Update on Breitbart's Derrick Bell non-story.

Media Matters for America is one of the right wing's favourite bogeymen. The reason is simple, they call out the right wingers using their own words.

But this time, they have surpassed themselves with their takedown of the Breitbart silliness about Barack Obama, and the late Derrick Bell. After all, Derrick Bell died back in October 2011, so he's not around to defend himself.

I didn't realise this video was already out and has been since 2008, nor did I know that the first reports emerged in 2007. But then, I can't follow every single media news source on my own.

Doesn't stop me trying though.

Viewpoint Hall Of Shame: Andrew Breitbart

In response to Keith Olbermann suspending Worst Persons In The World again, I'm going to start posting nominations to the Viewpoint Hall Of Shame. Whenever I see something worthy of a "Hall Of Shame" entry, I will blog about it here.

Today's nomination goes to the late Andrew Breitbart. Primarily because he'd acquired the tapes and even though he passed away before they were released, it is just another example of the kind of work that he made famous.

Back in college, Barack Obama praised the first tenured African American law professor at Harvard University, Professor Derrick Bell. The right chooses to portray Bell as a racialist, a radical. Sean Hannity showed the footage on his Fox News show last night, and this morning, Joel Pollak, Editor in Chief of Breitbart.com appeared on CNN to proclaim the bombshell. But Soledad O'Brien, much like myself, couldn't see any bombshell information in that footage.

What Breitbart and the others on the extreme right seem to forget is that life is all about growing, progressing, going forward, not going backwards or standing still. The people who are most looked up to are the ones who moved forward, not backward.

There is growing distrust about official media, corporate media and government information, but that doesn't mean you have to belive the first conspiracy theory that comes along. People who propogate these theories often have something to gain by promoting it. So be equally wary of those who claim that only they have the real knowledge. This smacks of desperation by a right wing media machine that knows the Republican candidates for President this year are the weakest ever. And even Mitt Romney, who is the strongest of the candidates, is seeing himself get weaker and weaker because he is being forced to go further to the right now, at the cost of attracting independents and moderates, the REAL mainstream of American politics, later.

That's why Andrew Breitbart posthumously gets nominated for the Viewpoint Hall Of Shame.

Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 14th October 2007

Well, the main story in the ratings this week, seems to be one of recovery for Sky One. For the second time in three weeks, the channel has increased its share of viewing, this time going up to 1.2 share / 16.9 weekly reach, which equates to a total of just over 8 million viewers over the course of the week. Despite that, that is still about half a million less viewers than Sky Three, despite it having a lower share (0.7 / 18.0).

However, on the positive side for Sky One is the fact that despite the fact that The Simpsons still had 6 of the Top 10 highest rated programmes, the Top 5 were not dominated by any one show. Noel Edmonds' new quiz show for Sky One, Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old? has for the second week in a row come in at Number 2 in the top 10, with an audience over 600,000. Add to that episodes of Ross Kemp On Gangs, Stargate Atlantis and Prison Break all scoring over the half a million mark, and you'll see that Sky One has an improving stable of programmes. There's still work to be done, but there is a good foundation forming.

It's unfortunate that a lot of the news channels ratings information is not made publically available. In terms of share of viewing and weekly reach, we have ratings for Sky News, BBC News 24 and Fox News, but for individual programmes, only data for Sky News is publically available. For Sky News, their top rated bulletin was a Sunday edition of Sky News at Seven, which just made it over the 100,000 mark! Just out of interest, I wonder just how low the ratings are for Fox News Channel over here. I know they reached only 216,000 viewers this week, but I wonder how that pans out for individual shows. It's kinda disappointing that BBC News 24 don't have their indivdual show ratings released. I'd love to do what Inside Cable News and TV Newser do for US cable news channels and release the hour by hour comparison for primetime. That would be truly interesting information. Unfortunately, I think I'd have to be a subscriber to get that info, and that means paying thousands of pounds a year to get it.

There's a whole load of news channels that do not subscribe to BARB and therefore do not have ratings information collected for them by BARB. CNNI, CNBC Europe, Bloomberg UK, EuroNews, France 24, Al Jazeera English, NDTV 24x7 and others do not appear on the list of channels in the BARB ratings list, so unfortunately, we have no idea just how many people watch those channels at all.

Onto the timeshift channels, and let's list the Top 5 again.

E4 +1 - 0.6 / 13.6
Channel 4 +1 - 0.5 / 14.5
ITV2 +1 - 0.4 / 9.5
Living TV+1 - 0.4 / 8.0
UKTV Gold +1 - 0.3 / 9.1

Next, to the weekly Hall Of Shame...

Sky Travel Shop - 73,000
Anime Central - 88,000
Business Channel - 40,000
Community Channel - 108,000
Diva TV - 156,000
Fashion TV - 169,000
Golf Channel UK - 99,000
Legal TV - 121,000
LIfe One - 121,000
MusFlash - 60,000
MUTV - 74,000
Overseas Property TV - 41,000
Performance Channel - 195,000
Real Estate TV - 128,000
Rockworld TV - 41,000
Setanta Golf - 134,000
Simply TV - 40,000
The Baby Channel - 28,000
The Travel Channel - 191,000
The Travel Channel +1 - 180,000
Wedding TV - 161,000
Wedding TV +1 - 128,000
Xleague.TV - 96,000

And finally for this week's ratings, a heads up for next week, when we get the first set of ratings for Dave, the rebranded UKTV G2. The final week's ratings for G2 looked like this. 0.5 share / 11.9 weekly reach, which equates to over 5.6 million viewers. The timeshift version had a 0.1 / 2.6, which equated to just over 1.25 million viewers. Their last week's top 10 programmes looked like this...

1	TOP GEAR (Thu 2001)	190
2	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2220)	185
3	QI (Mon 2100)	177
4	TOP GEAR (Tue 2000)	169
5	DRAGONS' DEN (Thu 2100)	150
6	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2140)	148
7	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2300)	143
8	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sat 2220)	137
9	THE CATHERINE TATE SHOW (Fri 2100)	131
10	TOP GEAR (Tue 1900)	116

So, just how much better or worse will Dave do? Answers next week...