Media Business

At least when the National Enquirer prints unsubstantiated garbage, they go with new stories, MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued today on the Fox News Channel. Bozell was referring to the New York Times publishing a front page article on a 10-year old rumor regarding presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Video (3:28): Windows Media (6.6 MB) and MP3 audio (970 kB)

Below is an excerpt from MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell's February 21 "America's Pulse" appearance on the Fox News Channel:

The dean of journalism at Northwestern University seems to have gotten himself in a bit of a sticky wicket, as it were. Apparently, John Lavine, the dean of the Medill School of Journalism, has been indulging in the use of unattributed and unnamed sources in his columns for the Medill alumni magazine and 16 NU journo instructors aren't very happy about it. Not only are they not happy about it, but according to the Chicago Tribune they are demanding that the dean prove that he didn't make his quotes up out of whole cloth.

You know the journalist's favorite source, don't you? It's the "unnamed source," the "anonymous quote" and the famed "deep throat" sources that journalists make out to be "protecting" from discovery. This sort of source has a long history in the kind of journalism of whistleblowers or muckrakers that have been increasingly popular since Watergate. But, everyone knows that you cannot base a factual story solely on the anonymous source. There must be other things, other sources, other proofs backing up these unnamed sources or the fact in question becomes an allegation instead of a proven truth. Naturally, employing unnamed sources too often damages the veracity of any story -- as well it should.

Earlier today NewsBusters Managing Editor Ken Shepherd briefly interviewed conservative publisher Al Regnery, author of a newly-published history of the modern American conservative movement, "Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism."

Regnery had just finished a lunchtime chat about "Upstream" with conservative bloggers at Heritage Foundation's weekly blogger briefing. Regnery will deliver a free lecture at Heritage tomorrow.

Audio is available here.

Book jacket photo via Amazon.com

Given the lack of media concern over the teachings of Barack Obama's church, I don't expect much media interest in this either:

A conservative Christian group yesterday criticized a large Methodist church in the District for planning to offer services that recognize gay and lesbian relationships, saying they violate the United Methodist ban on same-sex unions.

Foundry United Methodist Church, which Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton attended when he was president, decided last month to support its senior pastor's decision to lead services that "recognize and honor" committed gay relationships. Foundry clergy, however, do not perform union ceremonies, the local bishop said.

CNN has fired producer Chez Pazienza after the network brass realized he had been blogging at his own left-wing site and several others over a period of years:

In a phone interview this morning, Mr. Pazienza, 38, said he joined CNN as a senior producer in January 2004 and has consistently received positive performance evaluations of his work. He spent his first year at CNN at the network’s headquarters in Atlanta, then moved to New York to work on “CNN Daybreak,” which has since been canceled, then “American Morning,” which is shown Monday through Friday, from 6 to 9 a.m.

Mr. Pazienza said he started his blog in May 2006 as a way to keep his mind occupied while he was on a medical leave of several months after an operation to remove a brain tumor. He got noticed by blogs like Drew Curtis’s FARK, a popular news-aggregation site, and Pajiba, a left-wing blog of movie and book reviews. [...]

In another example of the belt-tightening of the old media, NBC has announced that they will be closing two of their long standing news bureaus. Gone will be the Chicago and Dallas bureaus to be replaced by "regional hubs."

TVNewser gives us the scoop:

Insiders tell TVNewser the current NBC News global news gathering system is in for an overhaul. Sources tell us a 9am ET conference call among News division execs and the bureau managers will announce that the current system will be replaced with regional hubs covering large areas of the U.S. and, in some cases, the world.

TVNewser reports that the Chicago office will now answer to the New York office and Dallas will report to Atlanta. No word on how many jobs are to be lost, but it is certain that some will go away.

