News Analysis
News: Media
>> = Important Articles
** = Major Articles
**The scandalous Internet (townhall.com, 050330)
**More People Reading Political News on ‘Net (Foxnews, 050306)
Presidential Election Campaign News Source (050100)
FNC’s Ratings Continue Rising While CNN’s Plummet in Prime Time (Media Research Center, 050307)
When 9-Year-Old Praises Bush’s SS Plan, Couric Corrects Him (Media Research Center, 050307)
Times circulation climbs to buck trend (Washington Times, 050518)
Poisoning children, too? (Townhall.com, 060303)
Nielsens: Another Tough Week for Couric (WorldNetDaily, 061030)
The American press should count its blessings (Townhall.com, 061122)
The Last March Of The Dinosaurs: The Death Of Network News (townhall.com, 071018)
Network TV News: Evil or Incompetent? (townhall.com, 080312)
U.S. paper ends print edition to live online (Paris, International Herald, 080428)
==============================
Tony Blankley
It’s not only the top of the market old media like CBS and the New York Times that are under assault. In the last few days there have been stories about the travails of the National Enquirer and the New York Daily News’ gossip columnist, Liz Smith, drowning in the digital storm.
It seems the Enquirer has lost a cool million readers per edition in circulation over the last eight years -- down to 1.5 million over its historic high of 4 million in the halcyon days of the 1970s.
Liz Smith, proud to be a gossip columnist a publicity agent could do business with, is down to 70 newspapers for her syndicated column. She cheerfully admits that she may be the last of the breed, and that it would be nuts to pay the million bucks a year she pulls down for a new hot print gossip columnist.
Unnamed Washington Post gossip staffers confess on background that they spend their days reading Wonkette on the Internet scooping their stories -- because she can be up as fast as she can type, while they have to wait for the next day’s Washington Post to be manufactured and shipped to its distribution points almost a day after the hot rumor has already been consumed by a ravenous public.
Is nothing sacred? Walter Winchell must be rotating in his grave, considering that the noble work of print gossip is being usurped by irresponsible digital gossips. In the old days, you could rely on printed gossip to be a genuine, certified rumor or double entendre sexual reference. (Have you noticed that there is invariably only one possible meaning to a double entendre?)
But today, the public is being fed unreliable digital gossip. What you read on an Internet gossip blog may not be a genuine rumor at all. The blogger may have made up the rumor out of whole cloth (or, to update the phrase, out of virgin electrons.)
Of course, its true that once the fabricated rumor (again, our language is lagging behind our technology. Something made of whole cloth is fabricated. But something made up of virgin electrons is “inputed” or “uploaded” -- once the uploaded rumor has been downloaded, it becomes a genuine rumor.
Still, there seems to be something more reliable, more substantial, about rumors printed on paper. Behind that rumor stands a large building filled with hundreds of employees paying federal state and local taxes. The words used to make up the rumor weren’t just typed, willy-nilly, on some $50 keyboard. When print media was really print media, each letter of each word of each sentence was cast in molten lead and assembled in large trays.
Even today, a printed rumor is then processed by large printing presses. The New York Times spent three quarters of a billion dollars a few years ago to buy some new printing presses. These are machines that require good relations with a major financial institution in order to acquire. Compare that impressive sum with the paltry few dollars a month it takes to bring a web server online.
The paper, measured by its tonnage, is delivered by train from Georgia. Oxen could drown in the ink vats. Platoons of highly trained, often unionized, press operators work around the clock to successfully bring the paper, ink and words together to form a proper setting for a genuine, certified rumor.
When those kinds of assets and those kinds of people are behind a paper-printed rumor, a reader has solid grounds for relying on it.
But today, inexperienced youthful readers are willing to consume cheaply produced rumors by unlicensed persons in their basements -- if they even have basements. Knowing the type, they probably only have lofts. Having a basement suggests a substantial building of multiple stories. But today’s decadent youth don’t care from where they get their rumors. Just like the steel and other heavy manufacturing industries, the paper-printed rumor business is being hollowed out. Digital rumor manufacturing is to the rumor industry what ten cents per month Chinese wage rates are to the steel industry.
The impending death of the paper-printed rumor business should be a warning to the news divisions of those papers. While the newspaper’s rumor department is at a competitive disadvantage with the digital rumor blogs, the news departments actually have some advantages -- if they choose to use them. Hundreds of trained reporters and editors, if they are committed to objective news gathering, can actually produce more usable, objective news each day than even the most hard-working blogger. But if they print rumor and prejudice masquerading as news, they will surely go the way of their official, certified rumor departments.
==============================
NEW YORK — Reliance on the Internet for political news during last year’s presidential campaign grew sixfold from 1996, while the influence of newspapers dropped sharply, according to a study issued Sunday.
18% of American adults cited the Internet as one of their two main sources of news about the presidential races, compared with 3% in 1996. The reliance on television grew slightly to 78%, up from 72%.
Meanwhile, the influence of newspapers dropped to 39% last year, from 60% in 1996, according to the joint, telephone-based survey from the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Nonetheless, Americans who got campaign news over the Internet were more likely to visit sites of major news organizations like FOX News Channel and The New York Times (43%) rather than Internet-only resources such as candidate Web sites and Web journals, known as blogs (24%).
