(NewsNation) — One of the things we pride ourselves on about this show is our transparency. I tell you what I think, so there are no hidden biases and you can better decide for yourself if you agree or disagree with me.
We do the same for our guests. There is no sandbagging. If it’s going to be a debate, the guest knows ahead of time.
The problem is that much of the mainstream media doesn’t abide by those rules. In fact, some view sandbagging as a job requirement and hide their biases rather than admitting where they are coming from.
That is what sure seemed to have happened recently when I agreed to do an interview with Paul Farhi, a media reporter from The Washington Post, about this show and NewsNation.
He reached out, claiming he had no particular angle in mind, just, “What is NewsNation and what’s it trying to do/how does it fit into the cable/satellite news ecosystem?”
I had generally liked his work, so I agreed to do an interview and presumed he would be doing a big-picture piece about the mission of this network and the results so far.
There is no doubt that any fair piece would say that when it comes to ratings, we still have a ways to go to catch up with Fox, CNN and MSNBC.
But when his piece came out this week, it was not really focused as much on the broader network or even the ratings trends, but on the hiring of Chris Cuomo. It had the headline: “Chris Cuomo’s new cable-news home woos moderates. So far, they’re not tuning in.”
It was chock full of personal attacks and references to “disgraced” this and that from someone who clearly doesn’t like Cuomo.
But even with that in mind, if the focus is on the impact of hiring Chris Cuomo, then the ratings he cites, which became the focus of the piece, must also relate to the time since Chris Cuomo started here Oct. 3 … right? But, of course, that isn’t what happened.
Regardless of what you think about Cuomo, the results speak for themselves, which is what makes the piece seem so clearly agenda-driven.
The fourth-quarter numbers for prime time on this network, which is from 8 to 11 p.m. and starts with Cuomo, then this show, followed by Ashleigh Banfield, is up 132% year-over-year from 2021 to 2022.
In the same period, CNN is up 3%, MSNBC 1% and Fox News down 2%. Our numbers are still well behind theirs, but the media usually focus on trends and we are trending way up.
In fact, in January, we were up even further, averaging 113,000 viewers in prime time.
As for the key sales demographic, adults 25-54, our viewership was up a whopping 217% in January from the previous year. That’s larger growth not only than any other cable news network, it makes us No. 1 in growth for any ad-supported cable network in the country.
But when you have committed to doing a hit piece, you play with the numbers, and rather than focusing on the trends and the performance since Cuomo made this his new home, as the headline says, you try to find a more negative outlook, which is to look back to all of 2022 before Cuomo started and ignore the trends, which is what Farhi did.
Now, The Washington Post doesn’t do a lot of cable news ratings stories, but here is a great example and it’s relevant in more ways than one.
The same Washington Post, in 1999, a few years after MSNBC and Fox News started (you remember those days when everyone had cable) published a story with the headline “This just in … CNN ratings slide” with the first line “CNN did not have plenty to be thankful for last month, having plunged 44 percent in prime time vs. November ’98.” They were covering the trend, year to year, of which way it was going.
And then this line: “Fox News Channel was the only one of the pack in the black; up from 202,000 to 248,000 viewers. That puts it ahead of MSNBC in prime time for the seventh month this year. MSNBC averaged 197,000 prime-time sets of eyeballs, vs. 248,000 last November.”
NewsNation is currently at 113,000. At the pace NewsNation is going, it will likely be beating those numbers three-plus years in. But that wasn’t the narrative that The Washington Post was seeking.
Why? Part of it appears to be political.
Because rather than showing the different kinds of voices we have on this show or others, which every news rating agency has said is more balanced than any of the other cable news networks, Farhi spends a lot of time talking about appearances that conservative Bill O’Reilly made on Cuomo’s show and suggests that the network somehow defies its mission by presenting opinion, which we openly welcome and admit we do.
In fact, I do it every day on this show. Except the only opinion he cites to make the point in addition to O’Reilly is one from “former Fox News host” Leland Vittert asking a question that suggests left-leaning media bias. The Washington Post and Farhi clearly disapprove of O’Reilly’s and Vittert’s politics.
I invited Paul Farhi on the show to respond because we always like to get both sides of a story. But he politely declined, saying his story spoke for itself.
More broadly, as I was looking back at old ratings stories, I found a story from The Los Angeles Times from 1997 when Fox News was about the same age as NewsNation today, where the Times referred to “Fox’s little-seen cable news channel.”
It takes time to build an audience, particularly in the cable news world. It takes time to establish brand recognition and trust. But based on the direction we are going compared to the other three networks, it sure seems like any objective observer would say it appears to be working.
The nonbiased, non-agenda-driven headline might have said “Chris Cuomo’s new cable-news home woos moderates. They have a ways to go, but the winds sure seem to be going their way.”
But then again, I do have a bias here, so you can judge for yourself.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.