FOX v. White House: And The Results Are In
Or at least the results since the Obama White House made FOX News the focus of its attempt at dictating which organizations should or shouldn’t be taken as serious “news” organizations:
But the White House’s stance also gave extra lift to the network at a time when it is on track to record its best ratings year ever. This year, Fox News has averaged nearly 1.2 million viewers across all its programming, a 16% increase over the same period last year, according to Nielsen. In the two weeks since aides to President Obama took after the coverage, the audience has been 8% larger than the previous two weeks.
If anything, the Obama administration has succeeded in reinforcing Fox News’ identity as a thorn in the side of the establishment — a role the network loves to play.
What news organization wouldn’t love to play that role? Er, the NYT, LAT, WaPo, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN?
Maybe this is a little lesson for them as well.
~McQ
Obama does not care what happens to fox. He is just making sure the rest of the MSd does not get out of line.
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This may work the opposite way, then. The administration is demonstrating that if you oppose them enough to get them to notice, your ratings will increase. The question is, how well does ideology stand up when there’s money to be made?
It will be interesting to see if TAO and his thugs double-down on Fox or try to walk away before they REALLY look like fools and paranoids.
And what about the rest of MiniTru? Will they rally (no matter how tepidly) to the side of their sister news organization? Or will they, too, double down, driven not only by ideology but also by jealousy and even desperation over Fox continuing to take away their viewers / readers?
For those who haven’t seen it, there was an interesting exchange on this subject on Stephi’s show this weekend. Note that predictable statements about how “Bush did it, too!”, Karl Rove is a creepy monster, all presidents seek to control the media, etc, etc, from the panel members other than Ingraham and Will.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/26/video-ingraham-rips-gibson-on-abcs-this-week/
http://www.lastingliberty.com today has a good article about this today: “Fox News Obama’s Only Friend”. The author makes a great point.
With the latest numbers in, I expect CNN to pick a fight with the White House over something, in the hopes of repeating FoxNews’ success, but will make it look so minor that they will be mocked for the effort.
Neo – … I expect CNN to pick a fight with the White House over something…
Given the apparent lack of brainpower at DCNN, I don’t think it would amount to too much.
CNN should consider banning its anchors from appearing on “Celebrity Jeopardy” after the humiliating defeats of Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O’Brien. Wolf was blitzed last month, coming in last with minus-$4,600, behind comic Andy Richter, a past winner who racked up $68,000 for charity. “Desperate Housewives” star [and total babe! - dj505] Dana Delaney came in second.
…
A CNN insider defended the journalists: “They are reporters, not trivia experts. And the buzzer is complicated. It’s not activated until Alex [Trebek] finishes the last syllable of the question. If you hit the button too soon, nothing happens.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/anchors_sink_on_jeopardy_otdWknnBnpH2jCseGGrJLL
I guess this is part of the reason that TAO gets on so well with MiniTru: they, like him, are apparently good only for reading a teleprompter.
mmmm..? something about payback and matriarchs?