28% said they primarily used news pages of America Online Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other online services, which carry dispatches from traditional news sources like The Associated Press and Reuters.
“It’s a channel difference not a substantive difference,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet group and author of the study. “Newspaper executives probably now have to think of themselves less as newspaper people and more as content people.”
The study also found the political news audience more mainstream — more women, minorities, older Americans and lower-income users than before.
58% of political news users cited convenience as their main reason for using the Internet. This group was more likely to use the Internet sites of traditional news organizations or online services.
But one-third of political news consumers cited a belief that they did not get all the news and information they wanted from papers and television, and another 11% said the Web had information not available elsewhere. These individuals were more likely to visit blogs or campaign sites for information.
And blogs, Rainie said, likely had an indirect influence on what campaigns talked about and what news organizations covered.
Blogs, for instance, have been credited with forcing an apology from CBS News anchor Dan Rather for last fall’s “60 Minutes” report on President Bush’s National Guard service.
Blogs “are having a modest level of impact on the voter side and probably a more dramatic impact on the institutional side,” Rainie said. “Blogs are still a realm where very, very active and pretty elite, both technologically oriented people and politically oriented people go.”
The study also found that the reliance on the Internet for political news was most pronounced among those with high-speed connections at home — 38% among broadband users against 28% among all Internet users. Reliance on newspapers was roughly even between those groups — 36% for broadband and 38% for all users.
40% of Internet users found the Internet important in helping them decide for whom to vote, while 20% said the online information made a difference.
The random survey of 2,200 adults, including 1,324 Internet users, was conducted Nov. 4-22 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2%age points.
==============================
(Based on All Voters)
Question: How did you get most of your news about the presidential election campaign? From television from newspapers, from radio, from magazines, or from the Internet?
|
|
November 2000 |
November 2004 |
|
||||
|
|
T.V. |
Newspaper |
Internet |
T.V. |
Newspaper |
Internet |
(N) |
|
|
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
|
|
Total |
70 |
39 |
10 |
76 |
46 |
21 |
(1209) |
|
Sex |
|||||||
|
Male |
68 |
39 |
12 |
70 |
43 |
24 |
(530) |
|
Female |
71 |
39 |
9 |
80 |
48 |
18 |
(679) |
|
Race |
|||||||
|
White |
70 |
40 |
10 |
75 |
46 |
21 |
(1051) |
|
Non-white |
73 |
35 |
13 |
79 |
44 |
23 |
(139) |
|
Black |
75 |
32 |
11 |
84 |
42 |
19 |
(82) |
|
Race and Sex |
|||||||
|
White Men |
69 |
39 |
11 |
70 |
44 |
23 |
(459) |
|
White Women |
70 |
42 |
9 |
80 |
48 |
18 |
(592) |
|
Age |
|||||||
|
Under 30 |
72 |
21 |
22 |
72 |
23 |
40 |
(104) |
|
30-49 |
64 |
37 |
15 |
72 |
43 |
25 |
(396) |
|
50-64 |
72 |
43 |
5 |
77 |
52 |
16 |
(383) |
|
65+ |
78 |
51 |
2 |
85 |
59 |
6 |
(308) |
|
Sex and Age |
|||||||
|
Men under 50 |
65 |
34 |
18 |
67 |
34 |
32 |
(226) |
|
Women under 50 |
66 |
33 |
15 |
75 |
40 |
27 |
(274) |
|
Men 50+ |
72 |
46 |
5 |
75 |
55 |
15 |
(299) |
|
Women 50+ |
77 |
47 |
3 |
86 |
55 |
9 |
(392) |
|
Education |
|||||||
|
College Grad. |
58 |
46 |
12 |
67 |
48 |
31 |
(517) |
|
Some College |
66 |
35 |
15 |
72 |
39 |
28 |
(303) |
|
High School Grad. or Less |
79 |
37 |
7 |
85 |
48 |
9 |
(383) |
|
Family Income |
|||||||
|
$75,000+ |
62 |
47 |
14 |
68 |
46 |
29 |
(328) |
|
$50,000-$74,999 |
64 |
39 |
13 |
72 |
43 |
27 |
(203) |
|
$30,000-$49,999 |
68 |
41 |
14 |
73 |
50 |
21 |
(265) |
|
$20,000-$29,999 |
80 |
34 |
7 |
82 |
41 |
19 |
(122) |
|
<$20,000 |
78 |
32 |
5 |
88 |
43 |
8 |
(144) |
|
Region |
|||||||
|
East |
65 |
41 |
10 |
76 |
51 |
16 |
(240) |
|
Midwest |
67 |
43 |
9 |
75 |
44 |
19 |
(305) |
|
South |
75 |
32 |
11 |
82 |
43 |
21 |
(394) |
|
West |
68 |
46 |
11 |
64 |
46 |
29 |
(270) |
|
Religious Affiliation |
|||||||
|
Total White Protestant |
72 |
40 |
9 |
77 |
46 |
18 |
(583) |
|
- Evangelical |
71 |
38 |
11 |
79 |
43 |
17 |
(293) |
|
- Non-Evangelical |
72 |
42 |
7 |
74 |
49 |
20 |
(290) |
|
White Catholic |
66 |
46 |
9 |
78 |
47 |
19 |
(230) |
|
Secular |
65 |
29 |
15 |
68 |
39 |
31 |
(119) |
|
Community Size |
|||||||
|
Large City |
66 |
40 |
16 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
|
Suburb |
67 |
46 |
10 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
|
Small City/Town |
73 |
41 |
7 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
