Rating the News Media - MSNBC Gears Up for Last Hurrah of Progressive Liberals

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One thing is clear in the latest Nielsen Ratings, the public is not being fooled by the news media and I use that term rather loosely when distinguishing between news and opinion shows since it is hard to tell the difference most days.

As we head into the fall television cycle and the upcoming Midterm elections it is hard to tell if the Democrats, incumbents, or media are suffering the most by misreading the mood of the public. Clearly the polls and primary election results demonstrate the Democrats and incumbents are lost in their ivory towers as they are in serious trouble and have no clue why.

This year will be one of lost opportunities for the Democrats and even more so for the progressive liberals. They have thrown away, wasted or blown one of the greatest majorities for an unknown and untested president and his party ever handed to politicians in our history.

Right now Obama and the Democratic majority are on the verge of showing one of the greatest falls from grace ever witnessed in politics. Look for the president's party to lose control and around 55 seats in the House, and maybe 9-10 seats and possibly control of the Senate, just two years after Obama's triumphant coronation as president.

Yet the impact on the progressive liberal media who helped power Obama into office could be even more devastating. For the media have ignored or failed to read the tea leaves to an even greater degree than the Obama, Pelosi and Reid people.

Just look at some of the numbers. In August only one network news anchor gained audience, Diane Sawyer at ABC according to the Nielsen numbers. Sawyer continued to close the gap against NBC while Katie Couric is buried in last place.

When it comes to cable news and/or opinion the stats are staggering. MSNBC is the clear bastion of progressive liberalism. Throughout the year they have continued to add progressive mouthpieces to their program mix while attempting to bolster the sagging numbers of their progressive philosophy. The result has been suicidal.

HNL's non-political Morning Express hosted by Robin Meade has buried the MSNBC far left leaning Morning Joe Show for 17 consecutive months as Robin has driven her ratings up 25%-28% in key demos and leads the Morning Joe show by a stunning 66% for the year to date.

As Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC token Republican on the Morning Joe Show, has drifted farther and farther from the GOP viewpoint the ratings of MSNBC have dropped. Just today Joe justified his MSNBC credentials by being about the only Republican on earth to say the GOP will not win control of the House in the elections. If he keeps it up he will beat out Howard Dean for the next leader of the Democratic National Committee.

Fox News is clobbering MSNBC in every single time slot, generally pulling three to four times higher ratings than MSNBC in daytime and prime time programming. For example, Glenn Beck beats Chris Matthews with over 2.1 million viewers to 464,000 for Matthews, O'Rielly beats Olbermann 2.5 million to 782,000, and Hannity beats Rachel Maddow 1.95 million to 610,000 in late August numbers. Note that Hannity often has Sarah Palin on his program.

Then there is CNN, who claims to be the last truly fair and balanced network. Yet they have Rick Sanchez and his progressive agenda on the Rick's List program and even added the liberal to their prime timeline up where his new show has lost 40% of the audience over the previous year. This past week his prime time show pulled just 92,000 viewers while a CNBC show (financial network) about McDonald's Big Mac pulled 143,000 viewers compared to a couple of million viewers on Fox.

CNN primetime average viewership hit a ten year low of just 486,000 in August while the Total Day viewership average of 381,000 was the fifth time this year it had one of the ten worst viewership months since August of 2000. Even Larry King lost 50% of his audience in just the last year.

So what is the lesson? If the media owners of MSNBC and CNN continue to push the progressive liberal agenda they will continue to alienate the Main Street viewers and may soon find themselves becoming an endangered species like many of the radical causes they advocate. Perhaps they should consider adding a little news content to their programming.

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Barack Obama and Roger Ailes - Great Political Peacemakers

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In a stunning turn of events Roger Ailes, the genius behind Fox News network and the Godfather of the conservative movement in America journeyed to the ABC This Week news round table Sunday, a program hosted by Barbara Walters of The View fame and keeper of the faith for liberals in America.



