The Obama White House’s inexplicable war on Fox News has magnified Fox’s stature among viewers. Far from marginalizing Fox and delegitimizing it as a news source, as intended, the feud has made more people than ever choose Fox News as their favored source of television infotainment. Fox’s ratings bumped up almost 10 percent in the two weeks after the White House decided to engage Fox News directly. And among advertisers’ favorite demographic — 25- to 54-year-olds — Fox’s ratings went up a whopping 14 percent. This is probably not the kind of change Obama voters thought they were voting for. Congratulations, Obama. You have transformed Fox into the most successful “news” channel ever. — D.K. Jamaal, Examiner.com
The breathless claim that Fox News’ ratings recently spiked thanks to the White House’s public critique is bogus hype. A detailed analysis of Nielsen ratings numbers clearly indicates that in the two weeks after the White House in mid-October sparked a media controversy by claiming Rupert Murdoch’s channel was not a legitimate news organization, Fox News’ ratings did not soar. They experienced no significant increase at all. Instead, in the two weeks after the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News’ total day ratings virtually flatlined. Think about it. The unfolding controversy — which gobbled up untold hours and pages of news coverage as the Beltway press treated the dispute like a major news event — and the hubbub barely moved the ratings needle one inch in Fox News’ favor. — Eric Boehlert, Media Matters
Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh is still playing the victim card in his failed attempt to buy a share of the St. Louis Rams. Rather than own up to his past racial comments, he blames his partners’ decision to drop him on the media’s contempt for conservatives (which, apparently, doesn’t extend to all the other NFL owners who are conservatives). Limbaugh wrote in a Wall Street Journal
Given all the times Rush Limbaugh has dragged out old quotes to demagogue liberals, it’s rich that he is so upset about being sacked in his effort to buy the St. Louis Rams over racial comments he has made over the years. “This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative,” he
“The Obama administration really needs to get over itself.” So
From Eugene Robinson’s
David Letterman doesn’t work for CBS, and Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, has said it has a sexual harassment policy that somehow allows Letterman’s conduct. “Dave is not in violation of our policy and no one has ever raised a complaint against him,” a company spokesman
Columnist Rod Dreher
Writer David Segal
Tea party supporters are upset with the mainstream media for reporting that the number of people at the 9/12 rally in Washington, D.C., totaled in the “tens of thousands.” Some conservatives have said that the total was more than a million, and they see the disparity as another example of liberal bias. Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander
Some of the reports of the resignation of White House “green jobs” adviser Van Jones (in photo) have omitted a key point. As the Washington Post
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman took away a useful lesson from how Van Jones’ present job was undone by his past. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Friedman
Were the “liberal” media to blame for health reform’s stumble last month? The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne thinks so. “I’ve spoken with Democratic House members, most from highly contested districts, about what happened in their town halls,” he
The Boston Globe mentioned Chappaquiddick in the fifth paragraph of its obituary of Sen. Ted Kennedy. The Associated Press and the New York Times waited until the 12th and 15th paragraphs, respectively. Curious about how flawed public figures are eulogized, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Michael Smerconish looked back and found that Watergate was mentioned by name five paragraphs into the Washington Post’s obituary of President Nixon. “I can’t help but wonder when President Clinton’s obituary will introduce Monica Lewinsky,” he
The
Vice President Walter Cronkite? Frank Mankiewicz, director of Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign,
The uproar over David Letterman’s unfunny joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter demonstrated that even a deft comedian gets his timing wrong.
David Letterman apologized for his joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter, but that didn’t stop him from poking fun at his protesters. His
“Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment,” columnist Paul Krugman
A House Judiciary Committee hearing last week deteriorated into a press-bashing session in which “ideologues of the left and right made no effort to conceal their yearning for a day without journalists, when public officials would no longer be scrutinized,”
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Glenn Beck has had a surge of popularity since becoming a host on Fox News Channel. He is now a leading voice for conservative populist anger, the New York Times
“Just as it takes a village to raise a child, according to the old African proverb, sometimes it takes a comedian to let the emperors of Wall Street journalism know when their clothes are falling apart,” columnist Clarence Page
The conservative Web site New Majority hosted a 