|
Rural Area |
69 |
27 |
14 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
|
Party ID |
|||||||
|
Republican |
67 |
37 |
10 |
75 |
42 |
17 |
(443) |
|
Democrat |
74 |
43 |
7 |
75 |
50 |
22 |
(390) |
|
Independent |
65 |
39 |
14 |
76 |
46 |
26 |
(340) |
|
Party and Ideology |
|||||||
|
Conservative Republican |
66 |
39 |
10 |
73 |
36 |
18 |
(324) |
|
Moderate/Liberal Rep. |
69 |
33 |
12 |
77 |
54 |
16 |
(110) |
|
Conservative/Mod. Dem. |
76 |
41 |
6 |
83 |
50 |
17 |
(243) |
|
Liberal Democrat |
70 |
48 |
9 |
58 |
50 |
36 |
(133) |
|
When Decided to Vote for... |
|||||||
|
Before 2000/2004 |
70 |
37 |
8 |
73 |
40 |
22 |
(466) |
|
Debates/Conventions |
68 |
43 |
8 |
70 |
48 |
24 |
(354) |
|
Post Debates/Conventions |
75 |
37 |
10 |
85 |
48 |
17 |
(207) |
|
Within Last Week |
63 |
34 |
19 |
84 |
55 |
20 |
(106) |
|
Labor Union |
|||||||
|
Union Household |
68 |
45 |
7 |
69 |
48 |
18 |
(173) |
|
Non-Union Household |
70 |
38 |
11 |
77 |
45 |
22 |
(1022) |
|
Battleground States |
|||||||
|
Republican States |
-- |
-- |
-- |
79 |
43 |
21 |
(380) |
|
Democratic States |
-- |
-- |
-- |
68 |
44 |
25 |
(354) |
|
Battleground States |
-- |
-- |
-- |
78 |
49 |
18 |
(475) |
==============================
CNN’s prime time ratings plummeted 21% in February, as MSNBC’s fell by 14%, but FNC’s ratings actually rose 18%. That put FNC’s average prime time audience at 1.57 million, compared to less than half, 637,000 for CNN, and even fewer for MSNBC, the New York Post reported on Thursday.
An excerpt from “CNN Sinking in Fox Hole,” a March 3 article by Tim Arango:
CNN saw its prime-time ratings drop sharply in February, falling further behind Fox News.
CNN’s ratings dipped 16% overall and 21% in prime time during February, according to Nielsen Media Research, as some of the cable news channel’s biggest stars lost viewers.
Fox News was the only one among the four cable news networks to post ratings gains during the month....
Fox saw its ratings rise 18% to an average of 1.57 million viewers. This compares with an average of 637,000 viewers for CNN....
Among individual shows, CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now,” which airs from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., saw a 17% drop in ratings, while its Fox competitor, “The O’Reilly Factor,” saw a 9% jump.
In the 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. time slot, CNN’s “Larry King Live” saw its ratings tumble 23%, while Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” posted a 19% rise.
The only CNN show airing between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. to post a ratings gain was “Anderson Cooper 360,” which airs from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. It gained only 2%.
The other two cable news networks, CNBC and MSNBC, also saw ratings declines in February.
CNBC’s overall ratings declined 23% and in prime time they dropped 42%. MSNBC’s ratings dropped 15% overall and 14% in prime time.
==============================
Noah McCulluogh, a frequent guest on NBC’s Tonight Show where he shows off his knowledge of political and presidential trivia, appeared with his mother in the 7:30am half hour of Friday’s Today.
After explaining how he’s serving as a spokesman for Progress for America, NBC’s Katie Couric wondered: “So, why did you decide to become a Republican? What was it that was more appealing to you about the Republican Party?”
Noah McCullough, who sat on a sofa next to Couric, said he looked at both parties and found he agreed more with Republicans, but that his mother is a Democrat.
Couric to Donna McCullough, Noah’s mother: “So, that must make for some lively discussions over mac and cheese, right? How do you feel about, first of all, that your son is such an incredible brainiac, Donna, I mean, you must be proud of him. But also, politically, is it difficult for you all to see eye to eye on the issues? I can’t believe I’m asking you that.”
Donna McCullough, condensed: At first it was, but maybe that’s how a future President starts out.
Couric: “And I know you’ve been to President Bush’s, the first President Bush’s library in Houston how many times now?”
Noah McCullough: “Twenty-seven times.”
Couric: “Twenty-seven times.”
Noah McCullough: “Twenty-seven times.”
Couric: “Is your favorite President, though, Ronald Reagan, is that true, or who would you say is your favorite?”
Noah McCullough: “It’s a tie between Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George W. Bush.”
Couric: “Okay. Well, very good. Very political, by the way. You’d like to run for President one day I understand, right?”
Noah confirmed his plan to run in 2032.
Couric soon arrived at Social Security: “Tell me why you agreed to stump for Social Security for President Bush.”
Noah McCullough: “Because I know that it’s a major problem that has to be fixed. And I don’t want to have to deal with it my first day in office.”
