Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow is Leading MSNBC to Record Ratings, the Only Cable News Net to Gain Viewers

Posted by on August 28, 2018 at 10:14 pm. 2 Comments :

While Donald Trump is dragging his presidency down to the depths of the abyss, he might deserve some credit for lifting MSNBC up to the heights of ratings Valhalla. For the month of August MSNBC achieved a significant milestone, becoming the the second-most-watched network across all of basic cable. And the network’s star, Rachel Maddow, had the number one show for total viewers on cable TV for the last week of August.

Rachel Maddow

This ratings bonanza took place as Trump’s world was crumbling. His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted on eight felonies. His personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight felonies of his own. And Trump’s inner circle suffered some serious ruptures. His long-time friend, and publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors. The same goes for the CFO of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg. Immunity is not handed out unless the recipients were exposed to serious legal jeopardy and had something useful to trade for their get-out-jail-free card.

These sort of news events may have brought viewers hungry for credible reporting to MSNBC resulting in their ratings wins last week. But the whole month notched gains that were noteworthy. In fact, MSNBC’s primetime rose over their draw in 2017, while both CNN and Fox News declined. Maddow’s contribution to that was scoring the top show rating in all of cable TV for the whole month in the 25-54 demographic. To be clear, she not only beat Sean Hannity head-to-head, but every other show of any type on basic cable.

The remainder of the MSNBC schedule was equally as successful with viewers. Everyone from Chris Hayes to Lawrence O’Donnell to Ari Melber to Brian Williams to Joy Reid, enjoyed record breaking numbers. The daytime crew, including Ali Velshi, Stephanie Ruhle, Hallie Jackson, Nicolle Wallace, and Katy Tur, all notched substantial gains as well.

If this is any indication of how the content of the news can affect ratings, there is sure to be more good news to come. Manafort’s next trial in Washington, D.C. is scheduled to begin in mid September. And almost every day there are new revelations that bring Trump’s dismal fate closer to realization. Much of them unveiled by his own big mouth and fat Twitter fingers. And as events continue to unfold, America’s television viewers will continue to seek out truthful accounts of the breaking news.

That’s good news for MSNBC. And as for Fox News, they can surely rely on their cult followers to keep their numbers pretty high. After all, they will need those extra doses of fake propaganda and blurred reality from State TV to anesthetize them into their cozy states of semi-consciousness.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Must Fire Sean Hannity for Refusing to Disclose His Relationship with Donald Trump

Posted by on August 1, 2018 at 10:39 am. 3 Comments :

Anyone who has been paying attention is well aware that the most devoted promoters of Donald Trump are on State TV (aka Fox News). And the biggest Trump fluffer on Fox News is Sean Hannity. He has been relentless in his shameless support for the President with a nightly program that is an hour long prostration to Trump interspersed with vicious and dishonest attacks on his critics.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, White House

However, Hannity apparently doesn’t think it’s enough. He was interviewed by Forbes Magazine Tuesday and further exposed the depth of his sycophancy to Dear Leader. The interview began by addressing Hannity’s all too obvious infatuation with Trump. The first question referenced well documented reports that Hannity and Trump speak on a nearly daily basis with Hannity being the last call that Trump receives each night before bed time:

“I ask him about the regular reports that he has daily conversations with the president of the United States — even, it has been suggested, that he is often the last person Donald Trump talks to at night.

“‘I don’t have a nightly call with anybody,’ Hannity tells me. ‘I read these things about me that are total bullshit. Quote it. It’s just not true.’

“So how much access to the president does Hannity have? That’s one of the few questions he won’t answer. ‘I really kind of enjoy that nobody knows, and I’m just going to leave it that way,’ he says. ‘But I can tell you this: Nobody has ever gotten my relationship with Donald Trump right, ever'”

It’s bad enough that insiders attest to the romantic loyalty of their relationship. It’s something that even outsiders recognize without those reports. After all, Hannity has literally appeared in Trump advertisements. And Trump returns the favor by promoting Hannity on Twitter and granting him “interviews” that are more accurately described as infomercials. Trump even hired Hannity’s ex-producer, and former president of Fox News, Bill Shine, as his Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications at Hannity’s urging. Shine, you may recall, was fired by Fox News for misconduct related to the sexual harassment and abuse by Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and others.

