Posts by DonIrvine:
NBC Nightly News Ratings Drop After Brian Williams Debacle
February 18th, 2015
By Don Irvine.
The debacle surrounding Brian Williams has not only cost NBC News much of its credibility, but based on the initial ratings since Williams was suspended without pay for six months, it is costing them a big chunk of their viewers.
According to Nielsen’s fast national data, viewership fell dramatically for the NBC Nightly News in the first week with Williams off the air.
Last Monday, Nightly News averaged 9.8 million total viewers, but by Thursday that had fallen to 8.6 million, a drop of more than 12 percent in just 3 days.
The main beneficiary of the tumult at NBC is ABC’s World News Tonight,anchored by David Muir. WNT beat Nightly News by 347,000 viewers on Wednesday, which was a huge difference from the previous week whenWNT trailed them by 400,000 viewers.
NBC News has replaced Williams with Lester Holt for the time being, but he is facing the difficult task of not only replacing the top evening news anchor in America, but trying to restore the division’s credibility as more stories emerge about Williams’ long history of lying on the air.
In time, Holt may be able to regain some of the viewers lost during this debacle, since Americans tend to be creatures of habit in their television viewing. But restoring NBC News’ credibility will be a much longer process and can only truly occur if they fire everyone who enabled Williams to get away with lying for so long.
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CNN President Jeff Zucker Consulted Muslim Employees Over Charlie Hebdo
January 21st, 2015By Don Irvine.
The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple blog is reporting that CNN president and CEO Jeff Zucker consulted with Muslim employees of the cable news network regarding his controversial decisions after the terrorist attack on the Paris office of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people were killed.
Zucker was addressing a town hall meeting of network staffers when he made his remarks:
‘I talked to employees in … hotspots. I reached out to Muslim employees. I reached out across the company,’ says a source who attended the session, abridging Zucker’s message.
To date, CNN hasn’t aired the cartoons that purportedly led to the radical Islamist attack on the Hebdo office, nor the cover of the “survivors issue” that quickly sold out this week when it went on sale.
Zucker told employees that while not airing the cartoons went against his best instincts, he made an exception in this case:
But my first priority has to be to the safety and security of the employees of CNN … If somebody gets killed because we aired this, that’s on me.
Not that there were any specific threats against CNN employees, but it does provide a convenient excuse for Zucker. This way he can avoid any potential backlash from Muslims who sympathize with radical Islamic terrorists, and it keeps him in line with the White House’s view, which is to placate the terrorists rather than take a tough stance against their actions.
If viewers want fair and balanced coverage on this issue, they will have to look elsewhere.
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FBI Director Doesn’t Rule Out Using Fake Reporter in the Future
December 12th, 2014
By Don Irvine.
The FBI, which came under heavy criticism from the media last month after it was revealed that an agent posed as an AP reporter in 2007 during an investigation into bomb threats at a high school in the Seattle area, refused yesterday to rule out employing the same tactics in the future.
FBI Director James Comey said that while an agent may pose as a journalist in the future, it would be rare and “done carefully with significant supervision, if it’s going to be done.”
Comey defended the tactics in a letter to The New York Times, saying that the “technique was proper and appropriate under Justice Department and FBI guidelines at the time. Today, the use of such an unusual technique would probably require higher-level approvals than in 2007, but it would still be lawful and, in a rare case, appropriate.”
In this case, the FBI agent posing as an AP reporter asked the suspect to review a fake AP article for fairness and accuracy about threats and cyberattacks directed at the school. What the suspect didn’t know was that the article contained a software tracking tool that revealed the computer’s location and IP address when a link was clicked, thus confirming his identity.
The AP seems to be more concerned with the effect the tactics may have on their reputation, than the fact that capturing the bombing suspect probably saved lives. Perhaps, though, if their reputation, along with that of the rest of the mainstream media, had been better to begin with, the suspect wouldn’t have fallen into the FBI’s trap.
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Left-Wing Media Continue to Dump on Hillary
December 4th, 2014By Don Irvine.
The left-wing media, which isn’t happy at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton candidacy—or at least the seeming inevitability of such an occurrence—have stepped up their attacks on the former Secretary of State in an attempt to broaden the potential field.