Couric countered: “On the other hand, President Bush has admitted that private accounts really won’t solve all the problems of Social Security, that there perhaps need to be other things that need to be implemented to keep the system solvent.”
Noah McCullough: I think it will be revived and we can go from there. Bush plan “kind of like the medication to get it back.”
Couric: “So down the road you think it will help the system become healthier?”
Noah McCullough: “Revive it...”
Couric moved on to how Noah has beaten Howard Dean, Tim Russert and Al Sharpton in trivia contests, and Noah claimed that Russert cheated by pushing his hand way from the bell.
Following a couple of trivia questions for Noah, which he answered correctly, Couric turned serious: “Quick question, Donna. Do you worry about your adorable and brilliant son being exploited for political reasons at all? I know he’s working for Progress for America, which, or has been to asked to help by this group, which spent, I guess $45 million re-electing President Bush and $20 million it plans to spend pushing Social Security reform. Do you feel completely comfortable with it?”
Donna McCullough replied that at first she thought it wasn’t any place for a child, but after he was asked to appear on the Leno show and got to meet Presidents, she decided it was healthy for him.
Couric wrapped up: “Noah, so nice to meet you. Good luck in 2032.”
Noah McCullough: “2032. I have your vote, right?”
Couric demurred: “We’ll see. If I’m around, you never know, right? That’s a long ways off, Noah. Thanks so much. And Donna, thanks so much to you as well.”
==============================
The Washington Times celebrated its 23rd anniversary yesterday with cake and champagne served to its employees at a midafternoon assembly, as its executives announced a substantial gain in audited circulation in the face of a national trend of declining U.S. newspaper numbers.
For the six-month period ending March 31, the newspaper’s daily circulation from Monday through Friday climbed to 103,017 -- an increase of nearly 3% over the similar period last year, according to Fas-Fax, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) report of publishers’ estimates.
“We’re scoring important exclusive after exclusive,” says Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Times. “I think Washington, official and otherwise, is realizing that The Times is the lively newspaper in town, packing a terrific punch as the indispensable source of news, and we’re enormously pleased that this is so. Newspapers, like humans, can suffer hardening of the arteries, and we’re determined not to let that happen to us as we approach the completion of our first quarter of a century as an important part of the life of the nation.”
Many U.S. newspapers, in fact, have struggled in recent years to hold readers. The Washington Post, for example, reported losing 20,682 subscribers, a 2.7% decline in its weekday circulation, from 772,553 to 751,871 compared to the first six months of 2004.
“I think we have enormous potential to grow,? says Richard Amberg Jr., vice president and general manager of The Times. “We’re looking at a strategic plan that will provide a more focused effort to expand our circulation and expand our advertising, which will lead to an even brighter and bolder future.”
About 77% of adults in the top 50 U.S. markets, which includes Washington, read a newspaper each week, compared to 78.6% in spring 2004, according to the Newspaper Association of America’s Newspaper Audience Measurement Index.
By the NAA account, only about a third of U.S. daily newspapers reported circulation gains. The New York Times daily weekday circulation inched upward to 1,680,582 in the first six months of this year, a gain of 0.2% from the like period last year. Daily circulation at USA Today, owned by Gannett Co. in McLean, stood at 2,281,830, holding steady from the previous year.
John Murray, the NAA’s director of circulation marketing, says there is more competition than ever for consumers’ time and people can get their news from other places, such as radio, television and Internet sources. Most of the widely read Internet sites are those of newspapers (including that of The Times at www.washingtontimes.com).
The decline in telemarketing has also played a role in the drop of circulation. Even before the national do-not-call list went into effect in October 2003, telephone marketing was becoming a less-effective way of getting new subscribers, Mr. Murray says.
Last year, about 31% of all new subscriptions came from telemarketing, compared to about 40% in 2003.
Art Farber, director of circulation at The Washington Times, says the government’s do-not-call list has measurably hurt efforts to get more subscribers. About 65% of the telephone numbers in the Washington market is on the list, and telemarketers cannot call those phone numbers.
“It’s difficult to grow circulation,” he said. “But [our circulation] has been going up slowly and most newspapers are going down quickly.”
==============================
by Brent Bozell
It was some six years ago, and my youngest boy, Reid, along with his best friend Mitchy, both 3, had browbeaten me into taking them to the matinee of the “Thomas and the Magic Railroad” movie. We had settled into our seats, they with their popcorn and soda, and I with the mission of an afternoon nap — a goal I was well on my way to achieving when I was jolted awake by the dialogue in the preview of the upcoming “Rugrats” movie. Scene after scene concluded with a comedic punchline revolving around soiled diapers, flatulence, mucus and God-knows what other bodily excretions, while my little boy and his friend giggled in delight. Thanks, Hollywood.
And here’s the worst news. While most of what is offered as children’s programming at the movies and on television is wholesome in its innocence, it is also true that even here, even in the programming produced for the youngest of the young, there are cultural landmines everywhere. The topic matter and language in the “Rugrats” preview wasn’t the exception. It is the rule for much of what young children are now receiving, particularly on television, as entertainment.
The Parents Television Council has released the results of a new study that examined what Hollywood is producing for children ages 5-10, before and after school and on Saturday mornings, on eight different networks. The numbers should be enough to trigger a double-take for any parent.
