Keith Olbermann Was Right About TVNewser

Posted by on March 17, 2009 at 11:47 am. 5 Comments :

In the recent dust up between Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer, TVNewser inserted itself into the controversy with an anonymously sourced item that asserted that MSNBC was told to refrain from stories on the matter. TVNewser’s Steve Krakauer did not reveal who told MSNBC to do this, nor who told him about the instruction.

Keith Olbermann responded to Krakauer’s claim in a posting on Daily Kos. He denied that any restrictions were placed on him, and he noted Krakauer’s and TVNewser’s reputation for partisanship and for regurgitating Fox News PR:

“Frankly, the guy who posted this, the site’s Associate Editor, Steve Krakauer (‘SteveK’), is well known around the industry as being entirely in Fox’s pocket […] Rachel [Maddow] could get the cover of Newsweek and he wouldn’t link to it.”

Well, this morning TVNewser is featuring two stories on its front page on Glenn Beck (both by Krakauer), including one that links to a Beck interview by The Daily Beast. But no mention that Rachel Maddow was on David Letterman last night.

Good call, Keith. I have previously documented other incidents of blatant bias by TVNewser. In one story about the marital infidelity of politicians Krakauer cited Hillary Clinton (who has never engaged in infidelity) and John Edwards (who, at the time, was the subject of unsupported rumors in the National Enquirer). He didn’t bother to mention the multiple marriages and notorious philandering of John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani. The other story offhandedly referred to Al Franken as “a rabid leftie.”

Krakauer is not only in Fox’s pocket, he is a former Fox News employee. The evidence of TVNewer’s bias is all over its web site. It’s apparent in what they chose to cover and what they chose to ignore. And, most of all, its community of commenters posting remarks to their articles is a buzzing hive of partisans so far to the right they would make RedStaters nervous. They congregate in items referencing Fox News and are devotedly defensive of anything and everything Fox does and says. Their boards are thoroughly useless as a forum for media discussions. Any comment that is contrary to the rightist hive-think is pounced on and assaulted in overtly personal terms.

TVNewser may eventually put up some notice of Maddow’s Letterman spot, but that will not resolve the larger problem that the site is infected with slanted coverage and lunatic rantings. It’s a shame, because there is a real need for a web site that offers balanced media news and informed discourse.

Update: Well, TVNewser did get around to posting a brief notice that Maddow appeared on Letterman. But they also followed it up immediately with a ridiculous Krakauer composed hit piece on Jon Stewart (more on that here).

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Fox News Deception Jumps Completely Off The Scale

Posted by on March 16, 2009 at 10:47 pm. 3 Comments :

Just a month after Fox News was caught reading verbatim from a Republican press release and presenting it as a news story, they have now dipped into territory that is so thoroughly unethical that it boggles the mind.

Media Matters caught a segment hosted by Martha MacCallum wherein she presented a state of affairs that she felt deserved a looking into.:

“Well, after weeks of economic doom and gloom, the Obama administration is now singing a slightly different tune. Take a look at what was said in recent interviews this weekend.”

Thereupon she played a video montage of President Obama and members of his staff saying positive things about the future prospects of our economy. Since Fox News spent most of last week complaining that Obama was too negative, it is ironic that they are now complaining that he is too positive. Would MacCallum prefer that Obama continue the doom and gloom for which she had previously chastised him?

But the bigger problem was that the video montage included a clip a Vice President Joe Biden saying that “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.” MacCallum characterized the whole clip as being comprised of comments made “in recent interviews this weekend.” Except that Biden’s remarks were made six months ago. Even worse, he was not expressing his own opinion that the economy was strong, he was mocking John McCain for saying so. MacCallum and Fox News cropped out the part where Biden said…

“Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that’s why John McCain could say with a straight face, as recently as this morning — and this is a quote: ‘The fundamentals of the economy are strong.‘ That’s what John says. He says that ‘we’ve made great progress economically’ in the Bush years.”

So MacCallum not only lied about when Biden’s remarks were made, she aired a video edited to appear as if Biden had said something when, in fact, he was quoting McCain as having said it.

It is just totally incomprehensible that anyone regards Fox News with any measure of respect.

Update 3/17/09: Twelve minutes into this morning’s program, Martha MacCallum raised the issue about the Biden video. She said that the video was indeed from six months ago and that Biden was quoting McCain. She then apologized for having “gotten it wrong.” While there was no explanation for how something this egregiously misleading occurred, I suppose it’s the best we can expect from Fox News.


Fox News Lies About Carville For Limbaugh

Posted by on March 12, 2009 at 12:50 pm. 3 Comments :

Obviously Rush Limbaugh’s infantile tantrum regarding his hope that President Obama fails has not gone over well with most Americans. But it has warmed the hearts of dittoheads, Republicans, and Fox News personnel. At the top of that list would be the Fox News Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon.

In his zeal to to defend Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party, Sammon dug up a comment by James Carville in 2001. Referring to President Bush, Carville was quoted as saying, “I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed.”

That mere sentence fragment is the whole of Sammon’s reporting on Carville’s comments. Carville said a great deal more which was reported elsewhere, but Sammon chose not to include any of it because it didn’t support the impression that Sammon wanted to create – which was to associate Carville’s statement with Limbaugh’s. Well, here is the rest of Carville’s comments:

“People basically like this president as a person and they want him to succeed, but they have some pretty serious doubts that have not crept in but are sort of there. You have almost half the country saying he is in over his head. Over half the country saying he is for the powerful. And as much as I would like for it or wish for it, they are not going to pull away completely from him months into his administration.

“I don’t care if people like him or not, just so they don’t vote for him and his party. That is all I care about. I hope he doesn’t succeed, but I am a partisan democrat. But the average person wants him to succeed. It is his country, his life or their lives. So he has that going for him. There is a lot that is going to happen between now and next November. It is not that people don’t like him. It is not that people don’t want him to succeed but it is also not that he doesn’t have some serious underlying problems.”

It seems abundantly clear that the only thing Carville is talking about was succeeding electorally. He was not saying that he hoped Bush’s policies fail, he just wanted Bush and other Republicans to lose elections. Contrast that with Limbaugh’s repeated assertions that it is President Obama’s agenda that he hopes will fail. What’s more, Limbaugh encourages others to adopt the same hope for failure, and disagreeing with Limbaugh is tantamount to treason. Carville is directing his comments to results from polling that express public opinion. He is not attempting to persuade anyone to adopt his opinion. And if he were, there would be no repercussions for those who disagreed.

It is also abundantly clear that Sammon deliberately truncated Carville’s statement to slant the story against Carville. Furthermore, Sammon included responses from Limbaugh regarding this story, but didn’t give Carville the same opportunity to respond.

Fair and balanced? Uh huh. And remember, Sammon is a news executive at Fox, not a commentator. But even he must bow down to kiss Limbaugh’s ring.

Prediction: I want to go on record as the first to predict that Fox will launch a new TV program starring the leader of the Republican Party. Fox News CEO, Roger Ailes previously produced a syndicated show for Rush Limbaugh that failed miserably – perhaps because TV required that viewers actually look at him. But Glenn Beck has proven that Fox viewers are less discriminating than the broader syndication audience. Ailes and Limbaugh will try again, this time on a more friendly platform.


What’s Up With CNBC?

Posted by on March 12, 2009 at 11:50 am. 2 Comments :

The cable news wars have been raging for years. But for the most part the combatants have been confined to the big three: Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. Headline News and CNBC have been regarded as niche players that weren’t really on the front lines.

All of a sudden CNBC has become the most talked about cable news network, just as the nation has inaugurated a new president and tries to weather a fierce economic storm. Much of the attention is couched in ridicule. Rick Santelli’s rant, that cast a bunch of elite commodities traders as emblematic of average Americans, was only taken seriously by the likes of Michele Malkin and her mush-brained followers. Jim Cramer was exposed as the clown that he is by a much better and more professional clown, Jon Stewart.

The backwash of this publicity parade is a boost for CNBC’s ratings and visibility. But why is it happening now?

CNBC has long been a friend to the business community. Its reporting rarely alerted viewers to imminent crises (like the the one we are enduring now) or corporate malfeasance (like Enron and Madoff). The anchors were openly chummy with CEOs, whom they courted for access, and some, like Larry Kudlow, were overtly partisan. CNBC elevated the art of bloviating by introducing the Octo-Pundit, where as many as eight self-styled experts yelled at each other from their respective video cages.

But with a lineup like Fox News and current events that favored their niche, they still needed a little extra push to get the recognition they felt they deserved. So along comes Santelli and Cramer and a concerted effort to expand their conservative profile.

