Media Curmudgeon

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February 27, 2008

No Country for White Men

Guest blogger Cody Keenan, columnist for The Citizen, the newspaper of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, writes:

If only Al Gore had won over a few more values voters. If only John Kerry had picked off a few more NASCAR dads. Right? Wrong.

Every four years, as Democrats rush to court the new hot demographic, they consistently ignore that most secretive and elusive of species: the white male. Since 1980, no Democratic nominee has won more than 38 percent of the white male vote. Al Gore and John Kerry each lost it by 26 points. Had either peeled off just a percentage point or two, Gore might be a lame duck today or Kerry might be up for re-election.

Conventional wisdom blames President Johnson’s signature on the Civil Rights Act for handing a generation of Southern white voters over to the Republican Party. But that no longer accounts for white male disillusionment with the Democratic Party; it hasn’t for some time.

The problem is that there are tens of millions of white males in America who feel disenfranchised and disadvantaged.

It sounds ridiculous: white males make up the vast majority of CEOs, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices and every president ever. But tens of millions chafe under the general feeling that, even though they do everything they’re supposed to, they no longer have the control over their lives that they used to.

The economy that used to guarantee a stable manufacturing job with enough income and security to care for your family, afford leisure and put your children through school has slipped away. A vapid and violent culture infects their children. Lousy trade agreements and illegal immigration steal their jobs. They feel as if they’re getting screwed.

“An entire generation of white men was raised in a system in which they felt disadvantaged,” writes The Politico’s David Paul Kuhn in a recent book on the subject. “It did not matter if the perception was true; the perception itself had political consequences.”

Democrats are the ones who actually have the working man’s economic interests at heart, pushing for a higher minimum wage and universal health care, and railing against tax cuts for the richest Americans and CEOs that make 500 times the average worker.

And yet in 2004, George W. Bush won nearly every state in the bottom half of lowest per capita income, and white men across every economic category.

It’s because the disillusioned white male is opposed to more government and still holds out hope he’ll be wealthy himself someday. And so Republicans smartly go after the bogeymen, bashing illegal immigrants and moral decay. And they win.

Working-class white men make up one in four voters - more than blacks and Hispanics combined. They make up a quarter to a third of the vote in the battleground states of Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Of those, Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio went for Bush last time. All but Iowa were blowouts for Bush among white men – and he won them there too.

These working-class men voted for Democrats by a margin of two to one in 2006. But that margin wasn’t the consequence of a shift back toward the Democratic Party; it was the combination of Bush fatigue and Iraq fatigue. There were some scattered successes, however, by Democrats who focused on the white male vote, either winning it outright or peeling enough away to win the election.

Mark Warner, the posterchild for this new Democrat, won formerly bright red Virginia in 2002 and is running for Senate this year. “There was a morphing of the Democratic Party from a sense of a common good or a common commitment to each other as fellow citizens to being an advocate for groups,” he says in Kuhn’s book. “And I think that Democrats were advocates for every other group except for white males.”

Some of the new Democratic officeholders like Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, and Montana’s Senator Jon Tester and Governor Brian Schweitzer, understood that problem. They understood what those disillusioned white males value: character, culture, and security.

So which of the two remaining Democratic candidates can best appeal to the white male? The white, or the male?

Let’s be honest, there are those, even Democrats, who will refuse to vote for a woman or a black man. But race and gender aren’t the problems; every Democratic nominee in history has been a white male. And so Senator Obama or Senator Clinton must work to win over some of that vote by recognizing that disillusionment, not writing it off as John Kerry did by ignoring the South entirely.

Senator Clinton’s strength with the white working class has faded over the past few weeks as Senator Obama has begun capturing the white male vote by widening margins, taking 55 percent in Virginia and 62 percent in Wisconsin.

But the general election is another story entirely. It’s not yet clear working class Democrats will embrace Obama should he become the nominee. He’ll have to recognize their disillusionment, reassure their economic worries and give them a sense of confidence. And he’ll have to rely heavily on the youth vote he’s harnessed. The tens of thousands of new voters he’s brought into the process and epic crowds he draws may provide an equalizer he’ll need.

There are macrotrends that will tempt the Democratic nominee to ignore the second-largest demographic in America yet again. The gap between Americans who self-identify as Democrats and those who self-identify as Republicans is at a record high. Democrats are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting in this election by nearly a two-to-one margin. Disapproval of President Bush is so high on every single issue that simply hanging the mantle of a third Bush term around Senator McCain’s neck and calling it a day seems like enough.

But it’s easy to be dismissive. The New York Times’ Frank Rich, examining the crowds at Senator McCain’s appearances, makes that mistake. “Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America,” he writes. “A cultural sea change has passed it by.”

This is precisely the thinking that loses elections.

One would think it impossible for the Democratic nominee to lose after eight years of President Bush. But there were those who thought it in 2004. The Democratic nominee must appeal to the disaffected white male voter, especially in those swing states that make the difference.