But the most troubling part of the Forbes interview is Hannity’s callous disregard for ethics. His explicit refusal, even delight, with regard to keeping his affairs with Trump secret would be intolerable at any legitimate news network (which lets Fox off the hook). By boasting that he won’t reveal how closely he is tied to Trump he’s making every interaction between them cause for suspicion of collusion and propaganda. It’s unprecedented in journalism or even the sort of political advocacy that Hannity engages in. Why is he afraid to tell the truth about his relationship with Trump? Well, we know why.

Also in the Forbes interview were a couple of morsels that deserve some attention:

“At MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was capitalizing on the Trump presidency, building some of the highest ratings in her network’s history. ‘We lost 75% of our prime time,’ Hannity said of that time. ‘And we’re still No. 1.'”

Indeed, Fox News has cratered with the exodus of a substantial block of their viewers. So even though Hannity finds solace in still being the top rated cable news program (a big fish in a small swamp), it doesn’t undo the fact that Americans are turning off Fox News in droves. And then there’s this:

“Does it weigh on him to be accused of using his platform to prop up President Trump, spread conspiracy theories and blur the line between news and rabid partisanship? ‘The amount of time I spend caring about it is zero. I don’t care,’ Hannity says.”

That’s not surprising. Why would Hannity care that he’s a propaganda tool for the administration? Or that he’s disseminating lies and crackpot conspiracies that hurt innocent people? Or that he’s breaching journalistic ethics? He’s actually doing all of that deliberately. Those are pretty much the entire purpose for his existence. And for the existence of Fox News, for that matter. Which is precisely why Fox will not fire Hannity, no matter how much it is required by principle and morality.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Rachel Maddow: White House Transcript Erases Putin Saying He Helped Trump Win the Election

Posted by on July 24, 2018 at 10:10 pm. 3 Comments :

Holy crap. This is one of those moments when it simply cannot be ignored that the Trump administration is deliberately falsifying reality in order to deceive their glassy-eyed Deplorables. The White House has brazenly disappeared part of the press conference he held with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. And the purpose is painfully obvious.

Rachel Maddow Donald Trump

On the Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, Rachel revealed that the official White House transcript had an omission that could not have been accidental. The video from Maddow’s show tells the whole story. But the gist of it this: Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked Putin a question and got a surprisingly candid answer. After Putin replied to a question about assisting Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, Putin and Mason had the following exchange:

Putin: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Jeff Mason: President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
Putin: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

However, that is not what showed up in the White House transcript. They omitted the first part of Mason’ question, making it appear that Putin was still replying to the Mueller question:

PRESIDENT PUTIN: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Q: And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
PRESIDENT PUTIN: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

So the Trump camp removed Putin’s explicit admission that he wanted Trump to win the election, and that he took measures to achieve that end. Gee, why do you suppose Trump didn’t want the American people to know about that, even after they saw it with their own eyes when it occurred? Could Trump be trying to re-write history in order to cover up his collusion with Russia? Would he be that obviously Orwellian? Well, on Tuesday he spoke at a VFW event and said “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” That’s frighteningly close to what Orwell wrote in 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

To make matters worse, the official video of this on the White House website has the same clearly intentional and flagrantly deceptive edits. This is nothing more than the sort of twisted propaganda tactics that occur regularly in authoritarian dictatorships. In fact, Russia excised the same parts of the transcript as the White House did (collusion?). Trump is trying to erase the fact that Putin openly advocated for his candidacy, and even directed his officials to provide assistance. And what’s really disturbing is that it seems to be right in line with the sort of abhorrent behavior we all expect from Donald Trump.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

See for yourself: And be prepared to be disgusted by the unscrupulous immorality of our current, and hopefully short-tenured, president.

UPDATE: Philip Bump of the Washington Post is saying that Maddow’s analysis of these video discrepancies is wrong. He says the video that the White House (and the Post) transcribed was missing the part of the question identified above. But even if that’s true, why didn’t the White House get the complete video? Maddow did. And if they want to say this is all just an innocent mistake, then why haven’t they corrected the White House website? Are we supposed to believe that they are committed to the truth when they leave information they know is false on their website?

UPDATE II: Sometime on July 26, the White House website finally corrected their transcript of the the Trump/Putin press conference. And it only took them them a week and a half.

