Big 3 Nets' Evening News Audience Fails to Break 20 Million in Mid-Sep
They're out of excuses. Summer's over. It's after Labor Day. The kids are back in school. People are back into their routines. The trouble for the Big 3 broadcast networks is that those routines don't include watching their early-evening newscasts. Beyond that, last week was a pivotal week in Campaign 2010, with key primaries in New York, Delaware, New Hampshire, and several other states. As…
George Stephanopoulos Strategizes With Old Boss Bill Clinton: How Can
Interviewing Bill Clinton for Tuesday's Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos' nine minute segment mostly amounted to a strategy session that was devoid of tough questions. Stephanopoulos stuck to softball comments, such as inquiring of the Clinton Global Initiative. He also speculated how Barack Obama could regain his "gut connection" with the American people. [MP3 audio here.]Some people…
AP Headline on O'Donnell 'Seeking' Establishment GOP Help Doesn't Matc
I suspect that headline writers at the Associated Press would be pleased as punch if readers stopped at their capsulization of Randall Chase's story and didn't read it. The headline at the AP's main site currently reads: "Surprise Del. primary winner seeks GOP support." Perhaps they're hoping that Christine O'Donnell's Tea Party base will be disappointed at the impression the headline gives,…
NBC's Brian Williams Gives Jimmy Carter a Platform to Denounce Fox New
In selecting which excerpts, from his sit-down with former President Jimmy Carter, to showcase on Monday's NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams began with the not so humble boast from Carter that “I feel that my role as a former President is probably superior to that of other Presidents, primarily because of the activism and the injection of the Carter Center into international affairs,” but also…
SEIU Activist: Local Networks 'Willing Partners' in Campaign Against W
Are the three news networks actively working to defeat the Republican candidate for Governor in Wisconsin? According to the far-left Service Employees International Union, yes, they most certainly are.SEIU spokesman John-david Morgan - also, incidentally, a former journalist - told a staffer (audio embedded below the fold) for GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker that local media affiliates…
Marc Ambinder Fulfills Own Prediction, Provides Messaging Assistance t
I didn't know about what follows when I posted last night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on Atlantic politics editor and CBS Campaign 2010 "Chief Political Consultant" Marc Ambinder's September 15 prediction that "The media is going to help the Democratic Party's national messaging." Though drop-dead obvious, I still found it interesting that someone in Ambinder's position would admit it. It…
Marc Ambinder: 'Media Is Going to Help the Democratic Party's National
In a September 15 post-primary item at the Atlantic ("An Epic End to the Primaries: What It Means"), politics editor Marc Ambinder presented seven "different ways to look at the primaries of September 14, 2010." His final item reads as follows (bold is mine): 7. The media is going to help the Democratic Party's national messaging, which is that the GOP is a party full of Christine O'Donnells, a…
Fmr MSNBC Analyst Crawford: Media ‘Playing into Dem Message’ That
Appearing as a guest on Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, the Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford – formerly an MSNBC political analyst – admitted that the mainstream media have "listen[ed] too much to the Democratic message" that the Tea Party movement will harm Republicans rather than Democrats in this year’s congressional elections. He further charged that the media are "playing into that…
Author: 'Great Leap Forward' Death Toll Was 45 Million; Nick Kristof i
A UK Independent item about an unreleased book by historian Frank Dikötter made me think about New York Times columnist NIcholas Kristof. Readers will see why shortly. Amazon says that Dikötter's "Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962" will be released on September 28. The Independent's Arifa Akbar relays Dikötter's core conclusion that "At least 45…
At NYT, Kate Zernike's Clueless Advice to GOP Candidates: 'Enlist (Tea
It's almost tempting to just run a few paragraphs of Kate Zernike's latest item in the New York Times and simply have folks take their rips, but a bit of background would be helpful. Zernike (pictured at right) is the Times reporter who seems to have made it her mission to somehow singlehandedly discredit what may when all is said and done come to be seen as the most significant grass-roots…
'Today' Air-Brushes Muslim Identity Of Possible Anti-Pope Plotters
Imagine six Israelis had been arrested in the US and charged with possibly plotting against a visiting ayatollah. Rhetorical question: would Today have mentioned their nationality and/or religion?But when reportedly six Algerian Muslims were arrested in the UK and charged with possibly plotting against visiting Pope Benedict XVI, Today breathed not a word of their identity. Reporter Nina Dos…
New York Magazine Columnist: Jon Stewart 'Invaluable' as Media Critic
Lauding Jon Stewart's biting humor and criticism of today's politicized media, NY Magazine columnist Chris Smith called him "Cronkite, the most trusted man in America" in his piece featured on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Friday. The show's panel largely agreed with him and emphasized that Stewart is bi-partisan in his comedy. "The right provides better raw material, but Stewart's complaints are bi-…
Cable Nets Barely Cover Christine O'Donnell's Values Voter Summit Spee
While the mainstream media have been in a frenzy to denounce Christine O'Donnell as a kook for her socially conservative statements on abstinence from the 1990s, the cable news networks had a perfect opportunity this afternoon to let her speak for herself. Collectively they gave her less than five minutes. The Republican Delaware Senate nominee gave a speech at the Values Voters Summit in…
MRC's Bozell Addresses Anti-Tax Cut Bias, 'Islamophobia' on 'Hannity
Closing out the "Media Mash" segment on the September 16 edition of his eponymous "Hannity" program, the Fox News host asked for NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell's reaction to NBC's Meredith Vieira telling House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that the Bush tax cuts "didn't succeed" and asking him "what's so good about them?":Memo to Meredith [Vieira]: You can have a debate about what future…
