Posts by DonIrvine:
David Axelrod: MSNBC Coverage of Chris Christie Presents a “Balanced Picture” [Video]
February 13th, 2014By Don Irvine.
Former senior Obama adviser-turned-MSNBC-contributor David Axelrod appeared on Morning Joe on Wednesday, and said that the network’s coverage presents a “balanced picture” of the Chris Christie situation:
Let me make one point. You guys have said there has been some—Chuck (Todd) has said there’s been some cheerleading for Christie. I think if it nets out over the course of hours on MSNBC, it probably is at least a balanced picture. He’s gotten pummeled on some other programs.
MSNBC’s coverage is balanced? Who is he kidding?
Ever since the scandal first broke last month, MSNBC has devoted countless hours to covering the story, with Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow devoting significant chunks of their programs to it. Even now, despite the fact that there is little new to the story, Matthews still spends half his program talking about it. And to no one’s surprise, it’s a pretty one-sided affair.
MSNBC was never going to cover this story in a balanced fashion to begin with, and Axelrod knows it. Matthews, Maddow and the rest of MSNBC’s liberal anchors saw this as an opportunity to take down Christie, who they felt is the biggest threat to a potential Hillary Clinton presidency.
The very idea that MSNBC would cover anything in a balanced way is laughable. But to hear Axelrod claim that they have in this case is ridiculous.
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Putting Perfume On A Pig? NY Times Ad Revenue Down, Yet Things Looking Up
February 9th, 2014By Don Irvine.
The New York Times Company reported earnings today, and while advertising revenues were down six percent from a year ago, it was good enough for CEO Mark Thompson to call it “the best quarterly performance in more than three years.”
That’s sort of a Pyrrhic victory, since ad revenues are still going south, but at least it’s not in double digits as has been the case for most of the last five years.
While the Times isn’t facing the same cash crunch it did a few years ago, it has managed to survive largely by selling off assets, including its headquarters building, and is now a pure play on the newspaper industry.
Even though advertising revenue isn’t decreasing as much as it has in the past, there is no sign of real improvement any time soon. That will continue to put pressure on the company to find other sources of revenue.
Currently, digital subscription revenue has helped offset the ad revenue decline, but growth is slowing in this area as well.
The Times is trying to find new sources of revenue, with mixed results, as their expertise is in reporting the news and not hosting events or producing videos, and the like. But unless they can find a billionaire like Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffet, who can afford to invest heavily in the company without regard to profits, the future of the Times will remain cloudy at best, as the digital revolution continues to eat away at its core business.
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MSNBC President Phil Griffin: We’ve Never Had an Ideology—Just a “Progressive Sensibility”
February 5th, 2014By Don Irvine.
In an article by Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast, MSNBC president Phil Griffin denies that the network has a liberal ideology, instead calling it a “progressive sensibility.” Grove writes:
Where some Republican operatives and office-holders see MSNBC as a liberal-Democrat collaborator of the Obama White House—with a promotional catchphrase, ‘Lean Forward,’ that echoes the slogan of President Obama’s reelection campaign—Griffin admits only to what he calls ‘a progressive sensibility.’ A ‘sensibility,’ he explains, is not the same as an ‘ideology.’
Grove continues:
‘I think we’ve never had an ideology,’ Griffin insists. ‘An ideology is a single thought across all programs. We’ve never had that.’ As evidence, he mentions the spirited on-air debates in 2010, pro and con, concerning whether the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire. ‘Obviously I hire people who fit the sensibility,’ Griffin says. ‘We do stay true to facts. You have to build your argument. That’s why I call it a sensibility.’
Griffin is right that ideology and sensibility are not the same thing, but I doubt that MSNBC hosts like Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow think that a “progressive sensibility” takes precedence over their liberal ideology on their respective shows.
Ideology drives them and MSNBC every day.
While Griffin denies that MSNBC has an ideology, he firmly believes that Fox News has one, telling Grove that “every Republican who’s in trouble goes on that network to be taken care of…They’re owned by News Corp, which is run by Rupert Murdoch.” Griffin added that Fox News president Roger Ailes “comes out of the Republican Party.”
