(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) The heart of the mainstream media, the leftist Associated Press, shifted the goal posts for what should be considered a success after the widely-panned J6 Tribunal TV production bombed, even with nearly universal prime-time coverage.
The AP spilled much digital ink hyping the J6 hearings, with one headline breathlessly proclaiming, “An infamous day. A search for Answers. Will America tune in?”
The article assured that “after more than 100 subpoenas, 1,000 interviews, and 100,000 documents, the committee has a story to tell … A story for the ages.”
This once-in-a-lifetime story was not hindered by any technicality, such as due process or evidentiary standards. Indeed, the AP wrote that “committee members” were “free from the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The AP touted the hearings as a prime-time extravaganza. FOX was the only major outlet not to provide blanket coverage for the event.
The AP went so far as to associate the hearings with the golden age of television, writing that “the prime-time setting for the committee hearing is a rarity and something of a throwback to an era when people gathered en mass [sic] at their televisions in the evening.”
Indeed, before the ratings release, the AP touted the viewers it gathered as something “usually reserved for live sporting events.” The actual ratings, however, showed that the hearing tanked.
Cable News Watch tweeted abysmal ratings for all major networks. These numbers, and total viewers, were well below the normal ratings of these channels.
🚨🚨 Dems BS 1/6 hearings BOMB in the ratings!
8pm ET
ABC Attack on the Capitol 0.5 4.477
NBC January 6th Hearings 0.4 3.296
CBC Capitol Assault Hearings 0.3 3.3359pm ET
ABC AOC 0.6 4.233
NBC Jan 6 0.4 3.331
CBS CAH 0.3 3.139— Cable News Watch (@CableNewsWatch) June 10, 2022
In response to this catastrophic flop, the AP changed the rubric for success, tweeting:
“How many people are watching the January 6th hearings? That’s not quite the best question to ask … Instead, it’s the slicing and dicing of clips that matter—and what gets shared.”
