Digging Deeper on Cable News Partisanship

by Silence Dogood

A lot has been made of White House accusations about Fox News being the Voice of the Republican Party and Rush Limbaugh and worst.

But, what do Viewer numbers show?  Viewers directly vote with their time and viewership. The problem is we cannot find this information in Main Stream Media.  And, the question is, "Why hasn't the New York or LA Times, or NBC, or others looked at the actual real numbers and reported on them"?

Curiosity killed the cat.  So, being a dog lover, I dug it up.

I reviewed a recent poll on Channel Viewership and another on Channel Partisanship.   Combining a Pew Research Poll on Partisanship and Cable News Audiences (Oct. 30, 2009) Nielsen Media Research  Ratings (Oct. 10, 2009) and came up with some interesting numbers:

    Channel Viewership

	Viewers	Rep.	Dem.	Indep.
FOX	691,000	39%	33%	22%
CNN	151,000	23%	51%	18%
MSNBC	235,000	18%	45%	27%

   *   A25-54 demographic, prime time Thursday night

Viewership Hard Numbers *

	Rep.	Dem.	Indep.
FOX	269,490	228,030	152,020
CNN	34,730	77,010	27,180
MSNBC	42,300	105,750	63,450

   *   numbers do not add up due to rounding

What does this jumble mean in terms of absolute Partisan numbers?

First, Fox News rules the Cable Waves. FOX has 79% more (Prime Time) viewers than CNN and MSNBC COMBINED!

Second, we all know that Fox has more Republicans watching than other political persuasions, but the other voting persuasions combined are larger in population than Republicans.

Republicans are only 6% more than Democrats on FOX, while Democrates make up 51% of CNN and are 28% more than Republicans - making CNN a highly partisan station; similar to MSNBC which has an absolute 27% divide between Democrats over Republicans (45% minus 18%).

So, both MSNBC, and CNN  are Partisan extemists when compared to FOX.

Third, 215% MORE DEMOCRATS watch FOX than MSNBC; and almost 300% MORE DEMOCRATS watch FOX than CNN!

Fourth, FOX has 25% more Democrats and Independent viewers than BOTH CNN and MSNBC Combined!

So, when the White House voids FOX, they are losing the absolute majority of the Cable News Market viewed by their own supposed supporters!

Fifth, Fox has has almost 560% MORE INDEPENDENTS watching that CNN, and 240% than MSNBC!

This is the market that the White House has to connect with in order to get anything done!  The Independent swing vote is what creates or destroys all American Political Movements.

Sixth, even if we rid Cable of all Republican viewers (something Keith Olbermann would like to be made into Federal Law, for sure), FOX will still have 25% MORE DEMOCRAT viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined!

Thus, while the White House is accurate in attacking FOX for its large Republican viewership; it is also sadly mistaken because it is also labeling far more Democrats and Independents as radical "Right Wing Nuts" or "Teabaggers" when it does so.

And, that is a challenging thought, unless everyone who watches a specific news show is a Wing Nut, or Teabagger, which is challenging, at best.

Now my own highly prejudicial thoughts.

I try to watch all three channels; but after watching Doberman a few times, I set up some rules (I hate baseless pure ideological attacks).  When I turn on MSNBC, I will only watch it until he starts an ideological rant.  The longest I have watched Olbermann has been about 3 minutes, maybe.  Usually, its closer to 45 seconds, unless I hit a commercial.

CNN was ranked the lowest in these ratings, which was surprising and disappointing.  While CNN clearly leans left, they often have good honest news reports, and even when they get ideological, it is not the kind of "burn them at the stakes because I burned down my own house, therefore they're witches!" kind of rants that Doberman and sometimes Maddow rake out.

CNN's opinions are theirs, but they provide some facts, and are more dispassionate and more rational about their ideological positions. And, in fact, they have been frequently correct in their assessments.  Of course, this falls apart when considering Blitzer's protecting his Favorite Son, President Obama, after Saturday Night Live skewered him for "doing nothing". Never before as a News Show created a show simply to deflect the public's image of a President.

At least, I don't remember them coming forward when Liberals were burning Swastika's and Hitlerian images in their attacks on "W".

Perhaps that is why their ratings slumped. My image of CNN viewers is that they are sincere, serious American's who want unbiased news Reporting. So, maybe CNN lost big after that biased show.

A final Disclaimer:  I did not even try to review the huge Viewership shows of O'Reilly and Glen Beck.  Their shows each average multiples of Prime Time viewship of both CNN and MSNBC combined.  For example, O'Reilly has 3,765,000 viewers to Olbermann's 962,000 or about 4 times the viewership!

Perhaps I will do that review later. But, there doesn't seem to be a reason for that exercise right now.

Also, it has to be noted that the two polls were not on the same day, nor were they coordinated, so some aberrations could occur that we are unable to perceive.