Last week it was the oldest, and one of the most influential, left-wing publications,The Nation, opining on the need for a challenger to Hillary in 2016:
The Democratic Party’s challenge today is that, in the minds of many voters, it is no longer linked with the issues it says are important. In part, that’s because big money and bad media warp our politics. But it’s also because the party is too close to corporate funders and too frequently fails to speak to the tens of millions still struggling in a weak recovery. One of the core understandings of Project 45 is that, in the process of nominating a presidential candidate, parties define themselves not merely as a reflection of the candidate, but as a reflection of the demands raised in primaries and platform fights. For this process to work, however, there must be challenges both to the front-runners and to assumptions about what is possible and what is necessary.
The Nation claims that their message isn’t anti-Hillary, but pro-democracy, and that what the Democratic Party needs is a candidate with a “smart, populist program untethered to Wall Street,” something that Hillary is not.
That candidate would resemble Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who will hold a leadership post in the new Democratic Senate minority starting next month, and who is seen by the left as a credible challenger to Hillary, though she has declined to discuss that possibility in deference to Mrs. Clinton.
Warren also received a boost from liberal columnist Juan Williams, who has just given her his 2014 “Member of Congress of the Year” award, saying that she is a major threat to a Clinton candidacy:
The Massachusetts senator could become the Barack Obama of 2016, able to grab the Democrats’ presidential nomination from the favorite, Hillary Clinton, by coming at her from the left. The defining issue for Democrats in 2008 was Iraq. In 2016 it will be the economy. Warren is much more in step with the party on this issue than is Clinton.
Warren’s economic populism also defines the party’s present. After losses in the midterms, the Democrats have concluded that it is time for them to go on offense, utilizing Warren’s issues — raising the minimum wage, cutting better deals on student loans and supporting equal pay for women.
The new political direction set by Warren-led Senate Democrats to add the first-term senator to their leadership team. They created a position just for her: “Strategic Policy Adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.”
That means Warren will be at the table shaping the identity of Democrats in the Senate, as they become a loud, defiant minority beginning in January.
But Warren looms largest over the 2016 race.
Hillary Clinton and her supporters thought she was a shoo-in for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. The left-wing media have other plans and they could very well succeed in upending the race, which is not good news for a party that is reeling from the devastating midterm elections and is in dire need of showing a unified front heading into the 2016 election cycle.
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Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Accuses the Media of Sexism
November 14th, 2014By Don Irvine.
Making her first public remarks since the Democrats were routed in the midterm elections, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused the media of sexism for questioning her decision to run again for her post, despite losing the last two midterm elections and pushing the Democrats into the minority.
Pelosi was asked if she had given any thought to stepping down after losing those elections. She used the opportunity to turn that around and accuse the media of sexism.
When was the day you said to Mitch McConnell when they lost the Senate three times in a row, lost control in taking back the Senate three times in a row—‘Aren’t you getting a little old Mitch? Shouldn’t you step aside?’ Have you ever asked him that question?
That answer would be fine if Pelosi had been asked about her age, but she wasn’t. Instead she chose to twist the question to make a spurious charge of sexism and avoid answering the real question about whether or not she thinks she should continue as the Minority Leader, considering the drubbing the Democrats have taken in the last two midterm elections.
Pelosi did say that she is here as “long as the members want me to be here,” and that she isn’t on a schedule, “except on a mission to get a job done.”
I assume that mission is to return the Democrats to power in the House. But on that score, she has failed miserably, as the GOP will apparently have a 55 seat advantage in the next Congress, making it extremely difficult if not virtually impossible to overtake the Republicans in 2016.
That’s not sexism, it’s incompetence. On second thought, maybe she doesn’t deserve all the blame. After all, she did have to try to sell President Obama’s radical agenda to the American people, and that was probably too much for anyone to overcome.
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MSNBC President Phil Griffin Says Network Has Had a “Tough Stretch” as Ratings Sink to 7-Year Low
October 5th, 2014By Don Irvine.
MSNBC president Phil Griffin, who predicted last year that the network would beat Fox News Channel by 2014, admitted this week that the network has had a “tough stretch.” He added that despite the fact that MSNBC’s ratings have sunk to a 7-year low, he is in this for the “long term.”
Griffin made his remarks at a luncheon for new morning anchor Jose Diaz-Balart, according to TV Newser:
‘I think we’ve done a lot of good stuff,’ Griffin told us regarding the changes he’s made this year to the daytime lineup, which includes adding Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid at 1 pm and 2 pm ET, respectively.
