Moyers On PBS

The Michael Savage hiring is pure post hoc ergo proctor hoc reasoning and you know it. MSNBC was trying all sorts of things in an attempt to find a successful ratings formula. To suggest that his hiring was some sort of knee-jerk reaction to the firing of Donahue is asinine and I'm asking to please stop digging this hole you've gotten yourself in.

Fenian - if you are going to quote JackS - do it with some integrity will you? Here is what JackS said:

You refuse to listen to JackS but instead cling to the idea that Donahue was fired because of his views on the war in Iraq. Well if you are not going to believe JackS - how about Keith Olbermann?

Given that the facts prove that Donahue was not fired because of his views on the war in Iraq (no matter how much you cling to that fantasy) - the question has to be asked - why did Bill Moyers make Donahue a centerpiece of his show? The Donahue sections of the Moyers show are very misleading. Is Moyers abdication of journalistic standards in order to make his story OK in an ends justify the means standpoint? I don't think so but I'm curious if you would justify it.

Oh and I highlighted one section of your post because yes I am an American but the way you wrote the highlighted part makes it sound that you don't consider yourself one. Just an observation. Maybe you live in John Edwards "other America"?

 

I did not say, ever, that Donahue was first BECAUSE OF HIS ANTIWAR VIEWS PERIOD. I said they contributed to it. The degree to which they did is what Jack and I were discussing before you and the voices in your head joined in. He says not at all. I say, well, somewhat. Olbermann says marginal. Donahue says a lot. Opinions differ. (And to say that Donahue was the "centerpiece" of the Moyers program is, well, just Powerline-level stupid.) Michael Savage -- a true racist nut -- was hired because MSNBC thought he would bring an audience with him at a time in which MSNBC thought the prevailing mood of the country would create that audience in the first place. MSNBC clearly was not "trying anything" to boost ratings at that point because they were certainly not trying to hire either a progressive or even a moderate political commentator. They hired a true racist nut. (Olbermann was already there, so no, he doesn't count.) Please put the Latin down now. It's old and very fragile.
It's one thing to throw around the Latin, but your highlighting of that sentence bespeaks a certain unfamiliarity with English pronouns. A bunch of liars took my country to war, too. I just wasn't as big a sucker as you.
Nothing in Jack's quote about the memo/study being as fake as Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Come to think of it, nothing in your post about that, either.

 

Fenian - you've hit bottom - please stop digging.

You are saying that Donahue's antiwar views contributed to his being fired and Bill Moyers had him in extended segments of his show as if to say that Donahue's antiwar views were THE reason he was canned. You can backtrack your own views all you want but there was no other reason for Moyers to feature Donahue unless it was Donahue's views and Donahue's views primarily that got him fired. This premise has shown to be a crock (but for reasons known only to you - you still cling to the premise).

I don't mind you attacking me but why do you continue to twist JackS's words? Here's exactly what he said in regards to the memo's being as fake as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy:

That seems pretty straight forward to me.

You keep talking about "critical thinking" but like Vizzini in The Prince Bride - I don't think that phrase means what you think it means. Critical thinking to most means examining the facts to determine the truth. You seem to pick and choose facts that only support your position. So if facts about why Donahue was fired don't match up to your predetermined worldview - you dismiss them or minimize them. Why are you trying to foist this agenda on everyone?

 

Will fenen foof please report to the office. Your mom has your intlectual honesty.

 

So now we're down to not the "centerpiece" of the show but "extended segments." And we're posting Jack from one point in the thread and not another, and I still haven't seen a cite where anyone else has proposed that the memo/study was fake. (Jack's cites were NBC denying that the firing was for reasons of content, which is a defensible position, if not a wholly compelling one, since MSNBC could have at that point clear-cut its entire programming schedule for that reason.) Jack's last position was that it might have been a consultant's report prepared for NBC. I find that intriguing, and fairly plausible. I neither dismiss nor minimize the fact that Donahue had ratings problems. Nor do I dismiss the fact that MSNBC pretty plainly was moving -- for reasons it thought were purely pragmatic -- toward the wingnut right, as personified by Michael Savage. Considering it's taken you two days, and you still haven't fairly characterized my position, or clearly articulated your own, I'm not inclined to take lectures on intellectual honesty from someone who doesn't understand the concept any better than Boom knows how to spell it.

 

Fenian - please stop. You are turning into a cartoon character.

