【赫芬顿邮报 091029】The New York Times and Bloomberg Act as Stenographers for MSNBC

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The New York Times and Bloomberg Act as Stenographers for MSNBC on Anti-CNN Coverage

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-warner/the-ny-times-and-bloomber_b_339045.html

On Tuesday, October 27, New York Times reporter Bill Carter wrote an article titled "CNN Last in TV News on Cable"inwhich he gave 25-54 ratings and rankings in prime time for the fourcable news networks. He did not indicate where he got the numbers.
Sarah Rabil wrote a similar article on Bloomberg.com posted at 3:18 p.m. EDT and titled "CNN Falls to Fourth Place in Prime-Time Cable News"in which she wrote: "CNN, owned by Time Warner Inc., placed fourthamong cable news networks in prime-time audience ratings in October,according to Nielsen Co. data provided by MSNBC."
OK, now we know where Bill Carter got his numbers - the MSNBC flackshad been spinning the story to media reporters and columnists - andSarah, as a good reporter should, wrote where she got the numbers. BillCarter didn't, but you know as well as I do what the original source ofhis information was.
Carter and Rabil acted as virtual, or rather digital, stenographersfor the MSNBC public relations flacks, just like the flacks wanted themto. Neither Carter nor Rabil gave much insight into why the ratingsmight have been the way they were.
When I returned to the Bloomberg.com site at about 7:15 p.m. to link to the CNN story, I noticed it had been updated at 7:58 p.m. and the name of anotherreporter, Brett Pulley, had been added. The story's headline was "CNNFalls to Fourth in Prime-Time Cable News Ratings (Update1)," was longerthan the original one, and mentioned that the ratings information was"according to Nielsen data cited in an e-mail by Alana Russo, aspokeswoman for MSNBC."
At least the Bloomberg.com reporters were transparent about wherethey got their information, but the journalistic question is "would thestory get played to make CNN look bad if it wasn't sold by MSNBCflacks?" and "Do the stories give insight or are the reporters merelyacting as stenographers for their source?'
Carter's New York Times story was more insightful and gavesome possible reasons for CNN's decline: CNN was down from 2007 and2008, which were dominated by political news, and because MSNBC and FoxNews in prime are filled with opinion programming and CNN, except forthe ridiculous Lou Dobbs, isn't. Prime time was emphasized becausethat's where ratings and, thus, ad dollars are highest.
But neither Carter nor Rabil and Pulley's story made the connectionbetween CNN's rating declines and the drastic change in the newsnetwork's channel position on Time Warner Cable in New York, wherealmost 10 percent of the country's TV homes are.
CNN was moved from the favorable Channel 10 position on Time WarnerCable in New York to the unfavorable position of Channel 78 and Fox'sFX network was moved to Channel 10. Why do you suppose this happened?Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that in February,2007, Time Warner spun off Time Warner Cable into a separate publiccompany?
When Time Warner ownedboth Time Warner Cable and the Turner Broadcasting System, which ownsCNN and HLN (previously Headline News), they were in the same familyand CNN got favorable treatment from Time Warner Cable.
But after the divorce in 2007, the newly independent Time WarnerCable wasn't in a mood to be nice to its former family members. AfterFebruary 2007, Time Warner Cable was in a position to maximize profitsfor itself, not for its former family members.
I suspect Time Warner Cable instituted a pay-for-play policy andbegan to charge cable networks for more favorable channel positions.I'll bet Fox sweetened the pot and got FX moved to Channel 10 in NewYork. I'll bet that MSNBC ponied up, too, and got a more favorableposition (Channel 14 in New York), next to its sibling, CNBC on Channel15. It doesn't look like CNN or HLN (Channel 58 in New York) coughed upenough, if any, money and got buried on Channel 78, which could affectthe ratings.
The Nielsen ratings sample is notorious small and, thus, is notterribly stable from rating period to rating period, In October,according to MSNBC's numbers as fed to the Times andBloomberg.com, CNN in prime time had 202,000 viewers 25-54 and MSBNChad 250,000. Those 48,000 viewers could be a rounding error caused bythe change in channel position (although CNN lost in a couple of monthsto MSNBC before the channel switch) or to sampling error.
But perhaps the larger questions is, "What does it matter to cablesubscribers if Time Warner Cable is making more money because ofpay-for-play, if indeed it is using this strategy?"
Well, my wife and I pay Time Warner Cable $142 a month for cable andan internet connection, and I can't remember the price of our serviceever going down. Well, that's not entirely true; we recently got ameasly $1.00 taken off our bill for eliminating paper and payingelectronically. But the point is that our cable bills are going up, theservice is passable at best (the internet service is fully automated bymeans of voice recognition and you have to give up two fingers and atoe to get to talk to a real person), and Time Warner Cable is nowmaking more money than ever.
Not what you'd call consumer friendly. No wonder the cable industryis vilified in public opinion polls and shows up lower than evenjournalists and politicians (and that's lower than whale dung).Consumers are angry, and having the cable companies inconvenience themwith senseless channel switches just to make more money is going tomake them angrier.
Comcast, the nation's largest cable company (Time Warner is numbertwo), is in negotiations to buy 51 percent of NBC Universal from GE.Congress will give this proposed merger close scrutiny because bothCongress and consumers are angry, and when they both find out aboutplay-for-play, they'll be angrier, I'll bet.
And it doesn't help when business and media reporters don'tscrutinize stories the are fed by PR flacks and act as stenographersfor cable company spin.

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