Media

There is no mistake that the number one listened to talk radio show is Rush Limbaugh. In 2012 he enjoyed reaching 15 million pairs of ears per week. Being such a big name also comes with a big price. In 2006 Limbaugh signed a 10 year contract worth $400 million with Clear Channel. But at what cost to Clear Channel?

Over at DailyKos, ProgLegs notices a little piece of news that was well hidden about Rush's employer:

Buried on the business page of mysanantonio.com today, so brief you could easily have missed it, was the news that Clear Channel Media Holdings just reported losses for the last quarter of 2012 of $191 million, and $424 million for all of 2012.

Clear Channel has been in trouble for a long time for a variety of reasons, but one factor that contributed to their losses in 2012 was the death spiral of their golden boy radio host Rush Limbaugh.

So the nation's biggest radio giant lost almost half a billion last year. And let's consider what Rush's impact is on this. Remember Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student Rush went after for speaking out about the need for contraceptives? His little tirade against this woman ended up costing Clear Channel tons of advertisers. It was to the point Rush's show would have dead space during commercial breaks because no one wanted to be associated with him. Despite that, Clear Channel continues to carry such a toxic name.

That means the only motivation for Clear Channel has to be propaganda. If they are willing to take such big losses in order to keep the word of Rush alive, the typical motivation in a capitalistic system of profit is now null and void. This is really troubling considering that Clear Channel's sole existence depends upon the use of our public airwaves.

Let's face it, Tucker Carlson is slime. He has always been nothing but slime and it makes you wonder why any media, left or right, would have ever hired him. But once he ran his course with the networks and had to venture out on his own, he took his same, slimy brand and packaged it up into a website called The Daily Caller. Now it appears that Carlson is set to take on Rupert Murdoch to become the king of slime:

A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

The local lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.

I would love to see this hit the courts now and Menendez end up owning the little creep.

But let's think about this for a moment. What Tucker's site has allegedly done is right on course for the right wing online media. Look at Breitbart. They have used James O'Keefe to produce videos, edit them down to twist the facts and destroy the lives of countless people, including Shirley Sherrod, who lost her career because of these punks.

Twitchy, the right wing site created by Michelle Malkin to "debunk" tweets, has an interesting story up accusing MSNBC of using spambot accounts on Twitter to promote their shows. You can view the post here.

Now Twitchy is saying they have investigated these accounts and this is their finding:

Twitchy looked at about a dozen of these accounts and noted some common characteristics. First, most (not all) have small numbers of tweets and small numbers of followers, suggesting that they probably are not bona fide Twitter users.

Second, most (not all) of the profiles link to a service called Followers Delivery. The service claims to sell 100,000 Twitter followers for $320. It also sells Facebook likes and YouTube views.

So who is Followers Delivery? Well, if you go to their webpage, you are taken to a HostGator suspended account page. So that avenue of investigation is dead. Now let's go to another one. I asked "who is" Followers Delivery, so I will do a whois on followersdelivery.com:

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: FOLLOWERSDELIVERY.COM
Created on: 26-Feb-13
Expires on: 26-Feb-14
Last Updated on: 04-Mar-13

Registrant:
FOLLOWERS DELIVERY
P.P. 226, HR
Zagreb, - 10002
Croatia/Hrvatska

David Zurawik , the media critic for the Baltimore Sun, has published a post at Daily Download, in which he declares that MSNBC is now worse than Fox News in ideology. The reason? Well he says it in the first paragraph:

MSNBC has long been as bad as Fox News when it comes to ideological bias. But with the hiring of longtime Team Obama loyalists David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, it’s official: MSNBC is worse.

Apparently Mr. Zurawik is media dumb. Allow me to try and inform him of Fox's past hires.

• Karl Rove - Senior adviser to George Bush. Leaves White House and joins Fox News.
• Dana Perino - Former press secretary for George Bush. Leaves White House and joins Fox News.

Then we have one that went in reverse, where the White House decided to pull it's talent from Fox News.

• Tony Snow - Fox News personality, leaves the network to become Bush press secretary.

Then we have some other notables:

• Liz Cheney - daughter of former vice-President, Dick Cheney. Worked in Bush's State Department. Leaves and joins Fox News.
• Jenna Bush - Daughter of George Bush. Now Fox News Contributor.

But apparently David Zurawik has no idea who these people are, since he fails to mention any of them in his post. That, or maybe he is just another partisan hack, ignoring facts to promote his own agenda. Which ever it is, the article has gone uncorrected for over 12 hours, so we do know that he is incompetent. That's pretty bad for someone who makes a living criticizing others.

Wayne LaPierre, the execute vice-president of the NRA that thinks movies and video games are where blame should lie for mass shootings, has written an op-ed in The Daily Caller. Let's take a look at some of it:

It has always been sensible for good citizens to own and carry firearms for lawful protection against violent criminals who prey on decent people.

During the second Obama term, however, additional threats are growing. Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States.

Ok, I hate to stop a quote mid-paragraph, but I must here. All this has happened in Obama's second term? So in only 3 weeks, with no gun law changes or anything, drug gangs have invaded every significant city?? Wow Obama is working fast to "ghettoize" our country! But let's continue with that paragraph, because it gets even better:

Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world, and though the states on the U.S./Mexico border may be the first places in the nation to suffer from cartel violence, by no means are they the last.

Now I thought more guns were the answer? Arizona is already one of the easiest states in the union to get a gun, so why so much violence there? If you ask me it sounds like old Wayne is contradicting the NRA's argument right here.

Then Wayne goes even more off the wagon:

When the next terrorist attack comes, the Obama administration won’t accept responsibility. Instead, it will do what it does every time: blame a scapegoat and count on Obama’s “mainstream” media enablers to go along.

When the last terrorist attack came, Obama wasn't even in the Senate. Instead George Bush and his enablers started blaming the Clinton administration.

Talk about being taken to the cleaners!

Sarah Palin uttered more than 189,000 words over 150 appearances on various FOX broadcasts during her three years as an analyst at the network, or $15.85 per word

With the three-year contract now expired between FOX News and Sarah Palin, there is a wealth of commentary made by the former Alaska Governor and GOP Vice-Presidential nominee to dissect.

Yeah I say Fox got screwed in this deal!

Leave it to Matt Drudge to come up with some new conspiracy that all the little minions on the right can latch onto. Today's conspiracy involves the release of October's jobs numbers. Here's the headline he is pushing right now:

Mystery? Oh must be bad numbers and Obama is going to wait until after the election!!!

But let's look at the article that Drudge is linking.

“It is our intention that Friday will be business as usual,” said Carl Fillichio, a senior press advisor at Labor. Mr. Fillichio’s statement provided clarity to an earlier Labor statement that said the agency would assess how to handle data releases this week after the “weather emergency” is over.

Friday’s employment report will be the final read on the labor market ahead of the November elections. Initial reports that a delay was possible briefly fueled speculation that the jobs data, good or bad, might not be revealed until after the elections.

Federal government offices in Washington are closed Monday and may be shut again Tuesday due to the storm.

(emphasis added)

Apparently Matt Drudge hasn't realized that there is a hurricane battering the east coast right now and that has shut everything down. You really think he would notice though, considering right above that headline is this: