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.

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Fox VP: Sen McCain’s Quest For The Presidency Is Over

Posted by on October 25, 2008 at 10:16 am. 4 Comments :

A couple of days ago Ashley Todd, a John McCain campaign worker, reported to the police that she had been beaten and robbed by an African-American supporter of Barack Obama because of her political affiliation. The story was widely disseminated throughout the media with the help of the McCain communications team. There was just one problem with this story – It wasn’t true. Within 24 hours Todd confessed that she had fabricated the entire affair.

Before the truth was revealed, Fox News Executive VP John Moody published this on his blog:

“If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.”

Moody doesn’t explain why voters would suddenly feel a lack of knowledge about Obama because a criminal unconnected to him was alleged to have done something horrible. But his remarks do confirm Fox’s obsession with associating Obama with all manner of evil, from radical preachers to domestic terrorists. The only real reason someone would revisit their support for Obama under these circumstances would be the reason Moody explicitly discarded. They are racist.

This is not the first time that Moody has demonstrated a gift for the ridiculous. He has previously said that terrorists were “thrilled” at Democratic victories in Congress. And there’s more.

Two days have elapsed and Moody has not posted anything to his blog since the article above. Therefore, we must assume that he is standing by his prediction that McCain’s campaign is over and is forever linked to race-baiting. I think the same thing can be said of Fox News, who eagerly promoted the false story when it broke.


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.


Who Do The Troops Support? Don’t Ask Fox News

Posted by on October 21, 2008 at 3:44 pm. 3 Comments :

Yesterday Barack Obama received the endorsement of General Colin Powell. This is a significant endorsement from a respected public figure who is a Republican that has served as Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war. And it was no ordinary endorsement. Powell was as effusive in his praise of Obama as he was dismissive of John McCain.

Immediately following his appearance on Meet the Press, the Republican smear machine cranked up their toxic rhetoric to belittle Powell with allegations of everything from naivete to racism. But that wasn’t enough to blunt the impact of Powell’s support for Obama. So Fox News is now promoting what they call “poll” that shows overwhelming support (68% to 23%) for McCain by members of the military. In the segment, Fox’s Megyn Kelly introduces the poll and leads off with some broad conclusions about its results:

“Well the Military Times is polling active service members on their pick for president, and it seems pretty clear from that poll who the armed services would like as a Commander in Chief.”

What Kelly fails to mention is that the “poll” is not a scientifically conducted survey designed to represent the views of the military community. It is merely an expression of preference by a self-selecting group of respondents who happened to return a questionnaire sent to subscribers to the Military Times. There was no attempt to create a sample group whose responses could be expanded to the military at large. There was no demographic targeting. This poll has no more relevance than an online poll that simply collects the responses of those who feel like clicking on it. But none of that stopped Kelly from casting the results as “pretty clear,” nor did it stop reporter Jennifer Griffin from surmising that…

“Democrats, in essence, have not made the inroads into the military vote that they hoped to in the last four to eight years.”


[Update – 1/20/09: Sorry. It appears that the original video with Megyn Kelly has been removed. However, Fox News did exactly the same thing two weeks ago with John Kasich guest hosting on the O’Reilly Factor]

This deliberate distortion is wholly the work of Fox News. The Military Times responsibly reported their methodology for the poll on their web site. It says in part that…

“Characteristics of Military Times readers may also affect the results. The group surveyed is significantly older than the military as a whole, and the survey group contains a higher percentage of officers than is present in the military.”

“Conversely, junior enlisted troops, women and racial and ethnic minorities made up a smaller share of the sample than of the military at large. While it is difficult to predict how those factors affect the results, those groups are generally regarded as more supportive of Democratic candidates.”

Fox News purposely left out this information because it didn’t advance their agenda. Clearly their intention is to inject an argument to mitigate the newsmaking endorsement by Powell. So Fox News went looking for something to counter the credibility that Powell has with the military and the general public. They found this survey that was actually published two weeks ago, and they have elevated it to a major story that has run multiple times throughout the day.

