Media Credibility and the Polls - What to Believe

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With primaries over we are almost through the silly season of the never-ending campaigns for control of our government and it is time to take a look around at all the damage that has been done. How do we do that? Well the media and politicians use a clever technique called polling to keep us informed of what we think and the big question is does it really do that? No!

Wake up media and stop trying to sway the American public opinion. It has been 40 years since I started developing campaign polling and demographic databases and the one constant through nine presidents is nothing has changed. The American people will always make up their own mind and if you try to influence them your polls will be the same disaster as always.

So why should the news media care? Because the credibility of the media is just as poor as the credibility of the president, congress and corporate America and those reporting the news should not be considered a joke. If I didn’t care about the reputation of the media I would not care, although the extreme efforts of some media to mislead the public does provide some form of entertainment.

News reporting is a protected privilege in America, it is even protect by the Constitution in the Bill of Rights. But along with such privileged status comes responsibility, the responsibility to not abuse your rights and many of the media seem to forget.

What is the purpose of polls? Polls are a snap shot at that moment of time in reaction to a specific question. No more no less. The more objective the question the more objective and honest will be the answer. The more scientific the pool of people polled the more accurate the results.

Every day political news reporters try to apply the results of daily polls to what will happen in the future. For example, they tell us Democrats and Republicans are tied in the polls today and that means the Democrats will do much better in the Midterm elections than expected. Such extrapolation is nonsense and the media knows better. When you hear such things just know there is a hidden agenda by those making such silly reports.

This is September, not November, and so far one third of the voters, the Independents, have not even been polled since all primary polls only talk to Democrats and Republicans. Those few polls that do survey Independents are not getting much press but they show the largest GOP lead ever recorded over the Democrats, well in double digits.

Any poll done at this time when one third of the voters are not even counted, and that one third may well be the angriest of all the voters, could be 20-25% inaccurate. So why does the media continue reporting the party results? They know better.

The only polls accurate right now are those concerning the public sentiment and they foreshadow serious change this fall. More than two-thirds of the public think the country is headed in the wrong direction, more than two-thirds think Obama and the Democrats are doing the wrong things, and more than two-thirds think congress, all of congress, is just as misguided. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe as I have pointed out consistently all year, a tsunami is about to hit the Democrats in control.

If the parties are running even at this time and both are held in low regard by the populace it is only because the Independents are not being counted. Come November 2 the game changes radically and the combined Republican opposition with the Tea party and Independent disgust with government will make a statement that will be heard around the world. The party in power will fall.

Also, there is no way the results in one state mean the same thing will happen in another state as the people of Delaware are far different than those in Ohio or Iowa, just as New York is different than California. Polls can also be very distorted if the people surveyed are not registered to vote, or even if they are registered does that mean they will actually vote.

As I said recently, just look at the numbers. Well over 4 million more Republicans than Democrats voted in the primaries in 2010, the first time since 1930 more Republicans voted in the primaries than Democrats. Yet sitting on the sidelines because they were denied the right to vote by archaic campaign laws is the mighty Independent voting block and they are just as mad as the "rogue" Republicans who have been leading the attack.

Take New Hampshire for example. The latest polls show 70% of Independents are dissatisfied with the direction our federal government is going. In yesterday's primary there were 266,144 eligible Democratic voters and about 70,000 turned out. There were 264,451 eligible Republican voters and about 152,000 turned out, more than twice as many Republicans. Yet there are 388,589 Independent voters who did not vote. If 70% are fed up with the direction of Obama and the Democrats they will be joining the vote and bring about a Republican landside in November.

A poll of “eligible voters” can be wrong because about 40% of eligible voters are not even registered to vote. Even a poll of “registered voters” could also be wrong for less than half will vote in the election and the enthusiasm of the voter will dictate the turnout. Republicans have much greater enthusiasm to vote and Independents may have even greater enthusiasm. Few polls will ever go into the level of detail needed to get accurate results.

There is a final distortion of poll results if the caller identifies who employs them or if they say it is for an organization like Gallup, Rasmussen or the Washington Post for example as some people are going to be inclined to answer the way they think the “media” wants them to answer. People do not want to feel stupid so they might just make up answers, especially on issues they do not know.

The bottom line is this. If you believe the polls published by the media you are as crazy as the media. On the other hand, if you really want to see a meaningful poll the following are the latest results from a Gallup Poll on the Confidence of the American Public in our institutions.