Now, this is how we expect the more "civilized," more "caring," more "intelligent" folks over at CNN to act, isn't it? The Page 6 column in the New York Post found that CNN has instituted a "a blanket boycott" of anyone from Fox News from appearing on their precious airwaves, even though Fox has had several CNN folks on their shows when those CNNers were flogging their books and side projects. It seems civility is something that CNN just cannot muster these days.

THE folks at Fox News Channel are magnanimous enough to put their rivals from CNN on air, but CNN isn't big enough to return the favor. Geraldo Rivera - who has a new book coming out, "His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S." - was booked to appear on Nancy Grace's CNN show on Feb. 28. But then he was disinvited and told CNN had "a blanket boycott" against anyone from Fox. " 'The Most Trusted Name in News' just chickened out," Rivera told Page Six. "This reveals a corporate insecurity." Fox has had on as guests both Wolf Blitzer and Glenn Beck. A CNN rep denied any boycott and blamed a scheduling conflict.

It's bad enough that CNN is so anti-social that they won't return Fox's kindness, but even worse that they went ahead and booked Geraldo and then pulled the rug out from under his invite after all the plans were made!

Jon Meacham is frustrated. After taking over Newsweek in 2006 as editor, he hasn't managed to get it out of its long-term rut as the second-best in the newsmagazine business. He also seems to have developed a severe case of Economist envy:

After about an hour, there seemed to be no more questions for him, so Newsweek editor Jon Meacham turned to his audience—about 100 graduate students at Columbia journalism school—and said he had a question for them: Did anyone in the room read Newsweek or Time? There was a small, awkward rumbling before finally, a man shouted, "No!"

Kudos to the guy for standing up and telling the obvious truth: Newsweek isn't read by anyone short of Grandma and dental office patrons.

The bad news just keeps coming for the old media, this time for major newspaper publisher the Tribune Company which may see its corporate bonds relegated even lower in the "junk bond" category.

Standard & Poor's Corp. put Tribune Co.'s already junk-rated debt under review for possible downgrade Friday, saying the Chicago-based media company's newspaper publishing group is likely to face further erosion of advertising revenue.

In placing Tribune's corporate credit rating on CreditWatch with negative implications, the debt-rating concern cited "our expectation that the rate of decline in advertising revenue at Tribune's newspaper publications may not improve appreciably and may worsen over the intermediate term."

Although MSNBC representatives make disgracefully offensive comments about President George W. Bush on a daily basis, it appears there is something the network won't tolerate: over-the-top remarks about Chelsea Clinton.

Such appears to be the case as MSNBC correspondent David Shuster has apparently been suspended for comments he made about the former first daughter on Thursday's "Tucker."

*****Update at end of post: Hillary's front-group, Media Matters, is absolutely thrilled by this announcement.

As reported by TVNewser (h/t NBer ricklail):

Conservative bloggers embody the political and patriotic spirit of Ronald Reagan argued Ace, winner of the 2nd Annual CPAC Blogger of the Year Award (read his blog Ace of Spades HQ here), as he accepted the honor earlier this afternoon at the conservative gathering.

Heritage Foundation blogger Robert Bluey introduced Ace, who lamented that while it may take another generation for another Reagan to rise to the presidency, everyday Americans can and should work to hold the political classes to account no matter the political climate.

Ace offered the recent debate over immigration/amnesty as one issue where bloggers were crucial in derailing a legislative compromise worked out behind closed doors on Capitol Hill and being foisted on the American public without the details being fully disclosed to the American people.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) the oldest news agency in the world and the largest French news agency, has been caught recycling two-year-old Congressional subcommittee testimony as current news.

On Sunday, AFP released an article, "US Qaeda strategy fatally flawed; analysts," which opened:

Speaking at a news conference in Oklahoma, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee floated the idea that the reason the vast majority of America's conservative talk radio hosts aren't endorsing him or John McCain is because Mitt Romney's investment firm owns a significant share of Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio syndication company.

"Some suggest that the fact that Bain Capital owns a major stake in Clear Channel is on Sean's network, maybe there's a correlation. I don't know."