First there’s the violence. In 443.5 hours of programming, researchers documented a staggering 3,488 instances of violence. Now hold on, Bozell, I hear the apologists saying already, surely you’re not going to condemn silly cartoons, are you?
It’s a good point. Just how many times did Jerry dismember Tom? How many sticks of dynamite eviscerated Wile E. Coyote, and how many times did Elmer Fudd open fire on Bugs Bunny with that shotgun? This isn’t serious violence. It is fantastic and fanciful, meant to elicit laughter because it’s comedic and inconsequential. After the smoke clears, the character is back. So take all those “cartoony” instances out.
And you’re still left with 2,794 other examples of violence. This violence is very different. It is realistic, oftentimes dealing not with goofy farm animals but with humans, and children to boot. It is dark: There is evil. It is consequential: There is pain and suffering. There is death. On Fox’s “Shaman King,” a fight between two characters ends when one kicks the other in the head and knocks him unconscious. The victor picks up the loser by his hair and reaches into his chest. The loser screams. The victor takes out the loser’s soul and puts it into his own body. The loser appears dead. That’s the kind of violence being presented to little boys and girls, ages 5-10, on television today.
What about language? Researchers found no less than 250 incidents of offensive language. There is the ever-present “potty humor.” On the Cartoon Network’s “The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy,” Billy shows his guardian Grim (a cartoon Grim Reaper) what he thinks of his “stupid rules” by passing gas, but then announces he has to change his pants, implying he soiled himself. In another scene, Billy’s dad picks his nose so much he pulls his brains out, and thinking his brain is mucus, eats it.
Euphemisms for obscene language are also prevalent. In the cosmic order of things, most are mild to be sure — but not all. One episode of “SpongeBob SquarePants” deals with the discovery of dirty words, with the childlike characters SpongeBob and Patrick trading sound-effect-covered cuss words, and you can only imagine the obscenity of the sailor talk they’re exchanging. More common still was verbal aggression, like abusive yelling and mean-spirited insults. There were 858 examples of these. And another 622 examples of disruptive, disrespectful or otherwise problematic attitudes, of which 53 were aimed at teachers or parents.
And there’s sexual content, too, certainly something of great interest to one on the back end of teething. On Nickelodeon’s “Fairly Odd Parents” a character uses his magic copier to make the things in his “dad’s magazines” real. He pulls out the magazines; one is titled “Under the Bed Monthly.” On Disney’s “Sister, Sister” there are references to pornography, descriptions of foreplay, and discussions about a “Gay Policeman’s Ball.”
All of which begs — screams — the question: Why? There is no market demand for this. It is clearly out of bounds, offensive and dangerous. It shatters the innocence of childhood deliberately. And yet there are people out there writing these scripts. There are people — not companies, people — producing this garbage. And there are people distributing it with the goal to reach, and influence, as many millions of little boys and girls as possible.
==============================
Despite her newsmaking interview with Michael J. Fox last week, Katie Couric’s goal of taking the “CBS Evening News” to the top is getting further out of reach.
Her average audience of 7.3 million viewers left the “CBS Evening News” 1.1 million behind ABC’s second-place “World News.” It was the biggest gap between the two broadcasts since the week of Feb. 6, according to Nielsen Media Research. NBC’s “Nightly News” led the way with 8.9 million viewers last week.
Couric scored the attention-getting interview with Fox on Thursday after he was criticized by Rush Limbaugh for supposedly playing up symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in a campaign ad. But it caused no appreciable jump: Thursday’s broadcast had 7.4 million viewers, Nielsen said.
CBS and Couric have tried some new things with the evening newscast, including longer interviews and a “Free Speech” segment where guests offer opinions. In the light of the ratings, they will likely face pressure to head to a more traditional format.
Couric’s average of 7.3 million was identical to the Bob Schieffer-anchored newscast during the same week a year ago, Nielsen said.
However, both ABC and NBC were down from a year ago. CBS has pointed to that movement, and its own broadcast’s improvement among younger demographics, as proof that progress is being made.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will the ‘CBS Evening News,’” Couric told USA Today this week. “It’s a process, and being in the middle of a process, while it’s sometimes challenging and can be frustrating, that’s really in many ways the fun part.”
The news was better for CBS in prime time, where it won again. All three versions of the “CSI” franchise finished among Nielsen’s top-10 shows last week, as did the strong sophomore series “Criminal Minds.”
None of the World Series games on Fox between St. Louis and Detroit _ the lowest-rated Series ever _ managed to crack the top 10 last week.
For the week, CBS averaged 12.3 million viewers (8.0 rating, 13 share), ABC averaged 11.4 million (7.3, 12), Fox had 10 million (6.5, 10), NBC had 9.7 million (6.3, 10), the CW had 3.6 million (2.3, 4) and the i network had 590,000 (0.4, 1)
Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision averaged 3.2 million viewers (1.8, 3), Telemundo had 780,000 (0.5, 1) and TeleFutura had 550,000 (0.3, 1).
