Anchors and analysts on the Fox News Channel rarely talk about liberal competitor MSNBC because the low-rated cable channel isn't “fair and balanced” and usually treats its few conservative guests with disdain. A recent example of this behavior came when All In host Chris Hayes introduced Jennifer Stefano as someone who is “waking up every day” plotting “to destroy ObamaCare.”
That incident caught the attention of Bill O'Reilly -- host of The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel -- and liberal analyst Juan Williams, who accused MSNBC of trying to make conservatives out to be “the bad guys” and treating Stefano like “a living piñata” so “they don't have to talk about the real issues.”
Randy Hall is a contributing writer for NewsBusters.
When the “Lean Forward” network hired Ronan Farrow last October to host his own weekday news/interview show, the 20-something son of actress Mia Farrow was hailed as “an original thinker” who could bring his 250,000 Twitter followers to watch him on MSNBC.
However, only a month after Ronan Farrow Daily debuted in mid-February, an anonymous source inside the channel told the New York Daily News that Farrow's ratings have been poor, and his program “has been a disaster for MSNBC” because the young host “sort of stinks on TV” and “hasn't turned out to be the superstar they were hoping for,” even in the relevant demographic of younger viewers ranging from 25 to 54 years of age.
Little more than a month after Alec Baldwin declared “goodbye to public life,” the liberal actor is back in the news after signing on as an executive producer of a documentary entitled Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank, which will debut on April 27 at the Tribeca Film Festival in lower Manhattan.
Barney Frank -- an openly gay, recently retired Congressman from Massachusetts -- “is a personal hero of mine,” Baldwin said in a statement regarding the project. “His legacy in Congress, and his historic importance as the first openly gay and married Congressman, are important for our country.”
One of the big steps in winning a social or political battle these days is defining the terms to be used in the debate. Remember how an “unborn child” became an antiseptic “fetus” during the start of the abortion debate? And how left-wingers now call themselves “progressives” since George H. W. Bush turned “liberal” into a slur during his 1988 presidential campaign?
According to a Thursday post by Daily Beast Washington reporter Michelle Cottle, the latest example of this principle is the Family Research Council's use of the phrase “natural marriage” instead of “traditional marriage,” a move to change the terms of the debate because the conservative organization had been “getting its butt kicked.”
According to a new report released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, the liberal MSNBC channel's prime-time audience fell 24 percent to 619,500 during the last calendar year, more than the Cable News Network -- which dropped 13 percent to a viewership of 543,000 – and the Fox News Channel, which lost 6 percent but still easily held onto first place with 1.75 million viewers.
As if that weren't bad enough, the “Lean Forward” network's revenue in 2013 lost 2 percent to total only $475 million. During the same period, CNN's income grew 2 percent to reach $1.11 billion, and the revenue for Fox News increased 5 percent to a tidy sum of $1.89 billion.
Ever since Friday afternoon, when Matt Drudge tweeted that he had just paid the “ObamaCare penalty for not getting covered” and called it a “Liberty Tax,” that post by the editor of the Drudge Report website has been slammed as a “flat lie” and “bad press” for the approaching March 31 enrollment deadline of the Affordable Care Act.
However, during Monday's edition of Rush Limbaugh's weekday radio program, the conservative host accused members of the media of trying “to smear and destroy” Drudge and anyone else “they consider to be the enemy of Obama.” Before long, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin praised Limbaugh as “consistently loyal to the cause of justice,” including his defense of Drudge “for calling out 'Obamascare.'”
Just when you thought it was finally safe to watch news programs and be free of any references to slain black teenager Trayvon Martin, along comes Monday's edition of Ronan Farrow Daily in which the MSNBC host and a legal analyst linked Martin's tragic life and a new study to claim he was a victim of a system that punishes African-American preschool children three times more often than their Caucasian counterparts.
After Farrow called the report “shocking, and I really mean this, shocking,” guest Lisa Bloom declared that “Martin was suspended three times” during preschool for minor violations, which makes him “a perfect example, unfortunately, very sadly, of this trend.”
Ever since longtime host Tim Russert died in 2008, his shadow has loomed over Meet the Press. His successor, liberal David Gregory, has seen the Sunday morning program hit historic ratings lows that led to a meeting on March 13 regarding the futures of both Gregory and “the longest-running television program in the world.”
According to an article on Thursday, NBC News senior vice president Alex Wallace declared:
"We're doubling down on David Gregory right now" since he will continue to host the TV series but with new responsibilities as the weekly program becomes an online “7-days-a-week source for politics and beltway buzz.”
With the March 31 deadline looming ever closer for people -- especially young adults -- to sign up for coverage through the "Affordable Care Act," the president has used several different and unusual venues to get his message out, ranging from a fake web-based interview with Between Two Ferns host and comedian Zach Galifianakis to a “push for ObamaCare” on Thursday's edition of CBS This Morning.
However, one of his most recent efforts was serving as a guest on Colin Cowherd's ESPN Radio show, when the host threw Obama softball questions about the last drive, which contains "supportive celebrity tweets and videos ... and a tongue-in-cheek tool kit that teaches parents how to get on social media and 'nag' their children 'mercilessly.'"
