As clearly illustrated in the video montage above, media collusion cannot be denied. This time, it’s to provide cover for pResident Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. in the impeachment inquiry being conducted by the House. Watch the main video of the “Mockingbird Media” provided above, then compare that to the talking points that were distributed when discussing the selling out of our nation by professional grifters – Joe, Jill, Hunter… well, the entire Biden family. Note the Leftist cover for selling influence inherent within the media.

As noted in an article by The Gateway Pundit (LINK), “CNN hosts Dana Bash and John King were left ‘perplexed’ at Iowa voters’ answers to the most pressing issues of the day including the Trump prosecutions, Ukraine, and 2020 election fraud. They simply could not understand why voters no longer trusted them.”

“The segment opens with King making a recent visit to Iowa to speak with voters. As it begins, King haughtily intoned that the voters’ “reverence for Ronald Reagan” and “optimism” has been overridden by Trump’s grievances, “disdain of big government” and “Trump’s distrust of just about everything.” Their answers below certainly explain why King was so triggered.”The segment opens with King making a recent visit to Iowa to speak with voters. As it begins, King haughtily intoned that the voters’ “reverence for Ronald Reagan” and “optimism” has been overridden by Trump’s grievances, “disdain of big government” and “Trump’s distrust of just about everything.” Their answers below certainly explain why King was so triggered.

The Gateway Pundit

Every cable news media outlet – and even some allegedly “on the right” in the alternative media venue, has the utmost contempt for the American citizen. As mere stenographers for the “elite” – the most incorrect descriptive term for the elected and unelected psychopaths who are leading the world into Communism, misery, and complete destruction, the following video clip can easily be used as a trial exhibit that illustrates their “mental disconnect,” their delusion, and the pitiful fact that they actually believe their own lies. Watch:

Their “fact checking machine” is nothing more than a wink and nod from the “elite,” the self-deluded Communist-loving scum who want to control every aspect of our lives. With the help of an obedient media (not clueless, but obedient), that is their intent is to advance their agenda of The Hunger Games.

To prevail, we must make the captured media (collectively) and each participant “journalist” individually bleed financially. We must kill their enterprise in that fashion – make them “bleed out.” Turn them off. mock them and their so-called “fact-checkers” who want you to believe them over your own eyes and ears. We are already fighting a civil war – we’ve allowed our nation to become captured from within. If we do nothing, it will only get worse – so do something. We must kill the media beast so the unelected (and elected) self-appointed rulers who want to forever fundamentally change our nation have no outlet left for their lies and contempt for all of us.

By Peter Barry Chowka

Recently, a question was raised during my appearance on The Hagmann Report. The questioner asked if I saw any parallels between the effort that resulted in President Richard Nixon’s resignation after impeachment hearings that resulted from his involvement in the Watergate scandal and other crimes and the current effort on the part of the Shadow Government, most of the mainstream media, and the left to force President Donald J. Trump from office because of alleged collusion with the Russians, or more recently, alleged obstruction of justice.

The answer is yes – and no. Notwithstanding the 45 years separating the two presidents, there are some major similarities and some differences, as well.

I was a young student journalist in the nation’s capital during the Watergate and impeachment period. Armed with an official D.C. Metropolitan Police press pass, I was able to cover and report on political events in Washington, D.C. like any other accredited journalist. Being young and with a lot of energy and an insatiable interest in politics and current events, I took full advantage of the access.

One similarity of the political climate then vs. now is that the left and much of the mainstream media – but not as much of the media as today – opposed the POTUS – both #37 and #45 – right from when he first declared his candidacy. With Nixon, that was in 1967 and with Trump, June 2015. Nixon was attacked and caricatured by leading commentators and political cartoonists alike, as he had been since he burst on the national scene in 1950. “Tricky Dick,” a label slapped on Nixon by his Democrat opponent in the 1950 race for the U.S. senate in California, was the most commonly used sobriquet. Cartoonists emphasized Nixon’s prominent nose and dark eyebrows to give him a sinister and devious look.

