Laura Bush's former flak, doing his usual Fox News cheerleading, recently made this phony claim about the White House's public scuffle last fall with Murdoch's cable channel [emphasis added]:

The public criticism of Fox no doubt went down well with the Democratic party's left for a few days. But it also backfired, boosting Fox's ratings, causing more people to watch as in: “Don't look over there, folks! That woman has no clothes on.”

Yeah, that's false:

No matter how many times reporters and pundits made the claim, a detailed analysis of Nielsen ratings numbers clearly indicates that in the two weeks after the White House in mid-October sparked a media controversy by claiming Rupert Murdoch's channel was not a legitimate news organization, Fox News' ratings did not soar or go “through the roof.” In fact, not only did Fox News' overall ratings not soar, they experienced no significant increase at all. Instead, in the two weeks following the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News' total day ratings virtually flatlined.