Fox News is Totally Cool with Sean Hannity’s Unethical Shilling for His Lawyer Michael Cohen

Posted by on April 17, 2018 at 2:18 pm. 2 Comments :

On Monday a shocking courtroom drama played out during a hearing for Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen. After previously refusing to disclose the name of one of his clients, he relented and announced that the secret client was Fox News host Sean Hannity. After those in attendance regained their composure, the media lit up with tales of the obvious violations of ethics from everyone involved.

Fox News Sean Hannity

It took Fox News another day to come up with a response to this calamity. But the extra time they devoted to it didn’t seem to help them manufacture a satisfactory excuse. All they could muster was a weak attempt to hold themselves blameless and free pass for Hannity to continue being a complete sleazeball. They said that:

“While FOX News was unaware of Sean Hannity’s informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support.”

Let’s break that down. First of all, Fox News is admitting that they have no idea what Hannity is up to. Obviously he never bothered to tell is bosses that he was in violation of common principles of media ethics. That failure to alert the executives in charge was, by itself, a fireable offense. No media enterprise should ever be “surprised” like this.

Secondly, what Fox is so cavalierly looking the other way about is a complex web of immorality and deceit. Cohen told the court that Hannity is his client. Hannity denied that. In effect, he is calling Cohen a liar. Plus, Hannity insists that Cohen isn’t his lawyer, but still says he should have attorney-client privileges. For that privilege to be in effect, there has to be an attorney and a client. Also, Hannity said that he never paid Cohen anything for his advice. Well, except for the time he slipped him ten bucks to invoke the privacy of an attorney-client relationship that he said he didn’t have. But what is he trying to keep private if the only thing he said he ever discussed with Cohen was real estate?

And why did Cohen try so hard to keep Hannity’s name a secret at the hearing? Does it have anything to do with Cohen’s specialty of facilitating hush money payoffs to mistresses of his famous clients? Or could there be some connection between Hannity and Cohen’s other client, Donald Trump, that they need to keep on the down low? Or maybe even some link between Hannity and Russia? Who knows?

Certainly not Fox News. At least they didn’t know before, and if they know now they aren’t saying. They also aren’t doing anything about it despite all of the blatant misbehavior noted above. Never the mind the beating they are taking in the press. For instance, the Washington Post published an article saying that it’s “Time for Fox News to investigate Sean Hannity.” Time Magazine is asking “Can Sean Hannity and Fox News Cover Michael Cohen Fairly?” Even Trump defender Alen Dershowitz called out Hannity on his own show saying “I do want to say that I really think that you should have disclosed your relationship with Cohen when you talked about him on this show.”

Fox News has already lost too many top prime time stars to take a chance with their current ratings king. Bill O’Reilly was fired due to his serial sexual harassment and abuse. Megyn Kelly ditched Fox for NBC in part due to O’Reilly and other Fox perverts. Laura Ingraham is currently suffering a hemorrhage of advertisers after she attacked David Hogg, the high schooler who survived the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Hannity would be getting off scot-free in under any circumstances because Fox is a den of iniquity and doesn’t care if their standard bearers are slimeballs. But he’s also benefiting because Fox is running out of replacement shills. If they were smart they’d give Hannity the heave-ho – not just because he committed unforgivably unethical acts – but because he’s losing to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. That should be the biggest embarrassment to Fox News that you would think they wouldn’t tolerate. They must really be hard up to let that go by.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

March Maddow-ness: MSNBC Dominates Fox News in the March Ratings Championship Game

Posted by on March 31, 2018 at 3:14 pm. 4 Comments :

Two years ago, Fox News was the unchallenged king of the cable news networks with ratings that sometimes exceeded the combined total of CNN and MSNBC. Last year, Rachel Maddow showed surprising strength against her competition, Sean Hannity. But now it is becoming a regular occurrence that MSNBC beats Fox News over significant parts of the daily schedule.

Rachel Maddow

MSNBC’s ratings success is driven by Maddow’s continued surge. She is no longer a quirky thorn in Fox’s side. She regularly wins her time period in the coveted advertising demographic of 18-34 year olds. In March she beat Hannity every single day of the month except for one. Her average audience for the month was 651,000. That compares to Hannity’s average of 568,000. But even more impressive is that Maddow also bested Hannity in total viewers fourteen out of the twenty-one weekdays in the month. Her average for total viewers was 2.99 million vs. Hannity’s 2.87 million.

