News Media Coverage of 2016 Presidential Election - Fair or Biased? Fox, CNN and MSNBC duke it out for ratings!

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After the first caucus and primary and the stunning results to the prognostications of political pundits what have we learned?

The most dominant and controversial news media story this election season was the Comcast - MSNBC decision to depoliticize their left-leaning, progressive liberal news slant and attempt to compete as a real journalistic news organization.

Of course, the liberals were shocked and denounced the move, conservative citadel Fox News probably liked the chaos in their competitor, CNN did not like a challenge to their false claim of being the only source of fair and balanced reporting, and the radical mouthpieces of the old MSNBC screamed as they were ushered out the door.

Chris Matthew

Lawrence O’Donnell

In the ensuing months the MSNBC line up went through painful shake ups at the anchor and reporting levels and the results have been interesting to date.  Unfortunately, MSNBC has continued to over-expose the old progressive-liberal anchors, guests, and reporters.

Rachel Maddow

Chris Hayes

People like Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O’Donnell continue to trash Republicans in general, Trump in particular, and anyone not agreeing with their leftist views.  The result for the New Hampshire primary, Fox garnered 4.17 million viewers, CNN 2.73 million viewers, and MSNBC 1.75 million viewers.

Overall cable news did quite well since all the major networks were running new shows for the Sweeps period.  The Iowa caucus spectacle still drew higher ratings but a real battle between Fox and CNN is in place, and if MSNBC can continue to improve by eliminating the liberal bias and report more news, they could become a major force.

Brian Williams

More than anything else MSNBC needs continuity.  In order to accommodate their anchor egos the election coverage is broken up between the return of Brian Williams and the revolving door of worn out radicals trashing the latest news developments rather than reporting the news.

A single host with alternating partners could solve the problem but the anchor should have no baggage and most MSNBC anchors have baggage.  The sad news is that there are rising stars at MSNBC, the next generation of anchors and reporters, who are free of the bias in their reporting and entertaining to watch.  They are getting lost in the constantly changing faces of election night coverage.

If I wanted to compete with CNN and eventually Fox here are the rising stars I would push to the forefront at MSNBC, the latest of the new journalists you should check out because of their news sense, journalistic principles, charisma, and camera presence.

Chuck Todd

Chuck Todd and Willie Geist are the most underutilized of all on air personalities.  However, Chuck would be a great news analyst while Willie, effectively buried on the ego driven Morning Joe Show, could be one of those rare anchors who do not take themselves too seriously.

Willie Geist

Potential anchors

Steve Kornaski

Gigi Stone Woods

Reporters

Hallie Jackson

Jane Timm

Kate Snow

Anderson Cooper

Of course CNN has some of the same problem, too many old and worn out anchors and is slow to recognize and promote those fresh voices and faces.  Continuity is also a problem but they do have some underutilized people and new faces.

Erin Burnett

Anderson Cooper remains one of the most unbiased and entertaining anchors on the air and Erin Burnett brings a lot of objectivity to the desk.  Between them, they have helped drive CNN closer to Fox in the ratings.  If they shared the anchor desk throughout the election night broadcast, the results could be interesting.

Here are the rising stars at CNN.

Anchors

Poppy Harlow

Reporters

Brianna Keilar

          

As Variety Magazine reported on the Nielsen survey of the election to date:

February 10, 2016 | 11:23AM PT

Rick Kissell

Senior Editor @ratesrick

Fox News Channel finished on top in both the demo (narrowly over CNN) and total viewers Tuesday as it and the other cable news networks combined for another sizable slice of the viewership pie with coverage of the New Hampshire primary.

Despite going up against all-original sweeps programming on the broadcast networks, Fox News Channel (4.17 million), CNN (2.73 million) and MSNBC (1.75 million) drew 8.65 million viewers during primetime, according to preliminary national estimates from Nielsen. Last night’s tune-in for the cable networks was well above average for a typical Tuesday but couldn’t quite match the record-setting tune-in eight nights earlier for coverage of the surprising results in the Iowa caucuses (10.16 million).

For Fox News, whose Tuesday coverage was anchored by Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, last night’s average audience represents the second highest ever for a night of primary coverage, behind only its 4.46 million for the Iowa caucuses.

After finishing second to CNN in the key news demo of adults 25-54 on the night of the Iowa caucuses, FNC moved to the top spot on Tuesday. It averaged about 992,000 viewers in the age group, with CNN a close second (951,000) and MSNBC (494,000) drawing about half the total of its rivals.

