Newsmax, OAN vie for Trump loyalists as Georgia votes

[webfact]

Newsmax, OAN vie for Trump loyalists as Georgia votes

By Helen Coster and Lisa Richwine

 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump departs on travel to West Point, New York from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 12, 2020. REUTERS/Cheriss May//File Photo

 

(Reuters) - As candidates face off in Georgia on Tuesday in contests that will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, another race is underway between cable news networks catering to conservative audiences.

 

For One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax, the Georgia runoffs present an opportunity to capitalize on post-presidential election audience gains, which they’ve boosted thanks to promotion from President Donald Trump. For weeks, the outlets pushed baseless theories about election fraud in an effort to be number two behind dominant cable news channel Fox News.

 

The elections will allow conservative media outlets to “see and tell the next chapter in the continuing saga of Trump World and the amplifying of the right wing cause,” said Frank Sesno, a former CNN correspondent and director of strategic initiatives at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

 

Trump ramped up his criticism of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corp-owned Fox News and began to promote Newsmax and OAN on Twitter instead, helping the two outlets to the right of Fox grow. On Dec. 30 Trump tweeted: “Watching @FoxNews is almost as bad as watching Fake News @CNN. New alternatives are developing!”

 

However, the president still conducted his only two post-election interviews on Fox News.

 

A DIVIDED CONSERVATIVE AUDIENCE

Georgia’s unusual runoff for two Senate seats will determine if Republicans hold power in the chamber. OAN reporters will cover the elections from Georgia, Florida and Washington, OAN President Charles Herring said. Two of the network's reporters recently covered the Georgia races from exclusive access inside Trump’s private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, Herring said.

 

Newsmax will feature one of its Washington-based correspondents at polling places in Georgia, and later at the headquarters of Republican candidate David Perdue, as part of its all-day coverage from the state. Commentators will include former Fox News political strategist Dick Morris and former Georgia Republican lawmaker Jack Kingston.

 

Fox, which has invested heavily in its own system for analyzing voting behavior, opinions and preferences, is the only one of the three networks that can make its own election projections. The network’s live coverage from Georgia began Sunday and includes two nights of a two-hour special on the runoffs. Fox will air overnight election coverage from 1 a.m. until 4 a.m. EST.

 

Courting a divided conservative audience will be key to keeping viewers engaged after the U.S presidential election, which helped Newsmax and OAN attract record audiences. According to Nielsen data, Newsmax ended the year averaging 277,000 viewers per day in December, down from post-election peaks, but up from 60,000 before the election.

OAN President Charles Herring said the network’s audience swelled by more than 40 percent in the fourth quarter over the third quarter.

 

The network does not subscribe to Nielsen, and Reuters was unable to confirm the numbers.

 

Fox News’ audience was far bigger, averaging 1.9 million viewers per day in 2020. While it dominated cable news in primetime, with 3.6 million viewers on average, its total day ratings have slipped below AT&T Inc’s CNN since the election.

The question remains whether viewers who tune in this week will stick with the upstarts when Trump leaves office, said George Washington University’s Sesno.

 

There will be an audience for their brand of right-wing coverage, he said. “I think the question is how large? How rapt? Does it ever get old?”

 

(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Kenneth Li and Aurora Ellis)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2021-01-06

 

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[webfact]

Polls close in Georgia's elections with Biden's agenda, Senate control at stake

By Rich McKay and Nathan Layne

 

Voters line up for the U.S. Senate run-off election, at a polling location in Marietta, Georgia, U.S., January 5, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Segar

 

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Polls closed in Georgia on Tuesday after voters cast ballots in a pair of runoff elections that will determine both control of the U.S. Senate and Democratic President-elect Joe Biden's ability to push through an ambitious legislative agenda.

 

Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler faced Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a pastor at a historic Black church in Atlanta.

 

The results could be known by Wednesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told CNN, although the outcome may remain in doubt for days if the margins are razor-thin. Officials were set to begin counting ballots as soon as polls closed at 7 p.m. (0000 GMT), although a handful of sites will stay open later after earlier delays.