As you may recall, President Obama journeyed to the Lion's den just last week to meet with Republican lawmakers without Nancy Pelosi or the White House gang and his appearance caused quite a stir. We ran a story on the meeting last week.

This time it was Ailes who journeyed to the bowels of liberaldom to confront the enemies of reality, the masters of deception, the pyramids of the pariah and the fountain of negativity and nitpicking. Well, maybe that gives Barbara Wawa a bit too much credit since she seems to be shying away from awful controversy she began hosting the View with the wall of liberal defenders.



Still, she was able to draw the Big Bear Ailes from his mountaintop, she describes him as a friend, one of her millions I guess, and it was still a memorable experience. It was the Sunday after the President's State of the Union and the Ailes interview dominated the media Sunday which is just what Roger expects Fox to do. I'm sure the White House staff were disappointed that Ailes knocked the president out of the lead stories but Fox seems to make a habit of doing that.



Waiting for him at the table was The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, a more worthy protector of the liberal line could not be found. A few fireworks began to ignite when she interrogated Ailes but his legendary wit and brutal honesty were no match for the leftists.



She challenged him on having an extremist like Glenn Beck on Fox and Roger simply responded we are after the ratings and we are number one.



When she asked how he could possibly have someone like, ugh, Sarah Palin as a network news commentator he replied I was the only network to have the only Democratic VP candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, on TV for ten years and now I am the only network to have the only Republican VP candidate on the air. We are Fair and Balanced.



Huffington huffed a few times but got none of the adoration she gets from all the liberal shows where she normally appears and the series of exchanges finally gave us a break from all the politicians polluting the airways.

I must say when she was challenging the Fox efforts to polarize the public Ailes calmly mentioned that her very own blog has used equally inflammatory language about him, she promptly claimed it was a comment from a reader, but a fact check showed it was in a Huffington story. Chalk another one up to Roger. Perhaps that is why Fox buries the liberal media in popularity.



Now if these peacekeeping efforts by Obama meeting the Republicans and Ailes meeting the liberals are a sign of things to come then there is an outside chance civility may return to the political scene. However, it is not something I would count on as it takes more than words to mend fences.



Besides, we have a long ways to go before we have thrown out all the rascals in politics and since they have no guilt over stretching the truth to defend their horrid records then tough talk may be the only way to get them out of office where they belong.

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CBS Promotes Smut to Smear Palin in desperate News Ratings Grab

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CBS News led by CBS Anchor just cannot stop trying to smear Sarah Palin long after Katie Couric failed to generate higher ratings when she attempted to embarrass Palin during a campaign interview.



In fact the backlash against Couric was fierce as she steadily sank to the lowest ratings in network news history finishing a distant last with little more than 5 million viewers. Her counterpart at NBC, Brian Williams saw the same erosion in ratings after the election as NBC and the MSNBC cable network also attempted to smear Palin every chance they got.



The latest move by CBS is an Early Morning Show interview with Levi Johnston, the father of Palin's granddaughter. Somehow CBS and MSNBC think Palin is still a major threat to "real women" on the liberal left and her early success with her new book has infuriated those leftist elitists who have been trying to silence Palin ever since she took the political world by storm.



Still two weeks away from release, the Palin book, Going Rogue - An American Story, is literally driving the liberal media insane. When CBS has to dig up the 19 year old disenfranchised father of Bristol Palin's baby, then give the story a provocative lead as follows, it shows CBS News is either desperate for higher ratings or supportive of promoting pornography since Johnston is announcing a nude spread he is doing for Playgirl magazine.



ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct. 8, 2009



Levi Johnston to Pose Nude for Playgirl
19-Year-Old Father of Sarah Palin's Grandchild Training Hard to Buff-Up for Magazine Spread



If malice had no role in this why would CBS News be the only network to give it national television exposure? Why would any headline writer with journalistic integrity focus on Sarah Palin and her grandchild when highlighting a nude photo spread by a lunatic from the Alaska backwoods? Neither Palin nor her grandchild had anything to do with this attention starved maniac and his nude photo shoot.