A ratings point represents 1,114,000 households, or 1% of the nation’s estimated 111.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of Oct. 23-29, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “Desperate Housewives,” ABC, 21.24 million; “NFL Post Game Show,” CBS, 20.83 million; “Dancing with the Stars,” ABC, 20.7 million; “Dancing with the Stars Results,” ABC, 20.02 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 17.83 million; “CSI: NY,” CBS, 17.42 million; NFL Football: Dallas at Carolina, NBC, 17.33 million; “Lost,” ABC, 17.09 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 16.83 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 16.77 million.
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By Michelle Malkin
In between breathless condemnations of the Bush administration for stifling its free speech, endless court filings demanding classified and sensitive information from the military and intelligence agencies, and self-pitying media industry confabs bemoaning their hemorrhaging circulations (with the exception of the New York Post), my colleagues in the American media don’t have much time to give thanks. Allow me:
Give thanks we don’t live in Bangladesh, where you can be put on trial for writing columns supporting Israel and condemning Muslim violence. Just ask Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of Blitz, the largest tabloid English-language weekly in Bangladesh. He is currently facing a sedition trial for speaking out about the threats radical Islam poses in Bangladesh. He has been imprisoned, harassed, beaten and condemned. In court last week, his persecutors read these charges against him: “By praising the Jews and Christians, by attempting to travel to Israel and by predicting the so-called rise of Islamist militancy in the country and expressing such through writings inside the country and abroad, you have tried to damage the image and relations of Bangladesh with the outside world.” For expressing these dissident opinions, he faces the possibility of execution.
Give thanks we don’t live in Egypt, where bloggers have been detained by the government for criticizing Islam and exposing the apathy of Cairo police to sexual harassment of women. Just ask Abdel Karim Suliman Amer, 22, who was arrested earlier this month for “spreading information disruptive of public order,” “incitement to hate Muslims” and “defaming the President of the Republic.” Ask Rami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, and has been outspoken in his criticism of Egyptian brutality. He was detained this week along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger. His host, 24-year-old reformist Muslim Muhammad al-Sharqawi, had been detained by the Egyptian government this spring as he left a peaceful demonstration in Cairo where he had displayed a sign reading, “I want my rights.” Sharqawi was beaten in prison over several weeks.
Give thanks we don’t live in Sudan, where editors can lose their heads for not kowtowing to the government line. Ask the family of Mohammed Taha, editor in chief of the Sudanese private daily Al-Wifaq, who was found decapitated on a Khartoum street in September. He had been kidnapped by masked jihadi gunmen. What did Taha do that cost him his life? He insulted Islam, and dared to question Muslim history, the roots of Mohammed and other Muslims. Before his murder, his paper was shuttered for three months and he was hauled into court for “blasphemy.”
Give thanks we don’t live in China, the world’s leading jailer of journalists and Internet critics. Consider Yang Xiaoqing, jailed for five months because he reported corruption among local officials in the central Hunan province. Or Yang Tianshui, sentenced to 12 years in jail this spring for posting essays on the Internet supporting a movement by exiles to hold free elections. Or Li Yuanlong, a Guizhou reporter for the Bijie Daily jailed for two years on subversion charges because he dared to criticize the ruling Communist Party on foreign websites. Or any of the other 32 journalists and 50-plus bloggers behind bars.
Give thanks we don’t live in Lebanon, where outspoken writers pay with their lives. Journalist and Christian Orthodox activist Samir Kassir, who was critical of Syrian involvement in Lebanon, was assassinated in a Beirut car bombing in 2005. His colleague, An-Nahar newspaper manager Gibran Tueni, was killed in a car bombing last December. Lebanese TV anchorwoman and Christian journalist May Chidiak survived a separate car bombing last fall, but lost an arm, leg and use of one eye.
Give thanks we don’t live in Russia, where investigative journalists routinely wind up dead. Last month, unrelenting reporter and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya was found shot dead in her apartment. In the days before her death, Politkovskaya had been working on a story about torture in Chechnya, according to her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. She joins a death toll that includes Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, who had been investigating the Russian business underworld and was gunned down outside his Moscow office in 2004; Valery Ivanov, editor of the newspaper Tolyatinskoye Oborzreniye, also shot dead after investigating organized crime and drug trafficking in 2002; and Larisa Yudina, editor of the opposition newspaper Sovetskaya Kalmykia in southern Russia, who was stabbed to death by former government aides.
Give thanks we don’t live in Denmark, where the cartoonists who dared to caricature Mohammed and challenge creeping sharia are still in hiding, in fear for their lives.
Give thanks we don’t live in Italy, where a spineless judge bowed to jihadists and put famed war journalist Oriana Fallaci on trial for her sharp-tongued critiques of Islam. She succumbed to cancer before they could exact a vengeful penalty against the lioness. But they made the price of “insulting” Islam known far and wide to the cowering Western media.
Give thanks we live in America, land of the free, home of the brave, where the media’s elite journalists can leak top-secret information with impunity, win Pulitzer Prizes, cash in on lucrative book deals, routinely insult their readership and viewership, broadcast enemy propaganda, turn a blind eye to the victims of jihad, and cast themselves as oppressed victims on six-figure salaries.
God bless the U.S.A.
