Wednesday, March 20, 2013

In the Tank? New Study Shows MSNBC Offers More Commentary Than Fox

                                     

       
A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that while all of the big three cable news networks are increasingly focused on partisan talk and debate, MSNBC far outdistances both Fox News and CNN when it comes to commentary.
Matthews2

The Center’s 2013 State of the News Media report found that opinion accounted for 85 percent of MSNBC’s content, compared to 55 percent at Fox News and 46 percent at CNN. CNN was the only one of the big three cable news networks to have more straight reporting than opinion, despite cutting back on story packages and live event coverage by more than half between 2007 and 2012.

Overall, Pew found that on cable news in 2012, commentary and opinion was “far more prevalent on the air” than straight news reporting, with 63 percent of all air time dedicated to commentary, and just 37 percent to straight news reporting.

Reporting was definitely not big at MSNBC, with only 15 percent of its airtime devoted to news.
In 2009, then-White House Communications Director Anita Dunn created some controversy when she told Time magazine that Fox News is “opinion journalism masquerading as news,” and followed that up on CNN by saying that the network “often operates as the research arm of the Republican Party.”

It wasn’t true then and based on the Pew study, it isn’t true now. But what is true is that with MSNBC devoting nearly all of its airtime to commentary and opinion, they are acting more like an arm of the DNC than a legitimate news operation.

Friday, March 15, 2013

The only stimulus proven to work is leaving more money in the hands of those who earned it.”
— Sen. Rand Paul
The death of Google Reader reveals a problem of the modern Internet that many of us likely have in the back of our heads but are afraid to let surface: We are all participants in a user driven Internet, but we are still just the users, nothing more. No matter how much work we put in to optimize our online presences, our tools and our experiences, we are still at the mercy of big companies controlling the platforms we operate on. When they don’t like what’s happening, even if we do, they can make whatever call they want. And Wednesday night, Google made theirs.
Google Reader Shutdown a Sobering Reminder That ‘Our’ Technology Isn’t Ours - Forbes

Thursday, March 14, 2013

When government punishes law-abiding citizens for the crimes of criminals by usurping the people’s Constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms, the rule of law is lost as is the credibility of that government.