Month: December 2007

Celebrity Of The Year: Stephen Colbert

Posted by on December 21, 2007 at 12:40 am. 1 Comments :

Congratulations are in order for Stephen Colbert who the Associated Press has just voted Celebrity Of The Year. Colbert eeked out a well-deserved victory over J.K. Rowling and Al Gore. In his acceptance email he said:

“It is truly an honor to be named the Associated Press’ Celebrity of the Year. Best of all, this makes me the official front-runner for next year’s Drug-Fueled Downward Spiral of the year. P.S. Look for my baby bump this spring!”

Perhaps this will make up for his bitter loss to Barry Manilow at the last EMMY Awards. It’s too bad we won’t be able to see him blow his own horn due to the writer’s strike. However, on that front, there is also news. Comedy Central has announced that both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will resume broadcasting January 7. A statement from the programs’ host reads…

“We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”

As I previously said, I truly believe that TDS/TCR are important contributors to our political discourse and that the nation suffers by their absence. Especially during an election season. So I am thrilled that they are coming back. I wish that they could come back with a contract, either through the Guild or independently. But it’s better to have them than not. And I would bet that their presence on air will support those on the picket lines. In fact, it may be the best thing for the writers to have Jon and Stephen pumping up their cause on national TV.

Movin’ on…

TVNewser Completes Its Descent Into Tabloid Drudgery

Posted by on December 20, 2007 at 3:02 am. 2 Comments :

Last night on the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric presented another in her series of Primary Questions to the candidates for president of both parties. The question for this installment dealt with marital fidelity and whether it should be a determinative factor when deciding for whom to vote.

This question, while not as elevating to the debate as questions about Iraq, global warming, the economy, or health care might have been, could still have produced some observable squirming from a number of the candidates. But in reporting on Couric’s broadcast, the rapidly deteriorating TVNewser was more interested in propagating rumors than in objective journalism. In an item by Steve Krakauer, who joined TVNewser last month and previously worked for Fox News, two candidates were singled out as having answers that would “be of interest.”

The first was Hillary Clinton, for whom a case could be made for a potentially interesting exchange. Although it should be noted that it was not Hillary, but her husband, who was guilty of infidelity. Since the context of the question was whether someone who was not true to their spouse could be trusted to be true to the country, it really did not apply directly to any behavior on her part. And despite their troubles, a decade has past since the affair and they have managed to keep their marriage and family together.

The second candidate Krakauer cited was John Edwards. And this is where Krakauer demonstrates either a woeful inability to mask his prejudice, or a professional immaturity that borders on incompetence. This is how he presents his next point:

“Also, with reports of a Sen. John Edwards extra-marital affair and subsequent pregnancy, his answer will be looked at more carefully as well.”

By referring to “reports” of Edwards’ “affair” Krakauer implies that there are credible allegations from responsible journalists and sources. The truth is that there is only a single allegation by an anonymous source as reported to the “National Enquirer” (to which I refuse to link) which is nobody’s idea of a responsible journal. And not a single reputable news organization has yet to follow the Enquirer’s smarmy lead, although Matt Drudge headlined it (good company).

The Enquirer’s story is fraught with ambiguity and error. Both Edwards and Rielle Hunter (the alleged other woman) describe the charges as untrue and ridiculous. Hunter, who is pregnant, has identified the father as Andrew Young, with whom she worked on Edwards’ campaign. Young confirmed his paternity, but that didn’t stop the Enquirer from asserting, with no evidence whatsoever, that everybody was just trying to cover up for Edwards. The Enquirer even faulted Edwards for not nipping the scandal in the bud early on by revealing the relationship between Hunter and Young. Of course Edwards could not have done that because he didn’t know anything about the relationship, as Young told the Enquirer.

This is the level of unsubstantiated innuendo that Krakauer pretends is newsworthy. In fact he is engaging in the most vile sort of rumor-mongering. He doesn’t even bother to explicitly inform his readers that his source is the Enquirer (he hides it in a link). And if all of this isn’t bad enough, in an article about the relevance of the breaking of marriage vows, Krakauer smears two candidates for whom there is no evidence of such behavior, but fails to mention others with known multiple marriages (McCain and Thompson) and notorious philandering (Giuliani).

So Krakauer thinks rumors spread by tabloid rags are interesting, but Mayors who keep their mistresses in the Mayor’s residence and use city funds to pay for trysts in the Hamptons are not even worth mentioning. What’s truly interesting and sad is how low TVNewser has sunk and how useless it has become. It is no better now than its new partner the Enquirer or, as I lamented in an earlier article, the Drudge Report. What an embarrassment for everyone involved.

