Free Republic

The Internet has risen to its all-time high as a primary source of news for Americans with 43 percent now saying they get most of their news on national and international issues from the web, according to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press. Meanwhile, television sits at an all-time low as a primary source of news for Americans with only 66 percent now saying they get most of their national and international news from TV--a nadir television also hit in December 2010. Since 1991, Pew has periodically asked Americans: “How do...

For an eye opening article on how network news business operates, click on the link and read the comments section to the article: How to Get ‘In’ with Mimi [A Guide for Future Students] 1. Mimi and her clique of chosen ones at ABC News were dubbed the “Mean Girls.” To be a part of the group you had to be at least 3 of the following: white/good-looking/rich/pedigree/Ivy(or fancy boarding school) or date/marry/be associated with people who fit that bill 2. If female, wear expensive jewelry and shoes. Talk about the size of your boyfriend’s p****, how good/bad the sex...

"The three major news networks are part of the “Axis of Denial” when it comes to Climategate! They are following the White House directive not to cover stories that Fox News comes up with. Musn’t upset the Obama administration, after all! President George W. Bush once spoke of an “Axis of Evil.” This time, we have an “Axis of Denial” with ABCDEmocrat News, Couric-BS, and No Climategate-BC all ignoring the biggest science scandal since people were told the earth was flat!NewsBusters quoted White House Astroturfer David Axelrod issuing the order to ABC and others…”It's really not news, it's pushing...

In the days before deregulation, hordes of economists at the CAB and the ICC, set tariffs and determined the “correct” amount of service on city pairs for the airline and trucking industry respectively.... There are five TV/Cable news operations: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News and CNN. 4 of the 5 are certifiably liberal and only one conservative. Yet the latest Gallup Poll shows there are twice as many conservatives as liberals (40% to 20%). Surely the FCC should use its club of license renewal to persuade....

After a summer swoon, you would think that the evening newscasts of the Big 3 networks would start to recover a bit now that many Americans are back from vacations, kids are back in school, and fall routines are getting established or re-established. So far, you would be wrong. It's early, and there's still plenty of time this fall to recover, but during the time period after Labor Day, the broadcasts primarily anchored by Brian Williams at NBC, Charles Gibson at ABC, and Katie Couric at CBS: Are down a combined 28.5% from their peak in late January during...

Some of the numbers are chilling. Newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23% in the last two years. Some papers are in bankruptcy, and others have lost three-quarters of their value. By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet. In local television, news staffs, already too small to adequately cover their communities, are being cut at unprecedented rates; revenues fell by 7% in an election year—something unheard of—and ratings are now falling or are flat across the schedule. In network news, even the...

The newspaper industry exited a harrowing 2008 and entered 2009 in something perilously close to free fall. Perhaps some parachutes will deploy, and maybe some tree limbs will cushion the descent, but for a third consecutive year the bottom is not in sight. We still do not subscribe to the theory that the death of the industry is imminent. The industry over all in 2008 remained profitable. But the deep recession already threatens the weakest papers. Nearly all are now cutting so deeply and rapidly that simply coping with the economic downturn has become a major distraction from efforts to...

AudienceThe audience for network television news programs shrank again in 2008, continuing a quarter- century of decline. To a greater degree than before, Americans turned instead to other outlets for news. On election night, for example, the total audience watching cable channels nearly equaled that watching the broadcast television networks for the first time. For all that, however, nearly 23 million viewers still tune into the three nightly newscasts each day, several times the number that are tuned into the three cable news channels at any given moment during prime time. Among major trends in 2008: The three commercial nightly...

All that cheerleading for Obama-Biden, and all they got was a continuation of their lousy long-term ratings drop. Perhaps one reason why Big 3 network coverage of the 2008 presidential election was so heavy on fawning favoritism towards Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined with all-out attacks on John McCain and Sarah Palin was that the belief that an Obama presidency might revive interest in their declining evening newscasts. If so, that strategy has spectactularly failed. Nine weeks into Obama's presidency, it's clear that after a short-lived revival, the audiences for NBC's Brian Williams, ABC's Charles Gibson, and especially...

When Sen. John Kerry arrived in Boston for the last Democratic convention, the TV news stars thought they’d died and gone to political heaven. Dan Rather said Kerry’s speech drove the crowd in Boston into “a three-thousand-gallon attack about every three minutes,” and Newsweek’s Jon Meacham was comparing Kerry to Abraham Lincoln on MSNBC. If media liberals can get that excited over Kerry, viewers may have to worry about the anchors lapsing into diabetic comas over Barack Obama’s ascension convention in Denver. It’s easy to forget just how “tick tight,” as Rather once put it, the primary race was between...