CNN reported that CNN Digital’s traffic surpassed last week’s record-setting audience on the day of the Iowa Caucuses, with more than 7 million unique visitors and 15 million page views on CNNPolitics.com. Nearly 3 million unique users engaged on CNN’s mobile app and there were 13 million unique visitors for CNN Digital overall.

Tuesday night proved to be a big one for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who scored huge victories for their respective parties. Next up on the political front are a Democratic debate on Thursday (PBS) and a Republican debate on Saturday (CBS).

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The Iowa Caucus - What did we learn?

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Only in America and only in Iowa could you have four different people making victory speeches when only two people won.

First was Marco Rubio stealing every line possible from Trump and Cruz as he profusely thanked the Iowa voters for helping him do the impossible against all odds.  Odd thing is he only finished third but he had a plane to catch to New Hampshire so he was pressed for time.

Then it was the actual GOP winner Ted Cruz and before he was halfway through the victory speech out came Hillary Clinton and the networks cut to her while cutting off Cruz.

Hillary gave a fiery and almost mad speech stealing every line possible from Bernie Sanders while hugging Chelsea and Wild Bill before running off to catch her plane for New Hampshire as if she had enough of the Iowa voters.  Since she was still in a dead heat at the time and no news network predicted she would win, it seemed a bit audacious and bizarre.

Bernie Sanders followed Hillary, although he did not claim a voting victory, but certainly was justified in claiming a great moral victory against the Clinton machine.  By the time all four victory speeches were done there was still just one winner and one dead heat.

What did we learn from the Iowa experience?

In terms of strategy, Cruz was best with his 12,000 volunteers who got him the victory.  Next best was Rubio who targeted just five of the ninety-nine Iowa counties and still managed to finish third breathing down the neck of The Donald.

Trump stunned the news media when he also spoke and gave a gracious and humble three-minute thank you to the Iowa voters, with nary a nasty word uttered.  As of the morning after there were still no nasty Tweets from Trump, an eerie silence.

In the Iowa Caucus only one winner since 1972 then won the presidency, Barack Obama in 2008, not much of a record of success over a forty-four year period.  It was the same with Republicans as just George W. Bush in 2000 won since 1976.

As for the Republican vote, it went like this.

Ted Cruz                    51,666             28%

Donald Trump          45,427             24%

Marco Rubio             43,165             23%

Carson at 9% and Paul at 5% rounded out the top five of the twelve GOP candidates.  No other candidate received more than 3% of the vote.  It is interesting to note that Rand Paul beat all four GOP candidates who were former governors, while two former winners of the Iowa caucus, Huckabee and Santorum, got just 2% and 1% respectively.

Records Broken

The top three GOP finishers all broke the record for the most votes in Iowa GOP caucus history, quite a remarkable feat.

The total Republican vote of 186,295 shattered the previous GOP record of 121,503 while 171,109 Democrats voted, well below the 240,000 Obama drew in 2008.  In fact, this may have been one of few times more Republicans than Democrats voted in the Iowa primary, perhaps not so good a sign for the Democrats in terms of new voter registration and turnout potential this year.

Bernie Sanders won the youth vote, age 17-29, by an astonishing 84% to 14% for Clinton, also a bad sign for the Democrat frontrunner.  Most notable in the GOP race was a significant increase in the Evangelical voters, the Cruz base.  It totaled about 64% of the GOP voters, but Cruz, Trump, and Rubio split the vote evenly.

Cruz and his highly proclaimed Iowa organization delivered as did Rubio and his five-county strategy.  As for Trump, he may need to beef up his ground organization in future primaries but for his first election effort and considering all the anti-Trump media for the past nine months, it was quite respectable.

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The Iowa Caucus - Predictions from an Iowa Hayseed - Hillary or Bernie, Cruz or Trump?

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Today is the beginning of the American Presidential campaign to replace Barack Obama as Iowans caucus to pick their choices for Democrat and Republican candidates in one of the most unusual methods used in the USA.

The "caucus" Iowa style is like no other form of primary in that it is the first test of the strength of candidates and first test of their ability to appeal to people, not the media, not the contributors, but the people.

The two parties differ somewhat in how to run the caucus, with the Democrats disqualifying anyone with less than 15% of the vote, which means a redistribution of the votes for O'Malley to the surviving candidates Clinton and Sanders.

What the media failed to note until today, is that if Bernie and Hillary tie as the polls seem to reflect, and Clinton is the establishment candidate while Sanders is the outsider, it seems logical that the O'Malley votes are anti-Clinton and therefore will go to Sanders.