Feel free to let TVNewser know what a pack of ethically-deprived journalistic lowlifes they are:

TVNewser
Chris Ariens, Editor, Exec. Producer
Laurel Touby, Founder, CEO

Deadline News

Posted by on December 20, 2007 at 12:20 am. 1 Comments :

MPAA rejects Gibney’s ‘Dark’ poster
The MPAA has rejected the poster art for Alex Gibney’s documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side,” which traces the pattern of torture practice from Afghanistan’s Bagram prison to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay. The reason for the rejection was the hood over the head of a prisoner. Perhaps the MPAA would have preferred if there were no hood so the prisoner’s bruises and expression of abject fear were plain to see?

Does Al-Jazeera belong in the USA?
Political pressure is keeping the network off of American TV. Politicians and pundits should not be answering this question. Cable and satellite companies ought to broadcast AJE free from political pressures; then Americans can watch it and answer for themselves. Unfortunately, politicians are even more afraid of Americans judging things for themselves than they are of Al Jazeera.

CSPAN’s coverage is 51% right wing think tank
A new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research “finds that right-wing think tanks got 51 percent of C-SPAN’s total coverage in 2006, while left-of-center think tanks only got 18 percent of their coverage (a mere 5 percent of which were ‘progressive’ think tanks). CSPAN is becoming almost as fair and balanced as Fox News.

Bill O’Reilly: The Internet is a high-tech “Lord of the Flies”
In this op-ed O’Reilly says that “The Internet is profoundly changing the behavior of American children and stunting their emotional growth.” The author of “Kids Are Americans Too” also says that “kids have always been dumb.” Of course they have. Why should they be any different than O’Reilly and his brand of “American?”

Bill O’Reilly’s Fair And Balanced Presidential Poll

Posted by on December 19, 2007 at 11:08 am. NO Comments :

Bill O’Reilly is currently polling his audience on the presidential candidates. He has completed a survey on the Republican field in which Mike Huckabee prevailed over Giuliani and Romney. Now it’s the Democrats turn. The poll includes only Clinton, Obama and Edwards.

Needless to say, this poll will have absolutely no significance to any campaign and will be illustrative of nothing but O’Reilly’s monstrously disturbed ego. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with it anyway. After all, it’s not as if we would be violating any of BillO’s journalistic standards:

Throughout the past year, The Fester has been hammering John Edwards as a phony who has sold his soul to the far left. O’Reilly is apoplectic in his ravings about how Edwards is intent on destroying America. I wrote about the media Ganging Up On Edwards last June and it has only intensified since then. For more detail, check out this brand new video from Brave New Films that also features Fox News’ attacks on Barack Obama.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to venture to the Forbidden Zone itself and vote for John Edwards. Vote for Edwards whether or not he is the candidate you are supporting. An Edwards victory could be just the thing to send O’Reilly over the edge of the precipice upon which he has been teetering for so long.

The poll is on the front page of BillOReilly.com. I would suggest that you go to Google, or some other neutral site, and type the URL in from there so that O’Reilly’s web minions don’t get curious about a lot of voters coming from this site.

It will be interesting to see how O’Reilly will handle the announcement of an Edwards victory provided by the visitors to his own web domain. He said that he will be announcing the poll results on Thursday (tomorrow), so waste no time in placing your vote. And feel free to enlist your friends and family. We may all finally get to see that vein on his forehead burst.

I can’t think of a better Holiday gift than getting to stick it to The Fester one more time before the new year.

Update: Poll results: Obama – 58 / Edwards – 27 / Clinton – 15.
Second place aint too shabby for Edwards on O’Reilly’s show where he is bashed incessantly.

The FCC’s Big Media Welfare Act Of 2007

Posted by on December 18, 2007 at 3:54 pm. NO Comments :

Tell the FCC: Stop Big MediaAs expected, the Politburo, oops, I mean the FCC voted today to loosen ownership regulations, providing Big Media the opportunity to get even bigger. They split 3 to 2 along party lines with Republicans following their Chairman, Kevin Martin.

Prior to the vote, 26 senators signed a letter to Martin asking that he delay the vote until more research had been done to ascertain the impact of the proposed regs on local media and diversity. They advised the Commission that if the regs were passed that Congress would “immediately move legislation that will revoke and nullify the proposed rule.” Amongst the signers were conservative Republicans like Trent Lott and Ted Stevens.

