Why the media has it all wrong - they forgot about Independents

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Sometimes the most obvious is the most difficult to see and when it comes to the American media the most obvious and most logical is most often overlooked.  Ever since Obama first ran for office there has been a peculiar Main Street media fascination with the Tea Party movement and when it comes to the liberal media, it became an obsession.

For some odd reason the Lame Street media has been afraid, fearful, and terrorized by the thought that the Tea Party and its seemingly radical right wing supporters represents a grave threat to the American political process.

If the media wants to condemn a conservative commentator they label them "Tea Party" whether they have any affiliation with the Tea Party or not.  It is the liberal way to stigmatize the on air personalities that cause so much havoc in their lives.

Yet most conservative commentators have never joined the Tea Party and view it as an element of the Republican party, not a separate institution.  So the Democrats have tried to diminish any threat from the Tea Party by talking about the splintering effect the Tea Party has on the Republicans.

I suspect they just don't get it.

The only threat to the two party system in America is their arrogance in thinking there really is just two parties in the country and their failure to see we are rapidly approaching the point of no return when more American are alienated by both political parties and their partisan nonsense when in truth there is little difference between them.

Every election we get closer to the point when there are going to be more Independents than BOTH Democrats and Republicans.  When over 50% of the public believes neither party serves the public but both parties have become their own Special Interests.

With the continuing decline in public confidence in our political parties, politicians and media and with the continued ignorance or deliberate effort by the media to disregard the growing number of Americans rejecting both political parties that day we cross the 50% threshold is rapidly approaching and will most certainly be here by 2016 or 2020.

The following is a Gallup Poll which most media failed to report on the continuing surge in the number of Independents in America.  They are the real danger to the two party system and the real hope for healing our Nation.

January 8, 2014

Record-High 42% of Americans Identify as Independents

Republican identification lowest in at least 25 years

by Jeffrey M. Jones

PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.

The results are based on more than 18,000 interviews with Americans from 13 separate Gallup multiple-day polls conducted in 2013.

In each of the last three years, at least 40% of Americans have identified as independents. These are also the only years in Gallup's records that the percentage of independents has reached that level.

Americans' increasing shift to independent status has come more at the expense of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Republican identification peaked at 34% in 2004, the year George W. Bush won a second term in office. Since then, it has fallen nine percentage points, with most of that decline coming during Bush's troubled second term. When he left office, Republican identification was down to 28%. It has declined or stagnated since then, improving only slightly to 29% in 2010, the year Republicans "shellacked" Democrats in the midterm elections.

Not since 1983, when Gallup was still conducting interviews face to face, has a lower percentage of Americans, 24%, identified as Republicans than is the case now. That year, President Ronald Reagan remained unpopular as the economy struggled to emerge from recession. By the following year, amid an improving economy and re-election for the increasingly popular incumbent president, Republican identification jumped to 30%, a level generally maintained until 2007.

Democratic identification has also declined in recent years, falling five points from its recent high of 36% in 2008, the year President Barack Obama was elected. The current 31% of Americans identifying as Democrats matches the lowest annual average in the last 25 years.

Fourth Quarter Surge in Independence

The percentage of Americans identifying as independents grew over the course of 2013, surging to 46% in the fourth quarter. That coincided with the partial government shutdown in October and the problematic rollout of major provisions of the healthcare law, commonly known as "Obamacare."

The 46% independent identification in the fourth quarter is a full three percentage points higher than Gallup has measured in any quarter during its telephone polling era.

Democrats Maintain Edge in Party Identification

Democrats maintain their six-point edge in party identification when independents' "partisan leanings" are taken into account. In addition to the 31% of Americans who identify as Democrats, another 16% initially say they are independents but when probed say they lean to the Democratic Party. An equivalent percentage, 16%, say they are independent but lean to the Republican Party, on top of the 25% of Americans identifying as Republicans. All told, then, 47% of Americans identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, and 41% identify as Republicans or lean to the Republican Party.

Democrats have held at least a nominal advantage on this measure of party affiliation in all but three years since Gallup began asking the "partisan lean" follow-up in 1991. During this time, Democrats' advantage has been as high as 12 points, in 2008. However, that lead virtually disappeared by 2010, although Democrats have re-established an edge in the last two years.

