First we hear from the Huffington Post, which I will not hot-link here (add the www. to complete the url):
.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/11/anita-dunn-fox-news-an-ou_n_316691.html
Anita Dunn: Fox News An Outlet For GOP Propaganda
Posted 10-11-09
The White House's communications staff announced this week that it was charting out a new, more aggressive strategy this past week, defined largely by a pledge to push back hard against news stories that are either inaccurate or unflattering.
On Sunday, the strategy was on full display as communications director Anita Dunn gave a lengthy and brutal denunciation of Fox News, calling the cable outlet a vehicle for Republican Party propaganda and an ideological opponent of the president.
Here are just a few choice nuggets from Dunn's appearance on CNN's Reliable Sources
"If we went back a year ago to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that was a time this country was in two wars that we had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election what you would have seen were that the biggest stories and the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and a something called ACORN."
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So, where are Americans turning for news during an economic downturn and a socialist Administration?
(Hint: it ain't the Huffington Post!)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...11qbdu4McUHlXA
Wall Street Journal to pass USA Today as top US paper
(AFP) – 21 hours ago
WASHINGTON — The Wall Street Journal said Saturday that it expects to become the largest US newspaper by weekday circulation when the latest figures are released, leapfrogging USA Today.
According to Editor and Publisher magazine, Audit Bureau of Circulations figures to be published on October 26 will show that USA Today's circulation fell 17 percent to 1.88 million for the six months ending in September.
The Journal, with a total circulation of just over two million, said that would make the News Corp.-owned newspaper the largest in the country by weekday circulation....
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http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/ente...mad_men_1.html
Fox News soars in ratings -- Bill O'Reilly rolls on
September 2, 2009
The August ratings are out, and once again, the ratings for the Fox News Channel are phenomenal.
Rather than throwing a million pieces of data that every channel is spinning into madness, I ask you to consider just this one: On Sunday night, the third episode of AMC's highly-publicized and much-discussed series, "Mad Men," drew an audience of 1.6 million viewers at 10 p.m. when it debuted. Throughout the month of August, Fox News Channel averaged an audience of 2.29 million viewers during every single hour of prime time. And some nights, Bill O'Reilly drew an audience twice as large as that of "Mad Men."
My question for this news-savvy group of readers: Why? How does Fox News Channel keep running these kind of numbers? (And by the way, what about the relatively small size of audience for "Mad Men"?)
For starters, forget MSNBC and CNN -- they are not in the same galaxy as the Fox folks on this discussion. Fox is the the third highest rated cable channel in prime time behind entertainment channels USA and TNT.
What's so impressive to me is that while MSNBC and CNN are down, Fox is showing huge increases from last August to this August -- and August 2008 was a high point in news channel viewing because of the national conventions and one of the most viewed Presidential election contests in recent history.
O'Reilly, for example, is up by a third in total viewership and almost two-thirds in the key news demographic of 25-54.
So, how and why is Fox doing it? Facts are facts. You might want to ignore these, but I think it is a wiser course to acknowledge and try to understand them....