Griffin doesn’t cite any specific examples, and doesn’t mention that Fox News hasn’t been shy in criticizing the GOP on many occasions. Nor does he mention the roster of liberal Democrats employed by Fox News to provide an alternate point of view—something that is rarely seen on MSNBC.
If anything, MSNBC is much closer to being a Democratic Party mouthpiece than Fox News is for the GOP.
But that’s what happens when you just parrot a 2009 White House charge, and ignore the facts.
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NY Times Public Editor Wonders What Happened to Real News on Front Page
January 29th, 2014By Don Irvine.
For the second time in less than a week, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has taken the paper to task for its reporting.
This time Sullivan is wondering what has happened to real news at the Times:
It’s a Monday morning in mid-January. Your print edition of the Times is at hand, along with your coffee. You scan it for news. But, for the most part, you scan in vain.
Of the six front-page articles on Jan. 13, only one can be described as hard news: an article from Paris about negotiators putting the last touches on a deal to freeze Iran’s nuclear program. The other five are: a reconstruction of the “Bridgegate” scandal; a news-feature story about relics restored to the National Museum of Afghanistan; an article about politics in Minnesota and Wisconsin; a setup story about Supreme Court arguments on the collision of free speech and abortion rights; and a feature about a high-end pawn broker.
Sullivan said she started thinking about this after a reader complained that there wasn’t a single news story on the front page of the Nov. 26, 2013 paper, calling the stories “interpretive journalism” as compared to the “real news” on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.
Just to make sure that these were not isolated incidents, Sullivan reviewed a few weeks worth of front pages and found that there were indeed several more days when real news was hard to find:
In general, I found an emphasis on interpretive and enterprise journalism. I also found many examples of interesting and well-written articles with little news value.
Managing editor Dean Baquet did admit to Sullivan that there isn’t as much traditional news as there used to be on the front page, blaming it in part on the constant flow of news that readers have access to:
We have to ask ourselves what’s new and surprising and important to people — what we can offer that no one else can. So we put pressure on ourselves to put it in perspective or say what it means or give the backstory.
Baquet also told Sullivan that the ideal front page would include three or four “strong news stories that nobody else has, an investigative story, and a couple of really good reads.”
Sullivan would probably prefer that as well, but that’s not what the Times is delivering these days, in her opinion:
In my view, the Times’s most prominently displayed stories sometimes go too far in the direction of interpretation, analysis and elaborate writing. The reasonable reader, with only his coffee for assistance, might well wish that the important nugget of news would appear in the second paragraph instead of the seventh.
That reader (as opposed to a journalist who is plugged in to changing events all day long) may prefer more of the original news and less of a “second day” approach. In some cases, a breaking news article that appeared on the website all day long, frequently updated, never even makes it into the Times archive, pushed aside by the more interpretive article that appears in print the next day, but where the news is obscured.
While the “interpretive” writing was only noticed by Sullivan recently, Accuracy in Media has been pointing out this type of biased reporting for nearly 45 years—in the Times and other mainstream newspapers—so she’s a little late to the party. But at least she is willing to publicly raise questions about the Times’ reporting, which other liberals are loathe to do.
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Washington Post Reader Representative to Depart Early—Paper Seeking Another Shill
January 12th, 2014By Don Irvine.
The Washington Post confirmed Wednesday that its reader representative, Doug Feaver, has left the paper after less than one year in the job.
The Post created the reader representative job after the contract of its ombudsman Patrick Pexton expired, hoping to soften the criticism of the paper’s reporting and editorial operations.
Editorial page Editor Fred Hiatt admitted as much last year when he said that, while the Post is committed to maintaining accountability, he wasn’t convinced that a weekly column by an ombudsman was the best way to do so. That’s especially true when the columns expose some inconvenient truths, like when former ombudsman Deborah Howell admitted that conservatives complaints that the Post has a “liberal tilt” are valid. That is something the late Katharine Graham repeatedly denied at the company’s annual shareholder meetings when challenged by AIM founder and Chairman Reed Irvine.
In the roughly nine-plus months that Feaver was on the job, he wrote just 28 blog posts, dealing mostly with reader comments. Unlike some of the more recent ombudsmen, Feaver didn’t cast a critical eye on the Post’s reporting, which is exactly the way Hiatt wanted it.
