Media Presides Over Own Demise

RUSH: We go to Chico, California. Aaron, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Conservative dittos, Rush. How you doing?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thanks very much.

CALLER: Yeah, remember, by the way, Barack Obama took a teleprompter to a rodeo during the campaign, which was hilarious.

RUSH: (laughing) He took had you seen teleprompter to a rodeo?

CALLER: Don’t you remember that? During the campaign, he want to a rodeo. I forget what state it was but he took a teleprompter there. You commented on it briefly.

RUSH: Yeah, I think I do. Now that you bring it up that way, yes, I do. Yes.

CALLER: Yes. Anyway, my comment was about a theory I had about that letter that was sent to you from The Hill… The Hill letter…

RUSH: Hill Buzz. Hill Buzz.

CALLER: Yes, the Hill Buzz, about not realizing how bad it really is gonna be for the Democrats?

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: And I think it’s because ever since you did say that, ‘I hope he fails,’ and having that CPAC speech that people have actually begun to listen and examine really who Obama is, what the Democrats, what the Democrats have been doing and how they’ve acted. But also how the media really has just totally not told what the truth is about what the Democrats are doing, what they’re saying. And the cover is coming off, and people are starting to question for how long the media’s been doing this. I mean, ’cause I’ve listened to you and I’ve followed what you’ve said as far as the information.

RUSH: How old are you?

CALLER: Me? I’m 38.

RUSH: Thirty-eight. Okay, that’s perfect. That’s perfect. So a lot of this stuff is it new to you. You probably… How long have you been paying attention to this stuff on a daily basis?

CALLER: I’ve been listening to your show roughly about nine years now and I’ve been most of informed ever since, and I used to not believe what I’ve been hearing and I went and checked it out and you’re absolutely right.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: You are, without a doubt, correct.

RUSH: Thank you. So your theory is that moderates and Democrats are now starting to go deeper than what the mainstream media is saying about who Obama is and what the Democrats are doing with all the policy, and you’re sort of agreeing with the Hill Buzz people, that there is more of a defection going on within the Democrat Party than anybody knows?

CALLER: Yeah. And all you have to do is look at the media and their plummeting ratings.

RUSH: Well, it’s all true. I think it’s all connected as well. I mean, I find it — and I’ve commented on it routinely. It really is kind of comical to watch the media report every day on Obama. Here the country is being ripped to shreds, Obama’s policies are tearing down the greatest engine of economic production activity we’ve ever had in the world. Rising unemployment is surprising. The fact the stimulus didn’t work is surprising. And they report on this as though it’s just ho-hum, everyday politics, and they cover up the actual destruction that’s taking place on purpose. You conclude that they’re either in on it or they’re so naive and stupid, so devoted — I mean such groupies — that their guy can’t do anything wrong and that their number one objective is to be protective. It’s stunning to watch. It’s stunning to watch the news business lose itself. It’s stunning to watch them.

Look at CNN. Could anybody imagine…? Let’s go back 30 years. Let’s go back 25 years, just 25 years. Twenty-five years ago you had ABC, CBS, NBC. You’re 38. So within your lifetime, Aaron, there was a period where there was only one cable news network: CNN. Everything else was network: CBS, ABC, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times. USA Today kicks up in the early eighties, I believe. Maybe late seventies. Nope, eighties. Regardless, CNN was it, and therefore in cable news they were giants, and when breaking news was happening, emergency news, crisis news, they owned everything. And it was the networks who were behind the eight ball, the networks behind the curve.

CNN has presided over their demise. CNN, the people that run that network — the people that owned it, created it, founded it, operated it — have sat there and presided over its demise to practical irrelevance. They have done nothing about it in the process. The efforts they have made to arrest it have only worsened the problem. They routinely lose audience. I saw the other day that this new show they have at eight o’clock has set an all-time network low, CNN low of something like 50,000 viewers in the 18 to 25 or 25 to 54 demographic. Now, in the old days, you lose audience like that and you get canned long before it gets to this point. They are — and it’s not just CNN now. It’s MSNBC. All these major networks and newspapers are literally presiding over their own demise and doing nothing about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No, it stuns me. As a media guy myself, it genuinely stuns me. Now, I know that modern media has become fractured and niche audiences are now pursued rather than mass audience, except I don’t look at it that way. I’m not looking at a niche. But if you look at cable television, it is niche. I mean, the Food Channel is obviously looking at a niche audience. They’re not mass marketing. But you would think that news networks would be mass marketing. What’s niche about news? At some point you figure, everybody wants to be informed at some point about something. But it just stuns me professionally to watch, to see these once-great entities shrink right before our very eyes and literally nothing be done about it. In fact, it’s excused.

It’s, ‘Well, you know, our audience is being fractured. Fewer and fewer people really have the sophistication to understand what we do here at ABC,’ or ‘Fewer and fewer have the sophistication to understand what we do here at PBS’ or what have you. ‘Yes, we have lost readers here at the New York Times, but the ones who are left are really, really smart.’ It’s the excuses that are made for this. It’s just mind-boggling. Were I in their circumstances, I’d be long gone. I could not survive an audience plummet. I myself, I would fire me! I would realize the time’s up — and if something like that started to happen, I would not blame the audience which is what they do. I wouldn’t say, ‘Those stupid people! They’re not smart enough to figure out what I’m saying.

‘They can’t keep up with me,’ but the left, that’s what they do. I would first say, ‘What am I doing to screw up here? What am I doing that’s no longer working?’ If there were media back during the days of Nero, they would write glowing stories of how well he played the fiddle while Rome burned to the ground! Which is what they’re doing with Obama. America is going to hell in a hand basket and they’re writing what a great communicator he is and how he’s not really do it as well as he used to, and can he get the old magic back. He is single-handedly destroying the country, and single-handedly helping to destroy them by virtue of their loyalty to him, and they sit there in awe. They just boggle my mind with it. It’s very strange, to a broadcast professional.