The Sean he was referring to had to be none other than Sean Hannity, America's number-two talk radio host behind Rush Limbaugh.

Will the Writers Guild of America strike end soon? Possibly:

Informal talks between representatives of Hollywood’s striking writers and production companies have eliminated the major roadblocks to a new contract, which could lead to a tentative agreement as early as next week, according to people who were briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

A deal would end a crippling writers strike that is now entering its fourth month.

The agreement may come without renewed formal negotiations between the television and movie writers and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, though both sides still need to agree on specific language of key provisions.

Business & Media Institute Director Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Network January 31 to discuss reasons why The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) revenue numbers decreased recently - saying that its product is the problem.

"People have lost confidence in the media according to most studies...Most Americans understand that the...mainstream media are overwhelmingly liberal, overwhelming out of touch with a lot of their issues," Gainor said.

Gainor cited an instance where the Times was ran a story about veterans being more violent when they come back to the United States - turning "anecdotes into a loosely connected story and when you do that you alienate readers. They're the people that the Times work for. Journalists forget that."

NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr is torn over the two Democratic front runners Sens. Clinton and Obama. This according to a weekly newsletter from Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore in Washington, D.C.

As taken from the January 30 e-mail newsletter (emphasis mine; h/t Carter Wood):

The presidential campaigns of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) were both derailed yesterday in Florida. But in covering the story, the AP was considerably more morose about Edwards's train wreck than Giuliani's (h/t NB reader Joe Loiacono).

Let's look at the AP coverage. First the Edwards write-up by Nedra Pickler (emphasis mine):

From yesterday's Financial Times:

Current Media, the online media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, on Monday said it planned to file for an initial public offering that could see it raise up to $100m.

Of course, it’s never made a profit and the vast majority of its revenue comes from cable companies paying it for the privilege of carrying Current (emphasis mine).:

"How would you like to get the terrorists' perspective on tonight's State of the Union address?" asks Red State's Erick Erickson, noting the prime real estate -- "just three to four steps away from the House Democratic Whip's Office"-- that the al Jazeera network is getting to cover the State of the Union and the corresponding Democratic response tonight.

See picture below fold:

Despite its best efforts, the New York Times Company continues to find itself plagued by wave after wave of investor complaints spurred on by the fact that the company's shares have fallen from near $50 to just under $16 since 2004.

First it was Morgan Stanley's audacious attempt to end the Times's dual-class share system which enables the radical leftist Sulzberger family to continue running the paper into the ground by giving it almost-exclusive control of the NYT Co.'s board of directors. Now comes news that two large Times investors are nominating their own members of the company's board, without prior approval from Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger:

It's a sad and horrifying story enough as it is, yet the Associated Press surely has compounded the grief for a Texas couple with its January 23 story, "Lawsuit: Stillborn Was Put in Laundry," excerpted below (h/t NB reader Tracy Zeeb):

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A couple filed a lawsuit against a hospital alleging that it sent their stillborn fetus's body with dirty laundry to the cleaners.

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee.

After the article "Shock Troops" in The New Republic had been challenged by critics , a documentary filmmaker/blogger by the name of JD Johannes narrowed down the search of the author to Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division on July21.

Three days after that on July 24, the military began a formal investigation, which included taking statements from soldiers in Alpha/1-18IN.

Scott Beauchamp gave his initial statement on July 26, published here for the first time.

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith talked to two liberal politicians, the black Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, and black mayor of Washington D.C., Adrian Fenty, about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and asked Fenty:

You know, if we look at this statistically, it's not a particularly bright picture. I want to just put up a couple of statistics very quickly here. The frequency blacks feel discrimination in America. So high. Applying for jobs, renting or buying a house, dining out or shopping. This is a pretty bleak picture. Mayor Fenty, is this -- is this the America we live in?