MSNBC should also be proud of having better audience numbers in the demo than Fox News for most of the evening hours including primetime. Their average from 4:00pm to midnight was 458,400 vs. Fox’s 455,800. The Last Word with Lawerence O’Donnell won its time period thirteen of the twenty-one weekdays in March. And The 11th Hour with Brian Williams came out on top on nineteen days. Both of those programs scored higher than their competition (Laura Ingraham and Shannon Bream respectively) for the full month. And although Fox News generally did better during most of the daytime time periods, Deadline with Nicolle Wallace managed to beat Fox’s Neil Cavuto on eight days.

A weak point in MSNBC’s schedule is All In with Chris Hayes. Which is too bad because it’s an excellent show that has been recognized with multiple Emmys. However, it needs some juice if it’s going to be a decent leadin for Maddow and the rest of their primetime. They should think about pairing Hayes with Joy Reid as a co-host. Reid’s weekend program has been showing strength and is popular among MSNBC’s core audience. And it wouldn’t hurt to consider swapping Nicolle Wallace into Chris Matthew’s Hardball slot. Wallace has demonstrated her ability to pull in viewers, and Matthews may play better in the earlier, newsier part of the day.

The bottom line is that Fox News can no longer consider itself the number one network for cable news. It has been declining with each new reporting period. In January Fox News dropped fourteen percent in primetime. And February topped that with an additional fifteen percent decline. Meanwhile, MSNBC gained significantly in both of those months. February’s percentage gains were over twenty percent. Even worse for Fox News was their actual earnings performance. Their revenue rose less than either of their competitors – a measly seventeen percent. CNN’s rise doubled that to thirty-two percent. And MSNBC rocketed up sixty-two percent.

We can expect Fox’s earnings to fall even more in April with the advertiser exodus they are experiencing due to Laura Ingraham’s reprehensible attack on David Hogg, one of the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parkland, Florida. So far there are at least eighteen major advertisers who have pulled their business from her show. And in the midst of that she just announced that she will be on “vacation” all of next week. For the record, that’s the same thing Bill O’Reilly did after his advertisers bailed en masse and just before he was canned by Fox.

UPDATE: Forbes affirms the above ratings analysis.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

In Unhinged Speech Trump Slobbers Over Foreign Despots While Attacking America’s Free Press

Posted by on March 11, 2018 at 10:13 am. 2 Comments :

The President of the United States left Washington, D.C. this Saturday, but didn’t head south to his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach as usual. Instead Donald Trump went up to Pennsylvania to deliver a campaign speech on behalf of Rick Saccone, who is at risk of losing to Democrat Conner Lamb next Tuesday in a district that Trump won by twenty points. The rally was reminiscent of Trump’s aimless campaign speeches in 2016 where he pontificated like a mad evangelist for an hour or more.

Donald Trump

In keeping with his practice of shrieking sermonizing, Trump made a point of attacking what he considers the the scourge of his existence: the media (video below). He rattled off the sort of derogatory slander that would ordinarily be reserved for bitter enemies of all that is righteous. It was a storm of damnation, both personal and broadly general.

For instance, Trump lashed out at NBC’s Meet the Press calling it “A show now headed by sleepy eyes Chuck Todd. He’s a sleeping son of a bitch, I’ll tell ya.” Remember, this speech was at a daytime rally with children present. He also went after an unnamed “certain anchor on CNN” who he said was “fake as hell, CNN. The worst. So fake. Fake news.” And he wasn’t letting NBC off either. He ranted that they were “perhaps worse than CNN, I have to tell you. And MSNBC is horrible.” Continuing down that path of raw animosity he called MSNBC “third rate. And NBC, which is horrible. Their newscast, by the way is not doing well. On NBC network. They’re heading down the tubes.”

This might be a good time to inject some facts into the discussion. NBC’s newscast anchored by Lester Holt has won ten consecutive quarters in the key advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds. They were also number one in the most recent sweeps period of February 2018. And their morning news program, the Today Show, topped their competition (ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS This Morning) in both the demo and total viewers. As for MSNBC, Rachel Maddow has been beating Trump’s BFF Sean Hannity on a regular basis.