MSNBC was quick to feature the CBS interview in a rare showing of competitors cooperating but then the bond of extreme socialism runs deep and no one in media is more socialist than MSNBC. It is a fact well known to the public as MSNBC ratings fail to reach one million viewers most of the time, more than ten times less than competitor Fox News.



Fact is Fox News has more viewers than every competitor on cable combined. As for CBS and Katie Couric, they should be paying less attention to smearing Palin and more preparing for more bad news as Diane Sawyer will soon become the ABC Evening News Anchor and dear Katie could fade farther into the depths of disastrous ratings.



As for Sarah Palin, she has a million dollars and a best selling book and will be featured on Oprah who vowed to keep Palin off her TV show during the campaign because she was backing Obama. I guess Palin has a much more Christian attitude than our media since she can forgive and forget media efforts to hurt her.



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Liberal Elitists of the World Unite - Intellectual Constipation Reaches Epidemic Proportions

Are all liberal media elitists and their army of mouthpieces intellectually constipated? There is a chorus of condemnation today toward Sarah Palin from everyone that hates Republicans, mothers, mothers with children, mothers with down children, mothers with sons in the war, religious mothers, feminists opposed to abortion, feminists opposed to fanatical feminism, conservatives, small town, Alaskan, moose hunting, oil drilling and whatever else the latest smear may be.

Wake up eggheads, Sarah Palin got it right, you got it wrong. The Bush Doctrine is not preemptive strikes as ABC News and Obama backers shouted all over the cyber world. The Bush Doctrine, if any of you have any interest in the truth, is the National Security Strategy of 2002 that identifies the US position concerning terrorism and includes four pillars in the struggle.

The four pillars include (1) rejection of moral relativism and commitment to fostering the spread of democracy in the Middle East, (2) treating terrorism proactively, on a global basis, and not as law enforcement issue, (3) willingness to engage in preemptive attacks against terrorists and terrorist supporting states, and (4) unwillingness to support a Palestinian state until Palestinian leaders "engage in a sustained fight against terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."
Palin addressed the global view on terrorism, and she was right. She even asked Gibson to be more specific when he asked about the Bush Doctrine and he didn't change the question. Finally, he clarified his question, acting like a professor correcting a student, and said the Bush Doctrine was preemptive strikes. Guess what professor, wrong! You left out the other three pillars.

You also didn't correct Obama when ABC News on Rick Klein Reports asked Obama about the Bush Doctrine back on July 26, 2007. Obama said Clinton would continue the "Bush Doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations if they first meet conditions laid out by the United States. No mention of preemptive strikes, no mention of the Obama mistake on such a critical national security issue and he was a sitting US Senator running for president.

Now are there dual standards in this race? Are female VP candidates expected to know what US Senators don't know. Can the news media simply call them wrong when they are right? Is there no requirement for the news media to check the facts? Perhaps the media madness that prevails within the Washington elite establishment should be cleaned out first.

ABC News Continues Media Efforts to Distort Palin Message

ABC News Charles Gibson introduced the first comprehensive news interview of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the world with clips of how he was able to cause her to stumble in questioning over the "Bush Doctrine."

Perhaps this was his effort to appease the criticism he received from the liberal left of being too soft in interviews with the McCain ticket and reacquire "macho" liberal approval but the result was a blatant attempt to trick Palin.

Gibson, out of the blue, asked Palin about the Bush Doctrine. She immediately asked him to be more specific. As she attempted to explain he asked the same question several more times, never bothering to explain what part of the Bush doctrine he intended to address. Finally after she gave increasingly more detail about the Bush doctrine he finally asked specifically for her position on preemptive strikes against terrorist targets.

ABC promptly sent out the edited questions and the liberal media jumped on the exchange as more evidence of her lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. Well shame on you Charles Gibson, until now ABC had not joined the stampede of news outlets leaning to the left but you have reestablished your news credentials as a master of media manipulation and should get a standing ovation at the next socialist convention in America.

