little precedent for such instant success.

The writing is on the wall. With the three news networks all bunched much closer together, Fox News is becoming ever more hysterical as their agenda is being rejected by America. So they try harder to push ridiculous fabrications, but the result is they make themselves look even sillier and they lose more viewers. In the past few months they’ve gone from calling Barack Obama a Muslim to branding him a Socialist. Sometime between now and election day, look for Fox to reveal that Obama and the Boston Strangler were never photographed together. Hmmm…Coincidence?

Not That It Matters: O’Reilly vs Franken

Posted by on October 28, 2008 at 11:01 am. 3 Comments :

Last night Bill O’Reilly couldn’t hold back any longer. He had to let loose on his arch-nemesis, Al Franken, and he did. Not that it matters. I’m just posting this as a bit of comic relief.

A far-left extremist, Franken’s tenure on the Air America Radio network was punctuated by one word: hate. The man is a smear merchant and a rank liar, unqualified for any elected office […] If Franken is elected to the Senate you can expect him to vote for every ACLU-driven impediment to fighting terrorism. He will approve more spending for entitlements, and he will promote San Francisco values any way he can.

O’Reilly doesn’t really give a damn about the ACLU, terrorism, or San Francisco values (although he did give Al Qaeda permission to blow the city up). He is just inconsolable that Franken may just prevail and, once again, prove that O’Reilly is a washed up old geezer who only holds sway over a pathetic congregation of rightist lemmings.

I want Franken to win because he’ll bring intelligence, insight, and compassion to the Senate (and a healthy sense of the absurd). But in addition to that, I just love how much closer it will bring O’Reilly to the thorough mental collapse that is inevitable.

Bill O’Reilly’s Ratings Derangement Syndrome

Posted by on October 26, 2008 at 2:21 pm. 9 Comments :

Bill O’Reilly’s deteriorating mental state has been on display for many months, even years. From the recently uncovered “We’ll do it live“ meltdown, to the unhinged “Don’t block the shot“ hysterics, O’Reilly has demonstrated the makings of an unprecedentedly public psychological collapse.

One of the core symptoms of the sort of delusional paranoia that O’Reilly exhibits is a personality so disordered that it sees enemies around every corner (see The O’Reilly Fear Factor: Collected Verses). The latest target of O’Reilly’s dementia is the A.C. Nielsen Company who is responsible for the television ratings used by networks, producers and advertisers. People often forget that the Nielsen ratings are a marketing tool because many try to use them as an indicator of popularity. In the business, however, it is well known that the numbers are routinely massaged to produce positive results for whomever is reporting them. But O’Reilly is stretching interpretation to the breaking point.

In his latest screed he is outraged by reports in the New York Times that address his program and its ratings. He begins by boasting that his ratings put him in front of every competitor. He notes that his program is number one in total audience and grew in the 25-54 year old demographic by 90%. However, after basking in the glow of Nielsen’s data, O’Reilly turns around and castigates them as having “major problems…that have benefited MSNBC” and asserts that…

“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.”

What O’Reilly fails to grasp is that Nielsen is a private market research company that nobody is compelled to patronize. If O’Reilly and/or Fox News don’t trust the results, they can decline to renew their contract. But to suggest that the Feds investigate them is just plain crazy. O’Reilly is attempting to elevate Nielsen to some kind of public institution that is subject to scrutiny from government overseers. It’s not. If O’Reilly had any evidence of wrongdoing, he could easily release it and Nielsen would be forced to respond. That’s how the free market, so revered by rightist ideologues like O’Reilly, actually operates.

Obviously O’Reilly has no such evidence. And he is exploring the boundaries of absurdity by proudly citing the Nielsen ratings as his source for how successful he is, then slandering them for cheating to make him look bad. If he wants us to be suspicious of Nielsen data, than shouldn’t we also question the data that shows him ahead?

As for his interpretation, O’Reilly is eager to complain that reporters from the New York Times leave out pertinent facts when profiling his performance. But so does he. His claim that he increased his 25-54 demo 90% needs to be put in context by noting that Keith Olbermann’s Countdown increased the same demo by over 300%. O’Reilly also likes to use the total audience numbers because they favor him. What he doesn’t say is that nobody in the business cares about them. Advertisers are focused on younger demos. In that area, O’Reilly lags severely. Only 22% of primetime Fox News viewers were in the 25-54 demo, compared to 31% for CNN and 38% for MSNBC. And Fox News is consistently the slowest growing of all the cable news networks.