Despite the warning, the FCC’s Republican majority rammed through the regs showing overt contempt for Congress and the thousands of citizens who attended public hearings to object to Martin’s give-away to the giant media monopolies. Now we must send an unambiguous response to Martin and his cronies. We must reinforce the support we’ve received so far from Congress. It is safe to assume that, even if Congress passes a bill to revoke these rules, the President will not sign it. So we must make sure that we have a veto-proof vote.

This all starts by communicating with our representatives to let them know that we are paying attention and that we will not retreat from this battle. Go to FreePress and sign their “Open Letter to Congress” and then tell your friends to do the same. We beat them before and we can do it again, but it will take the participation of every one of us.

Stop Hurting America Redux: Free The Daily Show

Posted by on December 16, 2007 at 1:40 pm. 2 Comments :

This is a follow up to my article proposing that the WGA negotiate individually with the production companies of The Daily Show and other comedy talk programs that feature current affairs issues: Stop Hurting America: The WGA And The Daily Show

In that article I made the argument that some of these programs contribute so much to public discourse that their absence was measurably harmful:

“While news programs continue spewing their corporatist, insider views of presidential politics throughout the strike, programs like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, etc., have become silent. This is not a trivial matter. Many of these programs have assumed a unique role in our culture by highlighting the absurd quirks and contradictions of our politicians and press. The light these programs shine on the political landscape is nowhere countervailed in the dimwitted din of the so-called Mainstream Media.”

“The tenor of our times is too tense to leave to the addle-brained punditry of CNN, Fox, et al. What’s coming round the bend of civic life in America needs to be reviewed and regurgitated by the creative minds that gave us Mess O’Potamia and ClusterF@$k To The White House.”

The day after I posted that article Patric Verrone, the president of the WGA, floated exactly the sort of proposal I was advocating:

“If any of these companies want to come forward and bargain with us individually, we think we can make a deal,”

Well, tomorrow it is going to be made official. The Guild has announced that they intend to invoke a legal right to force producers to bargain with them individually rather than as a group.

“In a letter sent to members on Saturday, negotiators for the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West said: ‘Each signatory employer is required to bargain with us individually if we make a legal demand that it do so. We will make this demand on Monday.'”

“The writers’ move was aimed at breaking what has been, at least in public, a united front by a small number of media conglomerates – General Electric, News Corporation, Sony, Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom and CBS – whose entertainment units dominate the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group.”

That “small number of media conglomerates” is dominating a lot more than an industry bargaining group. They overwhelm our social consciousness, polluting our sources of entertainment and information with propaganda and commercialism. This tactic by the writers is encouraging on several levels. It hits Big Media at the core of their strength by dismantling the monolithic front that they use to batter down opponents. It empowers responsible production companies that want to fairly compensate their creative personnel and takes them out from under the shadow of their bigger brothers who never had their interests at heart in the first place.

Most importantly, for those of us concerned about keeping a tighter chain on our politicians and press as we get deeper into the campaign season, it provides hope for a return of The Daily Show and its peers. Every day that passes is a missed opportunity to reveal something new and scandalous that will probably be ignored by the Conventional Media.

A Steady Diet Of Junk News

Posted by on December 15, 2007 at 12:52 pm. NO Comments :

Are you happy with the menu of calorie-free entrees dished up Big Media? Do you find endless stories about drunken heiresses and celebrities satisfying? Is being kept uninformed about major issues that actually have an impact on your life acceptable?

If so, you are probably thrilled with state of modern media. Forty-six years ago Newton Minow, former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, referred to the media as a “vast wasteland.” Were he here today he might consider the contamination so irreversibly toxic that it would qualify as a Superfund site (bet you didn’t know that the EPA has a program for Contaminated Media).

In the same speech, Minow decried the parade of poor programming that littered the television landscape:

“You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom.”

Aside from the decline of westerns in TV’s civilization, nothing has changed. Some marketers argue that the networks are just giving the people what they want and that the ratings for their low-brow fare are proof of their success. But ratings only measure which of the programs that were provided were watched. They do not measure what might have been watched if something better were provided. What’s more, ratings are not an indicator of quality. If they were, McDonald’s would have to be considered the highest quality food in the country. In fact, this is an area where TV and McDonald’s have something in common. As I wrote in Starve The Beast, they both have…

“…the cheapest crap that is loaded with filler and seasoning to appeal to the largest number of consumers with the least sophisticated taste.”