The truth, in case anyone cares, is the Bush Doctrine is a four pillar approach to terrorism in the world, exactly as Palin described. Preemptive strikes are one of the four pillars thus her request to him to clarify his ambiguous question demonstrated far more understanding of the Doctrine than ABC News. His repeated response of refusing to clarify it was clearly intended to make her look bad.

According to the book, yes books have been published about the Bush Doctrine, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Norman Podhoretz identifies the four pillars of the Bush Doctrine: (1) rejection of moral relativism and commitment to fostering the spread of democracy in the Middle East, (2) treating terrorism proactively, on a global basis, and not as law enforcement issue, (3) willingness to engage in preemptive attacks against terrorists and terrorist supporting states, and (4) unwillingness to support a Palestinian state until Palestinian leaders "engage in a sustained fight against terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."

Palin was right in asking for him to be specific. Her answer was right about the Bush Doctrine being the worldview on terrorism. And once again Gibson demonstrated how the mainstream media in America is hell bent on distorting the record, words and experience of Sarah Palin. Oh yeah, when he finally asked the real question she nailed it like she did on all the rest.

ABC has already issued misinformation on the exchange trying to limit the Bush Doctrine to the issue of preemptive strikes but the Bush Doctrine was detailed in the National Security Strategy of 2002 for all the world to see and its odd ABC missed such an important document.

Finally, when the same ABC (ABC News Rick Klein Reports) asked Obama about the Bush Doctrine back on July 26, 2007 during a conference call to reporters, according to ABC Obama "said Clinton would continue the "Bush doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations if they first meet conditions laid out by the United States." Clearly Obama didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was so in terms of truth, Palin 1, ABC News 0.

Perhaps when Sarah Palin gets to Washington her first mess to clean up should be the media as they are more tied to the lobbyists and special interests than the politicians.

STAY TUNED TO THE LATEST RERUNS OF THE NEWS

Tell me I'm not the only person to notice that more and more television newscasts are rerunning stories from the day before and even two days earlier. It used to be they might try to update an earlier story for filler purposes on slow days but now it seems that over half the news stories on news programs are reruns from the previous broadcasts. I think they have cut the budgets so much that they might not have any reporters left to report fresh news.

Most network and cable news channels now run long blocks of paid advertising during the late evening, early morning and weekend hours. That never would have happened under Ted Turner at CNN who believed a news channel was supposed to report the news twenty-four hours a day. Guess it is kind of hard when most of the reporters have been eliminated.

The networks have found other ways to try and milk more money from the news divisions. CNN did a special on Black America, a two part special, and then proceeded to broadcast the entire thing about 5 times over a couple of days killing off about 10 hours of coverage. Remember, every rerun means that much less original production.

Most talk shows on CNN, Headline News and others, programs like the O'Rielly Report, Glenn Beck, blah, blah, blah are rebroadcast as many as three times in 24 hours as if once wasn't enough. When too many reporters are laid off they start broadcasting more and more entertainment and celebrity expose stories since the self-promotion of the stars is always available from the studios.

Most quasi-news shows like Today, Good Morning America and others often have guests introducing new movies, television shows or books and more often than not they work for another division of the owner of the network. Thus Miley Cyrus of Hanna Montana fame who is owned by Disney is being interviewed on Good Morning America, plays a concert on that show to introduce her newest song, and shows up on several other ABC related shows which is also owned by Disney.



Fox, NBC and CBS all do the same thing when they get the chance so you never really know if a morning show is featuring talent because of the merits of the talent or because that person is contributing to the profit margin of the network. If you watch the news footage closely you can also see the same footage being used over and over again although the story may change slightly.

Which leaves us with the big question. Is our news being pre-packaged as Hillbilly Joe and Dogman say and are we being spoon fed stories that keep our attention diverted away from the truth? If we are getting a daily dose of propaganda then is anyone getting the truth? And what sinister force is behind the disappearance of real news on American television?