Lee Cowan’s “infectious” feelings and Chris Matthews’ “thrill” helped NBC lead the way in positive coverage for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. But the other two major networks weren’t far behind in a study of 1,365 network news stories going back to May 17, 2000, the date of Obama’s first appearance on CBS Evening News, through early June 2008, when the Illinois senator secured the Democratic nomination. The study was released Wednesday by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog and the parent organization of CNSNews.com. The study is titled, “Obama’s Margin of Victory: The Media,” pointing out that...

The always-interesting results of the biennial news consumption survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press were released Sunday afternoon. Findings on TV news and online-only news produced a few surprises (follow to come), but on the newspaper front the indications were mainly negative, especially on the print front, but also in some aspects of newspapers on the Web. Namely: while more young people are indeed reading newspapers online, their total readership, print and Web combined, has not grown in two years. This survey was conducted by telephone from April 30 to June 1 among 3,612...

When The Stiletto spotted this headline in The Billings (MT) Gazette, "Anchor Failure Blamed For Deaths," she thought, "Wow. Katie Couric’s dismal ratings must have finally pushed some executives at CBS News to hurl themselves off the roof of Black Rock.Yes, it really is that bad – and worse: A Gallup Poll finds that 29 percent of Americans "just don’t like" Couric. Negative ratings for NBC’s Brian Williams and ABC’s Charles Gibson were significantly smaller (18 percent and 16 percent, respectively). Couric’s positive ratings (51 percent) also lag, as compared to Williams (59 percent) and Gibson (62 percent). The Associated...

Polls have repeatedly shown a public dissatisfied with the economy under President Bush. A January 2006 Pew Research Center survey said 64 percent of those questioned thought economic conditions were fair or poor – and that wasn’t even Bush’s low point. The May New York Times/CBS poll gave Bush just a 28 percent rating for the economy. Network news stories have painted a bleak picture of an economy in decline. Reporters treated gas prices as a metaphor for the economy – only when they were high. And a slowing housing market coming off two record years was just another club...

Despite the enormous hype surrounding Edward Klein's scathing and hearsay-filled book about Hillary Rodham Clinton, the author has been ignored by all but two television talk shows. This collective cold shoulder hasn't stopped "The Truth About Hillary" from hitting No. 2 yesterday on the coveted New York Times list. "It's the biggest example to date of how major media censorship doesn't stop a book anymore from being a bestseller," Klein declares. .... "It's just been a total blackout," says Klein, adding that talk radio and some Web sites, including the Drudge Report, have driven sales of the book. "I definitely...

As NewsMax first reported in early March, ABC News' Ted Koppel has become the next anchor to follow Dan Rather into the sunset. Last Thursday morning, ABC News president David Westin told employees that Ted, 65, would leave ABC in December, after 42 years at the network. Westin also stated that Koppel had refused other possible assignments within ABC and "felt now was the time to leave." Word within the network had it that Ted was poised to replace George Stephanopoulos as host of the Sunday morning news show "This Week." "This Week" has had chronic ratings problems and has...

The best editor in America today isn't a journalist. He's Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, also known as the "Instapundit." He's endangering my livelihood. I used to say that I was in a declining industry, but fortunately, I was declining faster than it was. Now I'm not so sure. Journalists tend not to like bloggers, because they report on errors we make. Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines are unemployed chiefly because of the vigilance and tenacity of bloggers. (We journalists rarely turn the spotlights we use on business leaders...

Brokaw, Rather, Jennings and other old lions know a new age is coming, and so they're muttering a bit as they leave the stage. Who can blame them? The world in which they acquired wealth and celebrity has crumbled with startling speed. A new order has arisen. Journalism, no longer a redoubt of the illuminati, has become a vessel of grubby democracy. Anybody — literally, anybody — can play these days. They can insert their views in a weblog. They can call talk radio. Eccentric plutocrats, such as George Soros, get to spend bundles on advertisements in any and all...

Dan Rather didn't die Tuesday, but "Dan Rather" did. That Rather had aged into caricature status (the brush cut, the weird glare, the Texas drawl) was being advanced even by his own network, which on election night kept e-mailing reporters Rather colloquialisms, so-called Danisms, including: "It don't mean a thing if they don't get those swings," and: "This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex." Rather, it is said beyond the official statements, is stepping down ahead of the potential for more embarrassing details from a CBS investigation into his Sept. 8 report on "60 Minutes" that President Bush...

Audience decline an old story Dan Rather's announcement that he will step down as CBS' main anchor comes as the 3 major networks continue to battle the loss of news viewers to cable TV and the Internet By Leon Lazaroff Tribune national correspondent November 24, 2004 NEW YORK -- When Dan Rather took the CBS Evening News anchor seat nearly 24 years ago from Walter Cronkite, more than a quarter of the nation's TV-viewing households were watching the newscasts. Today, roughly 90 percent of television-watchers don't bother to tune in on an average night. He's not alone by any means....