Hey Hey Hey, Good-bye!
Last night, one could not help but feel a subtle vibration as the Earth jolted from the collective jumping with glee by conservatives around the country. Keith Olbermann is shutting down Countdown.
Of course, we at TheLobbyist celebrated a little as well.
It sounds to me that the problem was working with Olbermann. His ratings, while trailing behind nearly every Fox News program, were better than any “news” program at either MSNBC or CNN according to Drudge:
NEWS RACE
THURS. JAN. 20, 2011FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,918,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,079,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 1,940,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,786,000
FOXNEWS BECK 1,780,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,460,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,106,000
CNN PIERS 1,025,000
MSNBC MADDOW 976,000
MSNBC O'DONNELL 855,000
MSNBC SCHULTZ 760,000
CNN COOPER 740,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 700,000
TMZ reports, “Sources connected with the network tell us … Comcast honchos did not like Keith’s defiance and the way he played in the sandbox.” Sounds to me like he was just as painful to work with as he was to watch.
In the end, at least we know who we can blame for the era of Olbermann… damn you Pat Sajak!
-rj
Should Government Go After Fox, Breitbart?
The DailyCaller has a good article about left-leaning bloggers and journalists who are calling on the federal government to clamp down on Fox news after reporting Andrew Breitbart’s edited video of now jobless Shirley Sherrod supposedly admitting her own racism in her job. When people watch the video of Ms. Sherrod in its entirety, they can gleam from it a wholly separate picture.
Here’s the rub: I know Fox News and Andrew Breitbart participated in ruining this lady’s career, and they should be reprimanded by us, the consumer. However, I can see outcry on both sides of the aisle after this story broke, and especially after the fecal matter met the fan blades; but I did not see the same response from the left after ABC news reported on bad information. That is what Fox is guilty of, reporting faulty information. They should apologize and set the record straight, but government should stay the hell out of it. Otherwise, if the government lays down the law on Fox News, they should go after ABC for reporting false information about President Bush’s Air National Guard records, and Andrew Sullivan for his Levi and Bristol Palin infatuation (all which turned out to be false) and hell, every other news organization that reported something that ended up damaging their own credibility anyway. That’s what will, and should, happen with Andrew Breitbart and Fox after this fiasco.
-rj
Media Matters vs. Fox News
Yesterday, a friend on Facebook linked to a Media Matters for America critique of a Fox News chart supposing to show “Job Loss By Quarter.” Normally I brush off Media Matters, because while they often have very solid analysis, I also feel they often do more attacking AGAINST conservative media than analysis of, or “fighting back against,” conservative media.
However, the analysis by MM’s Jocelyn Fong interested me, particularly since she hit the chart from multiple angles and even gave Fox the benefit of the doubt a couple of times. This latter part is not something I often see when I go to MM. Below is the chart, with some of Fong’s analysis:
The chart claims to show “Job loss by quarter.” But it doesn’t. (We lost 15 million jobs in the second quarter of 2010!?? Surely, that would have been catastrophic news.) What this defective chart actually displays is the number of unemployed during four random quarters over the past two-and-a-half years.
And later:
Notice on Fox’s chart that the first interval on the horizontal axis, from December ’07 to September ’08 represents 9 months. The second interval, between September ’08 and March ’09, represents 6 months. And the third interval, from March ’09 to June ’10, represents 15 months, almost all of Obama’s term so far. So the third interval should be two-and-a-half times as long as the second. But in Fox’s chart, it’s shorter!
The effect of this is to flatten out the steep rise in the number of unemployed between September ’08 and March ’09 (before Obama’s policies started taking effect) and to suggest that the increases in unemployment later during Obama’s term were more dramatic than they actually were. To get the line straight, Fox also manipulated the scale of the vertical axis.
I decided to do some background checking. I called the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and was led to their June 04, 2010 report of May’s unemployment numbers, which said 15.0 million people were unemployed during May. (The BLS employee I spoke to said the 15 million was slightly rounded up from the actual numbers.) So far, it looks like Fox was not actively misleading with information on the chart- merely, as Fong noted initially, misnaming the chart and skewing its intervals. Bad, but not dishonest.
However, I was still unsatisfied, and called Chris Harris at MM, who followed up with Fong on my behalf (their research people don’t take calls directly, according to the operator). My question is in bold, with her answer following:
Is it accurate to say these are the number of jobs lost at these points during the recession?