Stay tuned for the rest of the story...

Who Can You Trust?

So we gave you our pick for the Queen of Network News Diane Sawyer, the Kentucky girl who rules ABC News. Diane proved that beauty and brains can be combined when she won the America's Junior Miss scholarship pageant and went on to break down all the doors of television news for women becoming the highest paid woman in network news.

However, not even that is good enough for the CPT Who Do You Trust? honor. The person must demonstrate a strict adherence to the ancient rules of journalism where you are objective, fair, unbiased, and never ever try to advocate a political philosophy or cause. Diane stands alone on network TV in this regard.

Today we are announcing the winner of the cable news Who Do You Trust? honor and once again beauty and brains are packaged in the Queen of Cable News, Robin Meade, anchor of CNN Express morning news. Robin was Miss Ohio and a Miss America finalist and went on to broadcast journalism in Ohio, Florida and Chicago before joining CNN.


You can find her every morning lighting up CNN Headline news where most CNN news personalities will put you to sleep. Many shows on CNN, Fox, MSNBC and whoever claim to be fair, unbiased and no spin but they are liars of course and all have an agenda to push on the unsuspecting public from right wing to left wing, conservative to liberal, and I for one am sick of hearing them tell me what to think.

You want a refreshing, upbeat news report go to Diane or Robin. They stand alone in preserving journalistic integrity. Interesting that they came from neighboring midwestern states.

TODAY’S TOP MEDIA SCAM – AMERICAN IDOL VOTERS

The American public has been getting conned by the media for far too long and since we have all become to desensitized to realize when we are victims the Coltons Point Times is going to give you the truth. Today’s con artist is Fox Television and the wildly popular American Idol show with a great deal of help from the news media of all networks.

Last night the three surviving contestants were reduced to the final two, both Davids (Archuleta and Cook), as over 56 million votes were cast by viewers according to the show. This morning on the various morning news shows the 56 million voters were mentioned over and over again but did anyone explain the vote? Nope.

Not to take anything away from the show because it is a slick production but American Idol is no amateur contest like it is billed and there are not 56 million people voting as the media would have you believe. Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts went so far as to say at least more people voted for president in America.

Guess what Robin and the rest of the news media, there are not 56 million voters because each person can vote ten times and then call back and vote again. It’s possible just 5.6 million people voted. The Idol producers are careful not to mention individual totals or the number of actual voters, the results would be far less impressive.

The fact is each week there are fewer people watching American Idol as the regional fan favorites get dumped one at a time. We are now left with the two Davids, one from Utah and one from Missouri. Kids from all major media markets have been eliminated which could explain the loss of ratings.



Last night 22.24 million people watched the 1st half hour and 25 million watched the 2nd half hour. The numbers are down from earlier in the season and from last year although they did increase slightly over last week. Last week 21.8 million people watched last Tuesday's competition, the smallest Tuesday audience in more than five years. The show did better the last Wednesday with 22.9 million, but that was the smallest Wednesday audience in three years, according to Nielsen Media Research.

While it is still the number one show on television the loss of 7 million viewers over the years would indicate the public is tiring of it. Part of that may be caused by the fact the kids are no longer kids and the amateurs are no longer amateurs as most of the top ten finalists came equipped with voice coaches, previous record deals, previous records released, years of performances and a team of advisors making this a lot more like a casting call of professional singers for a Broadway Show than an amateur talent competition.

Long ago when there were 24 competitors the Coltons Point Times predicted the top two males and females and our four picks finished four out of the top 5. Our number one pick, David Archuleta, the 17 year old from Utah is in the last two. Next week we will know.

ABC NEWS LOSES DEBATE – HILLARY LOSING ELECTION

It seems as if the ABC News attempt to trivialize the election and make the Pennsylvania voters sound like political idjits, as the Irish would say is dominating the primary for next Tuesday. The Gibson-Stephanopoulos mud wrestling at the Democratic debate continues to dominate the election news as well it should for if politicians are not talking about the issues it is because the news media is incapable of asking about it.

