Thursday, March 12, 2009

Quick Snapshot of the American MSM

I found this piece on The Corner to be extremely enlightening:

Fox News vs. MSNBC [Peter Wehner]

Kathryn, I wanted to piggyback on your link to the Ari Fleischer vs. Chris Matthews exchange. I thought Ari destroyed Matthews, and did so in a calm, factual, reasoned way. Matthews is loud, obnoxious, terribly ill-informed, and has a crush on Barack Obama — all of which are reasons why Matthews is perfect to host a program on MSNBC. I can’t help but notice, by the way, that the ratings for primetime shows on Fox News have skyrocketed during the Age of Obama. According to the latest ratings, Fox has the six top-rated cable news shows — hosted by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bret Baier, Shepard Smith, and Greta Van Susteren — each which draws 2 million viewers or more (Van Susteren drew a few dozen viewers short of 2 million). MSNBC’s top-rated shows rank ninth (Rachel Maddow) and eleventh (Keith Olbermann), with Olbermann drawing just over 900,000 viewers. And Chris Matthews doesn’t crack the top eleven rated programs. Perhaps this is evidence that MSNBC, which during the last few years have existed on embers of hate and resentment, is increasingly passé; Bush Derangement Syndrome is less interesting when Bush has left the stage. Secondly, the number of people who watched Ari slam Matthews could roughly fit in the size of a football stadium.

Chris Matthews long ago became a joke; what seems clear is that he’s an increasingly obscure one.




In case you're interested to see a perfect example of why so few people are watching Chris Matthews, try to watch this video:

Question: Does any reasonable person unequivocally believe that Matthews is NOT in the employ of the Obama administration? Perhaps not through direct payments right now but some other favors perhaps?



On a possible bright note, a columnist named Ross Douthat has been hired by the New York Times. What's remarkable is that he is supposed to be a conservative. I've not heard of the gentlemen but several people at NRO seem to think highly of him. I'll reserve judgment until I read several columns of his in The Times.

One thing for sure: If the law were ever changed and Mark Steyn was elected President of the United States
then Ross Douthat could serve as a good double:
White guys with beards: The new face of conservative Americans?!? :-)

2 comments:

David in North Burnaby BC said...

Matthews and Olbermann are a pair of shameless Obama shills. Its good to know their ratings are poor and better yet to know they'll have the mess Bama makes stuck to them forever. Couldn't happen to more deserving manure chutes.

Robert W. said...

Aloha David!

Don't you find it "strange" that the Shaw cable package includes MSNBC but in order to get Fox News you have to pay extra?!