The left, which was extremely powerful and highly visible in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, hated Nixon and routinely attacked him especially in the large, frequent anti-Vietnam War demonstrations that persisted beyond the sixties. One of them in Washington, D.C., in October 1971, was titled “Evict Nixon.” The event’s organizers, including Chicago 7 defendant and leftist superstar agitator Rennie Davis, claimed that hundreds of thousands of demonstrators would descend on the nation’s capital and march to the White House to physically “evict Nixon.” The demonstration was a bust as only a few hundred people showed up, their numbers dwarfed by security forces.

Similarly, Donald J. Trump has been widely mocked and dismissed – not only by the left and the press, but by many members of his own Republican party – since he declared for president in June 2015. The criticism of Trump has escalated since he was elected and took office, on a scale never seen before in modern times. Although the attacks on Trump are more intense than the ones lobbed at Nixon decades ago, the similarity is that both men have been subjected to frequent and sustained attacks by their enemies.

A major difference then vs. now involves the nature of the political climate and the demographic makeup of the country in the early 1970s vs. today. While the left made a lot of noise 4 ½ decades ago, the country as a whole back then was more homogeneous and center right and far less polarized (except among the youth). It had taken a sharp, temporary left turn in 1964 with the election of Lyndon Baines Johnson to his first full term as president but that was due to a number of anomalous factors. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated less than a year before the 1964 election, and by the time of the 1964 presidential campaign the nation was still in shock. Johnson reassured the nervous and unnerved electorate, promising stability and continuity.

The defining line from Johnson’s first address to the Congress and the nation on November 27, 1963 was “Let Us Continue.” The speech came to be known as the “Let Us Continue” address. From the outset of his accidental presidency, Johnson pretended to be a moderate Democrat when in reality he had transformed himself from a good ol’ boy of the conservative South to a big government ultra liberal statist. In his push for a War on Poverty, Medicare, and civil rights legislation, Johnson, after he was sworn in on January 20, 1965, would really start to show his true colors. Johnson thought that by championing civil rights and poverty programs, more passionately than his predecessor JFK, he would go down in history like a modern day Abraham Lincoln. But instead of finishing the job that Lincoln started but was never able to complete, Lyndon Johnson – in one of the greatest miscalculations of all time – only made it worse by advocating and institutionalizing an endless number of expensive new government programs that in reality compounded the problems facing African-Americans.

Johnson’s Republican opponent in 1964, Arizona Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, was a staunch conservative and was anathema to the Democrat and Republican mainstreams and the powerful East Coast Establishment. Goldwater was demeaned and lied about in 1964, including in MSM stories that were fake. With ongoing help from the media, Johnson won the ‘64 election in a landslide. His subsequent mishandling of the Vietnam War during the next three years, however, helped to destroy his presidency.

Having lost two previous elections – for president in 1960 and California governor in 1962 – in 1967-’68 Richard Nixon in a remarkable comeback had remade himself as the “New Nixon,” and skillfully used the television medium, which had not been kind to him against JFK in 1960, to his advantage. Nixon in 1968 was actually more telegenic than his opponent, the frumpy old school Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who was saddled with the mistakes of the Johnson Administration that he had loyally served and defended.

After Nixon assumed power in January 1969, the Silent Majority, as his administration termed it – defined as mainstream, traditional center right Americans – notwithstanding all the noise and periodic demonstrations and street violence from the left, was the dominant political force in the country. Proof of this fact was Nixon’s landslide victory in November 1972 against his Democrat opponent, the progressive anti-war Sen. George S. McGovern. McGovern won the popular vote in only one state, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. Nixon ran as a moderate center right incumbent.

Another similarity between then and now involves the role of the media in unraveling the Nixon presidency and attempting to do the same for President Trump. After the bungled Watergate break in – the attempted bugging of Democrat party headquarters on June 17, 1972 by Republican operatives – it was a slow but inexorable drip drip drip of damaging information until the Nixon regime was taken down. Nixon handed his enemies a smoking gun: the secret tapes he had recorded of his interactions in the White House and on the telephone with his aides over a period of years. Nixon was heard suborning perjury and obstructing justice. It remains to be seen if the ever escalating myopic concentration of the MSM on Trump and his supposed crimes, with purported obstruction of justice now being run up the flagpole, will bear similar fruit.