So who do the military really support? The non-partisan Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) released a report grading the candidates on their support for military legislation. Obama received a “B”, while McCain barely passed with a “D”. Perhaps a better measure is one where troops are putting their money where their mouths are. A survey last August by the Center for Responsive Politics revealed that…

“U.S. soldiers have donated more presidential campaign money to Democrat Barack Obama than to Republican John McCain, a reversal of previous campaigns in which military donations tended to favor GOP White House hopefuls.”

It’s no coincidence that Fox News began touting the two week old Military Times poll on the day after Powell’s surprise announcement. And it’s no surprise that Fox would deliberately distort the poll and its meaning. What continues to surprise me is that anyone still gives any credence to anything that Fox News reports.


Fox News Cancels New York Times

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 4:22 pm. 4 Comments :

This past weekend, the New York Times published a profile of John McCain’s wife, Cindy. Included in the article were facts relating to Sen. McCain’s adulterous relationship with his future second wife, as well as Ms. McCain’s troubles with drugs. These are simply factual episodes that any responsible biographical piece would have to address.

Predictably, the McCain campaign was outraged and immediately began shouting about media bias and tabloid journalism. Whereupon the masters of tabloidism, Fox News, came to McCain’s aid by parroting his complaints and even helping to punish the Times by providing viewers with a telephone number they could call to cancel their subscriptions. This all occurred during a “news” broadcast, not the O’Reilly Factor.

The hubris of Fox News never seems to find it’s peak. It would be one thing for them to report on the controversial article and McCain’s response. They might even follow that up with their own views as to the presence of bias in the article. At this point everyone knows that Fox shamelessly inserts their opinions into their reporting, and since McCain has already declared war against the Times, it’s only natural that Fox, the network of the Republican National Committee, would follow suit. However, by participating in a effort to encourage the cancellation of subscribers to the paper, Fox is crossing a new line that is much further out in the sand than was previously drawn.

Aside from the obvious advocacy on the part of Fox News for the McCain candidacy, and their staking out a position on the paper’s coverage, Fox News has a vested financial interest in harming the Times. Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. which also owns Times competitors the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. So this partisan interference in political affairs is also a brazen attempt to damage a competitor in the marketplace.

The many tentacles of the Murdoch empire continue to raise questions about monopolies and anti-trust. Is it proper for one News Corp. property to openly advocate that customers abandon a competitor of another property? If so, could NBC, which is owned by General Electric, broadcast appeals to their viewers to stop purchasing light bulbs or refrigerators made by their competitors? Could ABC, which is owned by Disney, run stories that advise people not to attend Six Flags Amusement Parks in an effort to boost attendance at Disneyland?

These are some of the easily anticipated problems with the sort of unregulated consolidation that has been rampant in the recent past, particularly in Republican administrations. If anti-trust laws aren’t taken seriously and vigorously enforced, the corporate chieftains end up controlling and manipulating markets to the detriment of competition and consumers. Barack Obama is on record in opposition to the Bush policy of ignoring, or advancing, corporate collusion, consolidation, and other anti-competitive activity:

“We’re going to have an antitrust division in the Justice Department that actually believes in antitrust law. We haven’t had that for the last seven, eight years.”

If Obama follows through on that pledge, we might begin to see some progress toward a truly open, diverse, and fair marketplace in the media and elsewhere. Regulations will need to be refined and some conglomerates will need to be broken up. Real reform in this area will be difficult to achieve, but it is essential if we want a system that provides a level playing field for everyone.


Fox News Hires Disgraced Journalist Judith Miller

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 11:25 am. NO Comments :

In an effort to further make a mockery of the phrase “fair and balanced,” Fox News has announced that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been hired as a commentator for the cable propaganda network. Coming on the heels of last week’s announcement that imbecilic blabber Glenn Beck will be getting his own show on Fox News, Miller should feel right at home, along with Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and her very own White House source, Karl Rove.

Miller is best known for spending 85 days in jail for protecting Rove and Scooter Libby, who had conspired with her to slander Valerie Plame. Plame was the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson who had revealed the lies that the Bush administration was peddling with regard to Saddam Hussein’s alleged aspirations for weapons of mass destruction. Miller and her cohorts outed Plame as a covert intelligence operative with the CIA, ending her career as well as her important work gathering intelligence about Iran’s nuclear activities.