It was the growing criticism that bothered Hiatt. For most of the position’s 43-year existence at the Post, the liberal journalists serving as ombudsman rarely criticized the paper. But that changed in the last five years, and Hiatt saw Pexton’s contract expiration as an opportunity to eliminate the position and bury any future criticism of the paper. And that’s exactly what happened.
Hiatt hasn’t decided whether or not to replace Feaver, but his departure gives him a chance to correct the mistake he made last year. In the name of good journalism—which the Post purportedly practices—they should bring back the ombudsman.
MSNBC Assigns Executive to Review Scripts Before They Go On Air
January 7th, 2014By Don Irvine.
MSNBC, which has been reeling from recent statements made by its hosts, has apparently decided that the network can’t risk any more embarrassing incidents. To that end, they are putting an executive in charge of reviewing scripts before they air, according to Eliana Johnson in National Review Online:
It now has an executive reviewing scripts before they go on the air. The role, which has fallen to Rich Stockwell, a former executive producer of The Ed Show and Countdown with Keith Olbermann, who now oversees special projects at the network, was created as several of the network’s hosts have, to the embarrassment of network brass, conducted a master class in political incorrectness. In recent months, Alec Baldwin, Martin Bashir, and, most recently, Melissa Harris-Perry have awkwardly crashed into the trinity of sexual orientation, gender, and race, leading many to wonder if there are any adults in charge at MSNBC.
The first host to have recently embarrassed MSNBC was none other than liberal actor—is there any other kind?—Alec Baldwin, who made an off-air homophobic slur to a New York Post cameraman. This resulted in the network firing him after just four episodes of his new program, Up Late with Alec Baldwin, had aired.
Bashir resigned in December after attacking Sarah Palin on his program for her comparison of the national debt to slavery. Bashir said that someone should defecate in her mouth. He apologized the next day for his remarks, but then resigned when it was clear that the controversy wasn’t going away.
Most recently, weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry led a panel that mocked a family photo of Mitt Romney with his adopted black grandson, with one panelist saying it summed up the diversity of the Republican Party.
Harris-Perry apologized this past Saturday morning, and Romney told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday that he accepted her apology and harbored no ill-will towards her.
The idea that someone will be reviewing the scripts sounds a little bit like a network censor, which would normally cause the left to recoil. But isn’t reviewing scripts the job of a show’s producer? Maybe they could initiate a 10-second delay, and wire the hosts so that the producer can send an electric shock every time they say something stupid. But that would require a full-time person. In reality, however, I doubt that this is anything more than a cosmetic move to make it appear that MSNBC is actually taking action to rein in their loose-lipped hosts.
UPDATE: MSNBC spokesperson Lauren Skowronski told Politico that ”MSNBC has had an editorial and script review process in place since the network began in 1996.” If that’s true it makes the network look even worse than it did before Johnson’s story.
CNN Tops Fox News, MSNBC as Most Searched News Source on Google in 2013
December 23rd, 2013
By Don Irvine.
CNN may be a cable-news ratings laggard, but it has managed to beat its rivals, Fox News and MSNBC, as the number one trending news source on Google. The search engine giant released its annual trends list this week, giving CNN an early Christmas present in what has been a mixed year at best for the network.
CNN, which finished third last year, displaced ESPN, which dropped out of the top ten entirely.
Fox News came in second after not making the top ten last year, and MSNBC tumbled to ninth, after relaunching its website in October. Al Jazeera rounded out the top ten, meaning that maybe they are getting some value after overpaying Al Gore for Current TV in January.
Even Liberals Have to Eat—TPM Pitching $50 Prime Membership
December 17th, 2013
By Don Irvine.
Liberal website, Talking Points Memo, has launched a membership drive for its $50 prime membership, which promises a cleaner, faster and in the cases of mobile and RSS feeds, no ads:
JOSH MARSHALL – DECEMBER 14, 2013, 12:52 PM
We’re kicking off a membership drive at TPM to sign you up as members of TPMPrime. If you’re already a subscriber, thank you. And don’t miss the Prime-only history of the demise of the filibuster ‘Longform‘ we published just this afternoon. If you haven’t, let me take a moment of your time to explain the benefits of joining Prime and why we think it’s so important for our core readers. Already convinced? Great. Click here. If not, join me after the jump.