O’Reilly’s attack on the Times has escalated into what he calls a war, and O’Reilly is fighting dirty. In a Herculean feat of irrelevance, he suggests that the Times’ performance on Wall Street is an affirmation of his position:

“The Times is suffering for its deceptive reporting. Its stock price is down 54 percent.”

Once again it is what O’Reilly leaves out that is most significant. First of all, he fails to note that the entire stock market has been brutalized by a sell-off of historic proportions. More to the point, the stock price of Fox News’ parent company, News Corp., is presently down 63% from it’s 52 week high. So by O’Reilly’s logic, Fox is 9% more deceptive than the Times.

I recognize that I’m being generous using the word “logic” in connection to anything O’Reilly does or says. But what’s notable about his latest “Reality Check” is how much farther it extends into the surreal than even he has ventured before. He has truly lost touch and now wanders a barren mental landscape in a vain search for sanity and safety from the demons he imagines are pursuing him.

O’Reilly, Hannity, And Beck: What Recession?

Posted by on October 24, 2008 at 2:09 pm. 4 Comments :

The economy continues to spiral downward in the U.S. and the world. Nearly a million Americans have lost their jobs just this year. Trillions of dollars in value have been lost in retirement and pension funds. Home foreclosures long ago surpassed all-time highs. Close to 50 million Americans have no health insurance. But why focus on the negative?

In some quarters there is good news and unreserved celebration. That’s because there is an unshakable bull market in Fox News Pundits (Or should I say bullshit market?). In just the past few weeks Bill O’Reilly signed a four year contract extension for more than $10 million annually. Sean Hannity re-signed a multimillion dollar per year contract for TV, plus another $20 million for his radio show. Glenn Beck will receive millions more for his new Fox hackfest. Neil Cavuto’s income leapt when he was promoted to managing editor of the Fox Business Network (the “Business-Friendly Business Network”) In addition, Mike Huckabee, Judith Miller, and Karl Rove, were all hired on as Fox contributors within the last year.

So when you hear the elitists at Fox dismiss the severity of this downturn, when you hear them say that things aren’t really so bad, remember that what they are really saying is that things aren’t really so bad for them. It’s easy for them to be stoic in the face of adversity when they are raking in more millions every year. Their mansions and limos and vacation villas are as glamorous as ever.

They have absolutely no sense of the loss or pain or sacrifice that the rest of us are suffering through. And yet they will continue to pretend to speak for us. They will push their phony arguments as fighting for the average Joe (Six-pack, Plumber, Blow, or whatever). They will soft-peddle the crisis and project blame on the lazy, and the irresponsible and, of course, on Barack Obama. Just minutes ago Cavuto did just that, saying that the markets were reacting to Obama’s comments on “spreading the wealth.” For confirmation, Cavuto then turned to well known financial experts Joe the Plumber and Ted Nugent. Seriously!?! That’s the sort of ludicrous financial analysis you can expect from Fox.

For the record, a little over a year ago Cavuto, disputed reports of the economy’s weakness saying that he “[didn’t] believe a word of it.” Bill O’Reilly, recently asserted that the market was tanking because traders were pricing in a presumed Obama victory in November. He also foolishly claims that the drop in the stock prices of GE and the New York Times affirms his positions opposing them. But the stock of Fox News’ parent company, News Corp., has fallen even farther than either of them, so whatever O’Reilly thinks is wrong with GE and the Times, it is even more wrong at Fox. Here’s the real reason for the market’s decline.

In the end, these disingenuous con men have no frame of reference for what ordinary Americans are experiencing. They only have their comforting wealth and their rightist agenda that is focused exclusively on enriching themselves and their friends. And anyone who believes that these impostors are advocating on their behalf is terminally naive.

Happy Birthday Fox Business Network

Posted by on October 15, 2008 at 3:52 am. 7 Comments :

Today is the first anniversary of the debut of the Fox Business Network, Rupert Murdoch’s newest propaganda platform. Ratings for the network are still so low that, even after a year, Nielsen cannot certify their reliability and they are not published. When numbers were leaked earlier this year they revealed a pitiful performance that drew only 8,000 daytime viewers, and 20,000 in prime time. CNBC, by contrast, drew an average of 284,000 viewers during the day and 191,000 in prime time.

