Shame? A network?

Front Page Magazine reprints an editorial from Investor's Business Daily which asks how long ABC and Barbara Walters will allow themselves to be embarrassed by the insane verbal spouting of Rosie O'Donnell:

Crackpot 9/11 conspiracy theories are usually deemed beneath the dignity of network television. With Rosie O'Donnell now promoting the fringe, how embarrassed are ABC and Barbara Walters willing to be?

Since joining ABC's all-female talk show "The View" last year, comedienne and film star O'Donnell has exchanged insults with Donald Trump, and been labeled a bigot by Catholic League president William Donohue for what he called her "relentless and profoundly ignorant attacks on the Catholic Church and its teachings." According to O'Donnell "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam."

Famed interviewer Walters, co-host and co-owner of "The View," and ABC might tolerate that kind of controversy. But will they accept her promotion of 9/11 conspiracy schemes? Last week, O'Donnell said the collapse of the 7 World Trade Center building "defies physics" because "it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved."

In a post on her Web site, she ranted last month about how 7 WTC "contained offices of the FBI, Department of Defense, IRS (which contained prodigious amounts of corporate tax fraud, including Enron's), U.S. Secret Service, Securities & Exchange Commission (with more stock fraud records), and Citibank's Salomon Smith Barney, the mayor's office of emergency management and many other financial institutions," not to mention "the U.S. Secret Service's largest field office with more than 200 employees."

In recent days, O'Donnell suggested on "The View" that Iran's capture of British seamen could be a plot by Britain and the U.S. to start a war with Iran. "Have governments ever faked incidents or incited incidents in order to get them into wars?" she asked.

O'Donnell smoothly transformed herself from history expert to a virtuoso in philosophy Thursday when a guest called the phrase "war on terror" propaganda. "Exactly," O'Donnell exclaimed, because the phrase "makes people into evil and good."

Reputable sources such as Popular Mechanics' "Debunking 9/11 Myths" report and last year's 10,000-page National Institute of Standards and Technology report have thoroughly debunked the 9/11 conspiracy crowd. While O'Donnell has a look at the facts they've assembled, she might also want to glance at her ABC contract — and get prepared to pull the cord on her golden parachute.

The short answer to the question is this, as long as the ratings for The View are good.

Whoever wrote this editorial makes a fundamental error in assuming that either Barbara Walters or ABC is capable of feeling shame. Anyone who saw Walters on her knees, practically fellating a dictator like Hugo Chaves in exchange for an "exclusive interview" cannot believe that she is capable of anything like shame.

The fact is that TV is a business and ratings for The View are very good and growing. It matters not one little bit that many of those tuning in are doing so for the freak show quality of Rosie's performance. All that matters is that they tune in and pump up the audience numbers so that more money can be charged for advertising.

The fact is that because of the proliferation of television channels caused by cable and satellite the potential audience for any program is much smaller today than it was even 30 years ago. This means that a program can survive and even be considered a success with a much smaller audience than at any time in the history of the medium. Because of this a program which only appeals to a small (as a percentage of the population) lunatic fringe can attract numbers which make it a success.

The news departments of the major broadcast networks have already lost the conservative members of the public. In order to bring them back they would have to transform themselves into something much closer than FOX News than CNN and the people who fill the news departments are simply unwilling to abandon their liberal agenda. If fact the bulk of them do not even consciencely realize that they have a liberal agenda.

For most of them supporting things like abortion, tax increases, gun control, increased regulation, gay marriage and the rest of the moonbat wishlist is just normal. In their minds these are just the things that ordinary sane people support. For this reason when they do a report on gun control they will have 9 minutes and 30 seconds of gun control advocates then a 30 second response from someone from the NRA. They will then believe that they have been perfectly fair. After all, they let the insane gun-loving wack jobs have a say, didn't they?

With the loss of the conservative, much of the centerist and even some of the center-left audience the networks will increasingly turn to the hard left fringe, which is making up a larger and larger percentage of the Democrat Party. It is both an economic decision and it accords with the natural inclinations of their news department staff, both those in front of and behind the camera.