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A couple of Time Warner shareholders went after CNN CEO Jeff Bewkes Thursday in LA at a Time Warner shareholders meeting [...] David Almasi, the Veep of the National Center for Public Policy Research1, a conservative communications and research foundation, is in LA to question Bewkes. Both Almasi and President David Ridenour are Time Warner shareholders.
[...] “Mr. Bewkes, we have urged you many times to make CNN more objective,” Almasi said in his statement. “You have admitted to us in 2014 the need for more balance. We praised you last year after CNN President Jeffrey Zucker also acknowledged this and acted on the need for more diverse views. But bias is apparently worse than ever. As shareholders, we are concerned about the repetitional risk to our investment in Time Warner as CNN appears to be a key player in the war against the Trump presidency.”
Almasi cited a Media Research Center2 study of CNN programing for 14 hours and 27 minutes of news coverage back on May 12. The report concluded that all but 68 minutes were devoted to Trump with 96 guests out of 123 being negative.
[...] “I’m inquiring about CNN’s bias and our return on investment,” Almasi continued in his statement. “Half of the American public – which includes potential and current CNN viewers – voted for Trump last November and supports his agenda. CNN acts as if it is part of the anti-Trump resistance. Are you willing to lose viewers, possibly forever, because of the bias?”
Almasi even threatened Bewkes, saying that Media Research Center plans to alert advertisers about news programs that “peddle smear, hate and political extremism.”
He asked Bewkes, “Are you concerned about advertisers leaving CNN? Will you continue to ignore our appeals for objectivity at the risk to our investment in Time Warner?”
Source: The Daily Caller
1The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a self-described conservative think tank in the United States. In February 2014, at Apple Inc.'s annual shareholder meeting, NCPPR proposed Apple "disclose the costs of its sustainability programs" was rejected by 97% vote. The NCPPR representative argued that Apple's decision to have all of its power come from greens sources would lower shareholders' profits.
2The Media Research Center (MRC) is a politically conservative content analysis organization based in Reston, Virginia, founded in 1987 by activist L. Brent Bozell III. Its stated mission is to "prove—through sound scientific research—that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @02:53PM (37 children)
Half? Really? At least we see the type of facts this guy wants -- alternative ones. Maybe he also has a few electoral college maps he'd like to share with us.
So news should change their reporting depending on what the viewers want? Is he confusing news with a reality show?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:02PM
I read that as a very blatant threat to pull funding if the "objectivity" wasn't biased a little the other way.
Honestly I can't help but think it's possible to remain objective about the recent events in government while still casting a very negative light, simply because rational sanity is more absent from federal government now than it ever has been.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:06PM (11 children)
There hasn't been a "landslide victory" since about forever. About half vote left, and about half vote right. Almost all of our elections have been that way. 51% of the vote isn't exactly a real "majority". It's more of a "close decision". FFS, counting errors can be larger than some of the "victories" that have been claimed in recent times.
This "majority" the left is claiming for Hillary is pretty damned meaningless. If your candidate were actually better than the other candidate, then he/she/it might have won the White House.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:12PM (7 children)
Guess that makes me ancient. Reagan won twice in landslides and I remember them both. Bush stomped nine kinds of hell out of Dukakis as well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:23PM (2 children)
Remember the Dukakis virus? Those were the days! When pimply faced antisocial nerds thought they could change the world from their basements. Not only was Dukakis a loser, but the guy who wrote that virus is still living in his mother's basement today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:55PM (1 child)
It is nice of you to let us know how you are doing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @10:36PM
Yep I have stagnated ever since I was the 10 year old boy who coded the Dukakis virus. I thought I had my whole life ahead of me and as soon as I grew a little older I would get a job and a girlfriend and move out of the basement. None of that stuff happened and now I am a 40 year old virgin still living in the basement and never found a job. Dukakis was my best work. As it turns out nobody pays a living wage for HyperCard skills.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 20 2017, @05:37PM (3 children)
It depends on how you define "landslide." There have been lots of Electoral College "landslides," but it seems the AC you're replying to was interested in popular vote "landslides" a bit more. Having a look at tables here [wikipedia.org], there are 49 elections tabulated since 1824. (Before ~1828, popular vote was less relevant in a lot of states, and some didn't hold one at all.)
