Category: Media in America

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Congress January 6 Media in America

Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Set A Daytime Ratings Record And Humiliated Fox News

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday was a massive ratings hit, according to the Los Angeles Times, setting a new daytime ratings record.

The Tuesday afternoon hearing, which the committee announced just a day ahead of time, featured 25-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Her dramatic testimony attracted 13,231,000 viewers across all major networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, according to numbers from Nielsen, a ratings firm.

In comparison, some of the most highly-rated shows on television were no match for the ratings Hutchinson received even though they are broadcast in primetime.

The ratings for Hutchinson’s testimony would likely have been even higher had the hearing not taken place in the middle of the day when most people are at work.

Fox, it should be noted, was humiliated with the ratings they drew for programming during the publicized Tuesday hearing, drawing a paltry 1.7 million viewers during the same two-hour time timeframe between 1 and 3 p.m.

Even more embarrassing for Fox is that while the they refused to televise the hearing, many of their hosts spent the rest of the afternoon and evening trying to shoot holes in what Hutchinson had said under oath.

Donald Trump was clearly watching, and has been positively apoplectic in his reaction, The Independent reports:

Deriding her as a “whack job” and claiming he hardly knew her despite her role as a senior aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, he also claimed she had asked to decamp to Florida with him for employment after the end of his presidency.

“I was going down to Florida with a group of people,” Mr Trump claimed, “great group of people, patriots, and her name was thrown out there and they said, ‘stay away from her.’ They said bad things about her.”

He did not specify who “they” were. Mr. Trump has denied Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony that when he found out he was not being taken to the Capitol to march on Congress with his supporters, he lunged at the wheel of his presidential car and then grabbed an agent in his detail.

 

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Fox News January 6 Media in America

The Ratings Are In: 20 Million Watched The Jan. 6 Hearing – Only 3 Million Watched Fox

Based on the numbers from the first televised hearing of the January 6 House Select Committee, it appears that Fox News dropped the ball in a big way and got destroyed in the ratings.

According to the New York Times, at least 20 million viewers tuned in to watch the hearings. Only 3 million opted for Fox, which deliberately avoided televising the historic event:

An audience of at least 20 million people watched the first prime-time hearing of the House Select Committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on Thursday night, according to Nielsen.

ABC attracted the biggest audience, with 5.2 million viewers. NBC and CBS each had an audience of more than three million. MSNBC averaged more than four million, and CNN drew 2.7 million. (The 20 million figure did not yet include PBS, so the total audience was most likely a bit bigger.)

MSNBC did especially well compared to Fox:

MSNBC averaged a whopping (for them) 4.161 million total viewers, trouncing both Fox News (2.957 million total viewers) by 29 percent and CNN (2.617 total million viewers) by 37 percent. CNN finished way ahead of its direct cable news competition in the key demographic for news programming, adults 25-54, with 709,000 viewers from that age range vs. 555,000 on MSNBC and 513,000 on Fox. That’s a 22 percent advantage over MSNBC and 28 percent win over Fox News.

The three Fox hosts who provided anti-coverage and criticism of the hearings — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — saw their numbers crater, which is bad news for the conservative network with more public hearings on the way in the weeks ahead.

Once again, Fox would rather lose tens of millions of viewers than air the truth. It’s one of many reasons they should remove the word “news” from their propaganda network.

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Fox News Media in America

Jeanine Pirro’s Cell Phone Goes Off During ‘The Five’ – The Ringtone? ‘I Love This Bar’

In what may well be the ultimate example of perfect irony, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro got humiliated on the air Wednesday during an edition of “The Five” when her cell phone began going off.

According to HuffPost:

Just before (Greg) Gutfeld began his recurring “Animals Are Great” segment, the former judge’s phone rang, causing her ironic ringtone to blast through the moment and prompting laughter from her Fox News co-hosts.

“What the hell’s going on?” Gutfeld asked as Pirro wrestled with her cell phone while trying to turn the ringer off.

The irony, of course, is that Pirro has been accused of broadcasting while she’s inebriated. For example, there’s this example from March of this year:

During a discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop (Yes, conservatives are STILL beating that dead horse), Pirro looked and sounded like she was two sheets to the wind, unable to pronounce the name of former CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Twitter had some thoughts on Jeanine’s ringtone:

 

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Fox News Media in America

Fox News Is Upset Because Jen Psaki Told The Truth About Peter Doocy’s Moronic Questions

As we’ve long suspected, the powers that be at Fox News can dish out the abuse, mockery, and criticism, but they sure as hell can’t take it.

The right-wing “news” network is up in arms because White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki dared to tell the absolute truth about Fox correspondent Peter Doocy.

Specifically, Psaki was asked on the Pod Save America podcast:

“Peter Doocy is a stupid son of a bitch or does he just play one on TV?”

Psaki replied:

“He works for a network that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch.”

Where’s the lie in that statement? Fox has always been known for asking moronic questions and trying to stir up fake controversy over crap like their bogus, manufactured “War on Christmas.”

In response, Fox reporter John Roberts (who used to be a half-decent journalist when he was still at CBS News) got on his high horse and defended Doocy, probably because he knew Psaki was correct and he felt a need to justify his own pathetic existence on a network that has about as much news as a kosher hot dog has pork:

“(Doocy) makes the decisions on what topics he wants to quiz you on, and develops the questions himself.

“His philosophy is a basic tenet of journalism. Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. If that makes all of us ‘stupid s.o.b.s’, so be it.”

OK, John, we accept that you and Doocy are both stupid sons of bitches. And that goes double for Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.

A spokesperson for Fox also defended Doocy, telling Mediaite:

“In his role as White House correspondent, Peter Doocy’s job is to elicit truth from power for the American public. His questions are his own, he is a terrific reporter and we are extremely proud of his work.”

He’s a terrific reporter? Then clearly you guys have lower standards than we suspected.

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Fox News Media in America

Erin Burnett Says Her Former Colleague Maria Bartiromo Has ‘Lost Her Way’

There was a time several years ago when Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and CNN host Erin Burnett were working for the same network, CNBC.

Since then, Burnett has gone on to host an evening show on CNN while Bartiromo currently works for Fox News, where she regularly disseminates all sorts of bizarre right-wing conspiracy theories.

Speaking with David Axelrod on The Axe Files, Mediaite reports, Burnett said she truly believes that Bartiromo has “lost her way.”

“I always thought her greatest strength was that she was a hard worker and I feel that she lost her way. Clearly, she’s lost her way. I’m obviously not personally close to her, but I think it’s sad what has happened to be honest because she was a very hard worker.”

Axelrod asked Burnett if she thought the two were in direct competition with each other during their time together at CNBC. She responded:

“We definitely were, and I don’t know, maybe as life goes on I’ll get more perspective on it, I think there is a desire out there for there to be a women versus women thing. I hope that that’s lessened over time, but when I was there that was certainly part of it.”

Recently, Bartiromo had this to say on her show:

“Some people have told me … this administration does not see Putin as the enemy, they see him as a partner on many issues.”

Really? Then why is the Biden administration arming the Ukrainian freedom fighters and the president making it clear he sees Putin as a war criminal? Bartiromo’s comment sounds like something she made up and decided to share with faithful Fox viewers who believe whatever BS the network is selling.

Maria Bartiromo is a hack. And she hasn’t only lost her way. She clearly sold her soul the day she arrived at Fox.