Miller is also the author of some of the most distorted propaganda in support of the Bush administration’s intention to invade Iraq. She operated as a functionary of the White House, retelling their lies on the pages of the New York Times so that they could cite her stories as proof of the need to initiate a preemptive war of aggression. After the fact, the Times’ editor was forced to apologize for the journalistic sloppiness and deceit of Miller and her colleagues:

“Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper…while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”

Miller left the Times in disgrace and later joined the conservative Manhattan Institute. Now she will expand her reach to viewers of Fox News, who will likely appreciate her right-skewed world view. And Fox gets another mouthpice to further its propaganda assault on America and the world.

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Rupert Murdoch Dead Last In Charitable Giving

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 10:30 am. 12 Comments :

Conde Naste’s Portfolio Magazine has compiled a list of billionaires ranked by their charitable donations. The Generosity Index itemizes fifty of the wealthiest individuals as donors, relative to their wealth.

Coming in fiftieth is the miserly media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that an uber-conservative, Republican monopolist, should finish last in expressions of charity. The Republican me-first ideology that values greedy self-centrism predictably drives people like Murdoch to the bottom of these lists.

At the other end of the spectrum, the top five most generous billionaires (Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, George Soros, and John Kluge) are all reliable supporters of Democrats and most have contributed to the campaign of Barack Obama.

This news bite is just a little more evidence that Republicans tend to be selfish, social Darwinians and Democrats tend to have more compassion and concern for the well being of others.


Sarah Palin: Failin On Saturday Night Live

Posted by on October 19, 2008 at 1:47 am. NO Comments :

The highly anticipated appearance of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live was hardly worth staying up for. She had barely noticeable parts in the sketches in which she was featured, and none of what she did was remotely funny. The entire affair smelled of self-promotion on the part of SNL as well as Palin.

There was some irony in the opening where Tina Fey did her usual smash up job of impersonating Palin. Then they cut away to the real Palin telling SNL producer Lorne Michaels why she declined to play the role of herself at a press conference:

“I just didn’t think it was a realistic depiction of the way my press conferences would have gone.”

How would anyone know? It is difficult to imagine a realistic depiction of one of her press conferences because she hasn’t done a single one since being picked as McCain’s running mate. Now she has even refused to do a fake press conference for a comedy show.

Her unwillingness to cooperate characterized the whole of her appearance. In her second bit, during the Weekend Update, she refused to perform the rap that had been written for her, so Amy Poehler did it instead. Palin sat there swaying to the music a little, but otherwise contributing nothing. That was ironic too, as it closely mirrors her real life unwillingness to cooperate with the investigations into her abuse of power as governor of Alaska.

So maybe we did learn something about Sarah Palin after all. The theme of both of her sketches revolved around her refusing to actually do anything at all. It’s clear from this performance that Palin is not qualified to be a guest on Saturday Night Live, much less a 72 year old heartbeat away from the presidency.


Glenn Beck To Suck On Fox News

Posted by on October 17, 2008 at 10:54 am. 46 Comments :

In what may seem like an obvious and long overdue match up, Glenn Beck will be leaving CNN for Fox News early next year. This should be good news for CNN because Beck’s show has performed terribly on the their Headline News Network (HLN). It is consistently in last place amongst its cable news competitors, and is the lowest rated program on HLN’s primetime schedule.

Despite bragging about how Beck had improved the time period for HLN, Beck has actually lagged other programs on the network. Nancy Grace pulls in twice as many viewers as Beck. All news networks experienced growth this year due to the presidential election. However, while Grace increased her audience 100%, Beck managed a paltry by comparison 34% gain over his third quarter performance last year in the key 25-54 year old demographic.

By it’s embrace of Beck, Fox News is providing more evidence (as if any were needed) of their intransigent partisanship. If they were smart, they would offer a show to Tanya Acker (who I love) or Bob Beckel (not so much) just to say they have one program from a left of center perspective.

So what is Fox getting for their trouble? They are getting the most ignorant and obnoxious host on cable news. They are getting a perennial ratings loser. They are getting an unrepentant racist provocateur. They are getting an ego-centric ideologue that CNN originally described as someone “that could siphon viewers from Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts.” Now he won’t need to as he and O’Reilly will be able to promote each other. There is no question that Beck will feel more at home at Fox. In a comment responding to his new contract he even admitted that Fox News will be a better fit because…

“I’m kind of an island over at Headline. It’s kind of difficult because I’ve got to bring my own audience over to Headline.”