Stephanopoulos has been fiercely defending his bizarre performance, as any good Clinton staffer should. Hillary is acting as if the debacle never took place, as any good Clinton should. Obama, who got bushwhacked by the Clinton machine, retains his good humor in spite of the underhanded tactics used against him. The Pennsylvania voters, who have been dealing with idiotic politicians and media since the founding of America 232 years ago are still waiting for the apology from ABC News, the commentators or perhaps Mickey Mouse on behalf of Disney (owner of ABC).

So what resulted from the latest Clinton tactics to insult the intelligence of America? Well post debate polls show Barach has pulled to just 4 points behind Hillary, well within the margin of error to make this a dead heat going into the last weekend. That is a remarkable surge since a couple of weeks ago Obama was over 20 points behind in the polls.

One good policy has resulted from the debate; Obama has said there will be no more debates with Hillary. Praise God Almighty the American public will finally be spared the senseless babble and tactics demonstrated over the last year and a half in 21 performances by the candidates. Finally voters will be allowed to make up their own mind about the candidates, not do what the media tells them.



As for Hillary’s message that only she can beat McCain, nonsense! Polls show Barach can just as easily beat him and Hillary has far higher and more deeply based negative numbers than any recent presidential candidate. Perhaps the fog is finally lifting on the Clinton candidacy allowing people to see through the rhetoric and double talk, see that it is a year when history should be tested and the history is whether a minority candidate can become president of the greatest nation on Earth.

Pennsylvania voters have a chance to set America on a historic course this fall, to send a message that the old school political tactics of the past have no place in our future, and that it is the policies and personalities of the candidates, not the antics of the moderators that will decide the election. The birthplace of American Freedom can once again free us from the errors of the past.

STEPHANOPOULOS AGAIN PROVES LOYALTY TO CLINTONS IN FINAL DEMOCRATIC DEBATE

Last night the Democrats had their last presidential debate in Philadelphia as ABC News man-child and political correspondent George Stephanopoulos co-hosted the event with the ABC Evening News Anchor Charles Gibson.

Georgie, the spokesperson and chief defender for President Bill Clinton during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinski scandals continued to be the loyal Clinton supporter as he valiantly tried to tie Barach Obama to a host of unsavory characters from the ancient Weatherman days of 40 years ago to Reverend Big Mouth of modern times.

ABC, short for A Bunch of Crap, seems intent on taking the crown from CBS for offering the most slanted news coverage possible. With such trustworthy news people as Diane Sawyer available it seems strange that a former Clinton insider would be doing the questioning for the network but when Disney owns you even the news has a fantasy spin.

We were hoping Obama would walk over and slap little Georgie for his mean-spirited questions but alas he was too much the gentleman. Hillary, clinging to a razor-thin lead in the Pennsylvania polls for the primary next Tuesday was unusually smug as she kept saying such tactics should be kept out of politics while throwing one barb after another in the typical Bill Clinton fashion.

It looked like a tag team affair between Georgie and Hillary as they once again worked to distract the media and public like they did so well during the Whitewater and Lewinski scandals. Hillary says she is experienced in the demands on the chief executive but I am not sure her experiences are what the public is seeking.

If experience is all it is about then McCain and Clinton, the only two candidates eligible for membership in the AARP, have a lot of explaining to do for all those years in public service. It is not experience that counts but what you learned from the experience. There is a real difference between working up a head of steam and being caught in a fog. Let’s hope the Clinton Steam Team can get a chance to focus on issues.

February 2, 1998

Starr Subpoenas Stephanopulous
Source says Clinton did not flatly deny December meeting with Lewinsky


WASHINGTON (AllPolitics Feb. 1) -- Former White House aide George Stephanopoulos has been subpoenaed by Independent Counsel Ken Starr to appear before the grand jury in Washington, CNN learned Monday.