(CONT)
* "It's working. Their rating, their ratings are going through the roof." [PBS host Tavis Smiley, on NBC's Meet the Press; 10/25/09.]
* "[A]ttacking Fox just drives the 'fair and balanced' news network's ratings through the roof." [The Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott]
* "It serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings." [Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus]
* "By raising the network's profile, Obama has all but guaranteed higher ratings for his nemesis." [Arizona Republic editorial]
* "And the [Fox News] ratings will increase, and the White House will look petty in the short term." [CBN's David Brody]
* "The more Obama goes after Fox, the better the ratings." [Denver Post columnist Mike Littwin]
* "Fox will use this White House move to boost their ratings." [New York magazine's Daily Intel blog]
* "It's going to spike Fox's ratings." [Pundit David Gergen]
* "And the White House's public attack will no doubt give Fox 'stature' and boost its ratings." [Providence Journal's Edward Achorn]
This is what happens when claustrophobic uniformity takes over among the Beltway chattering class. This is what happened when the media elites agreed that it was nuts for the White House to fact-check Fox News, and they were sure that the administration's carping sent the cable channel's ratings "through the roof." With so little original thought involved in the robotic repetition of the anointed Beltway truth, nobody bothered to checks the facts.
The chattering class wanted to claim Fox News' ratings were going up, up, up. They wanted to suggest that the White House critique had massively backfired. But now we know that's fiction. So when are the pundits going to start posting their retractions?
We'll wait.
*For the record, the Nielsen ratings company never issued any findings regarding Fox News ratings in the wake of the White House dispute, according to company spokeswoman Alana Johnson, who responded to my email inquiry. Lots of third parties subscribe to the Nielsen data and can put together their own interpretations of the ratings and attribute that analysis to Nielsen numbers, which is what happened in this case. But in terms of Fox News, Nielsen itself never made any kind of official finding about the cable channel's recent ratings in regards to the public controversy.
*Michael Wolff writes from Newser, not TV Newser, as originally stated. I regret the error.
If NY-23 is a victory for conservatives, I hope they have lots more victories like that in the years to come.