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Archives for August 2017

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Most-Watched Show in Cable News in August

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Rachel Maddow speaking at SWSX. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

Rachel Maddow had the most-watched show in cable news for the month, with 2.783 million total viewers in August, according to data released by Nielsen Media Research.  This marks the second consecutive month the MSNBC host landed at the top spot.

Closely behind was Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, with 2.679 million total viewers.  Rounding out the top five news shows were Fox News’ Tucker Carlson (2.483 million), MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (2.352 million) and Fox News’ The Five (2.351 million).

Maddow also was first among adults 25-54, a critical demographic for advertisers.

Fox News Channel edged out competitors including MSNBC and CNN for top overall cable network for the month, averaging 2.2 million viewers in prime time.  Fox has been the top-rated cable network based on total day ratings for 14 consecutive months and most watched cable news channel in both total day and prime viewers.

Top UN Human Rights Official: Freedom of Press Under Attack by Trump

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Photo courtesy John Gillespie.

The top human rights official at the United Nations stated that freedom of the press is under attack by U.S. President Donald Trump.

”It’s really quite amazing when you think that freedom of the press, not only sort of a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution but very much something that the United States defended over the years is now itself under attack from the President,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

He continued, “it’s sort of a stunning turnaround.  And ultimately the sequence is a dangerous one.”

President Trump has consistently attacked the mainstream media, even before his inauguration as a candidate.  His standard response to news stories that aren’t positive of him or the administration consists of him ripping the media as “fake news” and accusing journalists of being unpatriotic.

At a political rally in Phoenix last week, Trump claimed that journalists are “truly dishonest people” following criticisms of his response to a white supremacist rally in Virginia where he blamed “both sides” for the violence.  One woman was killed when a man attending the rally drove his car through a crowd of counter-protestors.

Fox News Goes Off the Air in UK

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Fox News Channel newsroom. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

Fox News will end its feed airing the network throughout the United Kingdom on Tuesday afternoon, according to an announcement by its parent company 21st Century Fox.

“21st Century Fox has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the U.K.,” the company said in a statement.  “Fox News is focused on the U.S. market and designed for a U.S. audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the U.K.”

There has been stiff competition for viewers in the United Kingdom, where U.S.-based Fox News was going up against British-based news organizations such as the BBC, ITV and Sky News.

A decision to approve 21st Century Fox’s bid for ownership of Sky TV was postponed last June by U.K. Culture Secretary Karen Bradly, pending additional review and analysis by the country’s Competition and Markets Authority.  21st Century Fox currently owns 39 percent of Sky TV.

In the United States, Fox News finished August as the most-watched channel on basic cable, according to Nielsen Media Research.  The network has held this title for 14 consecutive months.

Emmy Predictions! Entertainment Insiders Choose ‘Veep’ as Front-runner for Best Comedy Series

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Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

More and more experts are expecting the political comedy Veep to be victorious in winning the Emmy for Best Comedy Series this year.

According to the website GoldDerby.com, which tracks and analyzes entertainment award nominations, ten of the 16 entertainment journalists that have made predictions so far have revealed the smash HBO comedy has the advantage come September.

This year marks the sixth year in a row Veep has been nominated for Best Comedy Series, including winning the category both of the past two years.

The show has far more nominations than any other comedy this year, setting a high mark this time with 17 nominations, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Best Comedy Actress, Anna Chlumsky for Best Comedy Supporting Actress, Tony Hale and Matt Walsh each for Best Comedy Supporting Actor, Morgan Sackett, David Mandel and Dale Stern each for Best Comedy Directing, and Billy Kimball and David Mandel each for Best Comedy Writing.

The ten insiders predicting a Veep win this year include: Variety’s Debra Birnbaum, NPR’s Eric Deggans, TV Guide’s Joyce Eng, Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil, TV Guide Magazine’s Matt Roush, Gold Derby’s Paul Sheehan, IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, Yahoo’s Ken Tucker, ESPN’s Adnan Virk, and LA Times’ Glenn Whipp.

 

President Trump Blames Media for Racial Tensions

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Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump led crowds in his first campaign-style rally in Phoenix, the first since a white supremacist rally in Virginia resulted in the death of one counter-demonstrator and nearly two dozen others injured.  At the rally, Trump spent much of his time speaking blaming the media for the racial tensions highlighted since Charlottesville.

“Not only does the media give a platform to hate groups, but the media turns a blind eye to the gang violence on our streets, the failures of our public school, the destruction of our wealth at the hands of our terrible, terrible trade deals made by our politicians that should’ve never been politicians, and the hostility to our local police that work so hard and do an incredible job,” he said.

Turning specifically to criticisms he faced across the political spectrum following his initial response on Charlottesville, Trump misquoted and toned down his own statement, leaving out that he blamed people “on many sides” for the violence.

“This is me speaking. ‘We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence.’ That’s me speaking on Saturday, right after the event.”

He continued with blaming the media for the confusion stemming directly from his several days of contradictory statements following the violence: “Truly dishonest people in the media and the fake media, they make up sources.  They don’t report the facts, just like they don’t want to report that I spoke out against hatred and violence and strongly condemned the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and the KKK.”

The president was playing to his base supporters at the rally, where he was interrupted frequently with chants of “drain the swamp” and “CNN sucks.”

Breitbart Says Trump’s Afghanistan Speech Was “Disappointment” to His Supporters

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Photo courtesy of Pixabay / Geralt.

On Monday evening, President Donald Trump addressed the nation on live television regarding the country’s mission in Afghanistan.  During the speech, Trump announced he will not pull out U.S. troops and that he is committed to a new strategy to win the longest war in the nation’s history.