If you sort by popular vote margin, Reagan in 1984 had the 7th greatest popular margin percentage-wise, but Reagan in 1980 was 21st and and Bush in 1988 was 24th, both of those latter ones being solidly in the "middle of the pack" along with Clinton 1996 (23rd). Only Reagan 1984 of these won by more than 10% margin in popular vote. To get to a >20% margin, you'd have to go back to Nixon and Johnson.
What's interesting is when you compare such rankings with the Electoral College margins [wikipedia.org]. There, if we exclude the elections before 1824 for comparison, Reagan 1984 is #2, Reagan 1980 is #5, Bush 1988 is #17. But Clinton 1996 remains at #23. Reagan and H.W. figured out how to maximize Electoral College gains even more than their absolute gains in popularity over their opponents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:11PM (2 children)
I don't think they figured out any particular 'trick.' The reason the electoral college exists is, for better or for worse, the exact scenario we have today. The United States is made up of 50 states cooperating together. One of the big factors in the US declaring its independence was a lack of representation. After all - it was just a modestly developed and lightly populated backwoods compared to the majesty of the motherland. Flyover country in modern derision.
The reason our government is organized the way it is is precisely to ensure that the smaller states retain a strong say in the government. Clinton won a total of 487 counties of the more than 3100 in the country. Just 20 of our 50 states. What she did win though was an absolute landslide in California of more than 4 million votes - that alone is far more than her entire lead across the entire nation's popular vote. The problem is when you start giving a handful of extremely densely populated counties in a single state so much weight is that the rest of the country ends up being dictated by a single state. The president is the person who can appeal to the most states in the entire country, not who can create the most appeal in California.
I'd definitely agree it might be time for a change of our political system. However, there is absolutely no telling what this would mean. For instance fewer than 66 million people voted for Clinton. More than 120 million chose to not vote. One can only imagine what the zeitgeist of this nation would be if some of the 120million+ nonvoters decided to start having a voice.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 20 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)
I didn't claim there was any "trick" to the EC wins either. Rather, there was a major party realignment that happened in the 1980s, which we hadn't seen since 1932 and 36 with FDR (who also had record EC margins -- FDR 1936 is the only post-1824 election that beat out Reagan in percentage of EC votes).
So the "trick" to the extent that there was one -- is that lots of people were fed up with what happened in the late 70s, and Reagan promised something different, so there was a broad-based move of "moderates" temporarily over to Reagan, something that sustained in 84 and to some extent in 88. That differs from EC electioneering in "normal" years, where candidates depend on mostly increasing base turnout in swing states, rather than a widespread shift of the middle across-the-board.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:20AM
I don't think it's necessarily so simple. The results of this election were so far off that it was not a statistical anomaly. Just about all polls were predicting a Clinton victory. The only thing they varied in was would it be large, very large, or extremely large. Instead, Trump had a very large victory, gaining nearly 50% more electoral votes than Clinton. The reason this is relevant is because it shows there was almost certainly a fundamental problem with how the country was being statistically modeled. Like you probably know pollsters don't just call up random people and report the results. They try to create a representative sample and that can include oversampling when a certain perceived demographic is difficult to reach. In some counties an example of this was poor individuals with no access to telephones. With no real ability to sample these people, pollsters were left to make intelligent guesses in many cases which ended up pretty unintelligent.
And the republicans certainly weren't anywhere ahead of the modeling game. In spite of Trump's constant declarations of rigged polls, his mannerisms and 'tells' made it extremely clear he was certain he was going to lose the election. His 'acceptance announcement' wasn't a man fulfilling his self perceived destiny, it was a man in disbelief and shock. So while I agree with you that both parties have attempted, for years now, to try to minimize their area of influence to maximize results (which only makes sense) - the fact is that election results are more organic than ever now a days. Things that used to be golden tickets are likely now hurting candidates. For instance one Clinton trademark is using fake accents to try to appeal to local demographics. It's clearly something that's been focused tested and scores well. The problem is that it's not so easy to quantify the indirect effects. Those speeches being recorded, spread, and mocked to the ends of the Earth absolutely and 100% played a major role in Clinton's lack of trust ratings which, perhaps more than anything, are what caused her to lose the election.