It would appear the general public already know what they think of the media and their polls when 78% of our citizens do not have a great deal of confidence in Television news, yet they have even less confidence in Congress with 89% not having confidence, the worst record of any American institution. Also note that nearly two thirds of Americans, 64%, do not have confidence in the President. Then remember these numbers are almost three months old. How low can you go by now?

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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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Campaign 2010 - Partisanship, Polarization, Prejudice and Politics in the News Media

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After the pathetic display of news media favoritism toward Barack Obama in our last election, what can we expect in the 2010 midterm election from the media? No doubt the four cardinal sins of the media will be prevalent, the partisanship, polarization, prejudice and politics we have come to expect from a media that can only see through rose colored glasses.

Expect more of the same except some of the liberal media will be inclined to attack the president and his cohorts in congress who got us into the morass we find ourselves as Obama completes his second year in office. As the public opinion of congress and Obama continue a freefall reaching levels never before seen as far as congress, with just 11% of the people having confidence in our elected officials, serious danger is on the horizon.



Encouraged by the ludicrous journalism from the mainstream and cable news media our politicians seem more than eager to jump into the mood set by the media where separating fact from fiction becomes more of a challenge every day. Rather than try to figure out who is telling the truth, the polls indicate the public thinks just about everyone in politics and the media lies, a sad commentary on two of our institutions, one elected to help people and the other that is supposed to be the watchdog for the people.



It's really no surprise this is happening, the White House set the tone early promising transparency, fairness and bi-partisanship but quickly forgetting the promise and returning to the politics of blaming Bush for all the problems, the Republicans for not agreeing with them on policy changes, and even the conservative media for questioning the big government, big spending and even bigger deficits that were a result of the Obama agenda.

In spite of the enormous majority the Democrats and Obama enjoyed, there were never quite enough votes to force his agenda down the throats of congress and he could not seem to get over being challenged every step of the way. But then what should a president expect from the minority party?



Just because his campaign was fortunate enough, thanks to the dominant media support, to hide his lack of experience as well as his choice of Washington insiders for staff though promising a new way of doing business, it was only a matter of time before the truth would become obvious.

So 18 months into his presidency Obama remains a partisan and polarizing force frustrated by lack of support and the inability to see his policies have much impact on the huge problems facing Americans. The two legislative initiatives, health care reform and financial regulation will have no impact on the nation before the election and probably minimal impact by the 2012 election as they are monster bills of over 2000 pages requiring years of drafting new regulations and neither will be fully implemented, if ever, until long after his presidency.



Thus the Democratic majority sense their own futures to be limited because of the struggling policies and agenda of the president. The success of the minority Republicans in blocking many of the priorities of the president and Democrats in the Senate in spite of their overwhelming majorities has led to bitterness and acrimony and heightened partisanship and polarization.

With the majority of the media solidly behind the president and the lingering effects of the economic and environmental disasters facing the nation, not to mention the inability to make headway in the twin wars, there is virtually no journalistic integrity leading into the elections.

Finally, the Supreme Court ruling striking down limits on campaign spending by special interests, and the huge campaign war chests already built up by the political parties and candidates, America will be drowning in a sea of negative advertising and distorted messages by the election in early November.

All signs point to huge GOP gains, perhaps even capturing control of the House and maybe even the Senate, which will lead to even more polarization after the election. This will not be a year the politicians can be proud of and may be one of the bitterest campaigns ever witnessed.

In most years the incumbents are relatively safe because of their far larger campaign funds but the Tea Party and the nasty mood of the public in not trusting politicians may alter the norm and bring about some major rebuilding of the House and Senate leadership, radical changes in committee chairmanships, and even some sweeping post election investigations should the Republicans gain control of either branch of the congress.

GOP women, thanks in some degree to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, are poised for a historic election as there are 82 Republican women running for the House, 12 for the Senate and 10 for governorships. Look for the women to lead any Republican avalanche in the elections.

Adding to the GOP edge is the loss of independent support for the Democrats and the alienation of the Democratic base by the president meaning all the traditional special interests that support Democrats are frustrated by the lack of progress the president and congress have made on their behalf. Such a lukewarm attitude by the base means smaller Democratic turnouts on election day.



