2017 Apr 21^st

Fox News has a program where four women all in short skirts and tight dresses sit two on each side of a man at a low table and have a conversation. The program is “Outnumbered.” Today the man was Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, and the topic was mainstream media bias against President Trump.

Gingrich has not been Speaker of the House since 1999 when he resigned amidst an ethics scandal involving the use of tax-free money to fund a course he was teaching. None of that was of any concern to Fox News because Gingrich is a Trump supporter and has been for…months. Indeed the Outnumbered women politely referred to him by his former title “Mr. Speaker.” (His wife, Callista, with whom he had an affair while married to his second wife with whom he had an affair while married to his first wife, is rumored to be on the short list to be Ambassador to the Holy See. Think about that!)

As you can imagine, solid evidence was presented showing the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump. The primary example was from a researcher who had gone to the trouble of viewing broadcasts covering Trump’s first several months in office. He watched programs from each of the major networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, and then characterized these broadcasts as being either favorable or unfavorable toward President Trump.

From the Fox women’s and Gingrich’s viewpoint the results were not even close. As I remember, far more than 90 percent of the reports about President Trump were classified as negative. By Outnumbered’s standards, this was persuasive evidence of mainstream media bias. If the media reported that Trump’s Muslim ban was vacated by the court, that media report was evidence of bias. Similarly, when his healthcare repeal and replacement of the ACA got a 17 percent approval rating and was not even brought up for a vote, the media report of that fact showed bias. When the media reported that General Flynn, his National Security Chief was paid more than half a million dollars to represent Turkish interests as a lobbyist, that report was evidence of media bias. Simply reporting Trump’s screw-ups were, for these folks, evidence of media bias.

The problem here is not the silliness of this analysis but that many Trump fans watching Outnumbered will nod knowingly as they agree about this terrible media bias and vow to watch nothing but unbiased Fox News.

Fox has been getting a lot of coverage from other “mainstream media” because they have finally canned their premier eyeball draw, Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly’s reputation with women was getting too expensive for Fox because advertisers were insisting they did not want their names associated with his program; they weren’t leaving Fox but they were leaving O’Reilly so Fox decided to say good-bye to O’Reilly as well. Rumor has it that O’Reilly got a 25 million dollar going away present to cushion the blow. That’s about one year’s salary for him. He also has an estimated 35 million a year from his book sales. All that money won’t help his reputation although it is a little late for him to care about reputation.