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Hugh Hewitt
Howard Kurtz is the Washington Post’s media critic and host of CNN’s Reliable Sources. Kurtz is also the author of the just published Reality Show: Inside The Last Great Television News War. This is a detailed and often riveting account of the unexpectedly rapid and often dramatic transition from the network anchor era of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather to the new “big three” of Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams and Katie Couric. From the high point of the first big three to the week just finishing, the networks lost about 30 million viewers, and now welcome a combined audience of less than 25 million each night. Reality Show is a chronicle of decline, long on the details of what happened, not so long on the why. No matter, conservatives already know a lot of the “why,” and the elite Beltway-Manhattan media don’t care, so the account of the bleeding out of vitality and significance of the nightly news is entertaining without it.
Kurtz was my guest for a rare two-hour interview yesterday. Along the way we cover many of the most interesting aspects of his very candid book: Katie Couric’s lack of news judgment; the hyper-leftism of The Daily Show; the rapid aging of the network audience to a point where “25 million” vastly overstates the significance of the viewers; the “bubble” that network news lives in and cannot seem to break out of.
There are a lot of pleasant surprises in the book. The portraits that emerge of Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer are two of them. After reading Reality Show, I will start to take in Williams’ blog and —on the rare occasions I watch network news, will invite him back into my home. Williams is a smart, hard-working and —this is a compliment— thoroughly square guy who makes an effort to listen to the sounds originating from beyond Manhattan. His network is run by the most interesting exec in the book —Jeff Zucker— and small details, like Williams’ role as a director of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and his decency towards Bob Woodward and his family, are the sort of insights that soften the image that the nets can’t seem to live without but which is killing them: The anchor on high, surveying his vast realm below.
Sawyer, of course, is the smartest of them all —a not surprising fact given her years of close association as a writer with Richard Nixon on his memoirs and her relentless energy and inquisitiveness. Close Reality Show and you know that the first network to put Sawyer in the anchor chair will dominate the next decade of ratings. Sawyer will not fall prey to either the cheap or the deserved shots that Katie Couric has been taking since she took over at CBS. Couric’s “perky” was fundamentally miscast. Sawyer’s hyper-smart attitude will return some of Jennings’ aloofness to whichever network she leads.
Not that it matters all that much. There are many themes in Reality Show, but only one conclusion: The nets can’t change their DNA, and that DNA isn’t meant for the world of new media. They are slow when the new media is fast. They are hyper-liberal in an era where the center-right can shop for news and the radical left won’t accept even the hyper-liberal as other than sell-outs.
Worst of all, they lost their collective news judgment years ago, and still haven’t figured out how to get it back. They keep hiring people from inside the junior varsity bubble of the Ivies and J-schools and wonder why they can’t break out of their Manhattan-Beltway bubble. They don’t seem very curious about life outside of the elite world which they inhabit, and when they travel it is with the comforts of a nawab of the Raj. They have retinues that make star athletes jealous, and salaries that would suggest audiences that rival Cronkite’s. In short, they are an aristocracy every bit as unaware of the revolution underway around them as that of France’s in 1788.
Did I say “worst of all?” Whoops. The death of news judgment is their greatest failing, but their greatest burden for which they are only partially responsible is their loss of trust. People trusted Walter, Chet and David. They simply do not trust the current gang. Too much memory, too many National Guard fake documents, too much ax grinding. Really, how can Brian Williams expect to escape the brand that is nightly damaged by the ravings of Olbermann and the frenzies of Matthews? Explain all day and all night how past experience doesn’t predict future bias, but you’ll still have Cuomo aide Tim Russert and Clinton aide George Stephanopoulus making major “news” decisions which red state America is supposed to believe are not in any way influenced by their politics.
Fox News’ Special Report is the newscast for serious center-right viewers now, and though it is only at 1.5 million viewers a night —a third of Couric’s audience— it is the right 1.5 million, and it will continue to grow. Wolf Blitzer has a daily three hour run which also attracts the serious news consumer (and would attract more if they dumped the peptic and predictable Cafferty.) Bennett, Laura, Rush, the two Denni, Medved, Hannity, and yours truly do the news for 15 hours a day, in the car, where you have the time to hear it.
Do you care about the news? I spent two hours talking about it with Howard Kurtz yesterday, super-serving the news junkie. Who knows what Katie Couric covered? Who cares?
Read the book. Read the interview. I suspect it is the last book of its kind as everyone will know that nobody cares in another ten years. In the meantime, watching the dinosaurs thrash about in the swamp can be interesting even if more than a little sad.
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By William Wilson
From the very beginning of our Republic, observers and statesmen have noted that success as a nation depended heavily on an informed and active public. Jefferson went so far as to contend that citizens who took arms against the United State government in Shay’s Rebellion should not be harshly treated but rather educated on the goals and purposes the government had sought to achieve.
In the complex and intense world of the 21st Century, an informed and aware public is more essential than ever. Citizens are asked to make judgments on issues and candidates where the decision could literally mean life or death for millions.
And yet, what is the public fed nightly by those over-paid “news” organizations at what is called the Networks? The public is force fed a steady diet of propaganda, distortions and outright pap.
One night last week as I sat watching NBC Nightly News, this point came home to me more starkly than ever before. Consider the elements of that broadcast.
It is the day before the Ohio and Texas primaries. A main issue in the debate between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama revolves around which of the two would be stronger in dealing with foreign affairs. And yet, NBC treated the meat of the issue as if it was of no consequence.
