Tag: mainstream media

Why the Coming Death of Cable TV Is One of the Greatest Stories of Our Time

For more than a quarter-century, we’ve been hearing predictions about the demise of cable—and with it, cable news. 

A Pew Research article from 2000 showed the trends began more than 30 years ago, when consumption of broadcast and local news began to decline, and users began to get more news (and entertainment) online.  

These trends have only increased since, to the extent that the long decline in cable news may finally be reaching its end.

“This week might well mark the last time we ever care so much about cable TV news,” veteran media analyst Alan Wolk noted in April, following the surprising departures of Tucker Carlson from Fox News and Don Lemon from CNN.

Wolk wasn’t saying cable news was necessarily a terrible product; it was an obsolete one on an obsolete platform. While he didn’t predict that the death of cable was imminent, he made it clear it might be time to start looking for hospice care. 

“…eventually, probably sometime in the next five to ten years, cable TV is going to stop being worth it for all parties involved and will, for all intents and purposes, disappear,” Wolk wrote.

End of Days? 

The decline of cable is obviously bad news for the six largest cable news networks (Fox, CNN, Fox Business, MSNBC, CNBC, and HLN).

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post points out that fewer people watching cable news doesn’t just mean less ad revenue, which accounted for $2.6 billion in revenue collectively for the cable giants last year. It also means less revenue from cable providers, who provide cable news networks the majority of their revenue ($4 billion) through licensing fees. 

“…the day could soon come when an exodus of cable subscribers leaves cable operators unable to afford the hefty license fees that those news programmers now command,” Farhi writes. 

This is obviously bad news for cable news companies. Ditto for talking heads like Jake Tapper and Sean Hannity, both of whom pull in eight-figure salaries.

For consumers, content creators, and society generally, however, the collapse of cable news is nothing to be feared.

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CNN’s Kasie Hunt Suggests Every American Commits Mortgage Fraud… and Federal Housing Director Bill Pulte Wants Answers

CNN’s Kasie Hunt ran cover for Letitia James after a grand jury returned an indictment on Thursday.

Corrupt New York Attorney General Letitia James was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on Thursday.

According to the DOJ, Letitia James was charged with two crimes: Bank Fraud under 18 U.S.C. Section 1344 and False Statements to a Financial Institution under 18 U.S.C. Section 1014.

CNN’s Kasie Hunt suggested every American commits mortgage fraud on Thursday evening to water down the charges against Letitia James.

Federal Housing Director Bill Pulte wants answers after Kasie Hunt suggested every American commits mortgage fraud.

“We will start by requesting information into the VERY concerning public statements of Ms. Kasie Hunt that she has knowledge of individuals who are committing alleged mortgage bank fraud. If Ms. Hunt is aware of anyone committing fraud, we will need to know — and now,” Pulte said.

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Manipulation: Media’s Illegal-alien Sob Stories Are Meant to Deceive

There’s a certain technique often used by journalists, one designed to get you not thinking, but feeling. It involves opening an article with a human-interest story, and it’s figuring prominently right now with the illegal-migration controversy. It may go something like this:

Lupe entered the United States as a wide-eyed child from Mexico, having high hopes and dreaming bold dreams. Growing up in Arizona, she toiled as a maid to support her family. But using a false document to land a job resulted in a felony conviction, making Lupe ineligible for DACA; any path to legalization was closed to her. Now in her 30s, Lupe must endure the continuous fear of deportation. She has been robbed of opportunities her peers take for granted, such as driver’s licenses or college aid. Once a hard-working immigrant, Lupe is now an outcast, one of America’s modern-day lepers.

Heart Over Head

Of course, the idea is to engage your emotions and not your intellect. You’re supposed to identify with Lupe and not identify policy-specific imperatives. It’s not supposed to occur to you that Lupe isn’t an “immigrant,” as stated above, but a “migrant” at best. (The former term implies entry via a legal process.) You’re not supposed to think about illegal-alien crime and its many American victims. You’re not supposed to contemplate the strain on resources and infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals. You’re not supposed to wonder about how the billions of dollars illegals cost our system affect our ability to help fellow citizens, such as veterans. It’s not supposed to dawn on you that deportation isn’t punishment. As with children who’ve run away from home, it’s merely the returning of people to where they’re meant to be.