The point of this is that elections, especially now a days, aren't about some perfectly executed campaign. It's about the will of the people - or at least the states. And I think the thing is the complete disbelief today by many about what the country said. And I don't think many people are considering the derivative effects of this enacted and marketed disbelief. I am very liberal and would likely have voted for Trump over Clinton, though I chose to not vote at all. It's not that Trump won by vote (or non-vote, which effectively aided him) but rather that the democrat party lost it. And they lost it incredibly hard. And I think there are millions more in the same situation as myself. Keep in mind that the number of registered voters in the US increased by more than 15 million (!!!) from 2012 to 2016. And somehow Clinton managed to get fewer votes, when running against 'Literally Hitler', than Obama did against an insipid generic republican. That's an absolutely phenomenal accomplishment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @04:05PM (2 children)
It makes you wonder if our votes are even being tallied at all. The consistent and repetitive 51/49 split is quite convenient.
If you voted for the politician who lost, then you can look and see that well hey, at least 49% of people voted the same way I did. Right? Did they really?
After last year's election debacle, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson still only got a meaningless fraction of votes? Really? Did they really?
I'm getting more suspicious the more elections have gone by that were decided by a 51/49 split. Just too damned convenient.
We're familiar with dictators who are consistently elected in 99% landslide elections. We know that those elections are a sham. I'm beginning to suspect that our elections are also a sham but with just the addition of the one weird old trick of having two major candidates instead of just one, two major candidates who consistently get 51% and 49% of the vote. Every time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @05:45PM (1 child)
Why else would voting machines be pushed through when their security is shown to be terrible? Makes it very VERY easy to change the results.
Saw another report on election ballot handling where the "super secret tape" that shouldn't be removable was easily lifted and placed back. Boxes had enough openings to stuff ballots into. There was a single guy transporting the boxes in his van, he could stop anywhere along the line and do whatever.
Voting machines are terrible, paper ballots are not always 100% foolproof and require the participation and total transparency from start to finish.
The only way forward I can see is to use some crypto tech similar to bitcoin where the vote database gets distributed and mass verified, and each vote is tied to a token generated for each vote. The token would contain a hash that indicates what and who was voted for, to prevent people changing their minds and claiming fraud. Then millions of people check their vote results against the public database. Have the verification site only available through Tor to prevent IP / vote tracking, and thus anyone can download the vote results and do their own analysis.
Right now we have a massive black box system whose integrity depends on millions of volunteers and fail points. I do believe tech can make a more secure method, the main objection has always been the need to maintain anonymity of vote results. I think the above general method would suffice, and it would actually be preferable to eliminate party registration altogether. Why register as democrat or republican anyway? To participate in primaries which are obviously a load of crap?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:30AM
No. Screw your crypto, screw your tech in general. None it actually works like you think it does and more important 95% of the country will never understand the math well enough to have sufficient trust in it. The US Army showed us how to run an election. Look how they did it in Iraq. Nobody contested those elections and they were in effin war zones.
Sort out your voter registration lists far enough ahead to resolve disputes. Use hard to forge photo ID. (Although I think they managed to run some without this step, we would absolutely need it in the US) Paper ballots in clear plastic tubs sitting on unadorned tables. Every party with a candidate on the ballot can have a poll watcher who can keep eyes on the box from the time it is sitting there empty awaiting the first voter until it again sits empty after the final count is certified. Paper ballots go into the tub, voter's finger goes in the purple ink. Polls close, everybody watches the ballots get counted as they are withdrawn from the tub. Low tech, almost perfectly reliable. And zero chance of such a system being adopted anywhere in the US. Which tells us everything we need to know.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:08PM (7 children)
Yes, half. When not tallying votes for official counts, one or two percent doesn't make a difference.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 20 2017, @05:07PM
The statement is demonstrably false.
Two aspects of the claim: (1) "half of the American public... voted for Trump" and (2) "half of the American public... supports his agenda."
Actual statistics from the 2016 vote: 60.2% of the eligible American population to vote actually voted. 46% voted for Trump. Therefore 27.7% of the "American public" (excluding those who would be ineligible to vote like kids) voted for Trump last November.
If he had said "half of voters" instead of "half of the American public," his claim might be closer to reality. But he didn't. Whether we accept that the 46% of voters showed up and approved of Trump is a statistically accurate sample of "the American public" is a separate question. And no, I'm not claiming turnout was bad this election compared to others (it wasn't), but it's important to note that roughly 40% of the "American public" did not voice a clear opinion.
As for the second claim, only one recent poll (Rasmussen) has shown Trump to have a ~50% approval, which Trump himself touted this weekend, but that's cherry picking. Other recent approval ratings seem to be in the 35-40% range.