As for the public, they would be better off turning off the television, at least the network news and cable news programs, from September until after the election November 2. I cannot image finding much truth in the reporting nor much sanity in the campaign commercials. You might as well take the fall off from the Internet as well because the Internet search engines, social web sites and information sites will be inundated with campaign spam.

Whatever you do, do not take the media or politicians seriously as you will most likely be disappointed when their promises fail to materialize. That would be consistent with the election results in 2006 and 2008 so no sense getting all worked up for nothing.



Ignore the campaign shenanigans and enjoy the fall football because it might take your mind off the struggling economy. We do not need any more controversy in our lives, any more disappointment in our leaders, any more frustration in our stagnation and any more negativity in our heads.

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Secret Liberal Media Site Coordinates Attacks on Conservatives, Fox News and Sarah Palin

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Ever since the 2008 presidential campaign the Coltons Point Times has been pointing out the decided liberal, even left leaning liberal following favoring Barack Obama in the mainstream and cable news media. On numerous occasions we identified what appeared to be coordinated attacks by these media people on Sarah Palin, the Republicans and the conservative agenda.








More recently we have done a series of articles on the actions by MSNBC, the NBC news flagship, to demonize the Republicans and anyone who does not agree with their agenda. In particular Fox News and conservative commentators like Bill O'Rielly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh have been targets along with the rampant hatred against Sarah Palin.



Numerous times I wrote articles identifying distortion by the liberal media, and savage attacks far beyond what any good journalist would attempt. It always seemed there was a secret conspiracy among liberal members of the media to coordinate their reporting in order to manufacture the news.



Little did I know it was true. But a series of articles by Tucker Carlson, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Caller, a conservative web site, has finally got to the bottom of the mystery. Somehow Tucker was able to find a secret web site in which 400 liberal media members shared information with each other on how to discredit the conservatives, Republicans and Sarah Palin in the mainstream and cable news.



The names of prominent news members from the news networks, MSNBC, CNN, National Public Radio and many other liberal establishments show up in the mountain of emails sent back and forth in a concerted and concentrated effort by these supposedly objective reporters for many of the nation's most prominent news organizations.



It will come as no surprise to those of you who follow politics but it is a tremendous disappointment to me who was always proud to be a member of the press and journalism corps and believed these media institutions should have maintained a higher standard.



The following is a story by Tucker Carlson and a previous story by Jonathan Strong exposing the secret liberal media site called "Journolist" that served as the meeting ground by those dedicated to using the news media to advance a very narrow liberal agenda and to distort the news to help Obama.

Daily Caller

Letter from Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson on The Daily Caller’s Journolist coverage

By Tucker Carlson - The Daily Caller | Published: 3:54 PM 07/22/2010 | Updated: 4:41 PM 07/22/2010



We began our series on Journolist earlier this week with the expectation that our stories would be met with a fury of criticism from the Left. A hurt dog barks, after all.

The response hasn’t been all that furious, actually, probably because there isn’t much for the exposed members of Journolist to say. We caught them. They’re ashamed. The wise ones are waiting for the tempest to pass.

There have, however, been two lines of argument that we probably ought to respond to, if only because they may harden into received wisdom if we don’t. The first is that our pieces have proved only that liberal journalists have liberal views, and that’s hardly news.

To be clear: We’re not contesting the right of anyone, journalist or not, to have political opinions. (I, for one, have made a pretty good living expressing mine.) What we object to is partisanship, which is by its nature dishonest, a species of intellectual corruption. Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too.

The second line of attack we’ve encountered since we began the series is familiar to anyone who has ever published a piece whose subject didn’t like the finished product: “You quoted me out of context!”

The short answer is, no we didn’t. I edited the first four stories myself, and I can say that our reporter Jonathan Strong is as meticulous and fair as anyone I have worked with.

That assurance won’t stop the attacks, of course. So why don’t we publish whatever portions of the Journolist archive we have and end the debate? Because a lot of them have no obvious news value, for one thing. Gather 400 lefty reporters and academics on one listserv and it turns out you wind up with a strikingly high concentration of bitchiness. Shocking amounts, actually. So while it might be amusing to air threads theorizing about the personal and sexual shortcomings of various New Republic staffers, we’ve decided to pull back.

Plus, a lot of the material on Journolist is actually pretty banal. In addition to being partisan hacks, a lot of these guys turn out to be pedestrian thinkers. Disappointing.