 

Democrats must win both contests in Georgia to take control of the Senate. A double win for the Democrats would create a 50-50 split in the Senate, giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote after she and Biden take office on Jan. 20. The party already has a majority in the House of Representatives.

 

If Republicans hold onto the Senate, they would effectively wield veto power over Biden's political and judicial appointees as well as many of his policy initiatives in areas such as economic relief, climate change, healthcare and criminal justice.

 

Both Biden and Republican President Donald Trump campaigned in the state on Monday, underscoring the stakes.

 

No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race in Georgia in 20 years, but opinion surveys show both races as exceedingly close. The head-to-head runoff elections, a quirk of state law, became necessary when no candidate in either race exceeded 50% of the vote in November.

 

Biden's narrow statewide win in the Nov. 3 election - the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 - has given the party reason for optimism in a state dominated by Republicans for decades.

 

More than 3 million Georgians voted early by mail or in person, shattering the record for runoff elections even before Election Day arrived. The two races drew nearly half a billion dollars in advertising spending since Nov. 3, a staggering total that fueled a tsunami of television commercials.

 

An exit poll of more than 5,200 voters released by Edison Research on Wednesday showed the electorate's racial mix appeared to be roughly the same as in November. About six in 10 voters identified as white, while roughly three in 10 were Black and the remainder split among Latino, Asian and other groups.

 

The poll included both early voters and voters who cast ballots on Tuesday.

 

In Smyrna, about 16 miles (26 km) northwest of Atlanta, Terry Deuel said he voted Republican to ensure a check on Democratic power.

 

"The Democrats are going to raise taxes," the 58-year-old handyman said. "And Biden wants to give everyone free money - $2,000 each or something like that for COVID stimulus? Where are we going to get the money?"

 

Ann Henderson, 46, cast ballots at the same location for Ossoff and Warnock, saying she wanted to break Washington's gridlock by delivering the Senate to Democrats.

 

"It's the social issues - civil rights, racial equality, voting rights, pandemic response," she said. "If we take it, maybe we can get something done for a change."

 

TRUMP RAGES

The campaign's final days were overshadowed by Trump's continued efforts to subvert the presidential election results.

 

On Saturday, Trump pressured Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, on a phone call to "find" enough votes to reverse Biden's victory, falsely claiming massive fraud.

 

Trump's efforts to undo his loss - with some Republicans planning to object to the certification of Biden's win when Congress meets on Wednesday to formally count the presidential vote - have caused a split in his party and condemnation from critics who accuse him of undermining democracy.

 

At Monday's rally in Georgia, Trump again declared the November vote "rigged," an assertion some Republicans worried would dissuade his supporters from voting on Tuesday.

 

His attacks appear to have undermined public confidence in the electoral system. Edison's exit poll found more than seven in 10 were very or somewhat confident their votes would be counted accurately, down from 85% who said the same in a Nov. 3 exit poll.

 

Wall Street's main indexes finished higher after a weak start on Tuesday as investors awaited the outcome in Georgia.

 

If elected, Warnock would become Georgia's first Black U.S. senator and Ossoff, at 33, the Senate's youngest member. Perdue is a former Fortune 500 executive who has served one Senate term. Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, was appointed a year ago to fill the seat of a retiring senator.

 

(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Dan Burns; Writing by Joseph Ax and Will Dunham; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2021-01-06

 

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[Bluespunk]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

OAN President Charles Herring said the network’s audience swelled by more than 40 percent in the fourth quarter over the third quarter.

 

The network does not subscribe to Nielsen, and Reuters was unable to confirm the numbers.

Ah huh...

[Bluespunk]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

Terry Deuel said he voted Republican to ensure a check on Democratic power.

 

"The Democrats are going to raise taxes," the 58-year-old handyman said. "And Biden wants to give everyone free money - $2,000 each or something like that for COVID stimulus? Where are we going to get the money?"

That was trump's idea Terry...

[klauskunkel]

7 hours ago, webfact said:

OAN President Charles Herring said the network’s audience swelled by more than 40 percent in the fourth quarter over the third quarter

, however, the average IQ of its audience did not swell in the least and remained at a paltry score of 70...

