FOX News is reporting that they beat CNN in the ratings during the war coverage.

[Lancer]

How was your trip to the dentist paiktis?

[Bereta_Eder]

As good as can be expected. I'll go back in a couple of days for "finishing and polishing"

I'm so angry at the previous dentist. He took my money, did a crap job and now I have to go and fix all his mistakes

Plus dentist work is the one thing that isn't covered by the universal health care, which means I pay for it

[Bereta_Eder]

(but it's completely dedactable from tax )

[MRT144]

lancer, you admit that you want to hear what you like rather than what is happening.

you wanted to hear american destroying iraq's army with no resistance, and thats what you got from Fox.

The problem you have lancer is you place your complete trust in something without questioning why. and then when presented with differing opinions obviously they must be wrong, rather than yourself.

i beg of you to stop your hard on for self satisfying right wing news and try to question it, for once.

[Lancer]

Well I pay 20% of my charge, the insurance I get through work pays the rest. The cost for one root canal plus a cap over the tooth after is $1400 plus, so I still have to come up with $280.

What are you out?

[Bereta_Eder]

270 euros was the visit to the other butcher dentist. For 5 fillings with a white stuff called synthetic rytine (on the front of the teeth) plus a replacement of a normal filling and cleaning.

The new one, I shiver to think how much he will charge me as he seems to be (and according to trusted reports is) very very good at his job. We will see as he will have to determine which of the butcher's filling are to go and be replaced and which to stay and be processed.

[Lancer]

Wow, that's big money. I'm not sure your mouth is worth it.

Anyway, my toes are frozen. Time to tuck in...

[Bereta_Eder]

Money well spent

[Al'Kimiya]

How about brushing your teeth instead? Your yearly dental checkup should be a time of joy!

[TCO]

smoking is bad for your teeth.

[GePap]

Does anyone find it strsnge that FIX News is the only one crowing about ratings all the time..their whole; "look, they love me" syndrome?

FOX has a few things that make it worthwhile, like having access to this WH that no one else has (precisely cuase they are biased). Otherwise they are so comically not unbiased that it hurts when they claim they are.

And for all of its claims, most American's still don;t get their news form cable, wich is a good thing since Cable news networks are pityfully short on meanigful stories.

[TCO]

I prefer Cable News (even if just CNN) to evening newscasts. Yes, they are short of news to fill the huge number of hours. But I like it a lot better than the predigested pap on CBS, et. al. It's like the net, I guess...

For more serious news, I like newspapers.

Network TV should get a bullet in its head.

[Lancer]

GePap, #2 always has such a fixation. Now that they are #1, expect it to ease up. They may put in their advert, 'the #1 cable news program, or something, not mentioning CNN at all.

[Bosh]

just gotta repost this:

http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/iraqwarcoverage.html

Since this is what most people are watching these days anyway, let's catch up on how the television news networks are faring in week one of Gulf War II.
CNN:
CNN has probably done the best job of exposing the more tragic aspects of this war -- namely the fact that its reporting crew got kicked out of Baghdad over the weekend. The resulting 72 hours of nonstop coverage of the crew's tearful group hugs at the Jordanian border and ceaseless "how did you feel?" line of questioning from Atlanta made me think I had stumbled on an episode of Oprah. The fact that this had suddenly become "the story" in CNN's eyes, even as U.S. and Iraqi soldiers were getting immolated across the border, illustrates the inward focus that has played a primary role in the network's downfall. If "sexy" Paula Zahn doesn't up the ante and start adopting a more aggressive interview style soon (think Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct"), CNN is pretty much toast.

This Baghdad eviction has left the network in such a state that all it can do when the ratings-boosting pyrotechnics light up the Baghdad skyline is have sexy Wolf Blitzer narrate it from his suite at the Kuwait City Hilton, where the thundering in the background is just room service bringing up some fresh shrimp cocktail. Don't blame Fox News for your misfortunes, CNN -- blame AOL Time Warner. Things fall apart.

MSNBC:
What could be freakier than Lester Holt's botox permagrin as he recites the growing body count from the commander in chief's latest wacky misadventure? Maybe it wasn't botox -- maybe he was born with his mouth frozen like that. Regardless, it's trademark of MSNBC's robotic news delivery, which drones on for long sing-songy stretches only to be eventually shattered by Chris Matthews's hyperactive barking as he gnashes and hurls himself like a crazed Lhasa Apso at the heels of some unsuspecting liberal peacenik lured into the studio with the promise of some free government cheese.