We reserve the right to change our minds about this in the future, but for now there’s an easy solution to this question: Anyone on Journolist who claims we quoted him “out of context” can reveal the context himself. Every member of Journolist received new threads from the group every day, most of which are likely still sitting in Gmail accounts all over Washington and New York. So feel free to try to prove your allegations, or else stop making them.

One final note: Editing this series has been something of a depressing experience for me. I’ve been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It’s harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist as wrong.



Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright
By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller | Published: 1:15 AM 07/20/2010 | Updated: 1:56 AM 07/21/2010



Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ and former pastor of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., addresses a breakfast gathering at the National Press Club in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2008. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”

(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)

Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.

“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.
Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he exclaimed.

The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.”

Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too. The letter should be “Short, punchy and solely focused on vapidity of gotcha,” Bernstein wrote.

In the midst of this collaborative enterprise, Holly Yeager, now of the Columbia Journalism Review, dropped into the conversation to say “be sure to read” a column in that day’s Washington Post that attacked the debate.

Columnist Joe Conason weighed in with suggestions. So did Slate contributor David Greenberg, and David Roberts of the website Grist. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, helped too.

Journolist members signed the statement and released it April 18, calling the debate “a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world.”

The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York Times. But only a week later, Obama – and the journalists who were helping him – were on the defensive once again.

Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.

It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list.

The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, “It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country.”

Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. “All this hand wringing about just
how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going.”

“Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor,” Hayes wrote.

Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.

(Reached by phone Monday, Hayes argued his words then fell on deaf ears. “I can say ‘hey I don’t think you guys should cover this,’ but no one listened to me.”)

Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.

“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

Ackerman went on:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.” He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president?”

Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.

“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda — with this crap.”

(In an interview Monday, Schmitt declined to say whether he thought Ackerman’s plan was wrong. “That is not a question I’m going to answer,” he said.)

Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”

But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”.

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White House Takes MSNBC to Woodshed - NBC Now Sings a Different Tune

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Yesterday, after days of withering criticism from the liberal media led by the Morning Joe Show on MSNBC, the White House had the NBC gang over for a talk. Today MSNBC with NBC anchor Brian Williams as a guest on Morning Joe were singing the praises of Obama and his handling of all the major crises facing him.



Gone were the MSNBC reports on how the Obama Administration was responsible for issuing permits to BP for drilling and for approving all the change requests from BP. Yesterday this lack of oversight by a federal agency under an official appointed by Obama was a major story and the head of the agency had been forced out by Obama.



Now if the Interior Department failed to enforce the regulations or approved changes requested by BP that led to the environmental disaster then who is at fault, the oil company following the regulations or the regulators approving the permits and changes? Certainly both could be at fault.



However, the woodshed treatment by the White House has the entire NBC network singing a different song and telling a different story. Is this censoring the news? What exactly did the White House tell NBC that got them to change the story.

Ironically it was not just the oil mess that got the new kid gloves treatment by NBC. I mean why in the world did the news anchor of NBC News have to go on the Morning Joe show and demonstrate how easily the news media can be manipulated by the Obama gang?



Apparently the Obama boys could not put up with criticism from the left like MSNBC. Additional stories on the Morning Joe program about the Joe Sestak campaign promise of a job, the trouble in Israel, and the leadership, or lack thereof, by the president, all took a different slant after the scolding in the woodshed.



Anchors of two MSNBC opinion shows were also brought in to sing the praises of the president although Chris Matthews did not collapse and kiss the White House ring like Ed Schultz did. Of course hosts Mika Brezeinski and Joe Scarborough did a 180 degree turn and made all kinds of excuses for Obama when it came to his leadership.



Once upon a time Ed Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania called MSNBC the Obama Television Network. He wasn't kidding. But as the country moved to the center the network seemed to have realized a far left liberal position was destroying their ratings and they moved to the center. Now, after the whupping in the woodshed, they seem to have returned to the president's back pocket.



Such a dramatic reversal by one of the major networks shows little backbone on the part of the network, and a bold and outrageous act by the White House to control the media. It also proves that there is really no fair and balanced coverage by the news media.

As for the new story line at MSNBC, BP is the criminal, they already tried and judged them. As for the Sestak story, MSNBC now says the Admiral is nuts in saying the White House made him an offer. As for the lack of Obama leadership, MSNBC now says he is misunderstood, that he has really been a tiger behind closed doors and that the public doesn't understand him.