[Jeffr2]

Quote

As candidates face off in Georgia on Tuesday in contests that will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, another race is underway between cable news networks catering to conservative audiences

.

 

Should read: Networks catering to conspiracy theorists and those who prefer 'alternative facts'.

[onthedarkside]

A post making unsubstantiated election claims has been removed along with a reply.

 

[onthedarkside]

Fox News at this hour:

 

 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/

 

[onthedarkside]

Looks like OAN has trouble keeping their website up to date.. as their current article is still referencing 87% of precincts....

 

I'm not going to link to either OANN or Newsmax for how they're reporting the Georgia U.S. Senate results, because both are considered non-credible sources and not allowed as sources here on the TVF.

 

[kamahele]

Unfortunately, many Trump supporters don't want to listen to facts if the facts don't agree with their opinion so have turned to these two propaganda stations.

[placeholder]

6 minutes ago, onthedarkside said:

Looks like OAN has trouble keeping their website up to date.. as their current article is still referencing 87% of precincts....

 

I'm not going to link to either OANN or Newsmax for how they're reporting the Georgia U.S. Senate results, because both are considered non-credible sources and not allowed as sources here on the TVF.

 

I went to Newsmax and they announced that Warnock had defeated Loeffler. Said it was too soon to decide Ossoff-Perdue but had Ossoff checked off as the winner. Also claimed that over 99% of votes had been counted which isn't true.

[RocketDog]

As of this time, it looks like trump scared too many repub voters away. This won't go well for him with senate leadership. Anerican voters are finally twigging to trump's game and refuting it. 

Life just got harder for trump and easier for Biden. 

Sweet! 

Now we just have to endure the upcoming republican fiasco in the senate and this nonsense will be over for good. 

[hugocnx]

4 hours ago, klauskunkel said:

, however, the average IQ of its audience did not swell in the least and remained at a paltry score of 70...

Pathetic, but by the way yours is of course.........how high?

[FritsSikkink]

38 minutes ago, hugocnx said:

Pathetic, but by the way yours is of course.........how high?

Nothing pathetic about it, they are not very smart (mine is 136 btw)

[Proboscis]

The big news is that it looks like the Dems will take over the Senate.

 

But the other really big news is that Georgia never votes 50% democrat as in probably has not done so since the Dixie Democrats who ran a Jim Crow regime down there went out of power in the 1960s.

 

Now you can take your pick as to why more people voted democrat than every before in recent times - the fact that Mitch McConnell's Republican Senate would not even put the 2,000 dollar handout to a vote (given the amount of corporate welfare they have handed out over the years);

the fact that Trump has been wailing like a lost kid about the fake cheating in the election and wanting to take the people's majority choice away from them

or that the Republic administration has made a complete mess of the pandemic and is still making a mess of the vaccine roll-out.

 

Perhaps a combination of all three.

[shdmn]

Bye bye Mitch.  Special thanks to soon to be former president Trump.  We couldn't have done it without your help.  Your election denying and demagoguery is great for turnout.  Dem turnout that is.

 

The Trump brand is now so toxic it could be listed as a chemical weapon.

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2021 by shdmn

[Tug]

There should be consequences for spouting off obvious bs as thease sites do look at what it’s brought to dc today inexcusable 

[Stargeezr]

After the shameful action at Washington DC, and capital hill, Donald Trump will

now be so toxic that no one will want to be his news pals.  Maybe after the next few days

America will be a bit changed and maybe lots of people will give their heads a shake,

and distance them selves from this Orange haired guy, who lost the election.

  His speech just before the disgrace at capital hill by his supporters and fringe

group people was what lead to the breech at the capital hill building, and Rudy should also

hang his stupid head in shame.  The idiots that stormed the building are still hanging around.

  This is just unbelievable.  I hope the rest of America lets these thugs know just how

big of idiots they are.

Geezer

[J Town]

If the 25th amendment isn't invoked now, then why the hell do we even have it?

[Scott]

//CLOSED//