If there is a high voter turnout, and there most certainly will be, Sanders and Trump stand to benefit the most.  If the anti-establishment mood of the nation is real, and all evidence points to that fact, again Sanders and Trump benefit.

On the Republican side, there are a dozen good candidates, including two who won the Iowa primary previously.  Then there is the only true outsider championing the "silent majority" of Americans Trump, who has never run for public office.

Challenging Trump is Cruz, claiming to be an outsider but after winning a Senate seat in 2012 and personally managing the shut down of the US government a couple of years ago, he hardly qualifies as an outsider.  He also failed to mention he received one million dollars in last minute loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank in order to win a runoff for the Senate seat.

In my mind, the anti-establishment mood of the nation is a direct result of control of our government by special interests, specifically the financial and banking powerhouses and pharmaceutical drug makers, through the failure to have adequate campaign financial limits.

In this election year, the most special of special interests finance and support two candidates.  First is Hillary Clinton, whose family received millions and millions of dollars from Goldman Sachs dating back to Bill Clinton's impeachment, while Hillary has received millions from the financial giants and corrupt hedge funds.

The second is Ted Cruz, who not only violated federal campaign laws by failing to report the Goldman loans, he also failed to mention in his bio that his wife is a twelve year employee and director of Goldman Sachs.

The news media chooses to make qualified predictions of what will happen today, sort of hedging their bets since they have been wrong about every aspect of the election this year.  If the turnout is very high, they say, there is a chance Sanders and Trump will win, but the odds seem to be a lower turnout and wins by Clinton and Cruz because both spent more money and have the best organization in Iowa.

I say nonsense a qualified prediction is like a wimp whose idea of taking a chance is going out on a limb that is two feet off the ground.  Perhaps we should throw the media into the establishment category as they have done as much as the big bankers and beholden politicians to undermine our country.

Did I mention Barack Obama is the third politician who represents the best office holder money can buy because of his own decade long relationship to Goldman Sachs?

At any rate, the Coltons Point Times is not afraid to make real predictions on the Iowa race and here they are.

The Winners

The American people who know our government, financial system, our political parties, and campaign financing system are corrupt to the bone.

Bernie Sanders who will send shock waves throughout the Democrat establishment machine by beating heavily favored Hillary Clinton with his multitudes of young, energetic, and untested volunteers.  At the same time, he will help strike a mortal wound to the equally corrupt political party machines that have controlled our elections.

Donald Trump who is the other side of the double-bladed sword that will lead to the destruction of the special interest control of America, and who, like Bernie, comes to the party with no strings attached.  Like Sanders, Trump is bringing millions of Americans back into the political process in order to slay the mighty machine that has bled America dry.

America has seen nothing like this avalanche of support for outsiders since Andrew Jackson became our seventh president in 1829 when he ran against the corrupt financial establishment trying to take control of the young America.

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes."

                                                                                    Andrew Jackson

Jackson served two terms, founded the Democrat party, and closed down our national bank, the Second Bank of the United States.

Rand Paul considered inconsequential by the media and Republican Party but who can be invaluable in shaping a future America free of special interests.  I sense he will far exceed expectations.

The Losers

Hillary Clinton who finds she is no longer heir-apparent to the presidency and must stand accountable for all her bizarre acts in government.

Ted Cruz who discovers a conservative with no personality is largely boring and cannot be trusted.

Goldman Sachs who thought they had both political parties compromised but might just be wrong.  Even if she loses in Iowa, Hillary still is the prohibitive favorite to win the Democrat nomination since Bernie is not even a real Democrat and he is a socialist.

Barack Obama who is counting on Hillary to protect his presidential legacy even though trusting the Clintons to protect anyone other than a Clinton is not a good sign for our president.

Finally, Harvard and Yale could easily be losers as the two Ivy League schools have controlled the American presidency for the past 28 years.  There are 2,618 accredited colleges and universities in America, give someone else a chance.

Hillary (Yale) or Cruz (Harvard) is the standard-bearer expected to maintain the stranglehold on the presidency that Obama (Harvard), Bush, Jr. (Yale and Harvard), Clinton (Yale), and Bush, Sr. (Yale) have preserved through four straight presidencies.

  

Trump crowds

As for the caucus in general, I expect the Republican turnout to set a new record and the Democrats to be very close, if not break, the Obama record in 2008.

Bernie crowds

In addition, since Trump and Bernie will both win the New Hampshire primary in another week, the shock waves will continue to reverberate through the political parties and media as the campaign unfolds.

A side note, the Democrat winning the Iowa caucus won the presidency in 2008 but the Republican winning the caucus has not won the presidency in 20 years.

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