‘It’s been a tough run, honestly, since it’s happened because of the story lines, but I’ve been really pleased. Ronan’s done a lot of good stuff,’ he continued, noting a story Farrow did on rape kit backlogs across the country.
‘I’m in this for the long term. This has been a tough stretch, for everybody, but I think we’ve got the right people. Look, we’ll probably tinker with it, you always have to figure out where you are and how the world is changing. We should, we gotta respond.’
Tough stretch for everybody? While MSNBC’s ratings were sinking, Fox News finished the third quarter as the number one network in all of cable, while CNN’s ratings were up 2% in total primetime viewers and 4% in the A25-54 demo. MSNBC, by comparison, was down double digits in both total day and primetime, finishing fourth behind FNC, CNN and HLN in the total day demo.
MSNBC had its lowest rated quarter since the fourth quarter of 2007 in both total day and primetime viewers, and the lowest since the second quarter of 2006 in the A25-54 demo.
Griffin, who made his bold prediction about overtaking Fox News in March 2013, is singing a different tune these days, as he engages in a see-saw battle with CNN for the number two position behind Fox News. That spot was firmly in MSNBC’s hands as recently as less than two years ago.
The problem for MSNBC during this “tough stretch” is that Griffin doesn’t have any idea how to fix what’s wrong at the network. With the exception of replacing Ed Schultz with Chris Hayes last year at 8 p.m., Griffin has stood pat with his primetime lineup and watched viewers abandon the network. That is in stark contrast to Fox News, which saw its ratings soar after rejiggering its primetime lineup last year.
With an unpopular Democratic President—even among the Democrats—and a poor outlook in this year’s mid-term elections for the party, there is little reason for liberals to tune in to MSNBC at the present time, or in the foreseeable future.
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Americans’ Trust in Media Returns to All-Time Low
September 18th, 2014By Don Irvine.
Gallup has just released its latest survey of Americans’ confidence in the news media, and after a one-year rise, it has slipped back to an all-time low:
After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report ‘the news fully, accurately, and fairly’ has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%. ..Trust among Democrats, who have traditionally expressed much higher levels of confidence in the media than Republicans have, dropped to a 14-year low of 54% in 2014. Republicans’ trust in the media is at 27%, one percentage point above their all-time low, while independents held steady at 38% — up one point from 37% in 2013.
While Americans’ confidence level was once again on the downtrend, the survey found a sharp uptick in their belief that the media are too conservative, from 13% to 19%. Not exactly a big number, but a sharp increase nevertheless. This may be due in part to Fox News tightening its grip on cable news and the constant complaints about the liberal media, along with the dominance of conservative talk radio.
Gallup’s conclusion:
Though a sizable percentage of Americans continue to have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, Americans’ overall trust in the Fourth Estate continues to be significantly lower now than it was 10 to 15 years ago.
While the media expand into new domains of news reporting via social media networks and new mobile technology, Americans may be growing disenchanted with what they consider “mainstream” news, as they seek out their own personal veins of getting information. At the same time, confidence is down across many institutions, and a general lack of trust overall could be at play.
Americans’ opinions about the media seem to be affected, however, in election years. Americans’ trust in the media will likely recover slightly in 2015 with the absence of political campaigns. But the overarching pattern of the past decade has shown few signs of slowing the decline of faith in mass media as a whole.
So the only question that remains is—how low can they go?
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MSNBC Goes All Out on Ferguson Coverage—Ratings Sink
August 25th, 2014By Don Irvine.
A new Pew Research report finds that MSNBC devoted far more time to the coverage of the events in Ferguson, Missouri than any other cable news network. Yet according to Nielsen, it didn’t help the network’s ratings.
According to Pew, MSNBC devoted an average of 68 minutes of primetime news coverage per night to Ferguson between August 10 and August 15, with a peak of 122 minutes on Thursday, August 14, compared to 48 minutes on average for CNN and 36 minutes for Fox News.
Overall, during that time period, MSNBC spent a total of five hours and 43 minutes on Ferguson during primetime, with CNN tallying nearly four hours, and Fox News bringing up the rear with just under three hours of coverage.
Yet all that coverage didn’t help MSNBC’s ratings, as the liberal cable news network finished third every evening during the reported period, and on some days a distant third.
Breaking news has for years been an Achilles heel for MSNBC, and Ferguson has proven to be no different. It doesn’t seem to matter how much time MSNBC devotes to breaking news, viewers just don’t see them as being particularly credible so they switch in droves to Fox News and CNN.
