By Peter Barry Chowka
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 6½ hour-long testimony in the House on Wednesday was expected to be a big ratings win for the three cable news and three broadcast television channels, all of which covered it wall to wall. Not only did the event under-perform, but so did President Trump’s key media nemesis, CNN, which came in dead last at #6.
The red hot competition for viewers apparently led MSNBC and CNN to add a new level of fakery – both before and after Mueller’s testimony. MSNBC contributed to the “conspiracy theory” that Fox News was planning to black out live coverage of Mueller, while CNN obfuscated its poor showing in a post-Mueller hearing TV ratings analysis.
Conventional wisdom has it that when the news is perceived to be bad for President Trump, Resistance outlets MSNBC and CNN get a boost in viewership. Mueller’s long-awaited testimony was expected to turbo charge the Resistance and re-ignite talk of impeaching the president, although his performance clearly underwhelmed. Still, Fox News, the channel perceived as the most friendly to the president, won both the day of coverage (by its news anchors and reporters) and prime time, when opinion shows are programmed on all three cable “news” channels.
According to Nielsen Media Research, as reported by Forbes on Thursday:
Fox News drew a total audience of more than 3 million viewers between 8:15 a.m. and 3:45 p.m. ET, leading all broadcast and cable competition. MSNBC finished second with 2.4 million total viewers, followed by ABC (2.12 million), NBC (1.99 million), CBS (1.91 million) and CNN (1.5 million). CBS, it should be noted, is currently dark in 10 million American households because of an AT&T dispute with DirecTV, Nexstar and other carriers, which may have dampened its overall ratings.
Among viewers 25-54, the demographic group most valued by advertisers, NBC-TV finished first, with 536,000 viewers. ABC was second, with 489,000 viewers, followed by Fox News Channel (441,000 viewers), CBS (406,000), CNN (365,000) and MSNBC (347,000).
The weekend before Mueller’s testimony, a widespread “conspiracy theory” emerged – with the assistance of MSNBC – claiming incorrectly that Fox News would not broadcast the hearings live because they were expected to embarrass President Trump. In fact, Fox News had been running prominent on air promos for weeks advertising its plans to cover the hearings live, initially on Wednesday July 17 and then a week later when the Mueller show was re-scheduled.
The details of this hanky-panky suggest a new, down low strategy on the part of a cable news channel to try to depress the ratings of a competitor. On Sunday, frequent MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance tweeted her 337,000 followers the false information that Fox News would not cover the hearings. After criticism on social media, she deleted the tweet, claiming it was a sarcastic joke – but not before author and Resistance keyboard warrior Stephen King tweeted the fake news about Fox’s plans to his 5.33 million Twitter followers.
On Monday, as Brian Flood reported in an article at Fox News dot com on Tuesday, Vance’s claim had “morphed into a full-blown conspiracy theory – and anti-Trump liberals don’t seem to care.” In fact, on Monday, MSNBC guest Rick Wilson spread the fake news during an appearance on the channel and was not corrected.
Wilson appeared on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” and apparently missed the memo that Vance deleted her inaccurate tweet prior to his segment.
“Now Fox isn’t covering the hearings,” Wilson said during a discussion about the upcoming Mueller testimony.
[MSNBC host Nicole] Wallace didn’t correct him and responded, “Really?”
“They’re apparently not going to take them live. Everybody else is taking them live,” Wilson said, misinforming MSNBC viewers in the process.
“TV viewership for Mueller hearings falls flat,” an article on Thursday about the Mueller hearing ratings by Brian Stelter, CNN’s chronic Trump nemesis, significantly failed to note that CNN came in last. Instead, Stelter contrasted the total ratings for Mueller’s testimony with the numbers for James Comey, Michael Cohen, and Bret Kavanaugh when each of them testified before Congress. Stelter:
If Democrats were banking on massive viewership of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s televised testimony, they’re feeling broke today.
The Mueller hearings had a loyal audience, but they didn’t break any ratings records. Not by a long shot.
Preliminary Nielsen ratings totals — which are subject to adjustment — show an average of 13 million viewers across six major networks Wednesday.
Stelter’s closing comments ironically give one some hope that viewer interest in taking President Trump down is finally waning:
When the final Nielsen ratings come in, the Mueller hearings are likely to be in line with Michael Cohen’s testimony back in February.
In a possible sign of Trump-related fatigue, neither the Mueller or Cohen hearings were as highly-rated as former FBI Director James Comey’s explosive day of testimony in June 2017, which drew about 20 million viewers.
Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. Peter’s website is http://peter.media. Follow him on Twitter at @pchowka.
By Peter Barry Chowka
The files of the late New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison provide fascinating and important insights into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Garrison (1921-1992) investigated the 1963 murder of the president, which had been blamed on a supposed lone assassin – Lee Harvey Oswald – who himself was assassinated by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after Oswald allegedly killed Kennedy.