In all of 31 seconds, NBC gave stories about the threat by Venezuela – a major oil exporter – to launch a war against a neighboring country, the Russian election where stark authoritarianism is raising its head once again, the bombing of another nation by the United States, and near open warfare in Gaza. That’s right: 31 seconds to deal with four stories, any one of which could have devastating consequences for American citizens.
So how did NBC fill the rest of the time? They spent 4 minutes and 20 seconds on two stories that will warm my mother’s heart. The first came down to “eat a good breakfast.” The second had one theme: “get 8 hours of sleep a night.”
The world is on the edge of explosion. Economies and governments are teetering and the best NBC can do is tell us to eat breakfast and get enough sleep? Why this story selection? What would lead supposedly serious, highly paid, “professional” journalists to make such silly and transparently deceptive decisions?
That’s the most troubling aspect of all. Looking at that one broadcast, there really is only one of two options that explain it. Either these highly paid, “professional” journalists are neither professional nor journalists – they are simply incompetent at their jobs. Or, they had a reason. They decided that it was not in their agenda to inform the American public of the true nature of the danger and problems our nation faces out in the larger world.
I will leave it to the conspiracy theorists to determine who they wanted to help or hurt. But as FDR said, if anything happens in politics you can bet it was planned. So, I’m pretty sure the story selection was a planned action by people looking to influence how Americans viewed the state of things. There is a word for that. It is called propaganda. And that is what these “news” organizations have become – pure propagandists for whatever cause or view they want to advance. Nothing they report or say can be taken at face value – they have an agenda in every word of it. Or else, of course, they could just be incompetent.
Is it any wonder that millions of people are turning to the Internet for news and information?
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With print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions.
That day has arrived in Madison, Wisconsin.
Last Saturday, The Capital Times, a fabled 90-year-old daily newspaper founded in response to the jingoist fervor of World War I, stopped printing to devote itself to publishing its daily report on the Web.
(The staff will also produce two print products: a free weekly entertainment guide inserted in the crosstown paper, The Wisconsin State Journal, and a news weekly that will be distributed with the paper.)
An avowedly progressive paper that carried the banner of its founder, William Evjue, The Capital Times is wrapped up with the history of two larger-than-life Wisconsin senators, the elder Robert La Follette (whom it favored) and Joseph McCarthy (whom it opposed). But in recent years, the paper’s circulation dropped to about 18,000 from a high in the 1960s of more than 40,000.
“We felt our audience was shrinking so that we were not relevant,” Clayton Frink, the publisher of The Capital Times, said in an interview two days before the final daily press run. “We are going a little farther, a little faster, but the general trend is happening everywhere.”
The transition in Madison, while long foretold - The Capital Times was doubly part of a dying breed in the United States, being the afternoon paper in a two-newspaper town - has hardly been neat, clean and cathartic.
More than 20 members of the newsroom staff lost their jobs, mainly through buyouts, but also through layoffs. Each departing journalist was profiled in the final paper, and lives on at the Web site Madison.com under the headline “A Fond Farewell to Talented Colleagues,” with a “class photo” taken next to the presses.
The new staff total will be in the 40s. This includes seven new hires in areas like Web producing and arts coverage. Copy editors, by contrast, are “exiting at a higher rate than reporters,” said Paul Fanlund, the editor who arrived from The State Journal in 2006.
The Web strategy, while seen as a long-term solution, is still a work in progress, Fanlund said. It revolves around a portal, Madison.com, which is owned under the same joint arrangement mandating that both Madison papers share revenues, though they are editorially independent.
The Capital Times will operate a nearly continuous Web newsroom and focus on repurposing online the cultural and entertainment material the staff will begin to produce in the supplement, 77 Square, to be inserted in The State Journal.
“If there is a window of opportunity for newspapers on the Web, it is locally,” said James Baughman, director of the University of Wisconsin journalism school in Madison. “The reason the online version of the Cap Times may have life is that opportunity.”
Once upon a time in the United States and elsewhere, the afternoon newspaper was the Internet of its day, Baughman said, giving afternoon baseball scores and stock market reports in a quick turnaround. It was the more lucrative slot as a result.
The liberal afternoon newspaper still has a sympathetic audience in Madison, but the changing pace of news is more important. “The political activism is there, you can’t deny it,” he said of Madison’s newspaper readers, “but they want the morning box scores.”
And while Fanlund takes pain to stress the need to continue the progressive editorials and watchdog role of the reinvented Capital Times, it is sports that serves as a perfect example of the changes he said have been long overdue.
As an afternoon paper that did not publish Sundays, his sportswriters would be covering a college football game and “it would be 48 hours until the articles would be read,” he said.
But the decision to migrate online, and in free weeklies, necessarily involves reinventing the core mission at the newspaper and the core audience.
In its account of The Capital Times’s last daily press run, The State Journal reported that it had “succeeded in garnering most of The Capital Times’s former subscribers and will see its average daily circulation rise from 89,000 to at least 104,000 starting Monday.”
The final editorial of the print daily pledged itself to its founder’s purpose as “an independent voice for peace and economic and social justice that speaks truth to power each and every day.”
The editorial evoked him to give his endorsement of the steps the newspaper is taking: “He would caution us not to worry about the form The Capital Times takes, but rather to be concerned with the content and character of our message.”
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