After the failure of a year of the “Russia collusion” narrative to produce a viable Nixon-like smoking gun to implicate Trump, his enemies are now proffering several new narratives, centering around obstruction of justice involving the POTUS. The latest one as of this writing involves a tweet by Trump in which he wrote that he fired his national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn last February after he learned that Flynn had lied to Vice President Pence and the FBI. Analysis of the tweet (which the White House said later was written by one of Trump’s attorneys) by Trump’s critics immediately had them suggesting the possibility that Trump had obstructed justice when he asked then-FBI Director James Comey, who he later fired, to go easy on Gen. Flynn.

Where this is all going remains to be seen. Where it will wind up cannot be predicted. Anyone among the commentariat who claims that she can predict the outcome is lying. It seems that we are not even to the mid-point of the relentless and growing attempt to remove President Trump from office, one way or the other. That hoped-for scenario, and the left’s dedication to its success (the left today encompasses almost every major element of American society), is similar to the one that saw Nixon go from a historic electoral victory and high approval ratings in November 1972 to his certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and an ignominious resignation from the presidency less than two years later.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. Peter’s latest video interview on The Hagmann Report on Dec. 1, 2017 can be watched here. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka.

By Peter Barry Chowka

On Tuesday, November 21, at 10:17 A.M. E.S.T., the press release went out from Fox News in New York:

FOX News Channel (FNC) has signed nationally syndicated radio talk show personality Mark Levin as host of Life, Liberty & Levin, a new weekend primetime program debuting in February 2018, announced Suzanne Scott, president of programming.

The addition of Levin, an iconic figure in the 21^st century conservative movement, to the Fox News regular lineup should please the channel’s core audience. Until recently, FNC’s commitment to a fair and balanced conservative viewpoint had appeared uncertain with the ignominious dumping of long-term popular “no-spin” host Bill O’Reilly last April, the firing of popular conservative host Eric Bolling in September, and the elevation to higher profile status of progressive hosts and contributors like Juan Williams, Sheppard Smith, Jessica Tarlov, and Marie Harf, among others.

One month ago, however, Fox News reinforced its M-F prime time schedule with the addition of Laura Ingraham’s show The Ingraham Angle at 10 P.M., capping what is now the strongest right of center prime time lineup in the channel’s 21 year history.

Levin’s new program is set to premiere in February in its time slot on Sundays at 10 P.M. E.S.T. He will continue to do his 3-hour daily nationally syndicated radio talk show which is rated #3 in the country, behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Levin, who turned 60 on September 27, also hosts a nightly online subscription-based television show LevinTVon CRTV, a channel that features programs hosted by conservatives Michelle Malkin, Deneen Borelli, and Stephen Crowder.

Levin is an attorney who served in the Reagan administration as chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese.  He got his start in radio two decades ago by appearing as a guest legal analyst on Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s radio shows. Hannity nicknamed Levin “The Great One,” and still calls him that when he appears occasionally on Hannity’s TV program. In 2002, Levin was given a radio program of his own, weekends on WABC AM 770 in New York.  In 2003, he moved to the 6-9 P.M M-F slot on WABC, which at the time was Hannity’s flagship station, immediately following Hannity’s show. In 2006 The Mark Levin Show, which continues to air live at 6 P.M. E.S.T., went into national syndication.

Although Levin on the air can come across as acerbic and argumentative, he is a serious and articulate constitutional scholar and his legal and political expertise are reflected on his show. He has developed a large and dedicated audience. Levin is also the author of over half a dozen New York Times best selling non-fiction books. The most successful one, Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, was released in 2009 and became a #1 New York Times best seller for eleven weeks. It was rated #2 on Amazon.com’s list of the bestselling books of 2009.

