Media Business

She's a seven-term Democrat representing Las Vegas in the U.S. House of Representatives and she's running in a U.S. Senate race which "observers believe could be a pickup for Democrats." But yesterday, Rep. Shelley Berkley (Nev.) received "a blow to her candidacy" when "[t]he House Ethics Committee... voted unanimously to launch a formal investigation into allegations" that the congresswoman "…

Certain events in the 2012 campaign make you ask how would the media respond if a particular story was about Mitt Romney rather than President Obama.  Take this past Friday, when President Obama was introduced at an Ohio rally by a man accused to stealing trade secrets from his former employer.  According to a local CBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, Daniel Potkanowicz has been ordered to pay…

PBS’s “Frontline” defended its use of a convicted felon as an expert in its “Dollars and Dentists” documentary. Phil Bennett, managing editor at “Frontline,” responded on June 28 to the Business and Media Institute, saying the show was “unaware of [Christina] Bowne's criminal record,” and that he did not think it undermined the story. However, the interview was crucial to the show’s case…

On Sunday, we pointed out how the New York Times shamelessly plugged MSNBC "wonk prince" Chris Hayes as hot and trendy among young hipsters. The Times should wince now that  Jeff Poor at The Daily Caller dug up the actual ratings to embarrass Times writer Alex Williams for hailing the weekend ratings of Up! With Chris Hayes. It turns out the “Uppers” weren’t as numerous or trending as…

Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi publicized the latest feminist lament that “a new analysis of campaign coverage found that women aren’t even the principal news source on a topic they would presumably know best: women’s issues.” That apparently means sexual issues: “Major news outlets, print and TV, turn mainly to male sources for their take on abortion, birth control and Planned…

MSNBC will debut a new program, Monday, featuring a 9/11 truth conspiracy theorist as a co-anchor. Toure Neblett will be one of the hosts for The Cycle, airing at 3pm on the cable network. Toure (who doesn't use his last name on MSNBC) has tweeted his suspicions about whether the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job.One entry on Twitter reads: "How could a plane crash into the Pentagon? And…

Update (June 25, 5:48 p.m. EDT): Wurzelbacher has responded in a blog post at RedState, linking to a Smart Girl Politics post which noted that "[o]f the thirty-one signatories [of the anti-Wurzelbacher letter], all but six are registered Democrats or have made financial contributions to Democratic candidates or PACs." "A viral campaign video in which Samuel 'Joe the Plumber' Wurzelbacher…

On June 13, the CBS Evening News devoted a story by David Martin to the Afghanistan death count reaching 2,000, as Martin interviewed a mother of a fallen Marine. CBS was alone. There was no story last week on the Afghanistan death “milestone” on ABC, NBC, the PBS NewsHour – or even on the MSNBC programs found in Nexis, including Rachel “Our Military’s In a Perilous Drift” Maddow. But the…

MediaBistro's TVNewser blog picked up on an "unfortunate lower third" on Thursday's NBC Today, referring to a headline that appeared on screen as reportedly outgoing co-host Ann Curry was interviewing actor Steve Carrell about his new movie, Seeking A Friend for the End of the World. The graphic read: "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow."

Barack Obama’s adoring cheerleaders at NBC are back in the editing room distorting the truth, and, not surprisingly, Andrea Mitchell has the gall to make no apologies for it. First it was their vile attempt to make George Zimmerman sound like a racist to gin up racial conflict, and now they’ve set their sights on Mitt Romney who they’re desperately trying to paint as an out-of-touch, silver…

The next time a liberal friend of yours -- with a straight face -- tells you that MSNBC is concerned with substantive campaign reporting, you can throw this back at them. The Right Scoop blog has an excellent post today -- be sure to also check out Soopermexican's original post -- about how the network's latest fixation: Mitt Romney mistakenly calling the Wawa convenience store chain "Wawa's…

Openly gay MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts seems to make a point of addressing an issue of interest to homosexual activists at least once in each hour of his coverage of MSNBC Live. Today was no exception as Roberts gave a softball interview to retired multimedia journalist and former Eagle Scout Naka Nathaniel. Nathaniel was on to explain why he was publicly renouncing his achievements as a Boy…

Although it remains in distant third in the U.S. television ratings behind Fox News Channel and MSNBC, CNN has consistently been a good revenue generator for its parent company Time Warner. In fact, in terms of profits, CNN is on track for record numbers this year. How is that possible in the face of continued failures in both the daytime and primetime dayparts? The short answer is CNN's self…

With a program entitled Hardball, MSNBC audiences should expect, well, "hardball" questions of politicians no matter what their ideological leanings, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on the June 14 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity. Instead, host Chris Matthews recently and quite openly confessed his eagerness to aid Democrat Elizabeth Warren's campaign to defeat Sen. Scott Walker (…