During a brief visit to Washington, D.C., Deborah Turness – the president of NBC News – is slated to discuss the fate of the network's Sunday morning program with host David Gregory and executive producer Rob Yarin regarding possible changes to the format of Meet the Press, which recently saw its ratings tumble to their lowest point since the third quarter of 1992.
According to Dylan Byers, a columnist at the Politico website, the gathering is “part of Turness's ongoing effort” to improve the long-running news and interview show, which ended 2013 behind both ABC's This Week and CBS's Face the Nation.
During Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe program, one of the main topics of discussion was the victory of Republican David Jolly over Democrat Alex Sink in the special election held on Tuesday to fill the seat in Florida's 13th congressional district that had been occupied for decades by Rep. Bill Young until the GOP official's death last year.
One guest -- Jim VandeHei, editor and co-founder of the liberal Politico website -- declared: “It’s really hard to spin” the loss because this is “bad news for the Democratic Party” as the country heads toward the midterm election in November. “Republicans suck slightly less than Democrats,” he added, “and that’s where they’re getting an advantage.” [See video below.]
Newsweek, the weekly magazine with a penchant for controversial covers, reappeared in retail outlets across the country on Friday after more than a year as a subscription-only digital periodical. According to the Daily Beast, the publication's online partner, “a historic title is back from the dead."
As has often happened in the past, the new magazine's cover story has generated a controversy, this time by identifying Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the elusive founder of the crypto-currency Bitcoin, causing reporters from many other news outlets to swarm outside his home in Temple City, Calif.
If you're looking for proof that the MSNBC is in the tank for the Democrats and ObamaCare, you need go no further than to read an article posted on Wednesday by reporter Geoffrey Cowley that states insurance companies can “keep offering substandard individual health plans through 2016.”
By extending the time to apply for the Affordable Care Act by two more years, the administration has “extended the treaty it reached last fall with the half-million consumers who were set to lose their low-cost, low-value insurance plans," Cowley insisted.
In an obvious back-handed compliment, Rachel Maddow started her eponymous Tuesday night program on MSNBC by supposedly praising the Cable News Network, which she said “once upon a time” was the “only cable news network, and they really did have a singular role in keeping people informed.”
However, while the network once had a reputation for providing information “about what was going on, not only around the country, but around the world” in the 1990s, she claimed “CNN today is not what it used to be.”
Soon after Arizona governor Jan Brewer vetoed S.B. 1062 -- a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that would have given business people the right to cite religious beliefs when refusing service to homosexuals -- gays and liberals began cheering and celebrating the decision, which received extensive coverage in the three network morning shows.
However, many people who disagreed with the veto vented their frustration online by calling the network news coverage of the issue “a truly awe-inspiring tsunami of poorly informed indignation” since the word “gay” was not mentioned in the legislation, among other reasons.
During the first day The Reid Report, a new weekday program aired on MSNBC, the African-American female host said during an interview with Marc Lamont Hill of HuffPostLive that “the people who watch our network” should see themselves reflected in “the full spectrum of humanity,” which she stated is “the job of all news organizations.”
“More than a third of our audience is black,” said Joy Reid, who described herself as “an opinion journalist” who is very open about being a liberal Democrat. “And so, this is just good constituent service to make sure that the people who watch our network see themselves reflected in all of our variety. … I don't think MSNBC should be unusual. Everybody should be doing that.”
The plight of black conservatives took center stage during Monday's edition of Hannity, a weeknight program on the Fox News Channel. The segment featured footage of African-American radio host David Webb interviewing Alvin Holmes, a Democratic state representative in Alabama who had used the racial slur “Uncle Tom” to describe Clarence Thomas, the black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Only the Fox News Channel has reported this story on TV.
Holmes said he stands behind his previous statement because Thomas “is a black man who allowed himself to be used to carry the message of a white man, which is against the interests of black people in America. In my opinion, Clarence Thomas is a very prolific Uncle Tom.”
According to a report by Tim Cavanaugh, news editor of National Review Online, the Federal Communications Commission “has pulled the plug on its plan to conduct an intrusive probe of newsrooms” as part of a “Critical Information Needs” survey of local media markets.
FCC spokesperson Shannon Gilson issued a news release that indicated in the course of the commission's review and public comment, “concerns were raised that some of the questions may not have been appropriate. Chairman [Tom] Wheeler agreed that survey questions in the study directed toward media outlet managers, news directors, and reporters overstepped the bounds of what is required” for the pilot study in Columbia, South Carolina.
One way the MSNBC cable channel can tell it's in trouble is when liberal comedian Bill Maher -- host of the Friday night HBO program Real Time who almost got his own show on the "Lean Forward" network -- posts a tweet accusing you of “turning into Fox News” and stating that the channel has “stopped leaning forward” since “Bridgegate has become your Benghazi.”
“I'm no good at being noble,” the self-proclaimed “passionate flaming liberal” continued in his rant entitled “MSNBC-YA,” but “it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little lanes of traffic don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
Senator Dick Durbin apparently didn't check his facts before making a number of wild claims during his appearance on Sunday morning's edition of CBS's Face the Nation.
The Illinois Democrat's assertions that 10 million Americans have found insurance coverage thanks to ObamaCare -- which he also claimed would lower the budget deficit -- earned him four Pinocchios from the Washington Post's "fact checker," the lowest rating possible.

















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