The Nov. 21 Fox News announcement noted:

Life, Liberty & Levin will explore the fundamental values and principles undergirding American society, culture, politics, and current events, and their relevance to the nation’s future and everyday lives of citizens. The hour-long program will feature Levin’s lively in-depth and long-form interviews and powerful debate style with consequential guests covering history, philosophy, and economics. Levin will also capitalize on his extraordinary knowledge and compelling perspective as a constitutional lawyer to discuss the American founding, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

In making the announcement, [FNC president of programming Suzanne] Scott said, “Mark’s passion for the principles found in the Constitution and success in talk radio has made him a distinct figure in the media landscape. We look forward to adding this spirited program to our weekend lineup.”

Levin added, “I am honored to join FOX News, a network I have enjoyed appearing on as a guest for quite some time. As a proud citizen of the United States, I am delighted to share the significance of American values with such a wide audience and look forward to engaging with important guests about crucial topics.”

In taking note of the announcement of Levin joining FNC, most of the mainstream press saw it as Fox News reinforcing its perceived pro-Trump tilt. Politico, for example, noted:

“It’s clearly another step in Fox News Channel’s evolution to a more Trump-friendly series of programming,” said Dan Shelley, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association. “It’s right in their current wheelhouse.” . . .

The network has stuffed its lineup of opinion hosts with consistent cheerleaders for the president. Former mainstay Megyn Kelly was known for feuding with Trump, and even Bill O’Reilly — who was forced out by the network in April amid sexual harassment accusations — would break with him occasionally, but Fox’s current prime-time lineup of Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham rarely criticizes Trump, and goes to great lengths to defend him. Levin fits into that mold.

The 10 p.m. Sunday time slot is not a high-profile one, though it could lead to bigger things, according to Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at Pivotal Research.

“If someone is getting a Sunday 10 p.m. show, it’s safe to say that’s a trial run,” he said. If viewing levels build or the show develops well, he said, “then it can be given a time slot which is more likely to get greater viewing.”

Shelley also noted that the move locks in Levin — a highly established name in conservative media — from joining other competitors.

The MSM has a vested interest in spinning Fox News as a one-voice, pro-Trump propaganda mouthpiece. The reality is that progressive leftists are represented throughout the day on the channel.  And even in prime time, when conservative hosts rule the 8-11 P.M. time period, Democrat and other left of center guests are regularly heard, in fact every night without fail on Tucker Carlson’s show at 8 P.M. and also often on Hannity at 9 and The Ingraham Angle at 10. Levin himself was not initially pro-Trump and in fact he opposed Donald Trump’s candidacy until September 2016. Lately, Levin has been more sympathetic to the Trump administration, especially in the face of the Deep State’s overwhelming resistance to the Trump agenda, but not without criticizing it from time to time.

Peter Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka  Peter’s latest interview on The Hagmann Report from Nov. 15, 2017 can be watched here.

By Peter Barry Chowka

A major social media backlash may have saved the Fox News host from another unfair leftist attack – but for how long?

An avalanche of mass defections of advertisers from Sean Hannity’s Fox News program appears to have been staunched – at least for the present. Over the weekend, initially five, and then more, major sponsors were about to bolt. On Monday, the CEO of the company in the forefront of the defections, Keurig Green Mountain, apologized for his company’s threat to quit running its commercials on Hannity’s show. With that move, the tide against Hannity appeared to be turning. At least that is how Hannity positioned the news.

Monday was a day of fast-breaking developments, with Hannity’s fans, social media, and Hannity’s four hours of live shows (radio and TV) in the forefront. The sponsor defections started to gain momentum on Sunday after Media Matters for America (MMFA), a well-funded, left wing not-for-profit anti-conservative group with a long enmity toward Hannity, weighed in. MMFA construed Hannity’s reporting on Judge Roy Moore as support for the embattled Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Alabama. MMFA has been encouraging sponsors to desert Hannity’s shows for months, and Hannity’s attempt to cover the red hot Roy Moore story in a fair and balanced way gave Media Matters and its supporters a new opening to attack him.