I earlier said "a centerpiece" (which is a poor choice of words since you can only have one centerpiece just as you can only have one focus) and I said "extended segments" (which is completely true) and I estimated that 25% of the show was spent on the Donahue show and that 100,000 person march in Washington (again - it was an estimate but not too far off if you wanted to count the minutes spent on the show). I do not think anyone who saw the show, however, would be able to argue that Moyers wasn't trying to make the Donahue firing a pillar upon which to support his argument. That pillar has crumbled into dust upon examination and only you still believe it to be true.

I provided JackS's quote about Santa and the Tooth Fairy because YOU brought it up in your previous post.

You are clearly blinded by your vitriol and I'm not sure if it is a good idea for me to be arguing with someone so detached from reality. You clearly have a closed mind and are incapable to listening to reason. I feel sorry for you and hope you don't spend your final years as a bitter, disillusioned old man.

 

I'm extremely busy with breaking news today, but let me take two seconds to clarify my position while I eat some soup. I thought an "internal memo" was probably fiction. When I subsequently deduced it may have been an outside consultant's report, the existence became more plausible to me.

And on an unrelated topic, Olbermann's quote is a little misleading. Donahue's best ratings were the first week or two in Secaucus, then they plummeted. They did rise a little in NYC, but never back to the level of his first week or two. And I wish he and everybody else would stop saying they were the highest ratings on the network. That means nothing considering he had the best time slot! You don't compete against other time slots on your own network. You compete against other networks in your own time slot. And in that regard, Donahue failed miserably.

 

And I explained that, if we're being honest, we would mention that Jack's position evolved as we were discussing it to the point where he thought, interestingly enough, that the report was prepared for NBC by a consultant the network hired. And, just as an aside, the first speculation that Donahue was canned for political reasons came from those wild-eyed liberals at the Washington Times in their TV column on February 28, 2003. We would also note that we have not yet found a source that says the memo/study was a fake, and that Jack himself walked that back later. If we were being honest, that is.
If we're being honest we would point out that the whole program was about the elite media abandoning its function out of fear and obsequiousness. In this, the Donahue episode -- which, if one accepts the existence of even an outside report, means that these considerations were at least a factor, as can beinferred by the fact that MSNBC subsequently hired Savage. Dick Armey, and Joe Scarborough -- was an offense by his bosses, the same bosses for whom that Russert worked. It is not a "pillar" of the documentary any more than it was a "centerpiece." Put the metaphors down. You don't know where they've been.
As for your close, well, I suspect I'm going to be fine going down through the years, content in the knowledge that I live in a free society, one in which anyone, no matter how dim or dishonest, can find his way to the keyboard and argue, in public, with his several personalities.

Nice to have you back, Jack. Your "outside consultant" theory seems to make sense, or at least, explain the initial confusion.
Were his ratings higher than the people who replaced him in the slot?
And, on an unrelated note, how did MSNBC survive? Those numbers are awful

 

Olbermann's ratings were marginally worse than Donahue's (you can't go much lower) until the increase over the past year or so. Now they are decidedly higher than Donahue's were, but still not to the point where I would call his ratings good. He's still getting his ass handed to him by O'Reilly.

I have no idea how MSNBC survives. I've been saying for years MSNBC and CNBC should merge.

 

Having now seen the program, I can only conclude that our ignorant redneck Chris L has not--or at least was trying to watch and do his silly Red Sox blog at the same time.

Anybody who maintains that that "25% of the show was spent on the Donahue show and that 100,000 person march in Washington" either can't tell time or is being flat-out dishonest. In Chris's case it's probably a bit of both.

I would think that given his role as SportsJournalists.com apologist for Bush and his gang of thugs since Fredo's little adventure started, Chris L would be ashamed to address this subject, since his heroes have all been totally discredited.

Chris L is one of a kind. The first hillbilly from New England.

 

The one good thing about this thread is that it made me google Ashleigh Banfield.
She's on Court TV now. Note to self: Watch Court TV now.

 

fenian is the one who has left the impression that that whole show hinged on idea that Donahue was dumped for his postion on war. Chris has just been pointing out the folly of such a notion. Anyone paying attention at time knew that Donahue was getting about 2 viewers a night. It was not a well kept secret.


I remember when Olberman replaced Donahue, he went on Imus almost everyother day to promote his show. He even refered to Imus as "media diety".