Because there was a complicated New Orleans connection to Kennedy’s killing, Garrison undertook a several year long inquiry into the matter, culminating in the indictment, in 1967, of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. After a trial by jury in early 1969, Shaw was acquitted and Garrison’s reputation largely fell into disrepute.
Twenty-one years later, in 1991, Oliver Stone’s three-hour long dramatic film JFK – in which Kevin Costner played Garrison – put the story back on the map.
Way back in 1980, NBC television producer and personality John Barbour interviewed Jim Garrison in New Orleans for segments that were broadcast on the NBC network prime time reality show, Speak Up, America! In 1992, Barbour produced The Garrison Files, the first of two documentaries on the JFK assassination. The Garrison Files video is available free at YouTube here. John Barbour’s other documentary (2017) is The American Media and the Second Assassination of President Kennedy.
Still very active in the search for documentation and solving the murder of JFK – the greatest whodunit of the 20thCentury – Barbour is now releasing to the public, for the first time, batches of Garrison’s original files on the Kennedy assassination.
Earlier this month (March 2019), Barbour posted a video on YouTube describing the second collection of Garrison’s files (Release 2) that he has made available online. The video is available at YouTube here.
The Release 2 files themselves can be accessed and downloaded for free from here.
The first collection of Garrison’s files (Release 1) is here. Barbour’s video at YouTube describing Release 1 is here.
The files are a fascinating read and are well worth downloading and serious study.
Finally, on February 28, 2019, I interviewed John Barbour for an hour – primarily on the topic of the JFK assassination. The video podcast of our conversation is at YouTube here.
John Barbour’s information-packed and link-rich Web site, John Barbour’s World, can be accessed here.
Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. Peter’s new Web site is http://peter.media. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.
The ambush that specifically targeted white police officers in Dallas, Texas last Thursday is, to date, the most visibly brazen and statistically significant attack against police officers this century. As horrific as this attack was, it presages something even more sinister that is about to explode within our country.
To understand what we are witnessing, it must be first made clear that the murderous attacks on the police have little to do with the questionable deaths of black men by police. Their deaths are being conveniently exploited by individuals and groups whose plans were set in motion decades ago under different pretexts.
Related: Helter Skelter in a Summer Swelter
We must remember that we’ve seen this type of “orchestrated chaos” before, specifically in the late 1960s during the radicalization of students and young people across college campuses. Protests, sit-ins, and armed takeovers of campus offices by the radical left were increasing and blamed, in part, on the Vietnam War. Other reasons existed as well, including many of the same anti-Capitalist, anti-American sentiments we are seeing today.
Some of the very same protesters involved in the street-level take-overs are, or have been in power under Obama. Eric Holder, for example, participated in the armed take-over of the former Columbia University ROTC office for 5 days in 1970. Holder served as Obama’s Attorney General from February 3, 2009 through April 27, 2015, replaced by Loretta Lynch.
Other members of Obama’s inner circle played important roles to varying degrees, including advisors, during his fundamental changing of the United States, including Bill Ayers and Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a self-described “revolutionary communist.” The list of individuals is lengthy. The pretexts differ, but the anarchy playbooks have been modified only to make the best use of social media, which provides more effective avenues of communication and organization.
Many of these street-level protesters and the foot soldiers of these radical Leftist groups have infiltrated government and academic institutions since the 1970s. We are now paying the price, in terms of bodies and real human blood, for allowing this infiltration to occur under the guise of social tolerance and enlightenment.
We are seeing exactly what happens when we allow a man with known ties to members of the Marxist/Leninist/Maoist Left to take charge of a nation. We are seeing the fruits of his known associations, past and present, to be brushed aside as some sort of “fringe” conspiracy talk, even by some of our own. Those who have questioned his meteoric rise to power from a community organizer to the Oval Office without verifications of his genuine, authenticated bona fides, only to be told to stand down by fellow conservatives, should feel vindicated, if it helps.
Obama, through his appointments, associates and his own words has made his biases clear, and his objectives clearer. Just as the “New Left” of the late 60s and 70s promised, their mission is to build a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement,” to replace the “racist, capitalist and imperialist American system,” To build the new system, though, they must burn down the old.
Our first “clue” should have been the intimidating presence of armed Black Panthers at voting areas in Philadelphia on election day in 2008 – and the case that followed. Or the lack of prosecution, to be more accurate, which also seemed to have the wink-and-nod non-prosecutorial blessing by the Bush administration. It was the Obama-Holder crew, however, that ultimately closed the books on that case, emboldening and signaling to the “New Left” that they have friends in high places.
Then, of course, was the infamous “Beer Summit” of 2009. That highly-spun meeting that occurred at the White House stemmed from the Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy. Gates, a black Harvard University professor was arrested by white police officer Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department on July 16, 2009, following a breaking-and-entering call to the Gates residence by a neighbor. The facts of this case as they relate to race don’t matter. If you don’t believe me, Obama stated as much when he issued a statement to the press, admittedly before he knew all of the facts. Regardless, the stage for future race-related events was set. This was mere eye-candy for the masses, a smoke and mirrors maneuver to distract from the real agenda of this regime: burn down the old system and rebuild the new.