The conservative online portal Breitbart News responded by attacking the president’s strategy, saying the approach was a “disappointment” to many of Trump’s supporters.

A piece published after the president’s broadcast stated that “President Trump unveiled his plan for Afghanistan after seven months of deliberation Monday evening, announcing tweaks around the edges of the current strategy instead of a different approach.”

The author went on to say that “the speech was a disappointment to many who had supported his calls during the campaign to end expensive foreign intervention and nation-building.”

On the campaign trail, Trump had frequently criticized military intervention and “nation-building,” and on Monday he acknowledged that his “original instinct was to pull out.”

The Breitbart article commented that “he acknowledged the frustration that Americans felt after 16 years of war without an end in sight.”

The piece follows former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s return to the helm at Breitbart, following his dismissal last week.  On leaving, Bannon said he would “go to war” for the president and his agenda.

In an interview with Bloomberg following his dismissal, Bannon stated “if there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents – on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America.”

Trumps Will Skip Kennedy Center Honors

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Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will not attend this year’s annual Kennedy Center Honors in December.

According to a White House statement, “The President and First Lady have decided not to participate in this year’s activities to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.”

Several honorees had said they would boycott the White House reception.  Both dancer Carmen de Lavallade and television producer Norman Lear had announced they would not attend that portion of the celebration.

“In light of the socially decisive and morally caustic narrative that our existing leadership is choosing to engage in, and in keeping with the principles that I and so many others have fought for, I will be declining the invitation to attend the reception at the White House,” de Lavallade said last week, prior to the White House announcement.

In a joint statement, Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein and President Deborah F. Rutter said the center “respects the decision made today by the office of the President of the United States.  In choosing not to participate in this year’s Honors activities, the Administration has graciously signaled its respect for the Kennedy Center and ensures the Honors gala remains a deservingly special moment for the Honorees.  We are grateful for this gesture.”

This will be the fourth time a sitting president is not in attendance at the Honors, following Presidents Jimmy Carter in 1979, George H.W. Bush in 1989 and Bill Clinton in 1994.  All three former presidents had attended the annual celebration other years while in office.

Steve Bannon Returns to Breitbart

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Steve Bannon speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

President Donald Trump has been shuffling senior staff at a brisk pace of late, including firing of chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday.  Following his dismissal, Bannon announced he would be turning to the right-wing online blog he ran since the death of founder Andrew Breitbart in 2012.

“The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today,” said Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.  “Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.”

Only hours after being dismissed by the president, Bannon was already leading an editorial meeting for the online venue.  “We have a duty to the country to be the vanguard of ‘The Movement,’” he reminded staff, according to one person on the call.

Since returning to Breitbart News, the portal has already published stories critical of many current Trump staffers, including criticizing “New York Democrat globalists” in the administration such as first daughter Ivanka Trump, senior advisor Jared Kushner and chief economic advisor Gary Cohn as well as “hawks” like national security advisor H.R. McMaster and his deputy, Dina Powell.

In an interview with the Weekly Standard following his dismissal, Bannon seemed to lay down the line for the next phase of his relationship with the White House.

“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon said.  “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency.  But that presidency is over.  It’ll be something else.  And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days.  But that presidency is over.”

Meanwhile, the “War Room” strategy of Bannon’s White House seems to be on pause, with most promises such as countering the rise of China, trade and immigration still unfulfilled.  According to an administration official, Bannon’s white boards he used to map out political strategies were now in storage.

MSNBC Earns Title of Top Cable Network in Total Viewers for First Time Ever

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Photo courtesy Jeff Maurone via Wikimedia Commons.

According to Nielsen data, the cable news channel MSNBC ranked as the number one network across all of cable in total viewers for the day, for the first time in its history.

For Wednesday, August 16th, 1.52 million viewers for the total day tuned in to MSNBC across all of cable, beating Fox News, who came in second place with 1.5 million viewers.  CNN placed fourth among all cable networks for the day with 1.13 million viewers.

In the key 25-54 adult demographic, CNN was in first place among cable news networks for the day, averaging 381,000 viewers.  Fox News was second in the demographic with 353,000 viewers, and MSNBC third with 343,000 viewers.

Wednesday’s episodes of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” were both among the top 10 shows of the evening in total viewers.  Maddow’s show averaged 3.25 million viewers, with O’Donnell averaging 2.54 million.  Both shows were the highest-rated and most-watched cable news programs during their time slots.

Compared to Maddow’s 9PM EST time slot, Fox News’ “The Five” averaged 2.31 million viewers.  CNN’s Anderson Cooper averaged 1.52 million viewers during that hour.  (Cooper’s broadcast during the 8PM EST timeslot was third in total cable viewers with 1.67 million.)

James Murdoch Blasts Trump, Donates $1M to ADL

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James Murdoch in 2008.  Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

James Murdoch, CEO of 21st Century Fox and a trusted informal advisor to President Donald Trump, wrote a blistering email denouncing the president’s reaction to the violence and death last weekend in Charlottesville.

In the letter, he said that what “we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people.”

“These events remind us all why vigilance against hate and bigotry is an eternal obligation — a necessary discipline for the preservation of our way of life and our ideals. The presence of hate in our society was appallingly laid bare as we watched swastikas brandished on the streets of Charlottesville and acts of brutal terrorism and violence perpetrated by a racist mob,” Murdoch continued.

Also, he made the point that “I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis.  Or Klansmen, or terrorists.”

Murdoch concludes the email by noting he and his wife Kathryn would donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, a renown international non-governmental organization working to fight anti-Semitism, and encouraged his friends to give as well.

Murdoch’s firm, 21st Century Fox, is the parent company of Fox News.  His father Rupert also has very close ties with Trump, speaking with the president several times a week, as confirmed by sources in both the White House and at Fox News.