You’re not supposed to trouble over the cultural and political implications of absorbing millions of sometimes unassimilable aliens. No, you’re not supposed to consider facts, figures, realities, or statistics at all. You’re not to realize that making policy for 343 million people based on one person’s situation ignores that the “good of the many outweighs the good of the few.” You’re only supposed to identify with Lupe. You’re to be governed by your tears, not Truth; by what momentarily feels good, not what is good.

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The Wall Street Journal Has Many Ways to Deny Genocide

As more and more scholars, and one rights group after another, confirm that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, it’s becoming ever more obvious that those who deny the genocide are the intellectual and moral equivalents of people who deny other genocides, such as the ones inflicted on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide.

Yet the Wall Street Journal persists in running genocide denial. Looking at how the paper does so enables us to not only refute their falsehoods, but also to gain insight into the tactics Gaza genocide denialists, and genocide deniers in general, employ. These include:

  • Hand-waving: brushing off the cataclysmic damage Israel and the US have done to Palestinians as merely the unavoidable byproducts of war;
  • Victim-blaming: saying that Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas are to blame for the suffering in Gaza;
  • Inverting perpetrator and victim: presenting Palestinians, and not Israelis, as genocidal, with Israelis, rather than Palestinians, cast as the targets;
  • Obscurantism: offering dubious pieces of information, usually in a decontextualized manner, as if they showed that Israel has pursued its military objectives humanely;
  • Repudiation: flatly rejecting well-documented facts while offering little or no counter-evidence.

Ami Magazine columnist Avi Shafran’s Journal piece (7/22/25) utilized both hand-waving and victim-blaming. He asserted:

When critics distort Israel’s goal of self-preservation into a desire for genocide, the accusers have gone from righteous protesters to ignorant haters…. Civilians suffer and die in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. That tragedy is intensified when you are fighting an enemy who hides behind human shields. Eradicating the engines of terror in Gaza requires attacking the places from which they operate: hospitals, schools and mosques.

Israel’s supposedly “justifiable, even necessary” war has entailed such policies (as Human Rights Watch—12/19/24—notes) as

intentionally depriv[ing] Palestinian civilians in Gaza of adequate access to water since October 2023, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths and thus committing the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide.

Rather than offering a reasoned, evidence-based defense of such Israeli conduct, Shafran blithely wrote as if consciously withholding drinking water from a civilian population were as natural and inevitable as water boiling at a hundred degrees Celsius.

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‘Trojan Horse For Partisan Media’: Seattle Mayoral Frontrunner Wants To Force Taxpayers To Subsidize Biased News Outlets

With left-leaning news outlets in serious decline thanks to a decade of TDS-fueled propaganda, Seattle Mayoral frontrunner Katie Wilson wants to use taxpayer money to fund vouchers that can be used for “local news outlets” of choice. 

The plan to pass out the $100 vouchers would be funded through “a small property tax levy, a capital gains tax, or a digital ad tax,” journalist Jason Rantz reports.

In a recent interview on the Mostly Economics podcast, Wilson framed her proposal as a response to what she calls the “crisis in the journalism industry.” She lamented that “we do not have a sustainable financial model for supporting local news outlets” and suggested that taxpayers pick up the tab through “a small property tax levy, a capital gains tax, or a digital ad tax.” On The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red 770 AM, she admitted that it’s not necessarily a fully developed plan and that it’s intended to help smaller media outlets, like websites, and possibly radio.

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Democrats, Media Rushed To Blame Deadly California Fire on Climate Change. It Was Actually Arson.