This is not the first time Smith has seen America as a racist country, as he did in the wake of the Jena 6 controversy. One wonders where prominent conservative black leaders were for this segment, like former Maryland Lieutenant Governor, Michael Steele. Also, not even Smith’s liberal guests were willing to go as far as Smith. Fenty replied to Smith in a way beyond any particular race:

From MyDamnChannel.com comes a gem: Katie Couric yukking it up with CBS News production staff off-the-air on primary election night in New Hampshire. (Warning: There is some profanity in the video).

Some of my favorites 1) Couric admitting she doesn't know much about Huckabee 2) Couric talking about how she thinks she creeped out Cindy McCain because she couldn't stop staring at her eyes. 3) "I'm always like oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh sh*t" 4) "Give me one interesting exit poll, please!" 6) "Oh sh*t, I have seven seconds. [shrieks]"

It wasn't long after the fatal Minnesota bridge collapse on I-35 last summer that the liberal media jumped on the tragedy as a way to bash President Bush and the spending priorities of the Bush administration. Keith Olbermann suggested that Iraq war spending was to blame and Mike Barnicle, subbing for Chris Matthews on "Hardball" wondered if it gave Democrats political ammunition for growing the size of government.

Of course, this hardly was shocking for seasoned bias busters like our own Tim Graham, who noted parallels with media bias following a 1989 bridge collapse in San Francisco.

But now the investigation into the August bridge collapse is complete and it turns out that the seeds of the tragedy were planted in the 1960s when the bridge was built during the LBJ Era of massive social and defense spending with the Great Society and Vietnam respectively.

From a January 15 article by AP's Frederic J. Frommer:

This isn't The Onion; it's for real (HT Hot Air; bold after title is mine):

Sun, Jan. 13, 2008

Burke named executive director of ACLU in Texas

Terri Burke, former editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, has been named executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Burke, 56, will begin work at the ACLU of Texas on Tuesday. Her duties will include lobbying, fundraising, administering the organization and communicating with the public.

Burke said her new job seems like a continuation of her work in the newspaper business.

"I wanted to be a journalist because I thought journalism was a way to further the democratic process," Burke said. "At its heart, journalism is about the First Amendment. All my life, I've been interested in those kinds of issues."

I will suggest that no one in Old Media will think of Burke's move as the least bit odd.

Funny, that's not how they saw it in 1998 when the late David Brinkley retired and became a spokesman for a large corporation.

On January 9, a California appeals court struck down San Francisco's 2005 ban on handguns, citing that local governments lack authority under California law to enact such a ban (h/t NewsBusters reader John Kernkamp).

While this is a state law struck down on state constitutional grounds, not the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it is a major victory for gun rights advocates -- in a liberal Democratic state no less -- in a presidential election year in which the Supreme Court of the United States is hearing a 2nd Amendment case in March (District of Columbia v. Heller).

Yet while the San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko covered the story on January 10, I'm having trouble finding any coverage elsewhere in the media. When searching Nexis, I found no coverage of the San Francisco gun ban story in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, nor broadcast networks ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Meanwhile, as the Chronicle's Egelko noted in a January 14 story, San Francisco's district attorney has filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing the District of Columbia in its appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the District's 1976 handgun ban:

In it, an MSNBC executive admitted “Keith runs MSNBC.” Good to know that the basement-dwelling cable net is banking on a conspiracy-addled, orange-tinted Edward R Murrow wannabe for corporate guidance.

Olbermann went from almost fired to pulling the corporate strings in two years, which is impressive for a man with a habit of "trashing people publicly, even his employers" (bold mine):

But he seems to be doing well for himself in the office now. [Interviewer Paul] Tullis cites a senior executive at MSNBC, who says, "Keith runs MSNBC. It's been an amazing turnaround, because two years ago they were going to cancel him. Because of his success, he's in charge. Chris Matthews is infuriated by it."

It's almost like he's trying hard to win an MRC DisHonors Award.

Chicago Tribune's Jim Tankersley, writing last night in The Swamp blog re: Sen. Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire victory: