RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273925/american-president-london-bruce-bawer

Because my router was on the fritz during the first couple of days of the President’s state visit to the UK – a prelude to his Normandy visit on Friday marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day – I was forced to watch more TV coverage of the proceedings than would otherwise have been my wont. This meant relying heavily on CNN, the BBC, and Sky News. All of them were pretty much as snotty about Trump as expected, although the BBC did an especially obnoxious job, giving a ridiculous amount of airtime to some historian named Mark Shanahan, who in the guise of providing historical context and insight oozed anti-Trump – and anti-American – venom.

Since I’d never heard of Shanahan, I looked him up. He turned out to be an associate professor at the University of Reading, where one of his areas of specialization is “the celebritisation of American political culture from Eisenhower to Trump.” Shanahan brags on his university’s website about being “a regular media contributor to the BBC, ITN; CNN, Sky, ABC (Australia), France 24, and CTV (Canada).” During the Trump visit, no matter what the subject, he was ready with snark, both on the tube and on his Twitter feed. While Trump was visiting Westminster Abbey, Shanahan sneered that this would “play very well with American evangelicals at home.” Right, those American evangelicals who are into smoky thuribles, priests in red cassocks, and old Anglican anthems sung by boy choirs. Shanahan assured BBC viewers that Americans have an outdated “Mary Poppins” image of Britain, complete with bowler hats and chimney sweeps. Yeah, you’ve got it, Thucidydes, we’re all a bunch of dolts, who somehow slept through the Beatles, James Bond, Monty Python, the Thatcher era, Elton John, Ab Fab, Tony Blair, and all those horrible Hugh Grant romcoms. Shanahan also opined, with what seemed like at least a touch of antisemitism, that the “special relationship” is now a joke, because Trump cares less about US ties to the UK than to Israel.

Needless to say, Shanahan wasn’t alone. Pretty much every time the cable-news talking heads mentioned Trump, they found it necessary to repeat the word “controversial.”

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/06/04/nolte-far-left-cnn-suffers-double-digit-primetime-ratings-crash-in-may/
The news just keeps getting worse and worse for the far-left CNN, which suffered a 16 percent primetime ratings collapse last month.

The embattled CNN, which always lands is far-last place and axed more than 100 jobs already this year, had about as bad of a ratings month as is possible in May.

It’s primetime hours were only able to average a measly 761,000 viewers, while the fake news outlet’s total day viewers dove nine percent (compared to this same month last year) to just 559,000 viewers.

For comparison purposes, Fox News earned three times as many primetime viewers (2.34 million) and more than twice as many total day viewers (1.34 million). What’s more, when compared to this same month last year, Fox lost none of its primetime viewers and only four percent of its total day viewers.

The most astounding thing, though, is that CNN’s ratings are already so low, it seems impossible they could dive any lower — and yet, they always do.

Do you have any idea just how low 761,000 primetime viewers is…?

How does a nationally known brand like CNN, a brand that is decades old, only manage to attract 761,000 viewers throughout a gonzo news month in a country of over 300 million?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273830/new-york-times-enabler-genocidal-anti-semitism-kenneth-levin

In response to the uproar over its April publication of a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon, the Times first tweeted an acknowledgment that the cartoon was “offensive,” then posted an apology and finally – as the blowback continued – published a statement by the Editorial Board conceding the cartoon was “appalling” and its appearance in the paper’s international edition, at a time of resurgent targeting of Jews, was evidence “of numbness to [anti-Semitism’s] creep…”

One can agree with that assessment of the cartoon, but there are other elements of the Editorial Board statement that are grossly misleading and reflect a refusal to come to terms with the Times’ sordid track record regarding anti-Semitism.

On the Holocaust and its prelude in Germany, the statement declares: “In the 1930s and 1940s The Times was largely silent as anti-Semitism rose up and bathed the world in blood. That failure still haunts this newspaper.”  But it has obviously not haunted the paper enough to move it from its consistent refusal over many decades – despite its intense coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – to report on the incitement to mass murder of Jews that has long been a staple of Palestinian and broader Arab media, mosques and schools. It has failed to do so even as such incitement has in recent years become ever more widely established within the Muslim world.  On the contrary, to the degree that the Times, in relatively rare moments, has noted the problem at all, it has typically done so to downplay it or even to ridicule concern with it. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/al-jazeera-anti-semitic-video-controversy-radical-agenda/

An anti-Semitic video posted by the Qatari outlet last weekend is just the latest example of its radical, bigoted agenda.

While Al Jazeera’s English-language channel is known in the U.S. for its progressive bent and seemingly fitting slogan “Experience. Empower. Engage,” the outlet’s flagship Arabic channel showed its true colors last weekend, in a since-deleted video that denied the magnitude of the Holocaust.

The 17-minute video, featuring a female narrator, was published on May 18 on Facebook with the Arabic caption, “Gas chambers killed millions of Jews, this is what the story is. What is the truth of the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?” The video, according to the BBC, claimed that the toll of the Holocaust had been exaggerated and “adopted by the Zionist movement,” that Israel was the biggest winner from the Holocaust, and that Jews use “financial resources and media institutions” to “put a special spotlight” on Jewish suffering.

Al Jazeera’s statement following the video’s deletion said that the post had “violated the editorial standards of the network” and that two journalists were suspended over its content. But what editorial standards, exactly, is the network referring to? It’s been churning out such anti-Semitic tropes — not to mention Islamist extremism, anti-Shia rhetoric, and Qatari propaganda — since its inception.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/continuing_plunge_of_cnn_msnbc_ratings_reveals_that_fake_news_is_a_bad_business_strategy_.html

The catastrophic ratings decline for both CNN and MSNBC was no temporary blip following publication of the Mueller report. Both cable news outlets had heavily promoted the hoax of Russian collusion with the Trump administration, teasing the hopes of Trump-haters for impeachment and prosecution for treason. Now, those disappointed viewers have gone away, and continue to stay away.

TV Newser (free registration required) reveals the continuing loss of a substantial portion of the viewership for both cable news networks in the third week of May:

CNN experienced its lowest-rated week since November 2015 in the 25-54 demo. Additionally, MSNBC marked its lowest-rated prime time week of the year in the demo. Rachel Maddow delivered her lowest-rated week of the year in both total viewers and the 25-54 demo.

The most dramatic decline was in the prized demo, age 25 – 54, with MSNBC down 42% and CNN down 43%. Advertisers are getting barely more than half as many potential consumers watching their ads in both cable news outlets.

To be fair, last year was an election year, and Fox News also experienced a decline of 22%, but that is roughly half the decline of the two progressive outlets.

Fox News lost the crown of the most-viewed cable channel to ESPN, which benefitted from the NBA playoffs.