Democrats and media outlets were quick to blame climate change and oil companies for the devastating Palisades Fire that ravaged Los Angeles earlier this year. But that narrative crumbled on Wednesday when federal law enforcement officials charged a man for deliberately starting the fire.

Federal prosecutors in California charged Jonathan Rinderknecht with one count of destruction of property by means of fire, a charge that carries a maximum time of 20 years in federal prison. “While we cannot bring back what victims lost, we hope this criminal case brings some measure of justice to those affected by this horrific tragedy,” said acting U.S. attorney Bill Essayli.

The charge—which Essayli said was informed by witness statements, video surveillance, cell phone data, and an analysis of fire dynamics conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—cuts against the narrative prominent Democratic lawmakers and media outlets pushed following the tragic event.

“If you don’t believe in science, believe your own damn eyes,” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) wrote in a post with photographs of the Los Angeles fire. The post came in response to news that President Donald Trump would withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords in January.

After prosecutors announced the charge against Rinderknecht on Wednesday, Newsom wrote it “marks an important step toward uncovering how the horrific Palisades Fire began.”

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Antifa’s quiet alliance with Portland police is the story the media is missing

The city of Portland, Oregon is no stranger to being in the national spotlight due to the city’s strong Antifa presence. While they have made headlines this past summer for what Antifa was doing outside of the ICE facility in the southern portion of the city, the Portland Police Bureau has on been the receiving end of scathing criticisms because of what they are not doing.

The Portland police’s inaction to enforce basic laws outside of the ICE facility has been a growing problem, not just for the federal agents assigned to work and protect it, but also the residents of a low-income apartment complex just across the street. The city was taken to court over the issue by some of the residents, but the judge ruled the local cops are not obligated to do crowd control outside the federal building.

With the judiciary on their side, Antifa continued their siege of the courthouse, mainly at night. That changed this past week with the deployment of Oregon National Guardsmen being officially requested, on orders from President Donald Trump. If the city and state are not going to do its part, then the federal government will. This move by the War Department predictably angered the local radicals and they redoubled their efforts.

Antifa mostly blamed conservative reporters, namely Katie Daviscourt of the Post Millennial, for “falsely” portraying what they are doing in order to spur the military to be activated. Which is not the case.

But facts do not matter to these anarcho-communists. So they attacked Daviscourt and got away with it, all thanks to the Portland Police Bureau. Daviscourt followed her attacker, pointed her out to an officer, but the officer just let the suspect go. This was all caught on video.

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SURPRISE! ABC, CBS, NBC And PBS Are Completely Ignoring the Scandal Engulfing Virginia Democrat Jay Jones

Virginia Democrat Jay Jones is imploding under a scandal of his own making over texts he sent indicating that he was fantasizing about the murder of his Republican opponent and his children.

It’s so shocking that even Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe called on Jones to drop out of the race. That’s how bad it is.

But if you’re watching legacy media, you might not even hear about it.

The Media Research Center has analyzed the coverage of the Jay Jones scandal and found that out of all of the major networks, only NBC covered it and they only gave the story 63 seconds.

The media works for the Democrat party. There is no denying it.

NewsBusters reports:

In resurfaced texts that were released on October 3, Jones (who is running for Virginia attorney general) suggested he would shoot then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert over Adolf Hitler and declared that Gilbert’s wife should be forced to watch his “fascist” children be killed.

The texts from 2022 are more relevant given the heightened tensions about political violence, especially since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. On October 5, President Donald Trump called on Jones to drop out.

So how much time did the broadcast networks devote to the texts controversy?

63 seconds.

MRC analysts looked at the ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS evening, morning and Sunday roundtable shows from October 3, the day the texts were first reported by National Review, through the morning of October 7 and found just ONE mention of the Jones text scandal. The only discussion of Jones on the broadcast networks arrived on NBC’s Sunday roundtable show.

On the October 5 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, former Donald Trump staffer Marc Short brought up the controversy, sparkinga 63-second conversation.