Last Thursday, the Washington Post published an article alleging that Moore had engaged in inappropriate, or even illegal, intimate contact with teenage girls two decades his junior back in the 1970s. The following day, Hannity interviewed Moore at length by telephone on his afternoon radio show – putting Moore on the record for the first time since the Post story was published and created a firestorm.

On Saturday and Sunday, several advertisers of Hannity’s Fox News program let it be known that – at the instigation or encouragement of Media Matters – they would no longer run ads on his shows. It was a kind of guilt by association: Moore is looking increasingly unsuitable for the role as a U.S. Senator and Hannity, for having covered Moore, is guilty of something by association.

On Sunday and Monday, an unknown but large number of Hannity’s fans deluged social media with a backlash of tweets, hashtags, Facebook posts, and emails promising to boycott any sponsors who defected from Hannity’s program. Some of them produced videos showing the symbolic destruction of high-end coffee pod machines made by Keurig, the company that received the most publicity for its decision to drop Hannity.

On Monday morning, Keurig’s CEO Bob Gamgort issued a sort-of apology – his memo to employees was published by the Washington Post – blaming flawed internal policies for a corporate rush to judgment in the decision to cancel ads and promising to do better. The implication, without Gamgort explicitly saying so, was that Keurig would continue to sponsor Hannity’s television program.

Hannity took this news as a victory accountable to his strong stand in opposing the calls by the left for the censorship of conservative programs.

Around 2 P.M. E.S.T., an hour before his live radio show went to air, Hannity tweeted:

Hold on to your coffee machines @keurig has recognized it got caught up & misled by a bigot

“Bigot” is Hannity’s term for his nemesis, Angelo Carusone, MMFA’s president. On Monday Hannity used his Twitter account to take direct aim at MMFA and Carusone.

During the last half hour of his 3-hour radio show Monday, Hannity delivered an impassioned monologue about the Moore story and his involvement in the coverage of it. A podcast of the broadcast “The Truth Behind the Hannity Attacks 11.13” is available here for free streaming or download as an mp3 file.

Hannity’s opening monologue on his prime time Fox News Channel program live at 9 P.M. E.S.T. also addressed the issues. He closed his show with these comments (a video of the entire program is here):

A special thank you again. What I saw on the Internet this weekend to push back against those who would silence conservative voices – it has moved and touched my heart and it has given me a resolve to fight harder. You give me this camera every night and microphone every day. I think you so much. Let not your heart be troubled.

As the new day Tuesday is beginning, it is unclear if the number of sponsors who are defecting from Hannity’s show is diminishing, has stabilized, or is continuing to mount. In an article on Monday afternoon, The Wrap put the number of sponsor defections at eleven. Included on the list is Keurig. Earlier on Monday there was breaking news that another woman had come forward, with the assistance of attorney Gloria Allred, to claim that Moore sexually abused her when she was a teenager. As the Alabama Media Group reported at al.com:

An Alabama woman, Beverly Young Nelson, today accused Roy Moore of groping and assaulting her about 40 years ago when she was 16.

Nelson alleges the assault happened when Moore was a 30-something-year-old prosecutor in the Etowah County District Attorney’s Office.

It’s clear that the larger story of Judge Roy Moore, which Hannity is now indelibly identified with, is not going away anytime soon.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture.  Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka.

By Peter Barry Chowka

In recent months, Sean Hannity, host of the #1 program on cable news and the #2 nationally syndicated political talk radio show, has been at the tip of the spear. Day in and day out, his programs nightly on Fox News and during the day on radio have featured some of the best original reporting and commentary – and debate – on the divisive and polarizing issues that have arisen since the election of Donald J. Trump as president one year ago. For his efforts in trying to give President Trump a fair hearing, Hannity has been targeted for destruction by Media Matters and other left wing individuals and groups.