It may seem a bit ironic, but the longer the liberal media keep Ferguson alive, the more it hurts MSNBC.
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National Public Radio Ombudsman: “Balance” is Not Our Guiding Ethic
August 10th, 2014
By Don Irvine.
This probably won’t come as a shock to conservatives, but National Public Radio admitted on Wednesday that “balance” isn’t the network’s guiding ethic.
The revelation came during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session with NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos:
NPR’s guiding ethic is not ‘balance,’ in the sense that you present two sides as equal in their merits. Often factually they are not. Our responsibility is to give listeners and Web readers the correct facts and context. There might still be two opinions on how to interpret the facts, or which ones to give more weight to. NPR’s responsibility is to allow listeners to hear those opinions, especially if they have influence. Wacko or irrelevant opinions can be disregarded. What is wacko is a judgment call.
In other words, listeners aren’t capable of determining for themselves what is correct, so NPR is doing them a favor by deciding for them.
And they wonder why conservatives think they’re liberally biased?
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Ratings-Challenged Al Jazeera America Considering More Layoffs
July 29th, 2014By Don Irvine.
Al Jazeera America, which will be celebrating its first anniversary next week, is considering another round of layoffs, as the network’s ratings continue to sag.
According to TV Newser, Al Jazeera America CEO Ehab Al Shihabi told the staff during a meeting last week that there may be further layoffs.
A network spokesman told TV Newser that “Like any television network we make decisions based on our programming schedule,” and that they were always looking at staffing levels.
This is the second round of cuts this year. In April, the network laid off dozens of people in their sports and business units.
Al Jazeera America reportedly spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring staff to build 12 U.S. bureaus in anticipation of competing with Fox, MSNBC and CNN—after buying Al Gore’s Current TV for $500 million—and wound up with a network whose ratings are so bad they’re barely measurable.
While the Qatari government has plenty of money to spend on Al Jazeera, it’s evident by the layoffs that they are finally starting to realize the folly of their investment.
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Obama Gets 3 Pinocchios for Saying GOP Blocked Every Serious Idea
July 21st, 2014By Don Irvine.
The Washington Post Fact Checker has taken President Obama to task once again for being less than truthful when he blamed Republicans for his administration’s economic failures:
“So far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.”
–President Obama, weekly address, July 12, 2014
That may be a great sound bite for a President who‘s trying to help Democrats facing reelection in November, but according to the Fact Checker’s Glenn Kessler, it’s largely untrue.
Kessler noted that Obama used a variation of this theme during a speech in Minnesota on June 27—and repeated it on July 1—leading up to his latest attack last week, before pointing out the problem with what the President said:
But here’s the odd thing: on the very day the president recorded his weekly address, the office of House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) released this photo under the happy headline of “What Working Together Looks Like.” It showed Boehner, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other lawmakers signing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which streamlines job training programs, so it could be sent to Obama for his signature.
“This morning, leaders of both parties in the House came together to get something done for the millions of Americans who continue to struggle to find work in today’s economy,” the news release said.
Obama had earlier said he looked forward to signing the bill. “This bipartisan compromise will help workers, including workers with disabilities, access employment, education, job-driven training, and support services that give them the chance to advance their careers and secure the good jobs of the future,” he said in a statement on July 9. “Today’s vote helps ensure that our workers can earn the skills employers are looking for right now and that American businesses have the talent pool it takes to compete and win in our global economy.”
Kessler said that what constitutes a “serious idea” will differ from person to person, especially when they are on opposite sides of the aisle. But that doesn’t mean the bills that were passed this year weren’t “serious,” and he proceeded to list some of the bills that were passed by the Republican controlled Congress:
The Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which advocates claimed could sustain as many as 500,000 new jobs. “The first bill I’ll sign today is the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, also known as WRRDA, which will put Americans to work modernizing our water infrastructure and restoring some of our most vital ecosystems, the president said when he signed it. “During my State of the Union address, I asked Congress to pass this bill by the summer, and I congratulate this outstanding crew for getting it done.”
The Farm Bill, which the White House called “a jobs bill, an innovation bill, a research bill, and a conservation bill.” The White House claimed it would generate $35 in economic benefits for every dollar invested and put together a graphic to share on Twitter and Facebook that showed “Five ways the Farm Bill strengthens the economy.”
There were also bills like Home Heating Emergency Assistance Through Transportation Act and the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, which took steps to help speed up delivery of propane and home heating fuel and delay flood insurance premium increases, respectively.
Oops!
Obama also ignored the bills that the House passed that haven’t been acted on or have made little progress in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Those include the Keystone-XL pipeline, which has wide support among Americans, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The Pinocchio Test
We make no judgment on which side has the surplus of “serious ideas,” but the president is engaging in rhetorical overkill. Certainly this congressional session has resulted in few major laws. Perhaps he could make a case that Republicans have blocked many bills that he has sought—or even that his most prized initiatives have been stymied.
But to claim that “every serious idea” has been blocked is going too far–given that the president lauded at least three bills as aiding the middle class. (Update: In a speech the morning this column appeared, the president adjusted his language appropriately: “Republicans in Congress keep blocking or voting down some of the ideas that would have the biggest impact on middle-class and working families.”)
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Dan Rather: Journalists have Lost Their “Guts”
June 9th, 2014By Don Irvine.
In an interview with the Toronto Star, former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather criticized the changes in journalism that have occurred over the last two decades, saying that journalists have lost their guts and no longer challenge people in power for fear that they will pay a heavy price for doing so:
I think journalists and journalism — certainly in the U.S. — we lost our guts. An attitude got around: Be careful, because if you report something people in power don’t like, you may have to pay a very heavy price for that. That’s not in the best tradition of U.S. journalism, nor do I think it’s in the best tradition of the free press anyplace.
First of all, to say that journalists have lost their guts, misses the point. If it’s about going after Republicans in the White House or Congress, most journalists have no problem with that, even when they are way off target. But if a Democrat, like President Obama, is in power, the media certainly don’t want to offend him, or even tell the truth about him, since it may supply talking points for Republicans and conservatives, and help defeat their beloved leaders.
Most of the media are very liberal, and very protective of the Democratic establishment. Even when they point to liberals doing wrong, it is usually implied that at least their intentions were good. No, the real issue isn’t guts, but rather liberal bias, which is plentiful in today’s mainstream media.
And speaking of “Rather” and liberal bias, that’s not something Dan Rather cares to talk about. His 64-year career in journalism he has been one of the most biased in memory. Remember, Rather lost his job at CBS because of his role in a fabricated story, using fabricated documents, to attempt to help defeat President George W. Bush in his 2004 re-election effort. Bottom line—Dan Rather’s credibility as a journalist is suspect at best.
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Jeff Zucker: CNN Won’t Be “Shamed” Into Covering Benghazi
May 23rd, 2014
By Don Irvine.
Demonstrating his liberal bias, CNN president Jeff Zucker told The New York Times’ Bill Carter Monday night that he won’t allow CNN to be “shamed” into covering the House select committee on Benghazi hearings, according to Capital New York:
‘We’re not going to be shamed into it by others who have political beliefs that want to try to have temper tantrums to shame other news organizations into covering something,’ he said. ‘If it’s of real news value, we’ll cover it.’
Shamed? Is Zucker saying that an investigation of the massive cover-up of Benghazi by the Obama administration, where four Americans lost their lives, is not newsworthy, but spending endless hours covering the missing Malaysian Air flight MH370 long after there has been any real news is?
There is little doubt that Fox News and MSNBC will be covering the hearings in some form, and for CNN to brush them off before they even begin is irresponsible journalism.
Zucker has definitely struggled during his 16-plus months on the job. His attitude towards the Benghazi hearings shows that even though he says CNN is committed to breaking news, he is only willing to keep that commitment as long as it brings in hefty ratings, as their flight MH370 coverage originally did. But based on his programming choices, it’s clear that he would rather see the network go in another direction—towards more entertainment and fluff, instead of hard news—especially if that news is embarrassing to President Obama and the Democrats.
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CNN’s 9 PM-Hour Ratings Sink to Second-Lowest in 15 Years
May 20th, 2014By Don Irvine.
As the Malaysian Air flight MH370 coverage fades from CNN, so do the ratings, as the network hit its second-lowest ratings last Friday in the 9 p.m. hour.
The time-slot, which was most recently occupied by Piers Morgan, managed to attract a paltry 48K viewers in the 25-54 demo, and 226K viewers total, according to Nielsen.
