SubscribeSCIENTISTS CLAIM POLAR ICE CAP MELTINGIt's genius. The last headline is *always* some dumb local story about how it's snowing like hell or really really really cold somewhere in the world. Because he's, you know, fair and balanced.
FASTER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
UN STUDY GROUP WARNS OF
"UNPRECEDENTED CALAMITY"
IF GLOBAL WARMING NOT HALTED
FREAK SNOWSTORM HITS DENVER -- IN JULY!
One morning not long ago, the co-hosts of "Fox & Friends," the Fox News network's raucous and right-leaning version of the "Today" show, were promoting Fox-branded merchandise such as baseball caps and soap-on-a-rope when Steve Doocy, a co-anchor, turned to his partner, E. D. Hill, and said, "You know who's really jealous about our merchandising?" Doocy, who doubles as the weatherman, answered his own question: "My dentist is so jealous. You've seen him on TV--Aaron Brown. You know, the guy on CNN--he does that show at night? He just works nights over there. But during the day he's our dentist. Do we have a picture?"Apparently White House televisions are always tuned to Fox News. No wonder Bush and Cheney are out of touch with reality. They're living in the echo chamber.
Up popped a grim photograph of CNN's principal nighttime anchor, Aaron Brown. "That man looks just like a dentist, doesn't he?" Doocy said, and soon he and Hill were chatting about whether Brown was a good dentist and what he charged for a cleaning. Brown's picture lingered on the screen for a full minute, over bold, block-lettered captions: "AARON BROWN DDS," followed by "MOLAR MAN," followed by "ARROGANT BROWN."
That bit of intramural japery, which aired on December 13, 2001, was choreographed by Roger Ailes, the chairman and C.E.O. of the sometimes raucous and right-leaning Fox News. Ailes was trying to strike back at Brown for publicly "putting us down," he says. "I don't ignore anything. Somebody gets in my face, I get in their face." Ailes requires enemies the way a tank requires fuel, and as he contemplated retaliation he kept thinking, I know someone who looks like Aaron Brown. Then it came to him. He telephoned Doocy, telling him, "Steve, just say that Aaron's your dentist. Then have your co-anchor say, 'He's not a dentist. He's on CNN!' " Ailes, a man of Falstaffian girth, roared with laughter, and continued, "I said, 'Doocy, no matter what happens, even if they torture you, say he's your dentist!' " For two days, Doocy followed this script, and for two days, Ailes recalled fondly, "I'm sitting here laughing my ass off."
Aaron Brown, for his part, was not laughing his ass off. "I thought it was sort of juvenile," he said. "This is a little game they play. It's Roger's game. Roger seeks to define his political or journalistic opponents and destroy them."
Not only are they fascinating theories, but they show Fox's ability to evolve from denying there's a civil war at all to celebrating it! Fuck yeah!Have you noticed that right-wingers are going through the same progression with global warming?
Fox News remains the cable leader, but for the first time since its launch, it saw losses in viewership year-to-year. What’s more, the drop was consistent across the course of the year and across the dayparts, as well as being sharper than its competitors.
From January to December 2006, Fox News’s median prime-time viewership fell by 14%. That was in sharp contrast to the year before, when it was the only cable news channel to see an increase (9%). The story was repeated in daytime, when its median viewership dropped 12% in 2006. A year earlier it had grown 5%.
If we look at the mean, things don’t change for the better. Fox News saw almost equal declines in the two dayparts, 16% in prime time and 15% in daytime.
Indeed, comparing the number of viewers in 2006 to 2005, Fox News saw a decline in virtually every month, with the greatest gap in the latter half of the year (incidentally, when the big stories of 2006 took place).
...I was sitting there watching our anchor report the story. He was reading the teleprompter, and he was saying, "Because we want you to have as much information [as possible] about this important story, we want you to be able to go right to the source. We're giving you the address and phone number of the judge."It wouldn't surprise me a bit if this kind of crap is still going on.
Everybody knew that was a call to harass this guy. Even the poor anchor sees this. I mean, this is the way I saw it because I know the guy. But the point of it is, the guy running the newsroom, he had the control room type up this graphic with the guy's address and phone number on it. And I'm told ... that when the people on the second floor saw this they said, "Oh, jeez, we can't do that." And they had it taken off. It was this guy down here kind of freelancing, sucking up, thinking he knew what management wanted. And they stopped it.
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posted by proj at 11:24 AM on March 15, 2007