Now, why hasn't main stream media reported these numbers?  Knee jerk conservatives (me sometimes?) can believe this is a "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy"  a la Hillary.  But, the truth I think lies in the more base human need to keep one's job.

If FOX is cleaning everyone's clock, like Doberman, then they have to attack FOX at their weakest points.  Since the middle ground of news reporting is taken, they have to attack FOX some other way.  And, what better way to attack FOX than to completely misrepresent FOX's position by misrepresenting smalls snippets of the truth.

More Republicans watch FOX in absolute numbers, and as a percentage as compared to the other lagging channels. So, why not portray it as a radical news channel?  It doesn't hurt their own ratings!

But, when the White House followed that strategy, it was showing itself to be as dumb as both Merkel and her opposition Party labeled them when Obama spoke to the German people in July, 2008.  It is disastrous for the White House to attack Democrats and Independents who are amenable to Obama and possibly his policies.

It is more like committing to a scorched earth policy by starting at your own headquarters.  Good luck with that one!

 Blessings!

Silence Dogood

Obama Cedes the Center

November 6, 2009

Obama Cedes the Center

By Michael Gerson
WASHINGTON -- During long campaign swings in Virginia's recent gubernatorial campaign, Bob McDonnell's staff would count the cars that sported both Obama and McDonnell bumper stickers. These ideologically confused motorists turned out to be an important demographic. On Election Day, according to exit polls, about one in 10 voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 said they voted for McDonnell, the Republican.

Cable television debates offer a choice between extremes. Competitive statewide elections are a fight for the middle. This is the contest Republicans won on Tuesday.

Given the breadth of Obama's victory a year ago, Republicans had no choice but to seek the support of wavering Obama voters and independents. McDonnell, in particular, went after them with unflappable discipline -- speaking respectfully of Obama, while seizing the momentum of economic discontent. Obama won just under half of Virginia independent voters last year. On Tuesday, McDonnell carried 66 percent.

Both McDonnell and New Jersey's governor-elect, Chris Christie, were blessed with opponents who combined weakness and viciousness in equal measure. But the ideological atmosphere for the election was determined by Obama himself. When I interviewed McDonnell in September, he saw the first signs of an anti-Democratic backlash among Virginia businesspeople who were concerned about the "card check" bill (which would allow union organization without a majority vote). Then a broader resentment about the level of spending and new burdens imposed by cap-and-trade climate legislation. Then the summer of health care reform discontent.
 
The White House now dismisses Tuesday's losses as the reflection of "local issues" -- as though the Virginia outcome was determined by zoning disputes on the proposed site of a new 7-Eleven. When one of the primary concerns of the electorate is the direction of the economy, all politics is national.

By creating deficits unequaled as a percentage of the economy since World War II, by proposing to nearly triple the national debt in the next 10 years, by using the economic crisis as an excuse for the massive expansion of government authority over health care, Obama has become a polarizing figure. Of course, some Republicans thrive on ideological combat and would seek it even if unprovoked. But it is Obama's tax-and-spend ambitions that have united Republicans of every stripe in opposition, put fiscally conservative Democrats in an impossible bind, and ceded the economic center to Republican candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.

Advocates of purity politics on both left and right see Tuesday's lessons differently. "If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary 'bipartisanship,'" we read in the DailyKos, "you will lose votes." But what could this possibility mean in practice? Would Democrats have saved Virginia and New Jersey if they embraced a single-payer takeover of American health care? If they proposed another trillion dollars in new debt? Yes, Democratic turnout and enthusiasm were down in both states. But this is likely because Obamamania was an acute, not chronic, malady. And though Obama remains fairly popular, his liberal policies look considerably less appealing without his winning personality on the ticket.

Others make a similar argument with a different ideology: If only more conservatives were nominated, such as Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd Congressional District, the party might be pure enough to excite the base. Liberal Republicans who eventually endorse Democrats, such as Hoffman's opponent, should probably expect a conservative primary challenge. But this strategy is self-destructive when universalized. Would Republican appeal throughout the Northeast really be expanded by more ideological nominees? Though the Republican Party will remain the conservative party nationally, it is not possible for Republicans to win everywhere with an identical conservative message.

The Republican candidates who won on Tuesday were generally conservative, but not angry. They were supported by the Republican base, but spent most of their time reaching toward the middle. It was a center-right victory in a center-right country.

Politicians who have run for governor -- say, Bill Clinton -- had a good feel for the politics of the center. Obama has yet to demonstrate it. According to the White House, on election night he was "not watching returns" -- displaying a French monarch's indifference to America's shifting middle.

Now comes Obama's largest test, which will determine the ideological atmosphere for the 2010 election. If the president -- opposed by a majority of Americans, with almost no support from the other party -- imposes an ideologically divisive health reform, it will smack of radicalism, reinforce polarization, and may cede the ideological center to Republicans for years to come.

mgerson@globalengage.org

 (c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

Europe's Obama Fatigue

Bush was better for Europe. No, seriously.

