It was almost too easy. Up
until this morning (August 24, 2005), I had never heard the Stephanie
Miller Show on Air America's outlet, KTLK, in Los Angeles. Within
45 seconds (I swear), in a discussion on the media coverage of the
recent incendiary remarks by televangelist Pat Robertson, I heard Miller
mislead her audience by suggesting that there has been only modest
coverage of this story! [link
to audio (about 10 minutes in)]
MILLER: Can you even imagine: If any left-winger in
this country had said anything even vaguely like that
[Robertson's remark], this would have been everywhere!
CO-HOST ("Chris"?): Yup. Fox News would have covered
it!
Apparently, Miller and her
friend missed some of the coverage of the Robertson episode on these
major media outlets:
- ABC's World News Tonight: lead story,
August 23, 2005.
- NBC Nightly News: full story, August 23,
2005.
- CBS Evening News: full story, August 23,
2005.
- CNN, August 23, 2005: lead story on Anderson Cooper 360 ...
Paula Zahn Now ... and NewsNight
With Aaron Brown. [Thank you!
MRC link]
- MSNBC, August 23, 2005: lead story on Hardball with Chris
Matthews and Countdown with Keith
Olbermann.
- Los Angeles Times: front page story,
August 24, 2005.
- The Washington Post: p. A02, August 24,
2005.
- New York Times: page one paragraph with a
lead to an inside story, August 24, 2005.
Oh, yeah. Fox News covered
the story as well, as it was the lead item for quite a while on
its news updates every half hour.
------------------------------------------
Also ... A little later,
when Miller and her friend were taking some shots at Bill O'Reilly, they
similarly mislead their audience:
MILLER: (imitating O'Reilly's voice) "She's done.
She's done. She's done."
CO-HOST ("Chris"?): According to the ratings, The
Factor is pretty much done.
Says who? The O'Reilly
Factor still remains the number-one-rated show in all of cable news
... by far. Take last Wednesday, August 17, 2005, for example: (link):
In the 8pm EST hour, O'Reilly garnered 2,784,000 viewers. His nearest
competitor was CNN's Paula Zahn, with 560,000 viewers. O'Reilly had
nearly five times as many viewers as Zahn!
TheMediaReport.com says ... Air-head
America ... done.