Prime is the premium version of the TPM website – cleaner, faster, fewer ads, with original content, special site features, our members only discussion forum and a lot more. It’s not another side site somewhere else, it’s the same TPM you already love – just better. I’m going to describe below the individual features and additions you get. But it’s meant to be an integrated whole – a deeper, more engaging, more user-friendly experience designed specifically with our core readership in mind.
Let me briefly explain what you get.
1. Prime gives you the TPM website you know and love with cleaner and less cluttered page layouts and dramatically fewer ads. Prime also includes none of the intrusive and annoying ads that particularly turn people off. Like the ‘bumper’ ad that sometimes runs at the bottom of the site. It’s a faster, more pleasurable, less cluttered reading experience.
2. No display ads on mobile. That’s right. There’s not much real estate on a smartphone in the first place. So ads can be particularly cumbersome. On our smartphone optimized mobile site, with Prime, you’ll never see a display ad. We still have sponsored/recommended article links beneath the articles, as we do on the desktop website. But zero display ads.
3. Full RSS feeds, with zero ads. If you’re into RSS, enough said.
4. Original longform stories, exclusively for subscribers. This is one of the core concepts behind Prime. Since most of our operation is funded by ads, it’s not always economic for us to pour a lot of time into a piece that runs several thousands words and may have only a relatively small audience. But these are articles we think our core readers would very much be interested in reading. And our experience so far has more than borne that out. An example is the history of the demise of the filibuster piece we published just today by TPM’s Sahil Kapur. Prime gives us a revenue stream that makes it possible to do dedicate the resources to pieces like this that are really aimed only at our core readers. And deeper, longform articles are a key part of what we want TPM’s future to be.
5. The Hive. This is our members-only discussion area where Prime members discuss every topic under the sun. That ranges from the filibuster to the fate of Obamacare to gun control, fiscal policy or just the breaking news of the day. Some of it’s serious, other stuff is more lighthearted. But the quality of the conversation is very high. The cost of entry strips out the trolls and creates a community of dedicated TPM Readers who want a conversation that simply isn’t possible in the public comment threads. We also discuss TPM itself. How we’re doing, what we can do differently or better and advice and feedback on new features and initiatives we’re starting which we discuss first in The Hive.
6. Live Chats. These also take place in The Hive and it’s where TPM staffers and outside experts (like education policy guru Diane Ravitch most recently) come to answer your questions. We’re expanding this part of Prime now and joining it to the new book clubs we’re hosting at TPMCafe.
7. The final part of the equation are a growing list of special features to help improve your TPM experience. One is simple but a real favorite of Primates, bookmarks. Yes, there are other ways you can bookmark articles. But this is built right into the site. Save that article you really liked or bookmark one you want to return to later. The other is ‘New to You’. We publish a ton of stuff every day at TPM. And it can be hard to keep up. Which story on the front page is new since you visited last, what got published and slipped off the front page entirely since last stopped by. New to you gives a clean chronological feed of everything published across the site, with articles that appeared since your last visit specially highlighted.
It’s TPM as we’ve always wanted it to be, with special features and content targeted right at our core readers. And then there’s the final part of the equation. TPM is 100% independent. We’re not part of a larger corporation. There’s no money man in the background funding the thing. We need to operate in the black to survive, mainly against competitors who have those advantages noted above. Obviously every additional dollar of revenue is important for us. But consistent, dedicated revenue is especially important since it helps us make the entire operation more stable and robust. And that helps us create a better, more resourced site for you every day, even if you only read the public part of the site.
So that’s my pitch. It’s $50 a year. I ask you to join us and join the premium TPM experience. Click here to sign up now. If you have questions, drop me a line personally at our comments email address right there at the top.
So liberals, if you love TPM but hate the “intrusive and annoying” ads, all you have to do is pony up $50. If not, you will just have to suffer along with the rest of the liberal masses. What a pity.
Obama Says Media Too Focused on Government Failures [Video]
December 9th, 2013By Don Irvine.