Despite the blathering of Bill O’Reilly, the NBC News division has never been left wing. MSNBC was once the cable home of Michael Savage, Oliver North, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and it still features Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. The rise of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow occurred strictly because of their success, not ideology. Nevertheless, in the past NBC has demonstrated its cowardice in the face of criticism. They are the network that canceled their own number one rated program, Phil Donahue, for fear of being tagged anti-war.

By ramping up the rightist rhetoric on CNBC, NBC News is attempting to harvest popular outrage from both ends of the political field. They can continue to throw liberals a bone with their primetime MSNBC schedule, while cozying up to their natural right wing allies on the business-oriented CNBC. And neither network will have its programming muddied with ideological balance. As an ancillary benefit, NBC will try to tamp down the criticism they receive from the right by pointing to their new heroes of ham-handed conservatism.

In the end, CNBC just hopes to siphon a few viewers away from Fox News, and to smother the new born Fox Business Network in its crib. Unfortunately, the way they have chosen to do that is to emulate the Fox model which is focused on aggressive conservatism, and hysterical, paranoid personalities. That won’t work for CNBC in the long run because Fox viewers are too cult driven. They won’t abandon the comfort of that with which they are familiar for a subsidiary of that which their Fox masters have convinced them is evil.

Now, more than ever, CNBC needs to concentrate on providing responsible financial journalism. By making themselves truly indispensable in the field for which they claim expertise, they will be far more likely to succeed and to serve the interests of their viewers.


Bill O’Reilly Controls The Stock Market, Part II

Posted by on March 11, 2009 at 10:38 pm. NO Comments :

Last June Jed Babbin of the uber-conservative Human Events Magazine wrote a disturbingly ignorant article in which he contended that Bill O’Reilly’s asinine babbling about General Electric may have caused their stock to decline.

Now Paul Bond of the Hollywood Reporter has sunk to the same depths of dumb. Bond has a history of poor analysis and bias that would embarrass the editor of a high school newspaper. In this column he asks: “Could O’Reilly have been a factor in GE’s stock becoming a dim bulb?” Most of the article is a tired rehashing of the war O’Reilly has declared on GE/NBC/Keith Olbermann. But near the end of the piece he gets around to answering his own question:

“Despite the relentless nature of the tirades, there aren’t many on Wall Street who suggest O’Reilly has been the cause of GE’s free-falling stock. In fact, most experts dismiss it as partisan street theater, and they point out that shares of News Corp., parent of O’Reilly’s own network, also have been crushed.”

That would seem to settle it. The article’s headline was just Bond’s sensationalistic ploy that was summarily dismissed by more realistic analysts and experts. Except for the fact that Bond’s bias still manages to emerge as he cites stock performance data that he seems to have made up. He says that this year GE has declined 53% and News Corp only 32%, a 21% difference. Actually GE has only declined 45%, but News Corp dropped 39%, a mere 6% difference. It’s bad enough that he can’t write, but apparently he can’t do math either.

It hardly makes sense to keep comparing GE to News Corp in the first place. News Corp is an almost pure media play, while GE is a conglomerate that has a small media component along with much larger entities engaged in defense contracting, appliances, medical technology, electronics, and finance (which, in case Bond didn’t notice, has been having a very bad year). A better comparison for News Corp would be Disney, Time Warner, and Viacom, all of which outperformed News Corp this year. But that doesn’t stop Bond from drawing a conclusion that teeters on fantasy. In the very last line of his article he says:

“As long as News Corp. keeps outperforming GE, criticism of O’Reilly and his stockpicking prowess will ring hollow.”

All I can say to this is that as long as Bond keeps writing absurd articles that misstate facts and twist reality, allegations of his sanity will ring hollow – much like his pal O’Reilly.

Addendum: O’Reilly took to the megaphone to trumpet news that S&P cut GE’s credit rating one step from “AAA” to “AA+”. While O’Reilly announced that as if it were his own victory, he didn’t bother to mention that his employer, News Corp, has a lower credit rating of “BBB”. And what are the odds that he’ll mention that Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway just received the same rating cut that GE did?


Neil Cavuto Admits He Is An Obnoxious Jerk

Posted by on March 8, 2009 at 12:22 pm. 5 Comments :

For some time, I’ve been meaning to write about the odious on-air personality of Neil Cavuto. While people focus much of their attention on gargantuan egomaniacs like Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, Cavuto is every bit their equal as a dishonest and unctuous jackass. But while I have been mulling over the best way to illustrate the repugnance of this pundit, Cavuto has saved me the trouble by proudly confessing his character flaws.