Otherwise, we’ll be having this conversation again in four years.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:59 AM | Comments (1) | Print |

Bruce Braun at February 27, 2008 12:43 PM writes:

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February 25, 2008

No Country For Hope

This year was the first time I can remember in which I saw all of the films that were nominated for Best Picture in the Academy Awards. I liked four of them (“Atonement,” “Juno,” “Michael Clayton,” and “There Will Be Blood”). The one I didn’t like, “No Country For Old Men,” won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director. What’s wrong with me?

Or should I ask, “What’s wrong with the voters in the Academy?” Or “What’s wrong with our country?” “No Country For Old Men” is a movie in which the villain wins, in which evil wins, and in which the mumbling hero quits in fear and despair. There is no character in the movie to admire or like, there is no character development, the ending is as unsatisfying as Weight Watchers cookie, and there is not even a smidgen of hope to be found anywhere. Is the message that this is no country for hope?

I asked a good friend who is a successful writer and member of the Academy if she liked the movie and she said, “I hated it, but my 23-year-old son loved it.” I replied, “Strange, my 25-year-old son loved it, too. He said it was the best movie of the year, as did my wife’s 29-year-old son.” I read the reader reviews on The New York Times website and they were, I’d estimate, about 75 percent negative; well, more than just negative, they were witheringly critical: “No there there,” “…non-ending,” “repellant,” “very nicely styled garbage,” “testicle-level rubbish,” “Terminator movie shot in Texas,” and “US film industry has sunk to this very low standard,” among many others in a similar vein.

I guess the comment I agree most with is “very nicely styled garbage.” But what fascinated me most is that young people who I know are Obama supporters, and, thus, most likely embrace a message of hope, loved a film in which there was absolutely no hope. In order to explain this apparent contradiction, I went back to Bruno Bettelheim’s book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales to see if I could find some answers.

Bettelheim writes that children like fairy tales because at a very deep level the stories help them deal with their greatest fears. Certainly “No Country For Old Men” is no redemptive fairy tale, even though it begins with the visual message, “once upon a time, in a place far, far away.” But it is a story about random, horrific, technology-enhanced violent death without death. In his book, Bettelheim refers to J.R.R. Tolkien, who described the facets which are necessary in a good fairy tale: fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation – recovery from great despair, escape from some great danger, but, most of all, consolation.

“Old Country…” has the bleak fantasy land of Texas in the 80s – a time our current President was living near Marfa, TX, the location for the film – but there is no recovery and absolutely no escape. But what about consolation? Could it be that the greatest fear younger people have is of the random nature of uncontrollable violence and death by pathological foreigners, as horrendously imprinted on their memories by the tragedy of 9/11 and by continuing images of death in Iraq – a fear that is manipulated and given growth hormones by the same Texas president? If so, then perhaps “No Country…” is a film that makes people confront their greatest fears and provides a psychological outlet for them.

However, the movie’s ending in which Sherriff Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) gives up, is as unsatisfying as if Frodo and Sam Gamgee in “The Fellowship of the Ring” had said, “Screw the ring. There’s no hope; let the Dark Lord have it – my big feet hurt.”

I’m sorry, we need heroes, not villains in our modern stories myths. We need hobbits and Jedi Knights, not wimps. We need hope, not despair.

Posted by Charles Warner at 02:08 PM | Comments (5) | Print |

teddoyle at February 27, 2008 04:47 PM writes:

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Gil Gross at February 25, 2008 11:26 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 25, 2008 07:08 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 25, 2008 07:02 PM writes:

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Helene K at February 25, 2008 06:08 PM writes:

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February 23, 2008

Who’s In Charge Here? – The NY Times McCain Story

The online and offline media are inundated with opinions and stories about whether or not The New York Times should have published the recent front-page story about John McCain’s alleged romance and ties to lobbyists. The medium has become the message in this brouhaha.

After two days of reading copious blogs and articles about The Times article, I’ve come away with the impression that the Gray Lady has grown old, confused, and lost its memory. Since many types of boats are named after women, I’ll extend the metaphor and suggest that the Gray Lady is a vessel that has an incompetent captain who is letting the swabbies run the ship.

This notion first came to me when I read Jay Rosen's thoughtful (as always) blog on the Huffington Post in which he wrote, “there's one person who would have known about the paper's struggles with McCain and his lawyers over today's story, and who read and approved the paper's endorsements – or should have. That is Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher. And so to ask, ‘How does the Times endorse McCain with a story like that looming, if it believes in the story?’ is to ask, at a minimum, what Arthur thought he was doing.'" The answer, of course, is that Arthur has no idea what he’s doing.

Publisher Pinch let executive editor Bill Keller and managing editor Jill Abramson decide whether or not to run the McCain story with the befuddling headline “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.” A headline and story Columbia Journalism School professor and media critic par excellence Todd Gitlin mocks: “With that most vapid of introductions (so bland that my eyes glazed over on first inspection), the editors tried to muffle the dynamite that they'd awkwardly stuffed into the nth reedit of their half-exploding bombshell about--well, what was it about? (1) Intimations of an Iseman affair, or the ‘appearance’ of an affair, that his aides tried to scotch? (2) McCain's entanglements with lobbyists who cared a good deal about what he did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee? Uncertain which way to turn, having not much of a story about (1) and (on the strength of the evidence they published) no smoking gun about (2), they squared the potato and ran with the hodgepodge.”