Implications

Americans are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties. It is not uncommon for the percentage of independents to rise in a non-election year, as 2013 was. Still, the general trend in recent years, including the 2012 election year, has been toward greater percentages of Americans identifying with neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, although most still admit to leaning toward one of the parties.

The rise in political independence is likely an outgrowth of Americans' record or near-record negative views of the two major U.S. parties, of Congress, and their low level of trust in government more generally.

The increased independence adds a greater level of unpredictability to this year's congressional midterm elections. Because U.S. voters are less anchored to the parties than ever before, it's not clear what kind of appeals may be most effective to winning votes. But with Americans increasingly eschewing party labels for themselves, candidates who are less closely aligned to their party or its prevailing doctrine may benefit.

Survey Methods

Results are based on aggregated telephone interviews from 13 separate Gallup polls conducted in 2013, with a random sample of 18,871 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by region. Landline and cell telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted to correct for unequal selection probability, nonresponse, and double coverage of landline and cell users in the two sampling frames. They are also weighted to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, population density, and phone status (cellphone only/landline only/both, and cellphone mostly). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2012 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older U.S. population. Phone status targets are based on the July-December 2011 National Health Interview Survey. Population density targets are based on the 2010 census. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.

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The Death of Television News in America

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Did you know that in 1980 55 million Americans watched the network news every night?  In other words 24% of the USA population watched the news.  If 24% of the USA population watched the network and cable news on TV today 75.6 million people would be watching.

 

So why are just 25 million Americans watching the network and cable news today?  That means less than 8% of our population gets their news from the blob tube today.  What about the other 92% of the population?

 

Okay, this story could be a psychological thriller if you care about such things since we are talking about something that can have a major influence on your mind.  If you are a trusted psychologist is this drastic loss of news watchers a bad or good thing?

 

As an investigative reporter I want to find the truth behind the numbers.  So I first check on things like do people trust the news media.  Here is the latest Gallup poll.

 

Honesty/Ethics in Professions

 

 

So 24%  of the people seem to trust journalists.  That means 76% of the people don't trust journalists.  At least they are more trusted than politicians, lawyers, stockbrokers, Congress members and car salesmen.  It also means while just 8% watch the TV news 24% don't trust them.

 

Why would people want to watch news they don't trust?  No wonder the numbers keep dropping.  Is it good or bad that people don't trust the media?  If they don't trust the TV media who do they trust for news?

 

Sadly print media and radio are both fading into extinction as news sources while the digital revolution has brought us multiple sources for news bytes but little in the way of in-depth reporting.

 

I had a theory it all started back in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter got attacked by the killer rabbit.  Such stories could have accelerated the loss of trust in the media.

 

  

 

 

In spite of an expanding variety of ways to get news, a sizable minority of young people continues to go newsless on a typical day. Fully 29 % of those younger than 25 say they got no news yesterday either from digital news platforms, including cell phones and social networks, or traditional news platforms. That is little changed from 33% in 2010.

 

 

In all cases the more choices we have for news the fewer people are using them.  Thus the access is there, so is the availability, but the content and delivery seem to suck.

 

Once upon a time there was some semblance of journalism integrity when it came to news.  Standards, ethics and fact checking were all practiced before most stories got into the news.  With the Internet, there are no longer requirements for standards on content, ethics in the writing style, objectivity in reporting or fact checking in the content.

 

 

Once upon a time no respectable reporter would quote an anonymous source but today's Internet is filled with unsubstantiated facts and unknown sources of information.   Worse, there is no one in a position to bring such discipline and ethics to the Internet since it has no loyalty to sovereign geographic boundaries.

 

Who would you sue and under what court of law if a story full of lies is on the Internet?  It can be almost impossible to track the source of the story when Internet servers all around the world are used to transmit information.

 

So we are helpless to enforce any journalistic standards.  Maybe it is a good thing fewer and fewer people are watching the news or are accepting the digital universe as the source for news.