To be clear: I haven't watched CNN at any point recently, so I have no idea how fair or unfair their coverage is. And there certainly should be opportunities for the administration to present its view, as well as giving Trump supporters a voice. On the other hand, after Trump's post election "bump" and the inauguration, the trendlines have been steadily moving against him. Polls after the inauguration gave him at least mid to upper 40s approval and maybe higher, with only ~40% disapproval. That's now changed to high 30s approval and ~55% disapproval.
A few months ago it may have been reasonable to claim "half of the American public" supports him -- at least those who chose to express an opinion -- but that's not really true anymore.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday June 20 2017, @05:30PM (4 children)
Yes, half.
Hey Buzzard, parse this for me would you?
46.1 >= 50
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:09PM (2 children)
I'm sorry, did you fail the bit in grade school math where they taught rounding?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:50PM (1 child)
So you won't mind when I round your paycheck down to the nearest billion then? You now get zero billions!
Haha I'm clever, look at me go Mr. Sanducci! I can round down, yay. Double bonus for uzzie losing the paycheck he scammed out of people.
Sadly the strippers will suffer as he had no more dollar bills to stuff into their boobies.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:32PM
We're not talking paychecks or official vote counts for purposes of deciding who wins what, dipshit. Generalities quite suffice for this conversation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:01AM
Don't be too hard on him, he's got a first-generation Pentium CPU. Mostly he just fucks up division, but he's so backed up and full of...dust...that sometimes overheating causes other floating-point issues.
Hey Uzzard! F0 0F C7 C8!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:04PM
Yay! It is like Christmas when you gift wrap your bullshit in shiny "I'm a turd!" wrapping paper.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:16PM (9 children)
They're supposed to be in the reporting business not the propaganda business. They're currently in the propaganda business, which also has the financial problem of not being heavily viewed because what kind of weirdo wants to watch propaganda all day. So... yes.
On a high level its not even a moral or ethical question. I don't care if 50% of the weather channel viewers are at least tangentially interested in Cubs baseball scores, that kind of thing doesn't belong on a weather channel. Likewise the conversion of ESPN from a sports channel to a celebrity gossip channel is pretty sick.
Its only on the lowest level of individual story and message selection where its even occasionally "wrong" to report what the majority of viewers want.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:39PM (4 children)
Why don't all the sports fans play sports instead? It's far more engaging, far more fun; they can get some much needed exercise and stress relief; and there can still be just as much beer.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:55PM (2 children)
You could say that, but Imagine if you spent 10 hours a day digging ditches, when you get home the last thing you want to do is get off the couch.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 20 2017, @04:38PM (1 child)
Huh. I didn't realize pulling the levers on a backhoe was so arduous. :)
Anyway, there are always the weekends. People can play sports on the weekends.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @06:26PM
Found the guy who's never had a labor based job in his life.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 20 2017, @04:39PM
Good question. And, I happened to find an excuse to use my line today. A supervisor was standing right in the middle of my work area, getting in the way. Arms folded, wearing a frowny face, and apparently thinking hard. "Hey! Gary! This aint' no spectator sport! If you're gonna get in my way, you better pick up a fokkin' WRENCH!" Gary took my subtle hint, and moved along to be a pain in some other person's ass. Subtlety. Far to few people appreciate it. And, spectators. No one really appreciates them. That's why they have to pay for the privilege of spectating.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:56PM (2 children)
I don't care if 50% of the weather channel viewers are at least tangentially interested in Cubs baseball scores, that kind of thing doesn't belong on a weather channel.
Both channels have the same owners? I think you know what cross promotion and product placement are. The TV doesn't propagandize, it advertises. Put the silly idealism aside for one second. This is business... And they are showing what the viewers (ok, sponsors actually) want. The only thing that has changed from the past is that now they have to compete with weirdos crowdfunding other weirdos because they do want to watch propaganda all day.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 20 2017, @04:05PM (1 child)
In a commodity market
has a level of reliability thats pretty high.
On the other hand in a near monopoly, you only need a microscopic handful of dumb people to completely derail the dead hand of the free market from achieving perfection.
"The Market" for something like fidgit spinners is pretty near a perfect match of what fidgit people want. "The Market" of three TV news networks, not so much.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 20 2017, @04:46PM
This doesn't require that much thought. Simply put, if you follow the money, all your questions will be answered. The propaganda, political, religious, whatever, is a simple effective motivational tool. The direction, 'left-right', makes no difference.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @06:23PM
Oh VLM, you are hilarious. Never mind all the reports of CNNs spectacular numbers since the election, but no worries, I'm sure that's fake news to you.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:21PM (5 children)
Typical loaded argument these idiots go for. He leads with an exaggeration, then makes an unwarranted conclusion. Hillary won the popular vote. Less than half the public voted for The Donald.