BY JAMES JOYNER | OCTOBER 29, 2009 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/

U.S. President Barack Obama is so beloved in Europe that he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize (which he later won) just 12 days after taking office for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples." A Pew survey this summer found that 93 percent of Germans, 91 percent of French people, and 86 percent of Brits believed Obama "will do the right thing in world affairs," a stunning turnaround from their views on the last administration. Yet, this perception belies the reality that Obama has done much less for Europe than his predecessor.

Despite George W. Bush's defiant "you're with us or you're against us" public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe. And Europe is taking a hint.

The signs are telling, the most important but least reported of which are Obama's choice of staffing. To be sure, there are some very prominent Atlanticists in the administration. Gen. James Jones, the previous chairman of the Atlantic Council and former supreme allied commander, is national security advisor. And current Atlantic Council Chairman Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) has just been appointed as co-chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. But many important working-level posts in both the State Department and the National Security Council (NSC) are unfilled. Most notably, the EU portfolio at the State Department has been treated as a political hot potato, currently being handled as an additional duty by the Balkans director.

With such a dreadfully weak human infrastructure at home, it's no wonder next week's U.S.-EU summit is expected to be a non-event. The preparations have thus far mostly focused on protocol rather than policy. The Europeans are particularly irritated that the luncheon will be hosted by Vice President Joseph Biden rather than the U.S. president himself. Under the previous administration, Bush regularly presided.

On Afghanistan, which all agree is the alliance's most critical mission, the Europeans are also feeling a bit lorded over. As Jackson Diehl put it, the region's leaders are "frustrated that they must watch and wait -- and wait and wait -- for the [U.S.] president to make up his mind." Mark Mardell, BBC's North America editor, reported "a growing sense of frustration" at the NATO defense ministers meeting in Slovakia last week over being held in limbo.

Even in Britain, where the public loves Obama, the government has been obsessed, after repeated slights -- the infamous CD set gifted to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a press conference canceled due to light snow (or was it fatigue?), being denied a private meeting with Obama at the Pittsburgh summit, etc. -- with the notion that the two countries' "special relationship" is over. To be sure, some of this is overblown -- and hardly new -- but Obama has been less solicitous of his country's most natural ally than any U.S. president in memory.

America's relationship with France bounced back markedly after Nicolas Sarkozy was elected to replace Jacques Chirac. But there have been more than a few bumps since Obama took office. "Obama's policies are not the Atlanticism that Sarkozy was expecting," Macleans quotes Hall Gardner, a professor of international politics at the American University of Paris, as saying. "There've been several elements of disagreement between the two."

Some of this can surely be attributed to Sarkozy's personal pique over upstart Obama stealing some of his thunder -- what the press has dubbed his "Obama complex" -- as the U.S. president did by swooping in to take credit for China's concessions at the G-20, for example. But there is legitimate frustration over the handling of issues as well. Most famously, of course, Sarkozy complained at the United Nations that "President Obama dreams of a world without weapons but right in front of us two countries [Iran and North Korea] are doing the exact opposite." There are also sharp differences over troop levels and strategic objectives in Afghanistan, Turkey's candidacy for the European Union, and the future of the French nuclear arsenal.

But if Obama's ratings are slowly falling on the continent, one place where they are already low -- lower than Bush's, certainly -- is in the countries that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dubbed "New Europe." While Bush made Eastern and Central Europe a top priority -- as evidenced by the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic and the push for NATO expansion for Georgia and Ukraine -- his successor is clearly more concerned about relations with Russia, the very country whose influence New Europe is trying to avoid.

Obama's handling of the policy reversal on missile defense, in particular, has drawn sharp rebukes from the region, mostly on the execution rather than the policy itself. A Polish official was quoted by United Press International proclaiming that, "Waking Czech Prime Minister Fisher at midnight European time, and calling President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Tusk -- who refused to take the call -- 70 years to the day that Russia invaded Poland -- is politically inept and very offensive." Another official added, "this simply confirms how unimportant Europe is to the U.S., despite President Obama's words to the contrary."

To be sure, this criticism is somewhat overstated. But, as Bush learned to his chagrin, perception can become reality.

And indeed, while most European heads of state dutifully congratulated Obama after the surprise announcement of his Nobel win, the European press was as stunned as their American counterparts. The Independent's Ian Birrell assessed that Obama was being "once again lauded for his symbolism and potential rather than his actual deeds." Peter Beaumont of The Guardian equally snarked, "The reality is that the prize appears to have been awarded to Barack Obama for what he is not. For not being George W. Bush. Or rather being less like the last president."

It would be ironic, indeed, if the Europeans started longing for the good old days of the Bush administration. But that nostalgia is closer than you might think.