Not quite. The number of unemployed and “jobs lost” are not the same thing. When the recession started in December 2007, there were around 7.7 million people unemployed, according to the BLS Current Population Survey data. If you go back a couple of years, to December 2004, long before the recession began, there were 7.9 million people unemployed. Since there are always several million people unemployed at any given point, it’s misleading to say that 15 million have “lost jobs” as of May 2010. It’s even more misleading to omit any information from the period between March ’09 and June ’10, during which the unemployment level trend shifted significantly from increasingly steeply to essentially leveling out. The number of unemployed is now 639,000 lower than when it peaked in October 2009. You have to wonder why Fox chose those four specific points to include in the chart. And it’s also misleading for Fox to manipulate the scale of their chart in a way that understates the unemployment increases in late 2008 and early 2009 and exaggerates unemployment increases during the remainder of Obama’s term.
In retrospect, I realize my question was not phrased well. Not only did I forget that there is always unemployment, even in good times, but I also should have asked- as Fong noted- about the number of unemployed as opposed to jobs lost. However, I think Fong’s response shows that while Fox did skew the scale and misname the chart, there was no intent to mislead on what the actual information.
In the end, I think Fong was a bit overzealous in her analysis, because she obviously has talent, but also clearly was going out of her way to hammer Fox. She notes the following in her closing:
And again, when you use Fox’s data points like this, with no information about the period between March ’09 and June ’10, you miss the fact that the number of unemployed has essentially stopped rising since the Fall of 2009.
While this is entirely accurate, it also obscures that a lot of the hiring has been census workers, and that Fox wasn’t attempting, by Fong’s own statements, to show when and where employment stopped falling. Whether or not they should have is a debate for a different day- Fox was merely showing the unemployment rate at semi-random quarters (two of the quarters were the start of the recession and the current month, hence why they were semi-random data points) throughout the recession, as Fong herself noted. Again:
What this defective chart actually displays is the number of unemployed during four random quarters over the past two-and-a-half years.
It is overstepping of the analysis like this that causes me to sometimes brush off Media Matters. They do a lot of good work, but why spend so much time and effort on tearing apart a single Fox chart, when discrediting this particular chart could have been done with the above quote and a couple of their own charts? This is why they appear to some to be as much a tool of the Democratic Party as they likely believe Fox News to be of the Republican Party.
Update: Media Matters has an update noting Fox has changed the name of the chart to reflect more accurately upon the numbers.
The Rand-Slide… and Other Tuesday Lessons
Oops…Democrats Didn’t Think This Through…
Despite the despondent attitude I had earlier this week, I’m a bit more optimistic after a number of Democratic mistakes on health care reform, as well as the leadership of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). Even better, I saw on Fox News this morning that a CBS poll showed the vast majority of Americans want the GOP to repeal the health care reform bill President Obama signed into law. Even better than that, however, is the upcoming ping-pong of the reconciliation bill back to the House. Maybe they can scare a few Democrats into shutting it down. Unlikely, but possible.
Hope springs eternal- I just hope the right is not getting reform fatigue. I know I am. (Though that might be the allergies…)
God Help Me. I Agree With Kennedy…
…now granted, there are myriad ways I agreed with John F. Kennedy (and many where we disagreed); there were not very many instances where I agreed with the old “Liberal Lion” though and let’s face it, his son Patrick is a bit of a tool. Let’s just say, if he asked me to go for a joy ride in his Mustang Convertible, I would kindly take a rain-check.
But Patrick Kennedy did something yesterday, that I believe deserves bi-partisan support. He went after the media for turning our Federal government into a circus show, 24/7, and perpetuating the belief that Congress is nothing more than an episode of Maury in expensive suits. And the media is guilty of the charges that were levied against them.
He’s right. How many of our nation’s bravest men and women have laid down their lives in far away places, only to have their memories passed over because the press finds sexual harassment and “world’s ugliest dog” far more interesting? And this is by no means, a liberal or conservative issue: news organizations with a favorable sway towards either ideological camp are guilty of this, even though I find FoxNews and MSNBC to be the worst offenders.