But Trump wasn’t about to let mere reality interfere with his delusions. He went on to make a ludicrous and utterly nonsensical prediction about the media that he despises so, and which he is convinced hates him. Pointing to the press at the rally he said…

“Six months prior to the election, every one of those guys – ‘We really endorse Donald Trump. We think he has to win.’ You know why? Because if I don’t win the election their ratings are gonna go so far down they’re gonna be out of business, every one of them.”

WTF is he trying to say here? That the media that he accuses of trying to destroy him will suddenly reason that it’s in their interest to support him? If that’s true, then why wouldn’t they support him now for the same reasons? What’s more, he’s implying that the media’s surging ratings are the result of having him around to attack. Which means that more viewers are watching because they enjoy seeing him get hammered. That’s actually true. Every poll shows that Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president ever recorded. So people probably are happy to see him get cut down by responsible journalists whose reporting of Trump’s failures is just part their job.

The tone that Trump sets in these rallies is decidedly hostile and un-American. He praises China’s Xi Jinping, who just maneuvered himself into being president for life (of which Trump is envious). He declares that he blindly trusts Kim Jong Un’s promise to refrain from missile and nuclear testing. He protects Vladimir Putin’s Russia from sanctions mandated by Congress as punishment for their election tampering. Trump speaks of these and other anti-democratic tyrants in radiantly glowing terms. But he viciously insults fellow Americans who practice their Constitutionally protected right to freedom of the press. And he thinks that’s how to MAGA – or KAG, as he now says (Keep America Gross).

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Scaramucci Tells Fox News that Rachel Maddow Needs an Anti-Anxiety Suppository

Posted by on March 9, 2018 at 1:49 pm. 2 Comments :

Well, here’s something you don’t see everyday (unless you’re watching Fox News). Donald Trump’s former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, was a guest on Friday’s episode of Fox and Friends. This is the guy who lost his White House job a mere ten days after he was hired because of a profanity-laden meltdown attacking fellow Trump staffers. He’s a hot-head in the mold of Trump who continues to serve as a loyal surrogate.

Fox News Scaramucci

During his interview by the “Curvy Couch” potatoes (video below), the Mooch leveled another of his patented gross-outs, this time aimed at MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (who is slaughtering Fox News and Sean Hannity). It was wholly inappropriate personal insult that was devoid of substance. In other words, it was pretty much the same bullshit non-reasoning that all of the cretins on Fox News resort to. About Maddow he said that…

“You can tell she’s got a little bit of that Trump Derangement Syndrome, which I like. I’m hoping that one of these comedians will come up with anti-anxiety medication for liberals. Just take one tablet a day, maybe a suppository, and take it easy. […] The President is doing the right thing for the American people, but he’s also doing the right thing for the world.”

To be clear, Scaramucci is criticizing Maddow as being “deranged” and having an anxiety problem. The same guy who told the New Yorker that Reince Priebus is a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic,” and that Steve Bannon engages in self-fellatio, and that he wants to “fucking kill all the leakers” in the White House. That’s the guy who thinks that Maddow and other liberals should “take it easy?” Yeah, whatever. [Note: Scaramucci later tweeted an apology].

The topic of the segment was Trump’s announcement that he accepted Kim Jong Un’s invitation to meet and discuss a resolution to their juvenile slap-fight on Twitter. The Fox News crew was aghast that Maddow would have anything critical to say about that. They played a clip from her show wherein she wondered…

“Why has no sitting American president ever met with a leader of North Korea? Why has that never happened in all the decades North Korea existed as a nation? Shouldn’t I take this to mean that this might be a particularly risky, or even an unwise move?”

Those are perfectly reasonable questions. What’s more, Trump’s impulsive agreement to meet with Kim demonstrates a dangerous incompetence with regard to what Trump considers his greatest asset: dealmaking. A meeting with the President of the United States is an asset that a smart negotiator would reserve until other concessions were made by the opposing party. Trump gave it up at the very beginning. He got nothing for it, or for the legitimacy it grants to Kim. He could have at least asked that the Americans currently being held in North Korea be released as a prerequisite to a meeting.