President Obama criticized the media for focusing on the failures of government, like the IRS scandal and the botched Obamacare rollout, while ignoring its successes:
Part of the reason people are so skeptical is that when we do things right, they don’t get a lot of attention. If we do something that is perceived initially as a screw-up, it will be on the nightly news for a week.
Obama then cited the example of FEMA director Craig Fugate, who he said “nobody knows” despite the “flawless” job he has done in handling natural disasters over the past five years, as a government success story that is ignored by the media.
The President then compared that to the IRS scandal as a government failure that received undue attention from the media:
You’ve got an office in Cincinnati … in the I.R.S. office that, I think, for bureaucratic reasons is trying to streamline what is a difficult law to interpret about whether [a] nonprofit is actually a political organization [that] deserves a tax exempt agency. And they’ve got a list, suddenly, everybody’s outraged.
Obama added that there were some so called progressive and liberal commentators who were outraged at the possibility that the IRS, under the direction of the Democratic Party, had been discriminating against the Tea Party.
“That is what gets news,” Obama said. “That’s what gets attention.”
Obama is clearly frustrated that the media, which he has been able to count on as reliable allies and supporters ever since he was elected, have taken on a tougher tone as the scandals have recently mounted. Those scandals, combined with the colossal failure of the Obamacare rollout and the lies surrounding the President’s signature legislative achievement, have become too big for even them to ignore.
Newsroom Rebellion: USA Today to Boycott White House Photos
November 29th, 2013By Don Irvine.
On Monday, USA Today became the latest news organization refusing to use official White House photos to protest restrictions of press access.
USA Today’s Deputy Director of Multimedia, Andrew Scott, explained the paper’s decision in a memo to the staff:
All,
We do not publish, either in print or online, handout photos originating from the White House Press Office, except in very extraordinary circumstances. In those very rare instances where a handout image from the White House image has been made under legitimate national security restrictions and is also of very high news value, the use needs to be approved in advance by consulting with Dave Callaway, David Colton, Owen Ullmann, Susan Weiss, Dave Teeuwen, Patty Michalski or me prior to publication.
The functions of the President at the White House are fundamentally public in nature, and should be documented for the public by independent news organizations, not solely by the White House Press Office.
The journalistic community feels so strongly about this that 38 news organizations, including Gannett, have sent a letter of formal protest to the White House.
Thanks,
-Andy
The backlash against the White House began last Thursday when 38 news outlets sent a letter to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney protesting the limited access photographers were being granted to President Obama:
Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the President while he is performing his official duties. As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government.
The organizations said that their photographers were barred from “private” events that are covered by official White House photographers, and they called into question the legality of the prohibition.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest defended the policy at a press briefing on Friday:
We’ve taken advantage of new technology to give the American public even greater access to behind-the-scenes footage or photographs of the President doing his job. I understand why that is a source of some consternation to the people in this room, but to the American public, that is a clear win.
It’s greater access through a filtered lens, which flies in the face of Obama’s promise when he was first elected—to be transparent. Earlier this year he said it again: “This is the most transparent administration in history.” Restricting pool photographers to events that they covered in previous administrations is anything but transparent. But for a troubled President, it’s absolutely necessary.
With Ratings Sagging, Obama Meets With MSNBC Hosts, Liberal Pundits
November 25th, 2013
President Obama, who has seen his job approval ratings sink to new lows thanks to the failure of the Obamacare rollout, met with MSNBC hosts and some liberal pundits at the White House on Thursday in an effort to stanch the bleeding.
According to Politico, those in attendance included MSNBC’s Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, Mother Jones bureau chief David Corn, Think Progress editor-in-chief Judd Legum, Atlantic senior editor Garance Franke-Ruta, Salon political writer Brian Beutler and Fox News contributor Juan Williams.
While the meeting was supposed to be off-the-record, Williams appeared on Fox News and divulged that senior officials said that the administration is “in full fight mode” over Obamacare:
I met with other senior officials at the White House. I can tell you, they are in full fight mode over the Affordable Healthcare Act right now. What you hear from these senior officials is they’re concerned about what happened with insurance companies; they wish the insurance companies hadn’t sent out the cancellation notices; and if they had, that they had simply called them renewals. They feel as if they had a major systems failure, a major management failure, and they’re trying to get back on track.