What were Keller and Abramson thinking? Why did they open The Times up to such criticism? I think it’s because the reporters, not the editors, run the newsroom after the editors screwed up over the Jason Blair and Judy Miller fiascoes. I suspect the reporters convinced Washington bureau chief, Dean Baquet, that the story was solid and that they would be scooped by the Washington Post and The New Republic if The Times didn’t run the story after delaying for several months.

There has always been conflict between the Washington bureau and the New York newsroom, as Gabriel Sherman succinctly pointed out in his brilliant piece in The New Republic online “The Washington-New York divide is an eternal rift at the Paper of Record: Baquet had successfully brought stability and investigative acumen to the Washington bureau; with the McCain piece, he was being sucked into his first major struggle with New York.” Yes, sucked in by reporters.

In his blog, Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis wrote about “Folio’s report from its conference and a speech by Meredith president Jack Griffin. The fuller context: As a result, the company invested in its interactive and integrated marketing businesses—spending roughly $600 million since 2002 on launches, acquisitions and building out its existing Web sites, Griffin said, as well as redefining its editorial hiring approach. ‘We don’t hire editors anymore,’ he said. ‘We hire content strategists.’”

What The Times newsroom needs is a content strategist to sit next to Keller and help him think strategically (something a good publisher could do, but, then The Times publisher is Pinch, the leader of the lucky sperm club, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-warner/the-media-lucky-sperm-clu_b_86560.html and not the leader of The Times). Keller has been beaten over the head so much in recent years from both the right and the left that the pounding has affected his thinking. He is trying to do good journalism, keep his angry reporters happy, stem circulation declines, and please a feckless boss – too many balls to juggle to try to be strategic.

A content strategist might have advised Keller to think about the implications and timing of running the McCain story: (1) How would running the damaging story look after The Times endorsed McCain on January 25 for the February New York Republican primary? Would it reinforce the concept that editorial and news are independent or make Sulzberger look incompetent, as Jay Rosen implied, especially when on the Opinion page of the paper’s website there still appeared pictures of Clinton and McCain, along with headlines trumpeting the paper’s endorsements long after the primary was over? (2) How would using anonymous sources make The Times look after assistant managing editor Allan Siegal’s 2004 internal report, which asked, “Can we otherwise squeeze more anonymous sources out of our pages? Can we make our attributions (even the anonymous ones) less murky? Are there some stories we can afford to skip if they are not attributable to people with names?” (from Jay Rosen’s Press Think blog)? Wouldn’t it open The Times to criticism of breaking its own rules, succumbing to tabloiditis, and getting down in the gutter with the NY Post?

A good content strategist would have advised Keller to run the story as part of The Long Run series (as The Times did) but to run it before the NY primary, just as it ran a Long Run piece on Clinton the day of the primary – it would have been logical. Also, a good content strategist would have advised Keller to run the lobbyist connection part of the story, because that was consistent with the Long Run series the paper had done about other candidates, and to kill the alleged romance, because there wasn’t sufficient evidence – no seamen-stained blue dress.

But there was no strategy. Who’s in change here?

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:19 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at February 24, 2008 01:15 PM writes:

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February 20, 2008

Information Wants To Be Free

According to Wikipedia, “’information wants to be free’” is an expression that has come to be the unofficial motto of the free content movement. The expression is first recorded as pronounced by Stewart Brand at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984, in the following context: ‘On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.’”

When Shawn Fanning was a teenager at Northwestern, he was obviously on the side of the free-content movement when he invented the peer-to-peer file sharing program Napster, which allowed people, mostly computer-savvy young people, to either share or pirate music – depending on your point of view. If you were a free-content person, you shared files. If you were a content-valuable person, such as the rock band Metallica or the rapper Dr. Dre – both of whom sued Napster for enabling people to get their copyrighted songs without paying for them – you felt the songs were pirated.

Are you a content-free or content valuable person? Chances are you’re conflicted. You might like the free content on NYTimes.com and HuggingtonPost.com, but you might pay for the content on WSJ.com. On the one hand, you might look the other way when your kids pirate songs; but on the other hand, you might pay for songs on iTunes because you’re against pirating on moral grounds.

However, the quality of either free or paid-for content for the vast majority of people is not determined by the price of its acquisition by a publisher. The fact that a publisher pays an author a $5 million advance doesn’t make a book better, a $180 million film is not automatically better than one that cost $5 million to make, and the quality or value of a blog post or a newspaper column is not determined by how much the publisher paid the writer.

In fact, I would argue that not only does information want to be free but also that content is often better when it is free – free not only to readers but also free to publishers.

The free distribution of and access to content enabled by the Internet has created a new medium, a new journalism, for readers that is a much more of a two-way conversation than the old one-way model of print and broadcast. On websites that allow comments, the comments are often more relevant and better informed than the original blog or column, but, more important, comments allow readers to express their opinions and become part of a public dialogue. We all learn from each other, or as Satchel Paige said, “All of us are smarter than any one of us.”