Congressman Kennedy and I may part ways on every political issue under the sun, and we even disagree with what the objective of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, I believe the impassioned monologue he delivered yesterday should speak to all Americans and remind them that the most important issues are those that have to do with our security and the security of our men and women overseas. So what Massa might be gay (a topic unworthy of discussion, as I cannot imagine someone going on Larry King Live and having the Crypt Keeper on that show hammering them on whether or not that guest is straight … hard hitting indeed) and he may be a nutjob for lack of a better term; there are more important things out there to be talking about. But many people in the news media wouldn’t know, because they are just as seperated from everyday Americans as politicians are.
-rj
Sunday Shows
While I cannot watch all of the Sunday shows due to my limited omnipresence, I was able to catch This Week on ABC with George Will, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, and special guest Roger Ailes of Fox News. (This was after watching a rare Power Panel on Fox News Sunday which contained both William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer). I must say, I was impressed with Roger Ailes’ ability to fire back at the other side of the table when they sniped, which is an action George WIll rarely does, for good reason I might add. It was nice when Huffington accused the GOP of using “paranoid politics” and anger to energize a base that ended up helping Sen. Scott Brown win his elections, to have Ailes fire back with his own anecdote about Huffington Posts’ columns comparing Ailes to J Edgar Hoover and other similar snarky posts. Point. Ailes.
The roundtable played out like a fireworks show: a pop here, glittering showers of fire and lights there before subsiding into monotone. The end was a magnificent display, however, with Ailes calling them all out around the table, and making ABC regret extending him an invitation in the first place. Liberal tweeters and bloggers alike are answering Ailes’ points in typical ad hominem fashion:
| Roger Ailes’ doctor wants him to lose 100 pounds. #abcnews #thisweek | ||
| RT @KatrinaNation: Paul Krugman terrific on ABC “This week”on dysfunctional Senate. Priceless: his face listening to Roger Ailes blathering | ||
Unabashed, Untouched, Unachievable Idealism
It appears that if this Fox News story has legs, then we can throw away all the shallow remarks from Obama toward the Bush Administration regarding “sweet heart deals” and Cheney’s previous position at Haliburton.
Fox News is reporting that,
“…the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids…”
So much for changing the way things are done in Washington. Change is coming? Not so much.
-nick
Best of thelobbyist 2009
Thanks to all our readers for making 2009 a great year for thelobbyist.? Below you will find the top post from each month during the 2009 calendar year.
January – 8 days until EPA annihilation of America?Stop Them! – nick r. brown
February – Pseudo-Scientists Kill Possum (Not to be confused with Opossum) – nick r. brown
March – Conservatives Just Don?t ?Get It? – nick r. brown
April – Pay for Performance Act of 2009: An Encroachment of a Free Society – sam theodosopoulos
May – ?I?d Pretend I Was One Of Those Deaf-Mutes.? – nick r. brown
June – Fox News Presents Obstacle For NH GOP Opportunity – sam theodosopoulos
July – Tie: The Personal Democracy Forum Doesn?t Help Conservatives & Personal Democracy Forum: The Future of the Conservative Movement – nick r. brown
August – The Moore You Know About Obama? -? tom qualtere
September – Conservatives Are Right On Gay Marriage – dustin siggins
October - We?ve Never Begged For Money? – nick r. brown
November – An Actual Solution To Health Care Reform -? nicholas j. rohrhoff
December – Pro-Life IS Pro Health Care Reform – dustin siggins
-nick
Critical Vote On Health Care Passes Senate
Officially, the Senate has not passed health care reform. Unofficially, the fight is over for this round. Senate Democrats overcame a filibuster by a party-line vote of 60-40, including the two independent senators who caucus with the Democrats.
As I said, it’s not officially over; the above vote merely provided official “cloture.” However, it is merely window dressing to get the bill passed by Christmas Eve, which seems very likely now.
The Heritage Foundation outlines what this bill will do to America’s budget, the unborn and taxes. In short, it’s a bad bill, which we already knew. However, there is still hope. The Senate and House bills must be compromised in conference- where the two chambers make two bills into one- and then voted on again in each chamber separately. The two biggest issues, as far as I see, that could shut down this reform effort are abortion and the public option. The House bill includes the latter, the Senate one does not. The Senate bill, however, allows public funds to be used for abortion and the House one does not. I hope Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) holds strong on his abortion language and kills the bill. A pro-life amendment would help the health care bill that finally passes (if one does) not fund the murder of the unborn.
Fox News has a very revealing analysis about where various monies went to various senators in order to bribe them votes for the cloture vote. As Fox notes in the article, uncertain votes were brought in line as a direct result of how the Senate leadership decided to use our money.
