Daily Archives: September 28, 2004

Fox News Amazing Success

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Well, not really. Here’s the story:

For the first time in its history, Fox News Channel beat the combined competition in primetime during the third quarter of 2004, with major headlines of the summer including the national political conventions and a brutal string of hurricanes.
According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News averaged 1.8 million viewers, while CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Headline News averaged a combined total of 1.7 million. The quarter ended Sunday.

Paul, posting at Wizbang, tells us:
Amazing.
I’ll probably have to defend this point later but this really shows that FoxNews is not the “far right wing” that the liberals love to call it. In fact, the opposite is true. When a single news source gets over half of all viewers, it is, by definition, in sync with the population at large.
He’s right a little defense is in order.
Let’s see, the US population is somewhat over 294 million. About 1.7 million watched Fox. That works out to a little over 1/2 per cent of the population. Hardly what I’d call “in sync with the population at large” and clearly Fox, while large in comparison to other cable news channels, is serving a pretty small niche market. It is not at all unreasonable to think this audience is primarily of one particular persuasion.
Update (9/29): Paul defends by saying “…the defense writes itself.” I don’t see any sign of it though….

Wishful Thinker

This entry was posted in bush Election 2004 on by

g w bush is a wishful thinker. Mark Kleiman tells us about w the wishful thinker:

That’s what the President’s fiscal, environmental, and foreign policies have in common: a gay willingness to believe that things will turn out for the best in the teeth of logic, and that they are currently turning out for the best in the teeth of the evidence.
Wishful thinking isn’t seen as a horrible moral defect, like cowardice of meanness or dishonesty. It’s just a human foible, perfectly consistent with being a decent and likeable person. (No, you don’t think Mr. Bush is either decent or likeable, but you aren’t the audience for this message.)
And yet everyone knows that wishful thinking is the road to disaster; everyone with children has warned them of its dangers. In a military commander, in particular, wishful thinking is horribly dangerous, as it was when Mr. Bush ignored the National Intelligence Estimate that largely predicted the current disaster in Iraq.
This pretty accurately describes the guy O’reilly interviewed and I suspect the one that will show up at the joint soundbite presentation Thursday night.

Then and Now

This entry was posted in bush cheney Election 2004 US History US Politics on by

kennedy in 1963

Bush supporters dismiss world opinion. saying Europeans don’t like us, anyway. But Bush is the first American President in my memory who has to hide from the public when he goes abroad.
Hmmm, it seems that bush and cheney also hide from the public in the US. Unless, of course, the rally attendees have signed their loyalty oath or put in their time doing campaign work.