Last Friday Cavuto closed his program with a segment that featured letters from viewers complaining about his proclivity for interrupting. This annoying behavior is exhibited so frequently and conspicuously that I considered creating a new drinking game that called for a shot each time Cavuto interrupted someone. However, I immediately abandoned the idea because I didn’t want to be responsible for thousands of deaths by alcohol poisoning.

It seems that it was not just me that noticed Cavuto’s inability to keep his mouth shut after asking a question. His viewers must have written in in such numbers that he was forced to address the matter on air. And in a typical display of pundit Narcissism, Cavuto not only defended his incivility, he praised himself for it. He actually believes his impudence is performing a public service. How else could he say…

“God knows you’ve heard the stump speech so I demand they get off the stump. Sure, it jolts them. And clearly, you. But I am out not to be mean. I am out simply to get answers.”

Cavuto’s method of getting answers is to provide them himself. His guests become superfluous as he obviously prefers his own answers to the ones a guest might offer. His contention that he is merely attempting to short circuit a stump speech is plainly false. He doesn’t even give his guest enough time to discern whether or not the answer is substantive. By the time the guest has uttered, “Well Neil, the reason for that is…” Cavuto has already cut him off. His interruptions never compel a guest to be more responsive or clear. In fact, he interrupts almost exclusively to argue with the guest. That’s not seeking clarity, it’s browbeating. He is forcing his opinions down the throats of his viewers, and many of them resent it:

Email from Kevin: “News flash, pumpkin head, it’s not about you. It’s about the guest. Listen, you might learn. Doubt it, but you might.”

Sorry Kevin, but Cavuto is not going to listen. He has thrown down the gauntlet and refuses to waste his precious time allowing people with views different than his own to get a word in edgewise. As he said himself: “Not here. Not me. Not ever.” And although he shamelessly spews rightist propaganda, he will be the sole arbiter of what constitutes a talking point from the other side. He will nip it in the bud for fear that an honest argument or a good idea might actually make it through to his unsuspecting audience.

Along with hosting a daily program on Fox News that is ostensibly about the economy, he is the managing editor of the Fox Business Network. In this role he reports the business news of the day and conducts interviews on both financial and political subjects. His brazen partisanship belies the oft repeated excuse of Fox News CEO, Roger Ailes, that it is only the primetime shows that dabble in opinion. That nonsense simply can’t account for the self-righteous opining of Glenn Beck, Steve Doocy, Bill Sammon, Megyn Kelly, et al, all day long.

At times like these, when millions of Americans are so anxious about their jobs, homes, retirement, etc., financial news attracts a greater measure of interest than usual. The last thing any of us needs is another bloviating bully dispensing bullshit packaged as news. But that’s all we get from Fox, and Neil Cavuto is the very model of a modern major malfunction in the media.

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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.


Karl Rove: Turning On The Spit

Posted by on March 5, 2009 at 3:11 pm. NO Comments :

Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Josh Bolton are finally going to submit to questioning from the House Judiciary Committee. The agreement for their testimony spares them from having to appear under oath or in public. Although there will be a transcription of the proceedings, it will not be released until after the hearings are completed.

In reporting this concession, Bill Sammon, the Washington managing editor for Fox News, couldn’t help spinning the story in the most journalistically irresponsible manner possible. In an obvious attempt to disparage the chairman of the committee, Rep. John Conyers, Sammon wrote this:

“We’re closing in on Rove,” Conyers was overheard saying by two people just off the House floor last year. “Someone’s got to kick his ass.”

So two unidentified people just off the House floor, whom Sammon quoted without indicating whether they might have a partisan bias, happened to “overhear” something that they assert Conyers said. This means that they weren’t even participants in the conversation. And yet, this thoroughly unreliable pair of mysterious eavesdroppers are submitted by Sammon as sources for his reporting. It does provide a nice intro for Rove’s folksy self-defense:

“I understand they [Miers and Bolten] may be the hors d’oeuvres, but I’m the main course,” said Rove, who was Bush’s top political adviser in the White House. “Some Democrats would love to have me barbecued.”

It was generous of Sammon to set Rove up for that bit of theater and to preemptively tarnish the committee conducting the investigation. But it also provides additional proof that Sammon is a bald-faced partisan, and Fox News is the employer of choice for such hacks.

As for barbecuing Rove, the reason Democrats would love to see him turning on the spit (i.e. rotating on a skewer) is precisely because throughout his career he has been turning on the spit (i.e. orally ejecting (political) secretions).


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.