RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/12/22/cnn-sees-lowest-ratings-in-network-history-in-2024-n3798138

CNN reportedly wrapped up 2024 with the lowest audience numbers in its history. This is despite election years usually drawing more audience to news outlets in general.  

From December 26, 2023, through December 15, 2024, CNN averaged just 93,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic and 488,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research as reported by the Washington Examiner. This trailed Fox News, which dominated with 1.46 million total viewers.   

The poor performance follows disappointing election night coverage, where CNN drew 5.1 million viewers—a massive 44 percent drop from its 2020 election coverage. In comparison, Fox News attracted 13.6 million viewers during the same event.   

CNN wasn’t the only left-wing media outlet that had struggles this year. MSNBC averaged 86,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic but outperformed CNN in total viewers with 806,000. Reports on Thursday revealed MSNBC requested pay cuts from anchors Joy Reid and Stephanie Ruhle to retain their roles, following a $5 million salary reduction for Rachel Maddow.  

https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-expect-media-apologies-ever-for-the-duke-lacrosse-case

For the legacy media, the recent admission by Crystal Mangum, the accuser in the infamous 2006 Duke lacrosse case, that she had fabricated accusations of rape against three players on the university’s team, was at best a one-day story. While Mangum, a deeply troubled woman serving a long stretch at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women for killing a boyfriend five years after the Duke case, was clearly sincere in her contrition, opining on the podcast Let’s Talk with Kat that “saying that they raped me when they didn’t . . . was wrong” and “I made up a story that was wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God,” it hardly qualified as stop-the-presses news. That the allegation was false had long ago been established beyond question. The boys were fully exonerated and had reached a financial settlement with Duke for the school’s appalling response to the allegation. The hyper-ambitious rogue district attorney who in his zeal to nail them withheld key evidence of their innocence had been disgraced and disbarred.

So in that regard, it makes sense that in most accounts of the belated confession, it would come across as an out-of-the-blue footnote to a half-forgotten story, with a paragraph’s review of the case providing background for the uninitiated. The New York Times’s brief story, by Jenna West of The Athletic, does not even appear in the pages of the paper, just online.

In brief, the coverage conveyed not even a fleeting sense of what the Duke case meant at the time, how fully the story gripped the nation, dividing Americans by race and class; how, indeed, it anticipated much of what was to follow in the Trayvon Martin case; in Ferguson, Missouri; in the furious aftermath of the death of George Floyd; and, hardly least, in exposing the rot at the heart of two of America’s key institutions that has since become ever more apparent—academia and journalism.

All these years later, the media’s perfunctory coverage of Mangum’s admission is telling precisely because of what, given the calamitous mis-coverage of the original story, it so conspicuously lacks: self-awareness and accountability.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/20/study-most-cable-networks-coverage-of-trumps-cabinet-nominees-are-uniformly-negative/

A new study by a right-wing media watchdog group has found that the overwhelming majority of the coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees by major cable news channels has been “almost uniformly negative.”

As Fox News reports, the report was released by the Media Research Center (MRC), detailing the coverage of President-elect Trump’s personnel picks by ABC, CBS, and NBC. Within the timespan of December 1st to December 14th, Trump’s nominees – including FBI Director nominee Kash Patel, Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, and Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard – received approximately 60 minutes and 47 seconds of coverage. Of this coverage, 96% was negative.

“Across all three networks, the coverage of Gabbard, Patel, and the handful of other nominees mentioned was entirely negative. Only Pete Hegseth, who received the lion’s share of the airtime, enjoyed a scant four positive evaluative statements, all of which cited his mother describing him as ‘redeemed’ and ‘a changed man,’” said MRC senior research analyst Bill D’Agostino in the report.

“To reiterate: the only positive commentary any Trump nominee received on the broadcast networks was from his own mother,” D’Agostino continued. “In addition to a whopping 96 percent negative tilt across their flagship evening newscasts, these networks also appear to have paid the most attention to Cabinet nominees who appeared to have the highest chances of sinking.”

Of the three channels, CBS spent the most time talking about President-elect Trump’s nominees, with just under 25 minutes; of those 25 minutes, 14 minutes were spent on Hegseth alone. Of that coverage, 96.7% was negative. NBC had the second-highest amount of coverage, with 21 minutes; 94.7% of their coverage was negative. ABC spent 19 minutes on the Cabinet nominees, with 90% of that coverage being negative.