 

 

Yet I cannot help thinking that a society that no longer thinks and is no longer informed of the situation in the world may very well be so caught up in self-serving interests that the good of all the people is a distant memory.

 

Maybe we need more digital applications teaching us how to give selflessly rather than simply take.  Self-gratification is not a Cardinal virtue in spite of what you may have read in the digital universe.

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What is news?

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I've spent a lifetime devouring news from every source the world had to offer.  Newspapers, magazines, books, libraries, specialty magazines, radio, television network, television cable, wire services, Internet, world newspapers, cell phones, satellites and the pulpit.

Add to that the unlimited number of social, cultural and educational resources and the list becomes rather enormous.  Most of my life I was a freak with my obsession for news sources and compassion for reading.

One thing is quite clear, everyone has their own opinion of what is news.  That is rule number one in understanding what is news.  The second is people use news for a variety of reasons only one of which is to be informed of current events in the world.

Some people want to project an image of being intellectual.  Maybe they want to impress their parents, teachers, girl friends or whoever.  Maybe they were like me who had a grandfather who gave me Time or Life magazine, gave me an hour to read and absorb it, and then expected me to debate it with him.

Now had I been in high school when I was on the debate team I might have enjoyed it more but this started when I was six or seven and became a Sunday ritual whenever I saw him.  To me I had two choices in life at that early age. Listen to my grandfather tell me Irish stories or debate the world news with him.

As much as I loved and appreciated the Irish stories, my thirst for information was just as intense and at that young age not too many people were going to take a seven year old too seriously when it came to world affairs.  So I loved the intellectual challenges he gave me having no idea I was in danger of becoming a total nerd.

If I asked any of my brothers what they thought of the Cold War they looked at me like I was a freak.  Girls, cars, sports and entertainment all were far more important to them than intellectual pursuits.  I could always count on my grandfather to appreciate what I went through to stay informed.

Of course there is a great deal of problems that arise when you have an endless quest for information, you may actually learn a lot.  I thought I did.  And I also thought it was my universal responsibility to correct my teachers, most often nuns and priests, when they tried to teach my classmates inaccurate information.

Let's just say I was a perpetual candidate for an exorcism to drive the demons out of me who made me challenge authority.  It was never my intent to challenge authority but to help it be better.  Somehow their humiliation was more important to them than the truth.

At any rate, after all I've seen I think "news" should be information that helps the readers understand life, find their purpose in life, discover the truth for themselves in life, and helps lead to a better life for all.  Why else would we be here?

The stories I write are intended to serve that purpose.  It is up to you to find the real meaning of what I offer.  I must say, truth is most often not obvious but buried within a code of sorts.  Real insights come from the degree of effort given by the reader to be open to what is not obvious.

Finding people that want to make a difference in the world, that want to do what is best for all people, animals, the environment and Mother Earth, is a difficult process.  Finding people open to new truth, new definitions, no boundaries and no prejudice is the most difficult of all.

They are out there, scattered and hidden amongst us, and they need to be inspired, encouraged and heard.  So many people listen, so few people hear.

My goal in reporting my version of the "news" is to write stories to stimulate you to consider the impossible, appreciate the fantastic, never limit the potential and to seek the good for all creatures and inhabitants, whether man, animal, fish, vegetable or mineral, of this magnificent planet and gift from God(s).

 

Mostly it is to awaken within you your potential and to find or reassure your faith in a higher purpose we all must learn to serve.

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Obamaville March 1 - Pundits Punt on Veracity

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Apples are Oranges to Media Experts

Time goes by ever so slowly in the race for the Republican nomination but a few things are already quite obvious.  First, there is no effort for some media to hide, disguise or claim balanced coverage because media objectivity has been thrown to the winds with a little over 8 months left in the campaign.

Not that it makes a lot of difference because the public long ago assumed media bias was a new facet of journalism in America.  Of course Fox News is the conservative standard but they are not necessarily Republican leaning as no one has done more to undermine efforts by Romney to pick up conservatives than the Fox personalities.

Sometimes it seems they are in cahoots with MSNBC and their parent NBC the way they keep implying Romney is struggling to get the backing of leading conservatives.  Back in the days of honest philosophical differences all the Republican candidates used to pledge to support whomever won the nomination at the convention.