Kevin Martin, the current Chairman of the FCC isn’t fit to sniff Minow’s shoes (as much as he might like to). He is an unapologetic representative of the mega-corporations that presently dominate the media. He has consistently placed corporate interests above the public interest and now he is trying to rush through a vote on industry-friendly media ownership regulations that are opposed by a majority of the Senate Commerce Committee as well as the public.

Stop Big Media, an affiliate of FreePress, has produced a hilarious and frightening video that illustrates just how low journalistic standards in media have fallen in an era that has been defined by rapid consolidation. If Martin gets his way it will only get worse.

We, the people need to be heard about this – NOW. Martin has made it clear that he doesn’t care what the public wants, so it is now up to our representatives in Congress. FreePress has a simple form you can use to contact your senators. USE IT! And do so quickly because the FCC is voting December 18, which is this coming Tuesday.

It’s Best When Everybody Thinks Alike

Posted by on December 14, 2007 at 3:20 pm. NO Comments :

In this administration, as in the halls of Fox News, it’s best when everybody thinks alike – No matter how much they pretend otherwise.


The White House held it’s annual “Holiday” (that’s right, holiday) Party for the media last night and the guest list was, to no one’s surprise, heavily weighted to the right-wing regurgitators of whom the President is so fond.

This morning Dana Perino, the President’s press secretary, visited with a regurgitator on Fox News and had the following exchange:

Steve Doocy: [H]ow weird is it to have, Dana, people who appear on other channels, who bash the president all the time, and then, one night a year, they come into the White House, they bring their kids, and they say, Hi, how are you, as if they haven’t been bashing the president all year long?

Dana Perino: It’s a little awkward. And it was amazing to me, being in charge of taking the requests for invitations this year, how audacious some people are to call and ask to be invited to the president’s Christmas party.

It was nice of Doocy to so openly reveal that it is the “other channels” who bash the President, and not Fox, the President’s Cheerleading Squad. That sort of honesty has been more in view since Rupert Murdoch admitted that he tried to shape the agenda on Iraq. And Perino’s discomfort with reporters who are critical of the President says something about her lack of professionalism and her immaturity in the role of press secretary.

And speaking of lack of professionalism, another Fox regurgitator, Neil Cavuto, interviewed his boss Rupert Murdoch yesterday. The conversation covered Murdoch’s acquisition of Dow Jones (and the Wall Street Journal) and the launch of the Fox Business Network, for which Cavuto is the Sr. VP. Have they really sunk this low? A senior Fox News executive interviewing his boss on air. That would be like Dana Perino interviewing the President for broadcast (maybe I shouldn’t give them any ideas). What exactly would we expect to learn from that?

I guess we’ll just have to get used to Fox News employees interviewing other Fox News employees. And we’ll have to accept that the White House is no longer the people’s house, but an office for partisan business and gatherings.

Glenn Beck’s Ratings: Headline Snooze

Posted by on December 13, 2007 at 4:44 pm. 43 Comments :

When CNN announced the hiring of radio talk jock Glenn Beck almost two years ago, they used words like “cordial,” “conversational” and “not confrontational” to describe him. What they delivered was the polar opposite of that, as has been well documented by Media Matters. Despite CNN’s laughable depiction of Beck as “Miss Congeniality,” they knew exactly the sort of piffle they were peddling. Their programming strategy stated at the time was to…

“…build Beck into the type of TV personality that could siphon viewers from Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts.”

They failed.

Beck’s ratings for November 2007 (25-54 demo) reveal a program on life support. At this point the humane thing to do would be to pull the plug and put Beck (and innocent TV viewers) out of their misery.

As shown here, Beck loses to all of his competitors in cable news. Both his live show and his repeat come in 4th out of four programs. That doesn’t leave much for him to brag about.

But that’s not the end of his problems. While Beck is unable to challenge his competition, he is also the weakest link on his own network.

On this chart you can see that the two lowest rated hours on Headline News belong to Beck. He is a TV anchor who is performing like a ship’s anchor and weighing down the network’s line-up.

This is not a case of Headline News being a less widely distributed network. Both Nancy Grace and Showbiz Tonight would either beat or play competitively against MSNBC’s schedule. Grace would even threaten CNN’s Lou Dobbs were she in the time slot.

These numbers demonstrate an inherent weakness that is specific to Beck. This is confirmed by looking at his year-to-year performance which is virtually flat. Beck’s audience in the demo for November 2006 was 148K (live) and 142K (repeat). That is essentially unchanged for 2007. For the same time period Grace’s numbers improved 20% (live), and 15% (repeat). Showbiz Tonight added 34% over their 2006 showing. So Beck is not only the poorest performer against his competition, he cannot even keep up with the growth on his own network.