Fox News is predictably hailing Trump’s concession to meet Kim as a historic achievement. Never mind that the meeting hasn’t taken place and there are no guarantees that anything productive will result from them. In fact, there’s a fair chance that a summit between The Dotard and Little Rocket Man might make everything worse. They are two unstable, narcissistic individuals with little respect for one another. If their common stubbornness results in a fruitless affair, it might even make military conflict more likely as the prospects for diplomacy fade.

Time will tell if Trump can attend this meeting (if it even comes to pass) without screwing up. In his meetings with Congress he has proved that his word is virtually worthless and neither Democrats nor Republicans can rely on him to follow through. In the meantime, we fan expect philistines like Scaramucci to keep showing up on Fox News slinging insults and ignorance at their dimwitted audience. And maybe the world will survive a little bit longer.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Hypes Fox News Ratings While Ignoring the Success of Rachel Maddow and MSNBC

Posted by on March 6, 2018 at 11:58 am. NO Comments :

There is something deeply disturbing about a president who obsesses about television ratings. Especially when it’s focused so narrowly on one particular network that serves as his biggest media booster. Donald Trump has spent more time on Twitter fawning over Fox News than almost any other single subject. He frequently tweets or retweets things he just watched on Fox and Friends or Hannity as if they were his closest advisors.

Rachel Maddow

On Tuesday morning Trump retweeted a post by his son Eric that celebrated Fox’s ratings performance in February. Why on Earth was this so important to someone who is currently burdened with a nuclear standoff with North Korea, Russian interference in American elections, a trade war that he instigated, children being massacred in schools, undocumented residents who have spent nearly their whole lives in the U.S. facing deportation, and so many other serious matters? It’s almost as if his only experience for running the country came from being a TV personality.

Okay, so Fox had a pretty good month. They lost January, so it must be a relief to them – and to Trump. However, their February win wasn’t exactly a runaway. While Trump slams his arch-enemy CNN in this tweet, he neglects to mention MSNBC and Rachel Maddow. As News Corpse reported last week, Maddow had another impressive month, falling just short of beating Sean Hannity again in the key demographic of 25-54 year olds. And although her average audience was shy of an outright victory, she did win more days during the month than Hannity did.

What’s more, in January Fox News dropped fourteen percent in primetime. Now February has topped that with an additional fifteen percent decline. Meanwhile, MSNBC gained significantly in both months of this new year. February’s percentage gains were over twenty percent. Funny, Trump never mentioned any of that. But he did tweet about the ratings for the Oscar telecast on Sunday. And for some reason he took delight in the numbers having declined. Apparently our President is happy when the film industry, a major national employer and contributor to America’s domestic and export economy, is doing poorly.

Trump’s tweets on behalf of Fox News are more evidence that the network is a wholly owned and operated division of the Trump administration. Or is it the other way around? Or are both Trump and Fox News divisions of Russia’s Putin Enterprises Worldwide. All three scenarios are way too plausible. But most Americans would agree that the President has more important things to do than analyzing TV ratings and promoting programs that unfailingly exalt their Dear Leader. Jake Tapper of CNN had a pithy commentary himself on Twitter saying…

And conversely, if you’re a news organization and the folks in power are constantly maligning you, you’re doing it right. By definition. There’s a reason that Trump is relentlessly attacking CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. He’s afraid because actual journalists are revealing his criminal activities and those of his associates. His only recourse is a campaign of smear tactics. But that is only making him look even more guilty. So keep it up, Donnie. And remember, no matter how bad the ratings are for CNN, yours are still worse.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Rachel Maddow Guides MSNBC to a Strong February 2018 – Fox News and Hannity are Scared

Posted by on March 2, 2018 at 10:40 am. 3 Comments :

In another embarrassingly weak performance, Fox News has suffered a ratings fall-off in February 2018 that signals more trouble ahead. Fox’s declining fortunes are becoming a regular event. In January the network dropped fourteen percent in primetime. Now February has topped that with an additional fifteen percent decline. Meanwhile, MSNBC gained significantly in both months of this new year.

Fox News Sad

In January Rachel Maddow outperformed Hannity, and all other cable news programs, in the key audience demographic of 25-54 year olds. She came just short of repeating that performance in February with an average of 635,000 viewers per night. Hannity edged her out with 643,000. However, of the twenty days in February, Maddow won a majority (eleven) of them.