Well he won’t have to do that for Fox, because it comes complete with its own congregation of rightist believers. That will serve as an advantage to Beck who will have access to a much larger and better trained audience than he had at HLN. Plus, he was about to lose his nightly repeat broadcast to a rerun of CNN’s Lou Dobbs. That undoubtedly had some impact on his decision to jump ship. However, his Fox show will air earlier in the day at a time that has lower HUT (homes using TV) levels, in a time period that has featured previous losers like John Gibson and Laura Ingraham – both now canceled.

The open question now is, “What will CNN do with the vacant time slot?” One option would be to return to their original mission of providing summaries of breaking news events. But since the ratings trends favor personality-driven talk, they will likely seek a new, opinionated host.

This would be a good time to point out that CNN has never had a single program hosted by a liberal. Not one. But they have cycled through multiple conservative hosts. They may want to take note that MSNBC is the presently the fastest growing cable news network thanks to Keith Olbermann’s Countdown and the newest talk show sensation, Rachel Maddow. There are numerous progressive personalities available if CNN chose to demonstrate some market savvy as well as some content diversity. They could even reward their own Jack Cafferty with a promotion. He is wildly popular and, while he’s not exactly a liberal, he connects with everyone who is fed up with whatever status quo is at play.

Will CNN do the right/smart thing? Judging by their past I would not bet on it. But they have an opportunity and perhaps they may not squander it if they get some encouragement from viewers. CNN’s email: CNN / Headline News

Update: CNN has announced that Jane Velez Mitchell, beginning tonight, will serve as the interim host for the time period Beck is vacating. It is notable that CNN is pulling Beck from the schedule the day after revealing his agreement with Fox News. Beck’s contract doesn’t expire until February. Perhaps CNN is upset at Beck’s departure (though they should be grateful). More likely they see no reason to permit a future competitor to continue to promote himself on their air.

Velez-Mitchell is an unknown quantity so far as political commentary is concerned. She has done a lot of court reporting (i.e. Michael Jackson) and is a frequent substitute for Nancy Grace. She is also an out lesbian (hello Rachel), a vegan, and an opponent of animal cruelty, for what it’s worth. Last year she contributed $800.00 to the presidential campaign of fellow vegan Dennis Kucinich.


John McCain And Citizens Against Government Waste

Posted by on October 16, 2008 at 12:57 pm. NO Comments :

Now that all three presidential debates have been concluded, there is a notable thread of consistency that John McCain maintained throughout the process. In all three debates he cited Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) as a non-partisan watchdog group that voters could go turn for more information about his policies.

  • Debate 1: I suggest that people go up on the Web site of Citizens Against Government Waste, and they’ll look at those projects.
  • Debate 2: And now I suggest that maybe you go to some of these organizations that are the watchdogs of what we do, like the Citizens Against Government Waste or the National Taxpayers Union or these other organizations that watch us all the time.
  • Debate 3: Let’s look at it as graded by the National Taxpayers Union and the Citizens Against Government Waste and the other watchdog organizations.

The only problem is that CAGW is anything but non-partisan. Last month I wrote about how Fox News used CAGW as a source for a story on earmarks by correspondent William La Jeunesse (who may be the most politically biased reporter on Fox, and that’s saying something).

“[CAGW] has publicly endorsed McCain for president and donated $11,000.00 to him or to PACs he controls. CAGW has also worked as a shill to attack McCain opponents in a manner that may have violated election law. It has also been connected to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

On the board of CAGW is long-time McCain associate, Orson Swindle. They met as cell mates in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp where Swindle says that he and McCain ‘slept side-by-side for almost two years.’ Swindle is now the McCain campaign’s veterans liaison and was appointed to his campaign Truth Squad a couple of months ago.”

This is McCain’s idea of a non-partisan source? It’s not particularly surprising that McCain would exploit his cronies to boost himself. But it would be nice if the press would at least make a small mention of this deceit. Then, maybe I’m just too idealistic.