It is also notable that Beck’s unpopularity seems to be confined to his television persona. In other media he is still a figure to be reckoned with. He is a top five talk radio host (last month he re-signed with Premiere Networks for $50 million) and he currently has a book on the New York Times Bestseller list. He certainly has fans who are able to find and consume his products elsewhere. So the fact that Beck can’t parlay his other media successes into something better than a washout on TV illustrates just how deeply unappealing he is as a television personality.

Glenn Beck WeakFor more evidence of this you just need to look back at the week Beck filled in for Paula Zahn last July. Despite moving up to CNN from Headline News, Beck barely scraped up the viewers he routinely got at his less-watched network home, Headline News. And he underperformed Zahn, who was canceled for poor ratings, by a whopping 23%

Clearly Beck has not lived up to the expectations CNN expressed when they hired him. And his performance over time suggests that there is not much reason to believe that he will improve. A responsible programmer would be seeking to cut their losses. And it’s not as if they don’t have a broad variety of AAA players that could be called up: Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow, Stephanie Miller, Sam Seder, Taylor Marsh, Jim Hightower, Laura Flanders, Harry Shearer, or any other of the many distinguished progressive commentators. They could even draft their own Jack Cafferty who has developed a cult following on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.

You would think that the programming honchos at the network would be furiously grooming Beck’s replacement. Why wouldn’t they? They can’t blame Beck’s subterranean ratings on a generalized lack of interest because Beck excels in other media markets. They can’t be holding out for a sudden audience surge because there’s been no evidence of him connecting on that level in the past. They can’t believe that a racist, uninformed, arrogant host with a juvenile sense of humor is the next big thing in broadcasting because Fox News already has that market cornered and their ratings are sinking like a stone. And somebody at CNN must surely have noticed the soaring ascendancy of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC. It’s also worth noting that Dan Abrams’ new program, retooled to take a more aggressively honest approach to the news, is kicking Beck’s butt even though it is only a few weeks old.

So what is CNN waiting for? Are they masochistic gluttons for punishment who get pleasure from losing? Are they married to the repulsive and repudiated ideology spewed by Beck? Are they frightened, ineffectual, corporate bootlickers who couldn’t make a proper programming decision without a sackful of surveys and permission from their supervisor? It is just this simple: There is no business case for keeping Beck on the air. His program is a money pit and it’s fiscally harmful to the programs adjacent to it and, therefore, the network as a whole.

The only reason to give Beck a stay of execution would be fealty to the brand of caveman conservatism that he espouses. If CNN doesn’t cancel this stinker they will have settled, once and for all, the speculation as to whether they are a compromised media lapdog with an agenda aimed at placating the powerful and debasing journalism.

It’s time to pull the plug. Let CNN/Headline News know that Glenn Beck has to go. Let them know that you’re on to them and that keeping a loser like Beck reveals their biases. Let them know that you’re more interested in news and honest commentary than shallow contrarianism. Let them know that, although CNN has an obligation to provide diverse viewpoints, they have never had a program hosted by a progressive. And let them know that you have alternatives now (i.e. MSNBC, radio, the Internet, etc.) and you will not continue to watch CNN as long as it fails to provide programming that is honest, ethical and relevant to you, your community and your country.

CNN General Comments Form
Headline News General Comments Form

Somebody Alert Bill O’Reilly And Fox Security

Posted by on December 13, 2007 at 1:33 pm. NO Comments :

From The White House:

MRS. BUSH: Barney and Beazley, I’m so proud that you all wanted to become National Park Junior Rangers. Our national parks are so important. And in fact, the lawn where you play is part of our national parks.

President Bush and I wish everyone a very happy holiday.

What? No Merry Christmas? Is this evidence that The First Lady is offering aid and comfort to the Secular-Progressive enemies in the War on Christmas? Has the President cut and run? Have the terrorists won?

No need to fear – T-Warrior is here. Have no doubt that before you can slide down the MoonBat-pole, Bill O’Reilly will step forward and denounce this insult to America’s favorite religion: Christmasism. Never mind that only a couple of days ago O’Reilly declared victory in the War on Christmas, crediting himself with the glory he feels he so richly deserves. We have already seen those “Mission Accomplished” banners that didn’t really mean that any mission had been accomplished. So now, as always, the goal is to stay the course. Because surrender to the far-left, gay, flag-burning, pot smokers who murdered our savior, is not an option.