Maddow’s practice of covering breaking news and the unfolding scandals of the scandal-ridden Trump administration has proven to be an unqualified success. Her deep dive into research and expert analysis continues to draw devoted viewers. Two years ago no one would have predicted that Fox would be a second place news network. Fox actually moved Hannity into a direct time period competition with Maddow in an attempt to blow her out with his top rated program. That didn’t go exactly according to plan and must be gnawing at Hannity and his Fox bosses.

Consequently, Hannity’s program is sinking into ever more ludicrous conspiracy theory territory. He is challenging Alex Jones as the right-wing’s most unhinged crackpot. On almost every show Hannity ignores actual news of Trump’s daily failures. Instead, he features topics exploring Hillary Clinton’s ancient and baseless controversies, or some version of the alleged “deep state” takeover of America. And of course, Hannity is serving his master in the White House with constant attempts to slander special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI.

These subjects are also spread across the Fox News schedule. It’s why Fox viewers are so often shown to be more uninformed (or ill informed) than viewers of any other news network. And it is probably contributing to the overall audience decline at Fox as people seek out actual news and information relevant to their lives. But it is consistent with the Fox News commitment to defend Trump at all costs.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The Fox News mission has always been to prop up the conservative, Republican agenda. But it’s more immediate objective is to discredit the investigations into Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia (and other financial corruption). And flagrant propagandists like Hannity, Tucker Carlson (who just called Democrats anti-American), and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, are focused intently on smearing America’s law enforcement and intelligence institutions. They are putting their rancid partisanship before the interests of the country. And America’s television viewers are reacting with disgust and seeking out more credible reporting. Which is good news for Maddow and MSNBC.

Fox News is SHOCKED that President Obama Knew What Was Going On During His Presidency

Posted by on February 13, 2018 at 12:34 pm. 5 Comments :

Republicans are flailing furiously as they try to avoid sinking further into the depths of Donald Trump’s presidential sewer. The controversy over the now-former White House staff secretary Rob Porter’s domestic violence continues to simmer as Trump’s excuses and explanations keep changing. And Trump’s legislative incompetence is preventing a popular resolution to the immigration debate from progressing.

Fox News Obama Hannity

Meanwhile, over at Fox News there is a budding pseudo-scandal involving an email that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, sent to herself last year. The email was essentially a documentation of her notes after an Oval Office meeting. There is nothing remotely controversial about the email (which Rachel Maddow breaks down brilliantly here), but that doesn’t stop Fox News from trying to whip up outrage in their easily excitable and dimwitted viewers.

The most hair raising excerpt that the Fox folks could find is a single sentence that says merely that Obama “reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.” Grab the smellin’ salts, Bertha. That darky Kenyan tried to do some stuff the way it’s ‘sposed to be done!

Throughout the day Fox News hammered on this irrelevancy as if they had just resolved O.J. Simpson’s search for the “real” killers. And by the evening Sean Hannity was primed and rarin’ to go with his own hyperbolic distortions of reality. His ranting was on the order of Alex Jones-style conspiracy freak-outs. But that’s become so common it hardly needs mentioning. What stood out were the comments of one of his trio of ultra-rightist guests (video below). After offering his own interpretation of the Rice email as “CYA” (cover your ass), Hannity asked GOP Florida Attorney General (and enthusiastic Trump-fluffer), Pam Bondi for her interpretation. Bondi replied that:

“Of course that’s what it is. And to say that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, didn’t know what was going on is ludicrous.

Well, thank you very much. That was generous of Bondi to concede that the former president was well informed and competent. It is certainly ludicrous to suggest that Obama was ever negligent or inattentive in his duties. That’s such a stark contrast from what most Americans think about the current president. Even Republicans have been adamant that Trump doesn’t know what the heck is going on at any point in time.

For instance, they insist that he knew nothing about the Porter affair. He didn’t know that the anti-Muslim videos he retweeted were fake. He didn’t know that Nazis were marching in Charlottesville. He didn’t know that his son was meeting with Russians. He didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to tell Russian diplomats secrets he learned from Israeli intelligence. He didn’t know how hard it would be to be president. And on and on.

Given Trump’s obvious ignorance on so many issues critical to governing, it’s nice to see that someone appreciates that Obama knew what was going on. And for that opinion to make it to the air on Hannity’s program is downright startling. Unless I’m missing something. You don’t think I’ve misinterpreted Bondi’s meaning, do you?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.