Lou Dobbs quits CNN

I don’t watch much cable news — I’d like to keep my blood pressure from spiking — so this doesn’t really matter much to me. I guess it’s just amazing to me that a journalist who kept the “birther” rumors alive in the mainstream media far longer than they deserved still has the least bit credibility. Then again, Pat Buchanan is on the air at MSNBC, playing the part of everybody’s racist grampa, so what do I know? This is probably why I don’t watch much cable news.

Fox News, CNN and partisanship in the news

Piece in the Times today claims that Fox News merely reflects a return to the 19th century practice of partisan journalism — but that it’s not alone. Just check out the audience numbers.

In audience surveys from August 2000 to March 2001, Fox News viewers tilted Republican by 44.6 percent to 36.1 percent. More narrowly — 41.4 percent to 39.4 percent — so did the audience for MSNBC. The audiences of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central leaned Democratic.

Four years later, amid the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, the audience data had shifted. Fox News viewers had become 51 percent Republican and just 30.8 percent Democratic, while MSNBC viewers leaned Democratic by 41.7 percent to 40.4 percent. Viewers of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central grew slightly more Democratic.

By 2008-9, the network audiences tilted decisively, like Fox’s. CNN viewers were more Democratic by 50.4 percent to 28.7 percent; MSNBC viewers were 53.6 percent to 27.3 percent Democratic; Headline News’ 47.3 percent to 31.4 percent Democratic; CNBC’s 46.9 percent to 32.5 percent Democratic; and Comedy Central’s 47.1 to 28.8 percent Democratic.

This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about the journalism — or propaganda — being purveyed by the respective cable news networks. (Why the hell are they measuring Comedy Central in there, anyway?) It’s true that MSNBC features more straightforward liberals in its lineup than the other networks — but it also has former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough in the morning. CNBC has Reagan-worshipping free market prophet Larry Kudlow as a key part of its lineup. CNN has Lou Dobbs. And Headline News was Glenn Beck’s first television home, lest you forget.

So it’s not necessarily the case that all the non-Fox networks decided to appeal to Democrats as a business strategy. It seems just as possible — just as likely, in fact — the demographics have changed because conservatives have decisively fled the non-Fox networks for the warm ideological tongue bath they get from Fox. That’s left the other networks with only Democrats as their audience. And as the lineup of stars above suggests, they still don’t cater to their ideological audience as thoroughly as Fox News does. Suggesting, as the Times does today, that Fox isn’t all that unusual flies in the face of common sense.

#CNNFail: The lame defenses of CNN’s Iranian election coverage

Something that looks like a revolution — maybe, maybe not — has been taking place in Iran this weekend, but you wouldn’t have known it by watching cable news. While Iranians were marching in the streets, CNN was re-airing an old Larry King interview with the guys from American Chopper. The result? #cnnfail became one of the top trends on Twitter Saturday night, and deservedly so.

Worse than CNN’s lame coverage of Iran has been its lame defense of its coverage. Howard Kurtz — the Washington Post media critic and host of the network’s Reliable Sources show  — has been defending CNN on his Facebook page. And I’ve found myself so irritated by his defenses that, in a rarity for me, I’ve been arguing right back.

It started Sunday morning with this post from Kurtz:

Howard Kurtz: On Reliable, Gregg Doyel calls Twitter the “teenybopperification” of news. Guess he doesn’t know most users are older and (presumably) wiser.

I responded:

Joel Mathis at 11:56am June 14: But… Twitter seems to be more on top of the Iran developments than CNN. Have you seen the #cnnfail trends on Twitter? It seems like a bad day for anybody on the network to mock Twitter’s approach to news.

Kurtz, a few hours later:

Howard Kurtz: I’m not getting the argument that CNN fell short on Iran. Christiane Amanpour has been there and the net has devoted hours to the story.

Howard Kurtz: In fact, CNN stayed with Ahmadinejad’s endless rant this morning long after the other cables broke away.

Other commenters pointed out that the King interview and reruns of Campbell Brown’s show dominated CNN’s Saturday programming in America, not breaking news in a country critical to U.S. security in the Middle East. Meanwhile, CNN International viewers were getting breaking coverage of the Iran situation. I posted another response to Kurtz:

Joel Mathis at 1:00pm June 14: Due respect, Howard, that’s kind of lame. CNN missed most of what was happening in the streets — but hey, at least they spent extra time broadcasting Iran’s “official” version? That actually makes the network look worse, not better.

So, Kurtz started to backtrack.

Howard Kurtz: Maybe CNN should have taken CNNi feed last evening. But it was middle of the night in Iran, and even journalists have to rest sometimes.

(Sigh.)

Joel Mathis at 4:53pm June 14: Howard: I hope I’m not coming across as one of these people who nag you constantly. Not my aim.

But Iranians were on their rooftops at 4 am – their time – chanting “Allahu Ackbar!” in protest. You’re telling me that journalists had to go to bed when the country itself was awake with protest? I’m not a CNN hater. But this might be a good case for CNN to say: “You know what? We kind of fell down on the job of reporting the most important news story of the weekend. Mistakes happen, but we’ll work to prevent a repeat.” I would respect that. It’s difficult to respect the defenses being offered on CNN’s behalf.

And I say that with sincere respect

Another commenter challenged me:

Don Jones: Joel, just curious…what kind of “first hand bureau” reporting by the other 24 Hour News Networks have you seen? And by that I mean not showing the same video loops of rioting taken from Iranian TV or Al Arabia (now banned for a week) or video pulled off the internet…but real life first hand (meaning they shot it, did “stand ups” with demonstrators, talked to opposition politicians) Middle East Bureau reporting.

And my final thoughts, for now:

Joel Mathis at 5:52pm June 14: Don: I haven’t seen better from the other news networks. They’ve all failed, frankly, but it’s no laurel to CNN if it failed a little bit less than its competitors.

And we’re in the 21st century: Aggregation happens. It would be nice to get more bureau reporting from Teheran, but a good fallback is to do what Andrew Sullivan has spent the last 48 hours doing and collecting information and analysis — including video, TV’s lifeblood — and kept his readers pretty well abreast of developments. CNN makes a big deal about reading blogs on air and using “citizen journalists” through its IReport program. It seems like they could apply those lessons to a big important news story like this.