With 20 hours a week on the air (radio and TV), Hannity rarely gives interviews on other programs. An exception was his first appearance at the start of Fox News host Jesse Watters’ weekly show Watters’ World on FNC last Saturday evening November 11.

Hannity’s interview with Watters was pre-recorded in Hannity’s studio at Fox News headquarters in New York City. It proved to be an interesting discussion of fake news and where, in Hannity’s view, we go from here. A partial transcript below starts with Hannity’s comment about the surprising victory of Donald Trump on November 8, 2016:

HANNITY: Nobody listened. . . But the people who are suffering listened.

Watters then played a montage of video clips from CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast networks of mainstream media anchors and hosts weeping and wailing on the night of 11/8/16 when they realized that the unthinkable – the victory of Donald J. Trump – was actually happening.

HANNITY: This meltdown has gone on for a year. . . This is now bordering on a psychotic, collective breakdown by the left. They can’t handle how wrong they were. . .

There is a swamp. There are forces that are working every day that want this president out – no matter how they do it. You’ve got the Deep State, you’ve got the liberal media, you’ve got the Democrats, then you’ve got weak, timid, spineless Republicans and Never Trumpers. They want him out! They’ll do anything they can do to get this man out of office.

JESSE WATTERS: And they’re doing it day after day and I believe it’s because the Democrats are completely shut out of power so the media now is the tip of the spear. Trump has declared war on the media. Let’s look at the history going back a year of Trump vs. the press. Roll it!

At this point, another selection of video clips highlighting the media’s unfair and biased reporting on the administration of President Trump was shown.

WATTERS: Who do you think is winning? Right now the ratings and circulation are up with the media but credibility is way down.

HANNITY: I don’t think they’ll ever recover credibility-wise. The single greatest quality of Donald Trump is that he’s not going to take your lies, he’s not going to take your misinformation, he calls you out for what you are. This media bias thing – we conservatives have talked about for years – now you see it, day after day, night after night, newspaper article after newspaper article. I don’t see how they recover any credibility. . . I think people are hip to media bias. I said in 2007 that journalism is dead. It’s buried, it’s finished.

It’s sad because people deserve the truth. I definitely have a conservative view, because I feel that conservatism works. But you just have to look at the truth sometimes. They’re [the MSM] so ideological – everything is seen within the prism of this hatred that they have toward the president. It’s not good for the country.

Video of Sean Hannity’s segment on the November 11 Watters’ World can be streamed from here.

Peter Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka

By Peter Barry Chowka

CNN, the venerable cable news channel now in its 38^th year, is a mess. While it masquerades as an objective news source, CNN’s coverage of President Trump and the Republicans is anything but fair and balanced. On Wednesday November 8, news reports suggested that CNN could hamper the mega billion dollar sale of its parent company Time Warner to AT&T unless Time Warner first divests itself of CNN and separates it from the proposed deal. And now, an attorney is promising to refile federal charges alleging CNN has systematically discriminated against more than 200 of its past and present employees who are African-American.

The legal case against CNN alleging racial discrimination was originally filed last December on behalf of two plaintiffs as part of a much larger class action involving as many as 175 CNN personnel. One of the primary plaintiffs, Celeslie Henley, worked at CNN for seven years but was fired, she alleged in the 2016 suit, after emailing CNN’s human resources department to complain about alleged discriminatory treatment by her employer.

The case that was filed last year, with the plaintiffs represented by Atlanta attorney Daniel R. Meachum, was thrown out of court this past July by Judge William Duffey, Jr. At the time, the judge cited technical problems with the suit. Attorney Meachum is now promising to correct the errors that he acknowledges and to refile the lawsuit before the end of this year. He said this week that he has another 30 plaintiffs to add to the suit for a total of 205.

At the very least, this development is an embarrassment to the news channel at a time when other problems are rearing their head. Not least is the situation with CNN’s ratings. Of the three American cable-satellite-Internet news outlets, CNN is usually third in the ratings behind Fox News and MSNBC.