Since Morgan’s departure, CNN has filled the hour with CNN Tonight, which has rotating hosts and programming.
In the last 15 years, the only other time the 9 p.m. hour rated lower than that in total viewers came on October 11, 2010 when Larry King Live had 196K viewers. In the demo, it was on May 15, 2012 when Piers Morning Tonight had just 39K viewers.
It was a terrible Friday night all-around for CNN, as none of their primetime programs managed to attract more than 84K in the demo. In addition to the primetime woes, the return of Crossfire continues to hurt the network as it sheds viewers who had been tuned in to Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room, and attracted just 37K in the demo.
CNN president Jeff Zucker was hired to fix the network’s longstanding problems. But absent milking stories like Malaysian Air flight MH370, it continues to underperform its competition by a wide margin, casting doubt on Zucker’s future.
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Boston Globe Puts Headquarters Up For Sale
April 26th, 2014By Don Irvine.
The Boston Globe reported that it has hired a commercial real estate broker to explore the sale of the newspaper’s headquarters building and property.
The Globe’s chief executive told employees in a memo that the company has hired Colliers International to determine the feasibility of selling the building and property, and to identify potential buyers, adding that it is a process that will take years.
The Globe was purchased by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry last year for $70 million, which was a fraction of the $1.1 billion The New York Times Co. paid for the paper in 1993.
Estimates are that the building and property could fetch between $50 and $70 million, which would allow Henry to recoup a large chunk of his investment.
When and if a sale takes place, the Globe would be following a trend in recent years for big city newspapers, whose business has been in decline for the last six years. The trend is to trim overhead and generate cash by parting with a piece of their history, in order to bolster their finances and try to weather the storm.
The Globe may not be under the same financial pressure as most newspapers, thanks to its billionaire owner. But it doesn’t mean that Henry won’t try and run it as efficiently as he can to limit his losses, which are probably substantial, given the current environment.
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Who’s Crazy? NBC Hired Psychological Consultant to Evaluate Meet the Press’ David Gregory
April 22nd, 2014By Don Irvine.
In what has to be one of the more unusual moves to address a program’s falling ratings, NBC hired a psychological consultant to interview Meet the Press host David Gregory, as well as his wife and friends, according to a report by The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi.
Last year, the network undertook an unusual assessment of the 43-year-old journalist, commissioning a psychological consultant to interview his friends and even his wife. The idea, according to a network spokeswoman, Meghan Pianta, was “to get perspective and insight from people who know him best.” But the research project struck some at NBC as odd, given that Gregory has been employed there for nearly 20 years.
Odd indeed, but I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.
Since Gregory took over for the late Tim Russert, Meet the Press has fallen to third place in the ratings among Sunday morning shows, and even hit a 21-year low in the key 25-54 demographic in August 2013.
Rumors have been swirling for months that NBC is looking to make a change, though no names have surfaced as potential successors.
What probably burns NBC just as much as watching the program slide from its decade-long run at number one under Russert is that the 43-year old Gregory is losing badly to the 77-year old Bob Schieffer, who hosts the top-rated Face the Nation on CBS.
I’m not sure what NBC thought they would really discover about Gregory from the consultant, but even if they understand him better and even if he is more in touch with himself, it hasn’t helped the show’s ratings, which is what really matters to the network.
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AP’s Julie Pace: White House Recognizes that Running on Obamacare is “Political Suicide” [Video]
April 3rd, 2014By Don Irvine.
Associated Press White House correspondent Julie Pace appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discus the impact that Obamacare will have on the mid-term elections. She said that the White House recognizes that it would be “political suicide” for Democrats like Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu to run for re-election on Obamacare:
I don’t think the White House is expecting any calls from Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor to come down to their states and run on Obamacare. I also think the White House is okay with that. They recognize for one of those Democrats to do that it would basically be political suicide.
This isn’t the first time Pace has pointed out the political risks for Democrats supporting Obamacare this year.
On March 14, after heavily favored Democrat Alex Sink lost a special election in Florida, Pace appeared on Morning Joe and said that while Democrats were happy to have Obama raise money for them, they didn’t want to be seen with him, as the taint of Obamacare could sink their re-election chances in November.
The Democrats got the law they wanted, and now they will have to live with the consequences of their actions.
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Viewers Abandoned MSNBC in 2013—Primetime Audience Drops by 24%
March 28th, 2014
By Don Irvine.
