Ratings Bomb: The CBS Evening News

Michael Amsterdam has the full story on Katie’s rating disaster. Maybe there is no appetite for nightly doses of liberal drivel.
Katie Couric Ratings Disaster
By Michael Amsterdam
Oct 11, 2006

Katie Couric started off so well. Though she has said she hates it, she is often referred to as the perky Katie Couric and was the ratings queen in her first week hosting the CBS Evening News.

Now it appears the bottom has fallen out from under the perky one and she is headed for a ratings disaster.

Last week the former Today star’s broadcast averaged 7.04 million viewers, putting her in third place behind NBC’s Nightly News, with 8.56 million, and ABC’s World News, with 7.97 million, the Associated Press reports based on Nielsen Media Research.

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CBS is spinning away trying to put a happy face on the five week slide. They are noting that the CBS Evening News is the only one of the three network newscasts to improve its viewership for the same week compared to a year ago. Last year, NBC edged CBS by 2.2 million.

Democrat Hypocrisy

The New York Sun exposes Harry Reid’s hypocrisy in Reid of the Ritz Carlton.

We’ll see if the liberal media bothers to cover this story.

Senator Reid, the Democratic Party’s leader in the Senate, will reimburse his campaign fund for $3,300 that it spent on Christmas bonuses for workers at the Ritz-Carlton luxury condominium where he lives in Washington, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Which raises the question: The Ritz-Carlton? The Democrats, who tout themselves as the party of the common man, are rapidly turning into the party of the plutocrats. The Democratic Party’s candidate for Senate in Connecticut, Ned Lamont of Greenwich, is an heir to a J.P. Morgan fortune who has spent $10 million of his own money trying to purchase a Senate seat. The Democratic Party’s candidate for governor in New York, Eliot Spitzer, is accused by his Republican rival of having begun his political career with a $9 million loan from his father.

This is the new Teacher Preparation…

At a time when America’s schools are in desperate need of qualified, competant teachers, Columbia University has outlined a new plan for educating future teachers that reaks of Marxist, socialist tendenices that represent the political agenda of the American left. The program design allows for little training of competant teachers.

I have personally supervised over thirty student teachers in my career. These young professionals are sometimes full of energy, excitement, and an abiding love of children. These same young people are often woefully lacking in the preparation to manage students, write and execute outstanding lesson plans, and to engage the students in meaningful daily learning opportunties. These student teachers, on the brink of graduation, are almost all ill prepared to teach in the real world of public education. They usually are not masters of the subject matter, and have little or no comprehension of student attitudes, behavior, and motivation.

We have encouraged the local universities through several channels, including professional organizations, to design a curriculum and professional training model that prepares teachers for the rigors educating young people.

In this environment of needing competant teachers, Columbia focuses on training future liberals in diveristy and social justice. Like many professional training programs, the Columbia faculty concentrate more on furthering their political agenda than on the essential skills needed to be a master teacher.

“Our graduates choose to collaborate across differences in and beyond their school communities. They demonstrate a commitment to social justice and to serving the world while imagining its possibilities.”

The “conceptual framework” of the Coulmbia program  asserts that “educators must recognize ways in which taken-for-granted notions regarding the legitimacy of the social order are flawed, see change agency as a moral imperative, and have skills to act as agents of change.”
With Ivory Tower thinking like this at institutions of higher learning, America is still going to be searching for teacher training programs that prepare professionals to deal with America’s students.

The New York Sun has the story.

Blackwell Questions Strickland’s Judgment

BLACKWELL QUESTIONS STRICKLAND’S JUDGMENT

COLUMBUS – During the fourth and final gubernatorial debate, Republican candidate Ken Blackwell charged that Congressman Ted Strickland demonstrated a serious lapse in judgment by refusing to condemn a study by the American Psychological Association (APA) that said adult-child sex could be healthy for children. The APA later admitted the study was seriously flawed. However, Strickland has consistently stood by his refusal to condemn the study.

In addition, Strickland admitted to employing on his Congressional and campaign staff a man convicted of exposing himself to children. When notified of the employee’s misconduct, Strickland failed to conduct a thorough investigation and then ignored the issue. Blackwell asserted that Strickland’s negligence in the matter showed a blatant disregard for children and families.

Following are highlights and a link to the full U.S. House of Representatives resolution in which Strickland broke ranks with 355 Republicans and Democrats and joined 12 liberal Congressmen casting a “present” vote in protest.

Read the entire post.