One interesting feature of MSNBC's coverage is the huge map of Iraq laid down on the studio floor like a supermarket advertisement for Empire Flakes. All that's missing is the little toy tanks and planes being pushed around by generals on their hands and knees making zoom-zoom noises. MSNBC does claim frequent contact with an actual Baghdad correspondent, CNN refugee Peter Arnett, but Pete is suspiciously quick to note that he's actually a National Geographic correspondent, ostensibly left behind on a Mesopotamian excursion gone horribly awry.

FOX NEWS:
Like an Iraqi soldier dressed in civilian clothes, Fox News has crept in under the false cover of objectivity to unleash a blitzkrieg of bias so right wing that channel-surfers often mistake it for a eugenics infomercial. The only nod at an actual exchange of ideas is Hannity *****-slapping the hapless Colmes while slobbering permaguest Bill Bennett slowly undoes his belt buckle in anticipation of giving that liberal ****er his final comeuppance. It's enough the scare the teeth right out of Ann Coulter's vagina.

On Fox News, it's not "Attack on Iraq," it's not "Gulf War II," no, it's "Operation Iraqi Freedom, ANY QUESTIONS, *****ES?" I'm surprised **** Cheney doesn't call to tell them to tone it down a bit. Fox News also takes the prize for being "most indignant" that the Iraqis have decided they have nothing to lose by not fighting fair. All I know is that it must drive the audio technicians nuts to keep having to pod down all that goose-stepping in the background. If you work at Fox News, this isn't Gulf War II -- it's Christmas.

AL-JAZEERA:
It's so obviously the Jews. While the Bush administration swims in hypocrisy with virtually every statement it makes, are there any Arabs who recognize that if they just had a news service that countered this with anything approaching objectivity, somebody might take them seriously? After all, this is a television station that still insists all the Jews got out of the World Trade Center before the planes hit despite the fact that this rumor was proven to be your basic email hoax. If email is Al-Jazeera's source du jour, why haven't they reported on the ease with which any man can lengthen his penis two inches? They would surely rule the world within days! Here's the truth: Until the Arab world gets a mouthpiece that generates information that doesn't read like headlines out of the Weekly World News Paranoid Edition, nobody will take their concerns seriously.

ABC, CBS, NBC:
Who gets home in time to watch the news at 5pm every day? The elderly and the unemployed, that's who. The traditional network news operations are so irrelevant it's a wonder the U.S. military still bothers to send them press releases.

THAT SAID, a lot of the failings of the war coverage are shared ones. Whether you're a war supporter or a war protester, there's a lot of information that's been withheld from you like you're a five-year-old, because American news coverage has self-censored itself to the point of irrelevance. We see when the pyrotechnics light up Baghdad, but we haven't seen the POWs, the civilian casualties, or the details of Halliburton's brazen and immediate lunge at the profit piñata. We haven't explored the curious absence of any evidence of weapons of mass destruction despite the fact that coalition troops now control large swaths of the country. We haven't explored the increasingly disturbing evidence that George W. Bush has turned over the day to day decision making to a little voice in his head he calls "God." No one asks the hard questions, which is why Donald Rumsfeld can wave the Geneva Conventions in the air with one hand while the other pushes the button to send electricity into the genitals of some innocent Afghani taxi driver rotting away at Guantanamo Bay, and not worry about being challenged by assembled reporters shaking in front of him like raw meat in front of a hungry lion.

This failure of American news coverage has its roots in the 1980s, when the corporatization of America's news media really got underway and professional worriers worried that if the process was allowed to continue, one day we wouldn't have a credible fourth estate when we really needed one. Like now.

[Ming]

Nahhh... Fox is going to KEEP SHOUTING it from the roof tops that they are number one. Especially when CNN keeps advertising they are the number one "prefered" source of cable news based on some rigged silly study that was done. They sat in CNN's shadow for a long time when it came to ratings, and advertising revenue.

Now that they can, they will continue to rub CNN's face in it to insure they get more than their fair share of advertising revenue.