Content that is free to publishers, such as the blogs on the Huffington Post, allow writers to express themselves freely without an eye cocked to a gate-keeping owner, editor, or advertiser. It’s pure, heartfelt opinion, and, more important, if it isn’t reasonably well written and well argued, it won’t get posted, which is a strong quality-control mechanism.

Content providers that have regularly scheduled, salaried columnists and pundits typically publish their content regardless of its quality. Bill O’Reilly has a regularly scheduled show and FOX News runs his program no matter what he rants about. The New York Times has hired William Kristol to write a column on Mondays, so it runs his column regardless of whether it’s well written, makes sense, or has typos or factual errors in it (see Kristol’s horribly written, typo-polluted column this past Monday). It reminds me of many tenured professors at universities who teach boring, irrelevant courses that are scheduled only because the schools have to have something for these dinosaurs to do.

The Huffington Post’s free model is working – its growth has been extraordinary and it now has, according to some reliable Internet audience measurement firms, as many readers as the AP website and is approaching the audience of the Washington Post’s website. Readers get access to thoughtful, well-written blogs by Senator Ted Kennedy, former senator Gary Hart, Nora Ehpron, Alex Baldwin, Tom Hayden, Charlie Rose, Marty Kaplan, and Terence Smith, to name only a few blog writers who are not writing for money. They are writing to get their opinions, their causes, their passions distributed, and the beneficiaries are the readers who can join in the conversation, and, thus, both reader and writer can be informed.

I made the above argument to a friend of mine who said that, “Well, when the Huffington Post starts making money, the bloggers will want to get paid, they won’t write free.” I disagree. Smart, committed people want their voices heard and smart, committed readers want to know what these people have to say. Free information is good, and free both ways is better.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:25 PM | Comments (3) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at February 20, 2008 05:59 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 20, 2008 02:23 PM writes:

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somalley at February 20, 2008 02:01 PM writes:

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February 15, 2008

Readers Respond to the Final Word on Fox News

Guest blogger Jesse Kornbluth writes:

"Just for the record...Bruce Braun writes:

'Apparently, Jesse is one of those that will forever blame Fox News and Mr. Murdoch for facilitating everything bad or evil in right wing politics. Are CNN and MSNBC blameless?'

What I wrote:

'No, the problem isn't the Fox News pundits. It's almost every pundit, including some Mr. Derrough would think I'd admire. Because, for me, it's not the opinion or the commentator, it's the context, it's the environment -- the problem is 24/7 cable itself, a bread-and-circuses medium that sucks intelligence out of the creators until they are sound-bite shills for whatever point-of-view is held by the owners.'

Maybe Mr. Braun read a piece by some other Jesse."

Also, astute blog reader Marilyn Keenan writes:

"So is he, Braun, saying that just because that's the way it's always been, that's the way it must always be? If we don't like the way things are, we should just shut up and accept them because he can 'prove' they've been that way before? He, like so many, takes the tack that there are only two shades----all black or all white. There are liberals and there are conservatives. There's right and there's left.

But he forgets that the majority of us are moderates, centrists, in the middle. (And research supports that, too.) And I find it hard to believe that most of us wouldn't prefer more balanced news, information, and analysis and not just the partisans from each end of the spectrum point-counterpointing each other as the media's lazy way of trying to be unbiased.

When you read research that says viewers want a different point of view, does that mean go get another contrarian to say contrary things? I used to use lots and lots of research in my job, too. And research gets analyzed and interpreted. I understand about ratings, too, but surely there's a way to provide good background, analysis, information, data, and thoughtful opinion without having to be too liberal or too conservative. There really are lots of shades of gray. Has anyone really tried?"

And guest bloger Michael Weiscopf writes, in part:

"Not necessarily the final word...one cannot escape the hard reality that Fox is a propaganda machine. He may argue that other networks aspire to be as effective as Fox News is, but that is not really the point...or is it?"

The Media Curmudgeon sides with Jesse Kornbluth in keeping the record straight and with the notion that the biggest problem is 24/7 cable news -- too much time to fill with nonsense. I agree with Marilyn Keenan that moderates -- the majority -- deserve better, and I agree with Michael Weiskopf that the issue is that Fox News is biased.

I would add that a huge problem is the talk show hosts -- O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, Carlson (Tucker), Matthews, et al. They are entertainers who try to establish a public persona by being outrageous just to get noticed, just like Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, and Howard Stern. They are all outrageous celebrity-seeking warlocks who belong in the same cauldron.

Posted by Charles Warner at 06:12 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

February 13, 2008

The Media Lucky Sperm Club

Three of the most visible members of the “lucky sperm club” are media moguls, Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times, James Dolan of Cablevision and Madison Square Garden (the Knicks and Rangers, etc.), and Mark Mays of Clear Channel Communications (the largest owner of radio stations is the U.S). None of them would have or be able to keep his job if their families didn’t own a controlling interest in the companies they run.