Absent a national election last year, the cable news audience declined at the three leading networks. But MSNBC, which had predicted it could overtake Fox News by 2014, took a giant step backward last year with its primetime audience declining 24% from the previous year, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project.
By comparison, Fox News lost a modest 6%, while the struggling CNN lost 13%, contributing to an overall cable news decline of 11%.
Yet despite the decline, Fox News still drew more viewers on average (1.75 million) than MSNBC (619,500) and CNN (543,000) combined, proving just how much it dominates the sector.
In the daytime, both Fox (up 2%) and CNN (up 12%) saw gains, while MSNBC dragged down the group with a 15.5% decline.
While an off election year can explain some of the decline for MSNBC, the real culprits are the network’s unabashed support for President Obama, whose favorable ratings have plummeted; the botched Obamacare rollout and its lingering problems, which the network rarely talks about; and the lack of a truly “evil” Republican that the network can bash on a regular basis. Apparently even their viewers tired of the hour-by-hour updates of the latest Chris Christie email to be revealed.
MSNBC was also the only one of the big three cable news networks to experience a revenue decline (2%), with overall revenues projected to come in at $475 million. That trails CNN ($1.11 billion) and Fox News ($1.89 billion) by a large measure.
The outlook for MSNBC’s brand of liberalism is cloudy at best, and that can’t be too thrilling to Chris Matthews and Co.
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NY Times Public Editor Encourages College Journalists to Be Accurate
March 8th, 2014By Don Irvine.
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan encouraged student journalists to be accurate in their reporting, and to not plagiarize:
And last, another certainty is the need to get it right. We need the strongest possible commitment to accuracy and its close cousin, fairness. Yes, we’re all in the biggest rush in the world to get the news out. But we’ll wreck it all if we don’t make sure as we can that it is verifiably true.
Sullivan spoke at the Associated Collegiate Press National College Journalism convention in San Diego last week.
In addition to encouraging students to be accurate, she also told them that integrity is important and that they shouldn’t plagiarize:
One is integrity. Simply put, as journalists, you are not for sale. Not for a free lunch, or inside access to powerful people, or for, excuse, a line on a future book contract. Your work serves the public. It’s about truth-seeking and truth-telling. And your work is your work, not borrowed from or copied from others without credit.
It’s good to know that someone at the Times is concerned with accuracy and plagiarism—especially in light of the Jayson Blair scandal that rocked the paper more than 10 years ago, and continues to haunt them even to this day.
What she didn’t directly tell the college journalists, however, was to be unbiased. That is one of the biggest problems plaguing newspapers today. Many have moved from reporting the news to reporting their opinion about the news, and disguising it as news in the process.
College journalists need more than a lecture by someone like Sullivan to advise them what they should do. They need a class in how to report fairly and accurately—something that most journalism schools aren’t likely to teach—because that won’t sit very well with their liberal mindset.
That just means more work for Accuracy in Media, but we are up to the task.
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What Haz Happened to the News At HLN?
February 24th, 2014By Don Irvine.
Last week, HLN announced it was going to rebrand itself, and on Wednesday the network gave a preview of what’s to come to The Hollywood Reporter.
The programs will run the gamut from social media, news driven programs—Videocracyto a social satire cartoon show, I Can Haz News Toons—whatever that means—and an app— #What’sYourFomo (fear of missing out), that will likely become a television segment.
These changes are being driven by CNN president Jeff Zucker, who has publicly stated his preference for entertainment type programming over news. This apparently is a taste of what is to come at CNN if it succeeds at HLN. It’s also a less risky move—with HLN being the lowest rated news network that Zucker runs—and if it fails he can always just add more real news.
The changes are being led by CNN executive vice president and general managerAlbie Hecht, who was part of the team that created MTV in 1981, and transitioned TNN to SpikeTV in 2003.
But it’s one thing to add a travel show like Anthony Bourdain that had an established following on the Travel Channel before bolting to CNN. It’s another thing to try and add programs based on what is happening in social media, which isn’t known for factual accuracy.
Hecht said that HLN’s goal is to debunk the myth that social media is only aboutvideos of cats riding skateboards, and that the network’s “ripped from the social media headlines approach” will mirror what consumers are doing digitally.
Just because consumers are doing something digitally doesn’t mean that they want to watch it on television. Though HLN may succeed with their rebranding, the odds are that this attempt to base their programming on social media will largely fail.
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