The ratings from a typical day this past week – Wednesday November 8 – illustrate CNN’s dilemma. Screen shots of the two charts below, courtesy of TVNewser, show (top) the Nielsen cable TV news channel ratings in the so-called demo – the preferred demographic of viewers between the ages of 25-54 –  and (bottom) total viewers. On November 8, CNN was #3 according to both metrics.

The executive responsible for the channel’s scheduling, talent, and anti-Trump editorial spin that defines all of its reporting is CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker. Starting at NBC in 1986 as a 20-year old researcher, Zucker went on to have an impressive 24-year long career with the network, eventually rising to president and CEO of the company, NBC Universal. Along the way Zucker was credited with invigorating NBC’s Today Show and later on the network’s prime time schedule. But Zucker’s career at NBC floundered after his disastrous flubbing of the host transition of NBC’s crown jewel late night franchise when Jay Leno was ousted in favor of Conan O’Brien only to return a year later when O’Brien faltered. It was “one of the biggest debacles in television history,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Zucker’s career at NBC never recovered and he was asked to leave the company in 2010.

In 2012, less than two years after his ignominious departure from NBC, Zucker landed the top job at CNN. Curiously, despite his professional relationship with Donald Trump during the latter’s success over the course of a decade at NBC with his highly rated reality show The Apprentice, which Zucker reportedly green-lighted, Zucker turned CNN editorially against Trump when the billionaire real estate developer declared for president in 2015.

And now, two years later, CNN’s ratings are stuck in third place, CNN itself may be the fly in the ointment that prevents the completion of the $84 billion Time Warner/AT&T deal, and another big anti-discrimination lawsuit looms. How long can Zucker last? Will CNN keep to its far left of center bias or moderate its coverage? Stay tuned for developments.

Postscript: On November 9, Matt Drudge, who rarely posts anything on his Twitter account, tweeted:

Jeff Zucker out either way at CNN, primetime ratings abysmal. Feud with President Trump too personal and ridiculous…

Peter Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka

By Peter Barry Chowka

The Fake News-inspired perception that existential problems are enveloping the Trump Administration is expanding and deepening. As this questionable meme takes hold, it appears that the current toxic political climate is drawing more anti-Trump viewers to the partisan attack “resistance” programs that are playing out nightly on two of the three cable television news channels. Meanwhile, the new ratings war among the three 24/7 cable news outlets is settling into an ongoing war of attrition.

In recent weeks, the Fox News Channel (FNC), considered the most friendly to President Trump, has lost the commanding ratings lead that it held for the past decade and a half. On most – but not all – weeknights now, FNC is coming in second or third to MSNBC in prime time when the preferred demographic or “the demo” (viewers between the ages of 25 and 54) is the metric. The other anti-Trump channel, CNN, has seen its ratings rise, too, and occasionally it wins an hour or two in prime time. With the future of FNC’s iconic conservative program Hannity in doubt, the outlook for Fox News is, at best, increasingly uncertain.

See also: Bill O’Reilly promises ‘stunning’ information about his firing by Fox News as litigation likely
The rewards for the winner of the cable news wars are substantial. According to a 2015 New York Times Magazine profileof Fox News anchor-star Megyn Kelly, who has since jumped to NBC, “During a 10-year span, Fox News’s profits grew six-fold to $1.2 billion in 2014, on total operating revenue of $2 billion, according to the financial analysis firm SNL Kagan.” On April 20, 2017, the Hollywood Reporter noted that 20 percent of the profits for 21^st Century Fox in 2016 came from Fox News, “the biggest-earning division in the company.”