Obama has met previously with journalists from the left and right—more left than right—but the rollout and subsequent attempts to fix the many flaws in the law have been so bad that not even these liberals carrying out the President’s latest PR initiative can save his presidency from running into the ditch.
Obama Chides Media for Ignoring Good News on Obamacare—Medicaid Signups [Video]
November 18th, 2013By Don Irvine.
During his press conference on Thursday, President Obama chided the media for not reporting on the good news about Obamacare—the large number of people who have signed up for Medicaid.
Obama said that of the one million applications completed, representing 1.5 million Americans, some 396,000 now have access to Medicaid:
That’s been less reported on, but it shouldn’t be. Americans who are having a difficult time, who are poor, many of them working, may have a disability, they’re Americans like everybody else, and the fact that they are able to get insurance is critically important.
Obama was looking for any sliver of good news in the botched Obamacare website rollout. But citing increased Medicaid enrollments doesn’t help his cause.
Under Obamacare, states were encouraged to expand Medicaid coverage, with the carrot being that the federal government would cover 100% of the costs for the first three years and then gradually pull back, with the states then assuming more of the costs.
While this appeared to be no-risk deal for the states, it is anything but. The majority of people covered under Medicaid tend to be poorer, older and sicker than the general population, meaning that health care costs for them are also greater than the general population. As they get older, they will likely need even more medical care, pushing up the cost of the program, which the states will have to start paying a portion of after the third year. That is a cost that they may not be able to afford without tax increases or painful budget cuts.
But that really doesn’t matter to Obama, because by the time the hammer of increased costs comes down, he will be on his way out of the Oval Office.
Jay Carney: “Communications Are Challenging Here” [Video]
November 12th, 2013
White House press secretary Jay Carney admitted during Tuesday’s daily press briefing that “communications are challenging here,” as he struggled once again to defend the disastrous Obamacare website rollout.
Carney’s admission came during an exchange with Fox News’ Ed Henry:
Henry: Jay, obviously the words the President said three years ago have been picked over many times but what about when he said just over a month ago, September 26 in Maryland he had an event right before the actual rollout. One of the things he said was, quote, “If you already have health care you don’t have to do anything.” You can at least say that was not true, right?
Carney: Look as I said last week, accept that, you know –communications are challenging here. The President — you have to remember that the affordable care act – the promises…
The admission by Carney of how difficult it is for the administration to get its story straight, while he tries to defend the botched rollout of the Obamacare website and the President’s promise that people would be able to keep their health insurance and doctor, comes just one day after he told ABC’s Jonathan Karl that “I give up,” during a particularly tough line of questioning.
Carney has been flailing about as he tries to defend the indefensible.
Perhaps he needs to sit down with the President for a few lessons on how to lie convincingly.
Chuck Todd: Obama Made Promises Hoping Insurance Companies Would Keep Them [Video]
October 30th, 2013By Don Irvine.
Chuck Todd, the chief White House correspondent for NBC News, told Morning Joe that President Obama’s promise that people would be able to keep their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act was predicated on insurance companies being able to offer affordable policies that complied with the new law, even though he knew that would be difficult for them to do:
They put themselves in the hands of the insurance companies. They were making promises that they were hoping the insurance companies were going to keep!
At the time all of us said, ‘We’re highly skeptical of how he can make that promise. Let’s look at our own company. We can’t decide to keep our health care if Comcast decides to change health plans. We’ll get a choice, we’ll get maybe an a or b or c, depending on different things. So when the President said it, basically only people on Medicare, TriCare, Medicaid could he keep that promise for.
Joe Scarborough then pointed out that NBC’s Lisa Myers said that the White House knew many would lose coverage under the ACA and that President Obama knew he wasn’t telling the truth about Obamacare, and asked Todd how they get around that.
Todd admitted Obama’s statements on the health care plan puzzled him:
I never understood why he said ‘if you like your health care plan you can keep it,’ because he was relying somehow on the insurance companies to keep this promise. Again, this goes to making promises you couldn’t keep. And it goes even worse. Lisa’s report says they knew this wasn’t going to be case for a large group of people. So I don’t get it.