That was how Reagan was so successful in capturing cross over voters from the Democrat and Independent ranks.  Now it seems the candidates put themselves above the party by threatening to withhold support for the eventual nominee, threatening a third party candidate, and even threatening to back someone new who might be seduced into entering the race at the last minute.

Loyalty to party seems to have become a lost principle.  Accommodation of all views from conservative to moderate to liberal also seems to be lost on our present flock of politicians.  Perhaps they have hopes of demanding a litmus test on proper conservative attitudes before pledging support, a narrow minded view that has failed miserably in the past.

It would seem rather obvious from the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush years in the presidency that America has become far more moderate than conservative conservatives might like but reality is a powerful motivator to put philosophical loyalty in the middle where it belongs if one intends to serve all Americans.

Reagan proved you could be conservative and compassionate while the Bush family and Clinton proved being moderate was the only way to survive.  No doubt the nation needs a strong dose of fiscal conservatism to get out of the mess the liberals and conservatives have left us but eliminating budget deficits, reducing the national debt and fixing the entitlement mess also requires a lot of compassion to minimize the damage on people.

On the Democrat side of the media ledger very few media outlets show any desire to be anything but an extension of the Obama press office.  In the fifteen presidential elections I can remember I've never experienced anything like the media intimidation from the White House.  Not even Johnson or Nixon had the mainstream and cable media eating out of their hands like Barack Obama.

I suspect it is partly a response to the often heavy handed treatment of the media by Bush II insiders who never trusted the media and probably for good reason.  Backing Obama gave the media a chance to get even.

There is clearly a left leaning tendency on the part of most of the media which has come to the surface as the media lost all sense of balanced coverage and objective reporting.  And of course there is the fact Obama is Black, a Democrat and clearly wants big government, all draws to a liberal media.

It has been a long time since the liberals had a chance to influence the government gravy train, to dominate the news through reporters and anchors, and to control most of the cable news talk shows where they can sell books and book speeches.

Over the past few decades there were liberal stalwarts including The New York Times and Washington Post on the print side and PBS on television but the success of cable mouthpieces, first conservatives and then liberals, broke down the objective principles of journalism and opened the floodgates to news media stars interested more in making news than reporting it.

Rush Limbaugh is one of few media stars honest enough to admit that the role of talk shows is to entertain.  I suspect most of the public still thinks they report the news, fair and balanced news, choosing to ignore the advocacy and lack of objectivity of most of the media stars.

CNN has come a long ways from the days when Ted Turner ruled falling off the cliff of objectivity into the abyss of liberalism.  Some supposedly news shows like Soledad O'Brien and others make no attempt to hide their anti-conservative bias while the prime time news tries to downplay it but always stacks the panels of "experts" with liberals and Democrats, usually liberals as well.

Well there is still one place in CNN where you get balanced news coverage, that is the HLN (Headline News) Morning Express Show with the ever bubbly Robin Meade who has gradually taken over the morning news and entertainment slot and has the only six hour time slot, 6 am until 12 noon, on television.  She is also the only news personality who is part Native American.

MSNBC might as well be located in the Obama White House because even their so called Republican voices or pretenders defend Republican principles like France fought off the German invasion in World War II.  In other words, from Joe Scarborough's ego to former GOP National Chairman Michael Steele's outsider status they are far more concerned with protecting their own personal image than defending the Republicans.

NBC as a matter of principle still seems to project the GE party line which means you give homage to anyone who gets you $9 billion in tax free profits a year and Obama did just that.  Yet sometime NBC contributor Tom Brokaw and Meet the Press anchor David Gregory have both continued to avoid being caught up in the liberal stampede.

CNBC, the financial news network, is the exception to the rule in the NBC family as any blatant liberal bias would cost them their dominate position as the financial news source of America.  Of course their preoccupation with Warren Buffett, staunch billionaire Obama backer, who gets more CNBC air time than anyone on the globe, is an ongoing source of aggravation to conservatives but Buffett always has some common sense financial advice, not to mention he is the most successful investor on Wall Street over the past 50 years so he deserves to be heard no matter what his political beliefs.  No one can say he is not a successful capitalist.

