Pete Williams and the threat to CNN - POLITICO.com

This week’s coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated that that is a false argument. MSNBC doesn’t need to “do news,” because they have the resources of NBC — they have Williams, Michael Isikoff, Richard Espositio and Jonathan Dients, just to name a few. CNN may have more boots on the ground, but in the chaotic 21st century media environment, viewers want quality not quantity.

With Pete Williams becoming a household name this week, more and more viewers will be flipping from CNN to MSNBC for their breaking news coverage — a significant revolution in the cable news industry. And when the dust from Boston Marathon bombing clears, viewers will remember two things about the cable news coverage of this historic event: that John King blew it, and that Pete Williams got it right.

upwithchris:

Chris Hayes tells you what you actually need to know about the so-called “fiscal cliff” stand-off between House Republicans and President Obama:

I think people hear “fiscal” and they think, “Oh, what’s going to happen on January first is the deficit’s going to explode.” It’s the opposite. The deficit is going to dramatically reduce, there will be this intense austerity squeeze. And so think about this also. Washington is so obsessed with the debt and deficit, and right now, they are freaking out, and markets are freaking out, about the specter of an automatic, massive reduction in the deficit. Okay? No one actually cares about the deficit. This is very important for everyone to understand. People say they care about the deficit, but no one in their actual political behavior conducts themselves as if they actually do.

(via thenationmagazine)

Source: upwithsteve

MSNBC, Its Ratings Rising, Gains Ground on Fox News - NYTimes.com

MSNBC, a unit of NBCUniversal, has a long way to go to overtake the Fox News Channel, a unit of News Corporation: on most nights this year, Fox had two million more viewers than MSNBC.

But the two channels, which skew toward an audience that is 55 or older, are on average separated by fewer than 300,000 viewers in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers desire. On three nights in a row after the election last week, MSNBC — whose hosts reveled in Mr. Obama’s victory — had more viewers than Fox in that demographic.

“We’re closer to Fox than we’ve ever been,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, who has been trying to overtake Fox for years. “All of this is great for 2013, 2014 to keep building.”

The Rachel Maddow Show - Maddow to Hatch, et al: Grow up.

Listen, health reform’s gonna pass. Chuck Grassley, Lamar Alexander, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, you can’t stop it. You can’t stop health reform. You tried, but you can’t. But you can stop embarrassing yourselves with the blatant hypocrisy and the lying. Come on. Get serious. The country needs real debate. The country needs real opposition. The country needs you guys to grow up here

Source: MSN

Rachel cannot defeat him as a newswoman who has a superior grasp of the facts because Glenn Beck does not care about facts or proper reporting. Or about doing his job as a pundit well at all. The man hasn’t even bothered to learn how to fake-cry passably and that’s his whole thing. Rachel cannot shame him by showing that he’s a weasel because he has no shame.

And they’re adhering to different standards: Rachel assumes that a significant portion of her audience will also see CNN, The Daily Show, 30 different current events blogs, and maybe even a newspaper or two. She has to stick to a standard of being, you know, actually right when she says things.

Glenn Beck assumes that his audience will – at most – see and hear other Fox News pals. He whole living depends on his fans’ absolute refusal to fact-check him. He could have spliced together a sentence with footage of Rachel wearing 6 different outfits and his audience would still buy it. He has the almost insurmountable advantage of being completely illogical and, if he chooses, completely dishonest.
RachelWatch: Beck and Gall | News Story on 365gay.com

Source: 365gay.com