In 2006, when America’s second-richest person, Warren Buffett, turned the majority of his fast fortune over to the charitable foundation of America’s richest person, Bill Gates, he famously reiterated his strong opposition to handing over wealth to one’s offspring, who haven’t earned it -- to members of what he refers to as the “lucky sperm club.” The always quotable Buffett has said that letting sons or daughters run a family-owned company is akin to “choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.”

A new book titled Management Practice & Productivity: Why They Matter, is based on a study by Nick Bloom of Stanford University, Stephen Dorgan of McKinsey & Company, John Dowdy of McKinsey & Company, and John Van Reenen of the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics. Their research reinforces the complete folly of having an eldest son run a family business simply because he’s a member of the lucky sperm club.

The group studied 4,000 manufacturing businesses worldwide and with painfully dull and complicated academic research (which means it’s probably pretty good) showed, like most academic research does, what we already know to be true – that oldest sons who run family-owned and controlled companies stink as managers, with no better examples than Sulzberger, Dolan, and May.

The authors of Management Practice & Productivity: Why They Matter write, “When the firms in our survey were grouped according to ownership type, we found pronounced differences in both management practice score and performance. Companies with dispersed ownership performed best, while organizations owned and run by their founders or members of the founder’s family performed relatively poorly. Worst performing of all were family-owned firms run by the founder’s eldest son...”

The book was reviewed favorably by BusinessWeek and the Economist, but, strangely enough, not by The New York Times. And the week after the reviews hit, this item appeared in Jim Carnegie’s MBR Report: "On February 11, “Harbinger names its NYT Co. nominees, The Harbinger hedge fund and its partner in putting pressure on the New York Times Company management, Firebrand Partners, have named the four people they've nominated to the company board to challenge sitting directors. They've also nearly doubled their stock holding in the company.”

Marc Andreessen, on his blog.pmarca.com writes, “The hiring of Bill Kristol was the last straw. I can't take it anymore. I hereby inaugurate my New York Times Deathwatch, which will continue until the last Sulzberger has left the building.”

The only thing that is lower than the top management scores of The New York Times Company, Cablevision/Madison Square Garden, and Clear Channel Communication is the morale at these companies, because employees know nothing is going to change as long as daddy lets sonny play at management, a game in which all the really good players have to slow down, grudgingly, and let the prince win.

Posted by Charles Warner at 07:03 PM | Comments (3) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at February 15, 2008 01:05 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 15, 2008 12:31 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 15, 2008 12:26 PM writes:

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February 12, 2008

Guest Blogger Bruce Braun Has The Final Word

Apparently, Jesse is one of those that will forever blame Fox News and Mr. Murdoch for facilitating everything bad or evil in right wing politics. Are CNN and MSNBC blameless? How about MSNBC's Shuster suggesting the Hillary campaign had "pimped out" Chelsea? Hardly a new term, pimped, especially for Chelsea's generation, but within hours, the Clinton campaign was threatening to withdraw from an upcoming debate on that network, over a stupid remark.

Let's be realistic about all of the rhetoric over the objectivity of the news media today. For all of them, radio,television and print, specifically, it is about generating audiences. How soon most people forget the days of yellow journalism, muckrakers, and the adage: "if it bleeds, it leads". OOPS! Hey, all that is happening today, not just back in the 1920's and 40's!

Does Jesse think CNN, MSNBC and Fox don't all regularly conduct research and hire news consultants to guide them in how and what they present in their broadcasts? Ever hear about Frank Magid and Associates, the largest of the news consultants? Everything from the physical appearance, age, and clothing of on-air talent is strategized, up to and including the actual content and DELIVERY itself. Or as Magid says on their website: "At the heart of our work is the recognition that our client's success rests on an in-depth understanding of cultures, consumers, and the attitudes and perceptions that motivate them." Read between the lines on that claim.

Is this sort of audience research anything new? Hardly, Magid has been working his magic since 1957. Where do people think "Eyewitness News" and "Action News" comes from? Magid invented the names along with "news teams" and all of the outrageous special reports that take place during sweeps months. And Magid specializes just in TV.

I worked in news/talk and music radio for CBS in the 1970's and 80's and we hired research companies to tell us what audiences were being UNDERSERVED in our market along with the sorts of music, topics, subjects and stories we should emphasize (a top ten list as I recall). All of the on-air talent were selected not just on the basis of their ability but on how they tested with the audiences research, which told us we were being UNDERSERVED by other on air talent in the market. This sort of media research is ongoing, year in and year out. For the record, TV entertainment shows and music radio stations are also huge consumers of market research as well.

Everyone in media is constantly searching for that niche market that has been ignored or one they think they can dominate by exploiting the weaknesses of the competition. ESPN, CNN and MTV are all examples of early niche TV exploiters.