 

STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images

 

James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. These views are his own.

The Return of Israel's Existential Dread

In tabloid cartoons and dinner conversations, Israelis brace themselves for war with Iran.

By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI

Jerusalem
The postcard from the Home Front Command that recently arrived in my mailbox looks like an ad from the Ministry of Tourism. A map of Israel is divided by color into six regions, each symbolized by an upbeat drawing: a smiling camel in the Negev desert, a skier in the Golan Heights. In fact, each region signifies the amount of time residents will have to seek shelter from an impending missile attack. If you live along the Gaza border, you have 15 seconds after the siren sounds. Jerusalemites get a full three minutes. But as the regions move farther north, the time drops again, until finally, along the Lebanese and Syrian borders, the color red designates "immediate entry into a shelter." In other words, if you're not already inside a shelter don't bother looking for one.

The invisible but all-pervasive presence on that cheerful map of existential dread is Iran. If Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran's two terrorist allies on our borders—Hezbollah and Hamas—would almost certainly renew attacks against the Israeli home front. And Tel Aviv would be hit by Iranian long-range missiles.

View Full Image

David Gothard

 

On the other hand, if Israel refrains from attacking Iran and international efforts to stop its nuclearization fail, the results along our border would likely be even more catastrophic. Hezbollah and Hamas would be emboldened politically and psychologically. The threat of a nuclear attack on Tel Aviv would become a permanent part of Israeli reality. This would do incalculable damage to Israel's sense of security.

Given these dreadful options, one might assume that the Israeli public would respond with relief to reports that Iran is now considering the International Atomic Energy Agency's proposal to transfer 70% of its known, low-enriched uranium to Russia for treatment that would seriously reduce its potential for military application. In fact, Israelis from the right and the left have reacted with heightened anxiety. "Kosher Uranium," read the mocking headline of Israel's largest daily, Yediot Aharonot. Media commentators noted that easing world pressure on Iran will simply enable it to cheat more easily. If Iranian leaders are prepared to sign an agreement, Israelis argue, that's because they know something the rest of us don't.

In the last few years, Israelis have been asking themselves two questions with increasing urgency: Should we attack Iran if all other options fail? And can we inflict sufficient damage to justify the consequences?
As sanctions efforts faltered, most Israelis came to answer the first question affirmatively. A key moment in coalescing that resolve occurred in December 2006, when the Iranian regime sponsored an "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust," a two day meeting of Holocaust deniers. For Israelis, that event ended the debate over whether a nuclear Iran could be deterred by the threat of counter-force. A regime that assembles the world's crackpots to deny the most documented atrocity in history—at the very moment it is trying to fend off sanctions and convince the international community of its sanity—may well be immune to rational self-interest.

Opinion here has been divided about the ability of an Israeli strike to significantly delay Iran's nuclear program. But Israelis have dealt with their doubts by resurrecting a phrase from the country's early years: Ein breira, there's no choice. Besides, as one leading Israeli security official who has been involved in the Iranian issue for many years put it to me, "Technical problems have technical solutions." Israelis tend to trust their strategic planners to find those solutions.

In the past few months, Israelis have begun asking themselves a new question: Has the Obama administration's engagement with Iran effectively ended the possibility of a military strike?
Few Israelis took seriously the recent call by former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to shoot down Israeli planes if they take off for Iran. But American attempts to reassure the Israeli public of its commitment to Israel's security have largely backfired. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent threat to "obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear attack against Israel only reinforced Israeli fears that the U.S. would prefer to contain a nuclear Iran rather than pre-empt it militarily.

On the face of it, this is not May 1967. There is not the same sense of impending catastrophe that held the Israeli public in the weeks before the Six Day War. Israelis are preoccupied with the fate of Gilad Shalit (the kidnapped Israeli soldier held by Hamas), with the country's faltering relations with Turkey, with the U.N.'s denial of Israel's right to defend itself, and with an unprecedented rise in violent crime.

But the Iranian threat has seeped into daily life as a constant, if barely conscious anxiety. It emerges at unexpected moments, as black humor or an incongruous aside in casual conversation. "I think we're going to attack soon," a friend said to me over Sabbath dinner, as we talked about our children going off to the army and to India.

Now, with the possibility of a deal with Iran, Israelis realize that a military confrontation will almost certainly be deferred. Still, the threat remains.

A recent cartoon in the newspaper Ma'ariv showed a drawing of a sukkah, the booth covered with palm branches that Jews build for the autumn festival of Tabernacles. A voice from inside the booth asked, "Will these palm branches protect us from Iranian missiles?"

Israelis still believe in their ability to protect themselves—and many believe too in the divine protection that is said to hover over the fragile booths. Both are expressions of faith from a people that fear they may once again face the unthinkable alone.
 
Mr. Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and a contributing editor to the New Republic.
 

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