CBS used to be the most liberal network but NBC might have stolen the crown away.  At ABC you at least have a balance between anchor Diane Sawyer from the Republican battlefields and George Stephanopoulos, a Clinton/Obama creation, although George has far more air time to promote the liberal cause with other ABC news programs.

Ironically, if you really want balanced news coverage of politics in America your only hope is to turn to BBC whose world news coverage dwarfs anything on American networks and whose political coverage of America may sometimes be bewildered by the bizarre political and campaign process, but always seem to give it objective coverage.

Now you still have one last choice when it comes to the mainstream and cable news coverage and that is to turn off the television.  You might even do it for health reasons.  It would certainly lower your blood pressure.  It would keep you from believing all those lies.  And it might give you a chance to find out what your kid is doing on the Internet social media.

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South Carolina Primary - Gingrich & Palin versus ABC & CNN

Winners and Losers

Well the final days of the South Carolina primary have been everything we can expect from a state that started the American Civil War.  There was so much smoke blowing over Fort Sumter in Charleston yesterday it may take weeks for the politicians and media to emerge from the fog.

There are times you have got to love the rough and tumble world of democracy American style and there are times you have got to love the Constitutional freedoms America has protected that leave the rest of the world in shock.

If you want a show come to America and watch the elections because there is not a country on Earth that does it like America.  Now, if you listen to the Main Street or Lame Street media reports you would draw two conclusions.  First the Republicans are self-destructing and second that Obama is going to be anointed to a second term.

Fortunately, the American people long ago knew better than to believe the media as long before politicians hit the bottom of the list of least respected occupations the media were right at the bottom, next to lawyers.

There is a reason no more than five million out of 310 million people watch a network news show every night.  There is a reason newspapers are dying, while network and cable television news continue to decline in viewers every year.

People don't trust the media any more than they trust politicians.  That may very well be the saving grace for our nation.

The media would have you believe the Republicans are destroying each other in South Carolina and there is no chance they can recover in the general election.  Did they forget that just four short years ago the same thing was happening to the Democrats?

In 2008 Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were brutally fighting it out in South Carolina as Obama accused former President Bill Clinton of fanning the flames of racism to win over votes for his wife.  Did the media today forget how nasty the 2008 Democratic show had been?

Well Obama did win the primary but he did not become the consensus leader until June 3, 2008, and Hillary did not withdraw until June 7.  That is over four months from now yet the media acts as if this Republican primary campaign should be over.  Nonsense!  It will be over when the people, not the media, decide.

So ABC News, along with the Washington Post, tries to trash the Romney and then Gingrich campaigns in the final days before the primary with much hyped exposés and CNN jumps on the band wagon when two days before the primary John King, CNN moderator, opened the last presidential debate by asking Gingrich if he told his ex-wife in 1999 that he wanted an "open" marriage so he could continue an affair.

When ABC and CNN take the lead and are blindly followed by most of the lame street media in allowing such babble to dominate the presidential campaign coverage there is a serious disconnect with reality.

Gingrich, being the gregarious opportunist that he is, promptly blasted the CNN host, the national media, and the liberal universe drawing two standing ovations before the debate had hardly begun.   It was a performance equal to anything the legendary populist Huey Long of Louisiana (Democrat) achieved on the national political stage 75 years ago.

Like him or not old Newt fanned the flames and rallied the people against the media and in the process, the media obsession with protecting President Obama may have backfired.  Just two days before the debate Sarah Palin came out of mothballs to help save Newt from the "elite" media with a "kind of" endorsement Sarah Palin style.

Just when the liberals were certain Palin had been blasted into oblivion by three years of media massacre of her and her reputation, Sarah comes to Newt's defense.  It is very likely when the dust settles after this primary Gingrich will turn around his imminent collapse according to the media and win the primary, and the liberal media will have awakened the Momma Bear of Alaska.

There you have it, the winners and losers, and the primary is not until tomorrow.  South Carolina gave us Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton tossing charges of racism four years ago.  Now they have given us an energized Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.  It could be an interesting year.

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