MARC SHORT: But can I also say in your interview with Leader Jeffries, that can we stop with the pearl clutching about the mean tweets and sombrero tweets? That this week it came to light that a Democratic candidate for Attorney General of the State of Virginia called for the assassination of a political opponent, called for the assassination of that political opponent’s family, and there’s not one national Democrat calling for him to step aside. Not one. It’s disgraceful.

Liberal allies are starting to quietly back away from Jones.

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Van Jones found out: Gaza dead baby jokes aren’t funny

On Friday, Van Jones joked about kids dying in Gaza.

“If you open your phone, and all you see is dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy,” Jones said on Bill Maher’s ‘Real Time’ HBO program.

“That’s basically your whole feed,” Jones said.

The audience laughed and applauded.

The CNN host came off as dismissive of these deaths, calling it a “disinformation campaign” on behalf of Iran and Qatar.

The backlash on social media was fierce, where users made clear that the bloodshed in Gaza was very real and not mere “disinformation.”

Progressive pundit Briahna Joy Reid wrote, “Turning ‘dead Gaza baby’ into a punchline is such an evil choice that I’m struggling to even engage with the outrageous lie that we only care about Gazan deaths because of an Iranian social media campaign.”

The Yaqeen Institute’s Omar Suleiman shot back, “Truly disgraceful and vile (Van Jones). I’m sorry dead Gaza babies bother you so much. Maybe tell the people paying you to put lipstick on a genocide to stop killing them.”

The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi said Jones’ comments were a blueprint for how pro-Israel elites try to censor “what is actually happening in Gaza: A genocide of children conducted by Israel and defended by plenty of folks in the US, many of them on Israel’s payroll.”

NBC News’s Hola Gorani reacted in a post, “I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Gaza videos in the last 2 years, including content filmed by our brave teams inside the strip, and can confirm that the ‘dead Gaza baby’ images are quite real, not the product of a ‘disinformation campaign’ and that there is nothing funny about them.”

Media critic Sana Saeed might have summed it up best, “The reason Van Jones can get up, use ‘dead Gaza babies’ so crassly, toss in a joke about Diddy mid-sentence, and have an audience erupt in laughter – without hesitation for either context or content – is because of the depth and breadth of dehumanization that’s been permitted toward Palestinians…There is no America in which ‘dead Jewish babies’ could ever be invoked in such a vulgar way on such a platform.”

On Sunday, Jones apologized. Twice. Jones also turned off X replies to his apology.

This did not stop people from replying.

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Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is Alleged to Have Coordinated CIA Drug Trafficking Network in Southeast Asia that Financed Black Operations

Richard Armitage, the number two official at the State Department from 2001 to 2005, died on April 13.

The New York Times and other obituaries emphasized that Armitage was a Naval Academy graduate and Bronze Star recipient in Vietnam who served senior roles in the State and Defense Departments starting in the 1980s; as an ambassador to Eastern European countries after the fall of the Soviet Union, and was part of a hawkish group of advisers to President George W. Bush who called themselves “the Vulcans.”

According to the Times, Armitage blackmailed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf into supporting U.S. policy in the War on Terror by threatening to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” if he did not.

The Times obituary concluded by noting that, after his retirement from government, Armitage founded Armitage International, a company that helps multi-national corporations secure business deals primarily in Asia, and supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns while signing a letter declaring Donald Trump “dangerously unfit” for public office.

The Times and other obituaries predictably left out that Armitage was involved, according to two former CIA operatives, in shady covert operations associated with a CIA cabal led by Theodore Shackley that was implicated in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

This cabal, also known as the secret team, used drug profits to finance state terror operations.

The Iran-Contra scandal resulted from the discovery that the CIA was using profits from illegal weapons sales to Iran and other illicit activity to covertly fund right-wing counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua to whom Congress had cut off aid .

In 1986, Armitage was named in an affidavit filed in a civil lawsuit by the Christic Institute as part of a conspiracy responsible for the La Penca bombing during the Contra War that killed seven people.

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