It only took one trip to the woodshed to get NBC singing a different tune. Even so called conservative Joe Scarborough has been left exposed as just another presidential mouthpiece. Poor Joe has to work so hard to prove to his liberal colleagues that the Republicans hate him just as much as the Democrats that he has clearly lost his ideological compass.

MSNBC remains firmly planted in last place on the cable news shows and actions like today demonstrate why? The future stock value of GE who owns NBC for the moment and who benefits greatly from the actions of Obama and the Democrats in Congress must be more valuable to MSNBC than the truth.

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News Media Dine with Politicians and PIGS - Too Busy to Cover Car Bomb in NYC

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Saturday night was the annual White House Correspondents Dinner in our nation's capitol where the media rub shoulders with the news makers be they politicians, entertainers or pigs. Now you may ask how pigs get invited to an affair in which President Obama and Jay Leno are featured speakers but in truth, pigs control Washington.



Did I mention that a "pig" in political campaign terms refers to "public interest group" or "private interest group" which just about covers all the special interest groups that rule Washington? It also reflects a little of the distain for such special interest groups on the part of the campaigns who have to go begging to them for money all the time to fuel the campaigns.

At any rate, as I pondered on this self adulation on the part of the media which is what the event is all about I wondered if this event really could be a funeral wake of sorts for the mainstream media in America. If you follow the polls and the news, what little news there still is, you may have noticed the viewership for network news continues to fall off the cliff. At the same time the subscriptions for newspapers also is on a freefall.

Ironically and to the complete dismay of the cable news community all those people fleeing networks are not switching to cable news. Nor are they switching to newspapers from TV news. No, both the papers and television stations are going broke bringing us the news because the public figured out long ago that TV network and newspaper news outlets are nothing more than propaganda machines for the media companies that own them.



Those companies are addicted to advertising revenue and the competition for ad dollars has brought an end to any hope for fair and objective news in America. In fact, the prestige of news reporting in America has hit such a low that people no longer consider them the most reliable source of news as the most recent trend has shown independent news blogs to be considered more credible a news source for America than all forms of mainstream media.

The only thing that has prolonged the death of the mainstream news media has been the embracing of the entertainment industry by the news media, as celebrity gossip dominates news broadcasts. Thus you see the politicians, never one to not figure out how to best seduce the news media, surrounding themselves with celebrity figures in order to get more news coverage.



That silly trend makes the politicians feel good and makes the media feel like stars, I mean wouldn't you like to be on a first name basis with a George Clooney of the entertainment world? Unfortunately for us the politicians don't seem to get any smarter hanging out with entertainers or corporate gurus like Warren Buffett, they still cast votes that often defy logic and reason.

As for the death of the traditional media, let me give you an example that surprised even me though I have been watching the disintegration of the media for decades. It happened while the media were at the party in Washington. Apparently nearly all the national media from Washington to New York were at the party.



About the time the media stars were half lit and the party was in high gear a car bomb was being discovered in New York City in Times Square. Had the car bomb detonated many hundreds of tourists and Broadway patrons might have died in one of the worst terrorist acts since 9-11. Fortunately, a street vendor and a cop on horseback discovered it when smoke just started to fill the car and the NYC bomb squad was called in and dismantled it before a serious disaster occurred.



I spent all night checking the television for the latest reports on the attempted bombing and perhaps because all the media were partying in Washington, and partly because the media started running pre-recorded programs all night on Friday through Sunday nights, most major television news networks had no mention of the car bombing until 7 am Sunday morning, nearly 10 hours after the car was discovered.

What might have been one of the worst terrorist bombing attacks in years and no press was available to cover it, they were all bombed themselves in our nation's capitol. Now neither 24-7 cable news nor network broadcasters were staffed to cover the story in about the saddest performance by the news media in our history.



When they did wake up or sober up and go on the air they didn't have the staff to even get updated stories but spent much of Sunday re-running interviews from the night before. Of course the recycled news appeared on screen as "breaking news" developments but there was nothing breaking about events the night before.

Imagine that, all the news people in America and no one was available for what might have been the story of the decade. Nothing sums up the sorry state of media anymore than the truth. Is there really any wonder why people no longer turn to the news media for news?

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