How much more obvious can it be? Fox News has gained success because they tapped into a segment of the viewing audience (as well as Rush on radio) that felt the existing news outlets were biased on the left side of the political spectrum. I've yet to see any sort of survey of journalists as to political party affiliation and political viewpoint that did not skew overwhelmingly Democratic and Liberal. For the Fox News audience, at the risk of being redundant (in research terms), they believed they were underserved. How many of those people believe that CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS are propaganda arms of the Democratic party? Probably about the same number of those who believe what Jesse asserts about Fox and the Republicans.

Jesse might want to recognize that all incumbent and aspiring politicians conduct their own versions of what Magid does. As I recall, Bill Clinton took audience research to the most sophisticated levels it had ever been. Whatever buzz words or catch phases popped up in weekly voter focus groups, magically made their way into the following week's speeches and comments to the press, from Clinton and all members of his administration. In marketing, we call it keeping on message.

Truth in journalism is a moving target. Or to quote Bill Clinton: "It depends upon what the meaning of is, is." Most on-air mistakes, incorrect captioning and inadvertent slights are just that, screw-ups. To read in some level of conspiracy with these screw-ups is an over-reaction. Any one who works in a television news organization, knows that the rush to get on the air trumps accuracy in many cases. Left or Right, there are not any cabals sitting in a dark news room strategizing how to make the other side look bad. Politicians manage to to a great job of misspeaking, looking or sounding foolish without the help of journalists.

I'm no fan of Karl Rove or Fox News, but to demonize them for what every other political strategist and brand marketer does is disingenuous. Politicians, irrespective of party can be counted on to do whatever it takes to keep their grips on the levers of power. Promise anything and then blame the opposition for never delivering. Try running for any national office without the blessing of party leadership and see how far you can't go. Nice.

Rather than everyone getting their panties in a bunch over Fox News, how about focusing on the looming nomination grab amongst the Democratic Super Delegates. Take a look elsewhere on the Huffington Post for Ari Emanuel's "My Brother the Superdelagate and Why I Don't Trust Him To pick the Next President" Remember Bush-Gore in 2000? Same story, different day.

All pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than other pigs. Let's get over this misconception of our living in a democracy. We don't. We live in a Republic, where we elect people to represent us. One person, one vote is a fallacy especially when it comes to voting in a democracy where we return 98% of incumbents to office in every election cycle due to gerrymandering and no national term limits. Once in office, they vote what the party leadership dictates or suffer the consequences of being marginalized by the leadership.

"Gambling in Rick's? I'm shocked, shocked!"

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:09 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

February 10, 2008

Guest Blogger Michael Weiskopf Also Responds

Fox News has served as the Pravda of the Republican machine, and Rove's new gig is little more than an example of the media equivalent of the Military Industrial Complex, (Stephanopoulos is a Democratic example).

It is fair to argue that none of the major media outlets are offering substantive news on a regular basis, particularly through their cable networks. They offer political opinions as the main course, with some hard facts as the seasoning and celebrity gossip as dessert. There are occasions where investigative reporting occurs, but it has become the rare exception, and, in most cases, hard news that has an impact on our lives has a shelf life of a few days and then vaporizes, as events about missing persons and murders go on like serial dramas. It is fair to argue that in this environment Watergate would have been a three-day story.

Let's remember that this is ultimately about commercial interest and ratings, especially at News Corp., which reflects the Murdoch philosophy of commercial Darwinism, and in this respect Fox News resembles the WWF where wrestlers change their persona from villain to good guy and then back in an effort to keep fans in the seats. O'Reilly and the rest of the bunch would likely become strident left wingers or be replaced if it meant one more rating point with corresponding increases in advertising revenue, but keep in mind that corporate advertisers for the most part are more comfortable with right wing rhetoric, so don't hold your breath for O'Reilly to be bounced.

This type of flip-flopping doesn't seem to be the case with the management of the other news outlets, not necessarily because their management has a greater morality, but because they are not as determined as Murdoch and Ailes. PBS, Lehrer, Moyers, and Amy Goodman do not cover celebrity gossip; they drill down into stories and offer serious and thoughtful coverage of issues and deal with meaningful discourse. This type of discourse seems to me to be the definition of news and the responsible outlets are the ones marginalized by Fox News's rush to the commercial gutter.

Posted by Charles Warner at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Guest Blogger Jesse Kornbluth Disagrees

Neil Derrough is former president of the CBS Television Stations Division, and I am a schmoo who's seen, infrequently, on Plum TV, but we both have eyes and ears, and so, when we sit in front of a TV set, we might be equals.

In that spirit, may I respectfully suggest that -- like the network he defends in his post -- he misses the point?

Mr. Derrough falls into the easy, lazy game of ascribing positions to commentators. Who cares about the “politics” of a Chris Matthews? His problem with Hillary Clinton reflects that he has a deep-seated problem with [at least a few] women and man-crushes on [at least a few] Republican presidential candidates -- and could urgently use some help. Lou Dobbs also needs more counsel than a political consultant can provide; he never met a Mexican he couldn't hate. And while I'm thinking about CNN -- the “liberal” straw man in every piece like this -- why does that network keep a low-rated racist hack like Glenn Beck on if it doesn't want to grow up to be just like Fox?