The unprecedented success of the Fox News Channel is accountable to billionaire international media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who bankrolled the effort, and Roger Ailes (1940-2017), the legendary TV producer, political consultant, and all around media genius. Ted Turner, the founder of CNN in 1980 and another larger than life personality, believed that “the news is the star.” Ailes discovered and nurtured personalities – attractive ones, at that – and made them the stars of his channel. (Ailes’s 1987 book on how to achieve success is titled You Are The Message: Secrets of the Mass Communicators.) This ethos had a profound impact on the other news channels, which, like FNC, are also now largely personality driven.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/the_murdoch_boys_and_the_future_of_fox_news_.html#ixzz4jnpyUmmF

By Douglas J. Hagmann

The innocuously sounding ‘Media Shield Law,’ also referred to as a bill to provide the free flow of information to the public, is not what it is presented to be. It is an integral plank of the Progressives and Globalists who have been advancing the Communist agenda for decades, using it to ultimately seek control under global governance.

The bill, should it become law, will have a chilling effect on free speech, especially any negative discourse against the people in power, their policies and plans. Everyone needs to pay very close attention to this bill and take a stand to assure its defeat.

Instead of offering legal protections to journalists and their confidential sources who expose governmental corruption, this law will provide the ‘legal’ means long sought by the Executive branch to instead compel journalists to identify their sources based on a fluid and arbitrary definition of national security and the narrow ‘definition’ of a journalist. It is a direct attack on the First Amendment and a stealth attack against political dissidence. It is a stepping stone to the reimplementation of the Fairness Doctrine and a step toward controlling the information accessible on the internet.

Media oligopoly refined

By definition, an oligopoly is a condition where just a few firms dominate a certain market. Over the last few decades, we’ve seen media oligopoly in action. Today, about a half-dozen media conglomerates dominate what is known as the mainstream media, thereby allowing much easier control over the content of the news and editorials. A virtual monopoly is created, and what is aired as news is better controlled by those in control of licensing. By adding the nebulous factor of national security as we have seen in many other instances within our society, America is at risk of losing any remaining freedom of the press that once existed.

Centralization is the objective

Currently, forty-eight-(48) states and the District of Columbia have enacted ‘shield laws’ or some form of a shield law, protecting a reporter’s privilege to keep sources confidential. Why is the federal government pushing so hard to usurp state’s rights and redefine what has already been established? It’s to control information and those who disseminate it. Instead of reinforcing one’s First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution, they are being redefined under an oligarchy of an elite royalty.

The First and Second Amendments of the U.S. Constitution are inextricably linked, each dependent upon the other. One needs not to look any farther than the recent attacks on the Second Amendment to see their plans for the First Amendment. For example, each state has gun laws which they enforce, however they are under asymmetrical attack by the federal government for the purposes of control and enforcement, and ultimately registration and confiscation. By removing the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, there will be little ability to exercise your rights under the First Amendment. By hobbling the First Amendment, there will be little discourse permitted about the Second.

It is absolutely critical that people take a few steps back and look at the larger picture, as these issues are not confined to a vacuum. It’s all about centralization, which provides the ability for complete control of our lives. Examples of centralization in the U.S. are plentiful, from the modern income tax statutes of 1913 to the Affordable Health Care Act that will dominate one-sixth of our national economy. ‘ObamaCare’ is not about health care, but about centralization of power and control. Correspondingly, the federal Media Shield Law is not about protecting journalists or the prevention of disclosing classified information, but about centralizing the authority to control the dissemination of information that is inconvenient to the oligarchy.

Additionally, the same people who rely on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to expose government corruption are the same people who will fall all over themselves to promote this feigned treaty of cooperation between the oligarchs and the unwashed. While they chase their tails over papers peppered in black that tell nothing to those requesting the truth, the people in power chuckle at the sideshow while advancing their objectives. They are doubling down to prevent the exposure of their nefarious plans of subjugating the world’s populace to global domination, and have no intention of disclosure.

You don’t have to believe me, though. Instead, let the words of David Rockefeller, talking at the June, 1991 Bilderberger meeting in Baden, Germany speak for themselves:

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years.”

“It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries.”

Don’t fall for this Trojan Horse legislation. Make your voices heard before they are silenced.

Referenced legislation

• H.R. 1962: Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 Text May 14, 2013
• S. 987: Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 Text May 16, 2013;
• On Thursday, 12 September 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the media shield law bill with the Feinstein-Durbin amendment by a vote of 13-5.