The new system being forced upon America is predicated on Marxism, Socialism and ultimately Communism. Knowing that such change cannot be done as abruptly as taking over a ROTC building of a college campus, the playbook of the Marxist revolutionaries of the 1960s had to be updated to reflect the current social climate. The plays are generally the same, and require obedient participants (i.e. “useful idiots) to be programmed to believe that just by showing up in sufficient numbers, change would follow. Many of the protesters have no clue what is really going on behind the scenes, and they are being used as pawns in a system of which they know little.
I’ve had countless conversations with the late Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the Weather Underground about the differences between the core leadership and just “average protestors.” Cluelessness abounds among the drug-addled, angry, spoiled youth who possess a far greater sense of entitlement than plain sense.
Additionally, recall the bombings of police stations, the Pentagon, and many other planned bombings by this revolutionary group, the ideologies of which the unrepentant Bill Ayers, his wife, and other Obama “associates” are allegedly responsible. Their work is far from done. Today, they have even more effective assistance thanks to the illegal invasion allowed to take place. They are just getting started.
Just as there was this growing overlap of revolutionary groups in the 1960s and 1970s, there is an even greater overlap of groups today.
The landscape has changed as we see the unmolested mix of illegals being brought into America, not for their votes or even labor, but for an agenda far bigger. It must be fully understood that the collateral workings of Muslim groups and Mexican gangs act as force multipliers for anarchy and chaos.
The most blatant example of this Marxist agenda of takeover from within is the “social justice group” Black Lives Matter.
Most Americans believe that the activist group known as “Black Lives Matter” spontaneously originated in 2013 in response to perceived injustices against minorities, with the proverbial ‘last straw’ being the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who killed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. To believe that is to be dangerously myopic and naïve, yet it is a myth that continues to be perpetuated by politicians and pundits alike.
Black Lives Matter is merely the latest iteration of a decades-old deception that is based in the aforementioned Marxism-Leninism-Maoism philosophy, controlled by Communist groups whose foot soldiers have infiltrated the United States over generations. It serves as one of the latest fronts for highly organized and well-funded groups intent on subverting our Constitutional Republic under the pretext of advancing social justice and equality.
To reaffirm, its true objectives and intent are not what is being presented to the public, or even to the majority of those involved in the ‘peaceful protests.’ Most of the front line protesters are being duped and are, by definition, ‘useful idiots’ of those controlling the larger agenda. They have fallen prey to a slick marketing campaign by social media. Black Lives Matter is a hashtag of hypocrisy. Its rallying cries are being popularized by celebrities and activists alike, where the limitation of characters is second only to the limitation of understanding of the larger picture.
The online launch of Black Lives Matter can be traced to three individuals: Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. All three are radical progressives, and Garza is a self-proclaimed Marxist. All three believe that America is a racist, sexist and homophobic nation that was “built on indigenous genocide and chattel slavery.”
It is critical to note that this group has direct ties to the Obama White House. It is equally important to note that BLM is funded by many of the same who have funded both Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. It has little to do with equal rights or civil justice, but chaos, anarchy and the destruction of America.
BLM co-founder Opal Tometi was born to illegal immigrants from Nigeria in 1984. Since January 2011, she has been a national organizer for Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), a George Soros-funded group “to advance immigrant rights and racial justice for African-American, Afro-Latino, African and Caribbean immigrant communities.”
On September 23, 2013, Tometi accepted an invitation to the White House and met with Heather Foster, Obama’s then-lead liaison to the African-American community. Foster helped coordinate Obama’s response to various high-profile instances of blacks having been shot by police officers.
It is important to note media complicity to hide the real agenda of this group. In March 2016, Fortune magazine named Tometi and her two BLM co-founders to its list of the “50 of the most influential world leaders.”
BLM co-Founder Patrisse Cullors met with Michelle Obama at the White House on February 20, 2015. In July 2015, Cullors spoke at the annual Netroots Nation convention in Phoenix. In the course of her remarks, she exhorted fellow blacks to “rise the f*** up” and “burn everything down!” She also said that the allegedly high incidence of black-on-black crime “is a myth.”
Has this appeared in the corporate media?
It is also important to note that many of the groups associated with BLM and its co-founders are merely front groups for the Marxist-Leninist Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). Those include but are not limited to NDWA, SOUL, RTTC, and POWER.
Different groups working toward the same objectives. Many of the same people, just different positions.
Are we watching a ruinous coup being orchestrated from the White House?
Operational consistencies contained within the enemy playbook are becoming evident. Chaos is slowly gripping areas of our nation. We’ve reached a boiling point that cannot be understood by superficial assessments.
Expect chaos to continue and worsen under the guise of equality. Cities are about to burn.
Prepare. Pray.