No, the problem isn't the Fox News pundits. It's almost every pundit, including some Mr. Derrough would think I'd admire. Because, for me, it's not the opinion or the commentator, it's the context, it's the environment -- the problem is 24/7 cable itself, a bread-and-circuses medium that sucks intelligence out of the creators until they are sound-bite shills for whatever point-of-view is held by the owners. And as for informing the viewers about our complex world -- oh, who cares about them?

But to Mr. Derrough's point...

I don't object to the existence of Fox News; it isn’t regulated, it's entitled.

I don't object to Karl Rove on Fox News; it can hire whomever it likes.

But as a sometime journalist, I object to lies. That is, conscious, deliberate misrepresentations. I don't know Mr. Derrough's politics, but I dare him to write a single unqualified sentence praising Karl Rove's dedication to truth.

And as for Fox News, is it really a matter of "opinion" that Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party?

And, hey, we all make factual errors from time to time. Some people really thought Saddam had weapons. Not many of them still say so. Oddly, most have gigs on Fox News. And while we're talking facts...Mr. Derrough, does global warming exist? If so, please send Fox News the memo.

My beef with Fox News: When it gets the facts wrong, it generally seems to skew right. Like:

Just days ago: John McCain was labeled D-Ariz. Well, isn't he?

Fox News aired a picture of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) during a discussion of indicted Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA). Innocent error? Of course -- both are African-American.

And this beauty:

In the town of Lewiston, Maine, a group of Somalian Muslim middle school students were the subject of a cruel prank when their peers placed a ham steak next to them in order to personally offend the students. School officials filed a report because the students considered the act to be a hate/bias crime.

This actual story was then spoofed by a parody site called Associated Content, which made up quotes and details, such as the school's intention to 'create an anti-ham 'response plan.'"

On Tuesday, Fox & Friends reported these parody quotes and details as actual news. Poking fun at the students, hosts asked whether ham was "a hate crime…or lunch?" and showed screen shots of ham sandwiches, starving Somalians, belching, animal noises, and mock "reenactments" of the incident. Ironically, the hosts assured viewers several times, "We're not making this up!"

I could go on, but why? People who like Fox News and believe it are a lost cause.

I'm reminded of a guy I recently met who only watches Fox News and loves Rush.

"Is Rush concerned about Bush's expansion of executive powers?" I asked.

"Not at all," he said.

"Does he rant about the way habeas corpus has disappeared and Bush can, in essence, jail any of us as terrorists?"

"Never says a word about it," he said.

"What if Hillary Clinton were elected President and she inherited the power to jail any American she thought might be a terrorist -- would Rush care then?"

"You bet," he said.

And so would Fox News. O'Reilly and Hannity, for sure. But I bet the network would find a way to twist the facts, too.

Afterthought: It's Sunday morning, time for the pundits to kick politicians around on the "serious" shows. President Bush is interviewed on Fox News today. I guess he knows where to find "fair and balanced."

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:17 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at February 10, 2008 09:48 PM writes:

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February 09, 2008

Guest Blogger Supports Fox News

Neil Derrough, former president of the CBS Television Stations Division writes a thoughtful defense of FOX News, which follows.

The post asking for ”useful discourse” prompts me to question if what he really wants is to just ignore a clear matter of fact. Many associated with administrations have had meaningful jobs in the media for years. Granted, Rove is a former member of the present administration and that may touch a nerve. But it certainly doesn’t disqualify him from offering his insight any more than the Clinton administration’s Balgala or Carville offering theirs. But I submit, Rove is not what most troubles the legion of Fox News critics. The problem for most who protest so vigorously is that Fox News is there at all.

Let’s say that Fox News is more right than left. Would most agree that CNN and MSNBC are more left than right? That would depend on who was asked. I suspect the so-called mainstream media would say they are neutral. That too would draw an outcry from a sizable number of people. The hard question is, what shapes the opinions of Fox News? In my view it’s the commentators.

In your Media Curmudgeon post you singled out O’Reilly, you left out Hannity. In that they are the most highly rated cable commentators, they have an enormous bearing on the public’s and the media’s opinion of Fox News. However MSNBC offers up Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman. Any knowledgeable observer wouldn’t have them leaning right. It’s fair to say that all of these guys are in the opinion business. That’s a legitimate part of journalism. Therefore, no foul. MSNBC however, did have Matthews and Olberman moderate debates. That was a giant foul and a blemish for NBC News.

CNN is a harder case. They do have Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck. However, it doesn’t seem to me they shape to any great extent how people feel about CNN as much as the subtle but real left-leaning news presentation. This presentational left-leaning subtlety is at the heart the questions many have about the mainstream media in general.

The case against Fox News is an empty bag. Crying out because another news organization offers another option for news viewing is just nonsense. I don’t agree with everything Fox News does, but I do disagree with the concentrated effort to marginalize all that it does.

