days go on. there will be these hearings during the day, several times in the coming week. and certainly there will be a core audience that tunes in. these will be shown again on broadcasts as well as most cable news channels. however, i think in this modern media environment, people soak up news and information like sponges. sometimes you don t know what direction it is coming from, but you soak it up like a sponge and that is the significance of these hearings. the moments of news, the moments of confessions or of revelations will be consumed in lots of different ways. that gets to the 20 million figure you cited for thursday night. 20 million is that core audience number that we have, basically it is a good measurement of how many political junkies are there in the united states that want to watch a two-hour hearing about congressional activities and about the attack of the capitol. beyond that 20 million, many other tens of millions did pick up the information from thursday s heari
sort of in line with that. i have known chris since he was executive producer of cbs this morning and he s someone known for hiring talented people and letting them do their jobs, which is a little different way of going about things than the previous guy in the job, jeff zucker. it will be interesting to see how far he lets the people underneath him take some of these coverage ideas and coverage decisions. you were talking about the 9:00 p.m. slot and chris said he wanted to do experimentation over the summer before landing on i apermanent choice this fall. what s interesting to me is that msnbc in particular, i haven t seen a lot of consternation over developing someone to take that job. so i wonder if the cable news channels aren t shifting a little more and a little more focused online. we ve seen meet the press for example will have a show on nbc
press is diminished and that darkness begins to fall? just look at what s happening in serbia. gone are the days of jailing or killing journalists who are critical of the ruling party. instead, serbia s ruling party is deploying a more subtle form of censorship. joining me is the founder and chairman of the united group, a telecom and media company in eastern europe, it runs the only cable news channels in serbia that give air time to opposition voices. thank you so much for being with us. i read the story in the new york times the other day about what is happening in serbia and it sent a chill down my spine. what exactly, if you can explain it to us, is happening to the free press right now in serbia? well, i think the situation with the freedom of speech and freedom of news in serbia is very grave and unfortunately is
guilty. the insurrectionists have the biggest handle on the truth than their biggest cheerleader. fox s own lawyers argued in a defamation suit against the network, successfully they argued. the judge in that case quoting their apparently convincing argument. quote, the general tenor of the show should inform a viewer he is not stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary. and fox s own lawyers argued that any reasonable viewers arrive with an appropriate amount of skepticism about the statements tucker carlsen makes. wishful thinking perhaps because according to pew research, republicans get their news from fox far more than right wing cable news channels. when ted cruz needs the biggest audience possible to self-flach late, where does he go? you called this a terror attack when, by no definition
techniques, including this is a new one and i can imagine this infecting our politics. russia using the fact-check formula to put out disinformation. you can remember, you covered those stories where the parties did fake local news sites. yeah. i can see fake fact checks coming our way. and russians using clips from american media to support their cases from other cable news channels. michael allen, thank you for being here. great to see you. thank you, jonathan. thanks to all of you for getting up way too early with us on this tuesday morning. morning joe starts right now. 20 days into the war and russia has yet to carry out its central mission, capturing the ukrainian capital of kyiv, but not for lack of trying. russian forces continued bombing ukraine s capital overnight and