This hasn’t stopped Murdoch from pursuing his ambition for a business channel that would be…

“…more business-friendly than CNBC. That channel leap[s] on every scandal, or what they think is a scandal.”

Ironically, the network that was hatched to put a rosy hue on business news appears to have had the opposite effect on the financial world into which it was born. The week that FBN launched the Dow Jones was at an all-time high. Since then the Dow, which also became the property of Murdoch when he purchased it along with the Wall Street Journal, has plummeted 33%.

Is it mere coincidence that the markets went straight down immediately after having been touched by Murdoch’s bony, demon finger? The first week that FBN was on the air the Dow dropped over 500 points. That should have served as a warning of the devastation yet to come.

On July 13, 2007, FBN’s Managing Editor, Neil Cavuto, disputed reports of the economy’s weakness saying that he “[didn’t] believe a word of it.” Cavuto previously downplayed the significance of the credit crunch, saying that, because “this ‘meltdown’ affects roughly 4 percent of all mortgages out there” there wasn’t really any problem at all. He then blamed market declines on John Edwards, who was running a distant third in the Democratic primaries at the time, but apparently still had superhuman powers over the stock market.

Cavuto’s colleague, Bill O’Reilly, recently asserted that the market was tanking because traders were pricing in a presumed Obama victory in November. [For the record, the market has performed better during Democratic administrations than Republicans for the past 107 years. And investments accrue more under Democrats]. O’Reilly also has a spotty record of financial analysis. He lambasted General Electric’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, with whom O’Reilly is obsessed, saying that he didn’t know how Immelt kept his job after GE’s stock dropped 36%. But O’Reilly must not have noticed that News Corp., the parent of Fox News was itself down 38% – even worse than GE. Maybe he should be asking how Murdoch keeps his job.

So in honor of FBN’s first birthday, investors and news consumers should be aware that this is the sort of credibility you can expect from Fox News and FBN which calls itself: The Network You Can’t Afford To Miss. It’s more like: The Network You Can’t Afford To Watch.

Bill O’Reilly’s God Gets Clobbered At The Box Office

Posted by on October 11, 2008 at 11:51 am. 5 Comments :

Last week Bill O’Reilly observed that two ideologically contrasting movies were about to be released. One was the liberal bashing “An American Carol“ in which O’Reilly has a small part ( Note to BO: There are no small parts, only small actors minds). The other was Bill Maher’s docu-comedy “Religulous.” O’Reilly, whose analysis of media is notoriously shoddy, couldn’t help but speculate as to the reception these films would receive:

“It will be very interesting to see which movie wins at the box office. Will the pagans score big? Or will the first conservative satire ever clobber the atheists?”

Apparently the Pagans and Atheists have prevailed. At least they didn’t get clobbered. After a week in general release the two films are virtually tied at about $4.5 million. However, Carol opened in 1,639 theaters while Religulous opened in only 568. So Religulous outperformed Carol on a per-screen basis by over 300%.

These results must surely be unwelcome news for O’Reilly (and God). As for Maher, O’Reilly advises him to “pray for a long life.” O’Reilly even takes a swipe at Oliver Stone’s precarious salvation status. Stone’s biopic of George Bush, “W.” will arrive at theaters next week.

“I’ll make a bold prediction: Many critics will love it! Can you imagine anyone sticking up for Mr. Bush at this point in time?”

I’ll make a bold prediction too: Many critics will hate it! I know, I’m really going out on a limb. The fact that O’Reilly thinks that a negative review equates to “sticking up for Mr. Bush” shows just how deeply degraded his cognitive skills have become. He can’t seem to comprehend that critics may base their reviews on their impressions of the film’s qualities. And O’Reilly has previously expressed his paranoid perspective of the film critics community as being hopelessly liberal. He arrived at this conclusion because a majority of critics whom he asked about their ideological leanings declined to answer. Therefore, in O’Reilly’s dementia, they must be clandestine socialists bent on ripping America apart.

It must be getting harder and harder to be Bill O’Reilly – an egotistical demagogue who can’t seem to win even with God on his side.

Update: After four weeks in release, An American Carol has earned $6.9 million. Religulous has earned $10.7 million. So Religulous has earned 55% more despite playing in one third the number of theaters and costing one tenth the amount to produce.