It has been substantiated that when an effort is made to analyze the news content of these organizations, not their commentators, a far less emotional conclusion is reached.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:02 PM | Comments (2) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at February 11, 2008 02:22 PM writes:

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digibandit at February 10, 2008 11:38 PM writes:

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February 08, 2008

Ailes Assails Whiners

In an email FOX News Channel CEO Roger Ailes sent this week to all staffers, he wrote, “…I sometimes hear too much selfish complaining, petty whining, and a desire to have what someone else has. Of course there are exceptions to this and we all know who they are, on the other hand do not assume I am talking about someone else."

Come on, guys, quitchyerbellyaching. What have you have to be unhappy about, after all, as Ailes writes, “Presumably those of you who came to Fox News Channel have done better here than you were doing before. We make a decent living. Many of us are quite comfortable. Some of us are famous. We work for a great company. We contribute to the most exciting profession in the world and we live in America.”

In the email, he reminds everyone, that “My proudest accomplishment is being able to keep my word to Mr. Murdoch that I could and would lead the effort to build a fair and balanced news network. It is up to you to see that the dream continues.” He might have added but didn’t, that in order to keep the dream alive and to ensure that FOX News is fair and balanced, he recently hired Karl Rove – the ultimate fair and balanced person, right up there with Dick Cheney – as a news analyst and commentator.

What do fair-minded reporters and anchors at FOX News have to whine about? Certainly not Bill O’Reilly’s thoughtful, rational, calm, fact-filled, objective discussions? Certainly not Sean Hannity’s even more respectful, nuanced, and balanced musings? Certainly not the addition of Karl Rove to the roster of non-partisan analysts? Certainly not the emergence of the serious, meaty, highly popular, bimboless FOX Business News channel as another FOX News sister brand? Certainly the women employed by FOX News have no complaint about the objective, loving, fair news coverage of Hillary Clinton or about comments the FOX News personalities make about her.

Ailes wrote that email because he wants to keep the dream alive. What dream? The dream that FOX News is fair and balanced and that he’s as thin as Barack Obama.

Posted by Charles Warner at 05:03 PM | Comments (4) | Print |

Jesse Kornbluth at February 9, 2008 04:27 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 9, 2008 03:35 PM writes:

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Bill Stella at February 9, 2008 02:46 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 9, 2008 11:29 AM writes:

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February 04, 2008

Game 17, Commercials 3

Usually the commercials are the best thing about the Super Bowl, but in Super Bowl XLII, when the underdog Giants beat the Patriots with a white knuckles 83-yard touchdown drive with less than two minutes left, the commercials were thrust into the background.

Many sports analysts and fans are saying that it was the most exciting Super Bowl game ever, in spite of the relatively low 17 – 14 score. And some advertising critics are calling it one of the worst Super Bowls ever for commercials, but I wouldn’t go that far.

Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield’s review of the commercials is highly critical and downright depressing. He accuses advertisers of homophobia, scaring children, insincerity, and worse, pandering to “young males' masturbatory fantasies.” This is the same Bob Garfield who conducted an unprofessional ambush interview last March with Bill Gates and who has a website and blog titled ComcastMustDie.com detailing how he hates his cable provider, Comcast, because it didn’t give him the service he thinks he deserves as a lofty media star (columnist for Ad Age and co-host of “On The Media,” one of my favorite programs on WNYC and the best media criticism program on radio or television, in spite of Garfield’s often snide approach). Garfield has become too full of himself and too serious, and a pontificator -- bloviator is next if he doesn't lighten up.

The New York Times’s Stuart Elliott has a much more enlightening and less angry review. I recommend it.

I was offended by only two commercials by the same advertiser, SalesGenie.com. The company wasted money on silly, poorly produced commercials for a product that no one could figure out what it did. I liked several commercials: Budweiser’s Clydesdale and Dalmatian spot, Fed Ex’s giant carrier pigeon spot, and Bud Light’s cheese-run spot. USA Today’s AdMeter rated the Budweiser Clydesdale spot and the Fed Ex spot as the two most popular – both ads were one-minute long, something unusual for television commercials these days. In fact, there seemed more 60-second spots this year than ever: Ad Meter #7 Coca-Cola, #8 Max Diet Pepsi, #13 Vitamin Water, #18 the NFL’s uplifting Chester Pitts spot, and #21 Pepsi’s Justin Timberlake spot.

By my count, there were about 57 commercials in the pre-game show and game, not including local breaks. Tied for the number-one category were non-alcoholic beverages (soft drinks, vitamin water, Gatorade) and movies, closely followed by autos and beer – clearly the Super Bowl is a mucho macho advertising delivery vehicle, which is, essentially, what it and all commercial television is, except this year there was a great football game between the commercials.

Perhaps the networks and advertisers will take a lesson away from Super Bowl XLII and consider putting more compelling content between commercials and running longer commercials that tell us a story, entertain us, and inoculate us with warm feelings about their brand. Let’s hope.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:33 PM | Comments (3) | Print |

digibandit at February 4, 2008 04:42 PM writes:

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ThomH at February 4, 2008 03:27 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at February 4, 2008 02:17 PM writes:

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February 02, 2008

"Yes We Can" Video

An inspiring video supporting Barack Obama:

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | Print |