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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, 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.