That so-called promise was that insurance companies would somehow be able to offer the same plans with the additional Obamacare requirements—at the same price—so that people could indeed keep their plans.
But that was an unrealistic expectation, and Obama knew it. There is no way insurance companies could both comply with the new Obamacare requirements and keep the policy costs down.
And if Obama isn’t lying, then why have an estimated two million people, so far, had to change their health insurance because their current policies do not comply with Obamacare? Those policies are being replaced by policies that may cost the consumers up to 1,000% more in some cases? And according to a report by NBC, in fact the Obama administration has known for a long time that an estimated “40 percent to 67 percent” of policies will no longer be acceptable.
That doesn’t sound too affordable to me.
And this is Obama’s signature achievement?
Media Banned from Hillary Clinton Speech to Convenience Store Owners
October 20th, 2013By Don Irvine.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution received an email yesterday that said there would be a media blackout for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s appearance at the National Association of Convenience Stores convention today:
As will be communicated tomorrow at the Closing General Session with Former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, social media, photography, recording, writing about and/or videotaping any part of the session is prohibited.
In addition, the Harry Walker Agency has asked us to communicate the following information to all media attendees:
The NACS Show Closing General Session on Tuesday, October 15 from 8:45 am to 10:00 am is closed to the press. Media members attending the NACS Show will not be permitted to attend the General Session.
Thank you for your understanding.
Erin Pressley Vice President of Publishing NACS: The Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing
That doesn’t mean that attendees won’t tweet, write or videotape Clinton’s speech today, unless their devices are confiscated at the door. But it does make you wonder what Hillary can possibly say about convenience stores that warrants a media blackout.
Slurpee anyone?
Al Jazeera Ratings Disaster—Some Shows Hit Zero In Key Demo
October 10th, 2013
By Don Irvine.
Al Jazeera America, which had hoped to challenge the major cable news networks, is falling on its face, based on last week’s ratings, in which some shows didn’t record a single viewer in the key 25-54 demographic.
The network, which was purchased from Al Gore in January for $500 million, is suffering from low distribution and poor content.
Consider This, a show on the new network hosted by Antonio Mora, had the distinction of averaging just 9,000 viewers for the week and 3,000 in the demo. Last Thursday night, according to Nielsen, the show racked up a zero in the demo. Compare that to the major cable news networks—which regularly average well over 200,000 in the demo—and you can see just how bad things are.
Mora’s program wasn’t alone in the goose egg club, as the network’s 9 p.m. program, America Tonight, also managed to rack up a zero in the demo, but still finished the week with 18,600 average viewers and 7,400 in the demo. That also means that Mora’s show lost more than half of it’s lead-in audience.
Al Jazeera America has spent lavishly on studios and personnel in an effort to compete with its larger cable news brethren. But as the ratings show, so far it has been an abject failure.
About Face: Washington Post Reverses Itself—Decides GOP is Solely to Blame for Shutdown
October 3rd, 2013By Don Irvine.
The Washington Post, which on Sunday criticized both parties for the impending government shutdown, had a change of heart. By Wednesday they decided that the Republicans were solely to blame for closing most of the federal government on Tuesday.
This is what the Post said on September 29:
Ultimately, the grown-ups in the room will have to do their jobs, which in a democracy with divided government means compromising for the common good. That means Mr. Boehner, his counterpart in the Senate, Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), minority leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the president. Both sides are inordinately concerned with making sure that, if catastrophe comes, the other side takes the political hit. In truth, none of their reputations stands to benefit.
But just a couple of days later, the Post must have realized that they were out of step with the rest of the liberal media and decided that the blame should rest solely on the shoulders of the Republicans:
AMERICANS’ RESPECT for their Congress has, sad to say, diminished in recent years. But citizens still expect a minimal level of competence and responsibility: Pay the bills and try not to embarrass us in front of the world.
By those minimal standards, this Congress is failing. More specifically, the Republican leaders of the House of Representatives are failing. They should fulfill their basic duties to the American people or make way for legislators who will.
Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Budget Committee chairman and former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and their colleagues may be in a difficult political position. Honestly, we don’t much care. They need to reopen the government and let it pay its bills.
All of a sudden, any mention of any obstinance by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) disappeared as the Post zeroed in on Republicans as the sole reason for the shutdown.
The Post editorial board said that they weren’t rabid partisans, but’s it’s hard to believe them after this reversal.
Seymour Hersh: American Media is “Pathetic”
September 29th, 2013By Don Irvine.
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Seymour Hersh lashed out at the U.S. media in an interview with The Guardian, calling them “pathetic” and accusing them of not standing up to Obama.
It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama].
Hersh also told The Guardian that NBC and ABC should close down their news bureaus, and that “90% of editors in publishing” should be fired so they can get back to the fundamental job of journalists, which is to be an outsider.
He also took a shot at The New York Times, which he said spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would.”
If Hersh is only realizing this now, he’s a few years late. But as a left-wing writer who worked for the Times as a young reporter, it’s still noteworthy to see him criticize his former employer as being too favorable towards Obama.
Chris Matthews Wonders Why Illegal Aliens Would Risk Voting [Video]
September 22nd, 2013By Don Irvine.
Chris Matthews, who thinks Republican efforts to enact Voter ID laws are aimed at voter suppression and constitute a poll tax, picked up on that theme again on Wednesday when he discussed the Texas Voter ID law with Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice:
MATTHEWS: So what about registration? How do you prove you’re a citizen? It’s a border state, Texas, how do you prove you’re in this country legally? How do you do it?
WEISER: You actually don’t have to file proof of citizenship when you register to vote. You have to swear an affidavit under the penalty of perjury and that is the proof of citizenship. And the election officials can investigate whether there are any questions and prosecute or remove people where there are questions.
MATTHEWS: What’s the real disincentive for people who shouldn’t vote, but vote? What is the real way it works, in practical terms?
WEISER: As a practical matter, the penalty for fraudulently voting is dramatic.
MATTHEWS: I see.
WEISER: It is five years in prison, ten thousand dollars in fines, those are the federal penalties. It is very easy to get caught, and the benefit to that very individual voter of casting a fraudulent vote are quite small. It just doesn’t really make sense to do that and it makes sense that very little people actually do.
MATTHEWS: We were actually talking about that in the office with the producers trying to figure out what it is that actually stops, the disincentives now. To everyone watching, it’s common sense. Why would a person, who is in the country illegally, undocumented in this country, why would they risk exposure, why would they risk imprisonment, a serious charge, simply to vote as an American when they’re not legal in America.
Why would they “risk exposure?” Because despite the stiff penalties that Weiser referred to, very few cases of voter fraud are ever investigated, much less prosecuted. So the risk of exposure, as Matthews put it, is virtually nil, and he knows it.
Matthews isn’t interested in fair and honest elections, just ones that favor the liberals and the Democrats.
Shepard Smith Leaving Primetime to Make Way for Hannity
September 15th, 2013
By Don Irvine.
Fox News announced yesterday that longtime anchor Shepard Smith would vacate his 7 p.m. slot as part of the primetime reshuffling of programs that will feature Megyn Kelly, when she returns from maternity leave.
Kelly is expected to get the 9 p.m. time slot, which is currently occupied by Sean Hannity, with Hannity likely taking over Smith’s time period.
If that is the case, then it is likely that Greta Van Susteren will remain in her 10 p.m. slot and not move to an earlier time period, as she hinted might happen in an interview a few months ago.
Smith isn’t leaving Fox News, but instead will lead what he called an “incredibly expensive” breaking news division that will have the ability to interrupt current programming throughout the day.
He will also continue to host his Studio B program at 3 p.m. while taking on the new duties.
Smith has been handily beating the competition at 7 p.m. If Hannity can match his current ratings in the earlier slot, then he will give The O’Reilly Factor an even stronger lead-in than Smith has been.
From a ratings standpoint, though, Fox probably would have done better by letting Smith stay put and having Hannity move to 10 p.m., where he would very likely improve upon Van Susteren’s ratings and further strengthen Fox’s grip as the number one cable news network. But no matter what they finally decide, it should still be net plus for them.