Just because people voted for Donald doesn't mean they support his agenda. Lot of it was a frustration vote. Who do you vote for if you want Wall Street policed, and held to the same standards and laws as everyone else? Want ridiculous levels of executive pay ended? Want price gouging, particularly in medical, reined in? Not Hillary. She was better than a Wall Street crook who cheats his employees of pay, but she wasn't going to bust the banksters either. Bernie was the best real chance, probably would've won the election if only he could have won the nomination.
Other than that, um... no one? The Greens aren't focused on the issue of corruption in finance. The Pirate Party may have been the best, with their platform of transparency. But hardly anyone knew they even existed.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:42PM
I like the Pirate Party. When I read the platform for the Pirate Party in Iceland I thought, "Finally! Somebody whose political head isn't trapped in the 1800's."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 20 2017, @03:43PM (3 children)
ABSOTUTELY!
Some people, I'm sure, voted for Trump because he was the only real not-Hillary alternative.
Really love to know if Sanders would have taken it over Trump. My bet is he would have won.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:10PM (2 children)
He absolutely would have. A significant portion of the Trump vote was from people who simply hated Hillary. Remove her from the equation and it all changes.
Think of it this way: How many people voted for Trump because they hated Hillary? Now replace Hillary with Bernie; how many of those Hillary-hating Trump voters are going to hate Bernie enough to vote Trump instead? So he'd get a lot Trump voters switching over to his side. Remember, both Trump and Bernie were anti-establishment votes, votes for change. Hillary was a vote for the status quo and the establishment.
Now on top of that, factor in how many votes the Dems would lose by switching from Hillary to Bernie: how many Hillary voters are going to hate Bernie enough to vote for Trump? I'd say that number hovers pretty close to zero.
Additionally, how many people didn't vote? The turnout was significantly lower in 2016 than in 2008. There was zero enthusiasm for Hillary on the Dem side, but there was a lot for Bernie (and a fair amount for Trump). Replace her with Bernie, and you'll surely get more people turning out to vote blue.
So, add these three together: some Trump voters will cross over to vote for Bernie, zero Hillary voters will cross over to vote for Trump, and some no-shows will vote for Bernie. Bernie would have had an easy win.
This is really all on the DNC and Hillary for screwing this up, and it's ultimately the fault of the DNC (namely Hillary and DWS) for whatever horrible things happen during Trump's administration. The DNC should have been neutral, and Hillary should have bowed out when it was clear that she wasn't well liked. This is yet another example of the DNC fielding a terrible (or at least terribly uninspiring) candidate and then wondering why they lost the election. It happened with Kerry, it happened with Gore, it happened with Dukakis, and it happened with Mondale. The *only* times they've won in recent history is because they found someone with real charisma: Bill Clinton and Obama. Every time they run someone with no charisma, they fail. When will they learn?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:38PM (1 child)
*Sigh* All on the DNC and Hillary? Hint: just because you don't like the Democrat candidate does not mean that you must vote for the Republican. Second hint: there were more than two candidates on my ballot; I'm guessing there were more than two on your ballot as well. I eagerly await the day that Trump voters finally own their fuck ups. Unfortunately, I don't see it coming any time soon.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:06AM
There are ONLY 2 candidates when you absolutely cannot stand one of them and do not want them to win:
Candidate One: someone you absolutely cannot stand one of them and do not want them to win
Candidate Two: the only other candidate that can possibly beat candidate one.
Candidate One could have been Bernie Sanders, but because of theft and corruption it became a candidate that you absolutely cannot stand and do not want to win
ie:
--Option one could have been breathe fresh clean air, but that option was taken away and changed to mustard gas (that will slowly, painfully kill you) instead.
--Option two is smelling baby poo: the horrible baby poo that makes you gag and want to puke.
--Option three is kill a unicorn: if you cannot find one, you die from mustard gas (that will slowly, painfully kill you)
--Option four is kill a Mog named Barf: if you cannot find one, you die from mustard gas (that will slowly, painfully kill you)
Which option would you choose? The sane human chooses Option Two, cause smelling baby poo is mostly preferable to dying..........mostly......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---