Al-Jazeera captures former US Marine

A former US Marine featured in the 2004 documentary of Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war, "Control Room," has been hired to be the American face of Al-Jazeera International.


Rushing will be based in Washington...Al Jazeera-International, which Rushing compares to the international versions of CNN and BBC, plans to start broadcasting in the U.S. in the spring of 2006. Rushing will likely do set pieces on issues, interviews and perhaps even have a 30-minute international affairs show. The format is still being finalized, but Rushing knows who he considers models: NBC's Tim Russert and Bob Costas.

USA Today has more on Rushing and AJI:

Control Room captured Rushing's growing respect for Al-Jazeera's staff, particularly senior producer Hassan Ibrahim, with whom he had many philosophical debates. In one scene, Rushing talked about how revolted he was by Al-Jazeera showing dead American soldiers and interviews with American prisoners of war. Then he noted that he had seen video of Iraqi casualties on the network and not been affected by what he saw.

"It upset me on a profound level that I wasn't as bothered as much the night before," he said in the film. "It makes me hate war."

When the film was released in 2004, reviewers commented on Rushing's candor. Rushing told The Village Voice that American media don't tell the whole story when they cover a war. "In America war isn't hell — we don't see blood, we don't see suffering. All we see is patriotism, and we support the troops. It's almost like war has some brand marketing here," he said in that interview.

The network has been hiring staff for more than a year. A spokeswoman, Katie Bergius, said in an e-mail that the channel is "over halfway there" in hiring the "hundreds" of people it will need. In past statements, the network has said it will need about 200 staffers.

So far, Bergius said, Al-Jazeera has hired reporters and producers from several Western competitors, including the Associated Press, the BBC, the Canadian Broadcast Corp., CNBC, CNN and Fox News.

Two things. One, sounds like Rushing and Al-Jazeera will be very happy together. Two, as for the spokeswoman's claim that they're hiring tons of grade-A talent: remember that this is Al-Jazeera talking. Consider the source.

CNN pairing of Anderson/Brown "Fire and Ice"? More like "Fire and Room Temperature"

On the heels of The Cable Game's Monday exclusive on the new permanence of Anderson Cooper's 10pm duties, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution lets CNN prez Jon Klein talk aboutAaron Brown's "cerebral analysis":

Cooper, who has headlined "Anderson Cooper 360°" at 7 p.m. for the past two years, has been sharing duties on "NewsNight" with regular host Aaron Brown since mid-September, when the 10 p.m. show was expanded to two hours. CNN said Thursday it had decided to keep Cooper as co-host.

The change might not be permanent, but Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S., considers Cooper one of the top talents in TV. Klein likes pairing the emotional Cooper with the stolid Brown.

"The combination of Aaron and Anderson gives us fire and ice," Klein said Thursday. "Anderson is about visceral experience. Aaron is kind of about the cerebral analysis."

The AJC's got its word choice on Brown right, sure enough. "Stolid" is code for "a shot of slowly-being-bored-to-death with a boring chaser."

But as for Klein's "fire and ice" and "cerebral analysis" comments? Hey, some opposites do go great together. Opposites do result in great symbiosis, sometimes. But there is ALWAYS a common thread that makes all those instances work: both opposites are great to start with. In this pairing, all Cooper's fire is doing is illuminating the empty space--oh, I'm sorry, "cerebral analysis"--of Aaron Brown's reporting.

FNC biz host Neil Cavuto on being rich....and having money

FNC's Neil Cavuto, host of the highest-rated biz show on TV, talks to the Charlotte Observer about true prosperity--it's not the same as money:


One of the hallmarks of Cavuto's show is his short commentaries, which range from conservative political ideology to urging viewers to spend more time with their kids.

While the latter seems a strange message to send to the career-obsessed financial workforce, it is a lesson that Cavuto holds dear, mostly as a result of his overcoming Hodgkin's disease, then being diagnosed in 1997 with multiple sclerosis.

Cavuto says those struggles made him more aware of the treasures of life. "It's not about the economy, stupid, it's about living," he says.

They've also changed his outlook on dealing with others. "I try to treat people well. It's important for the time we're here on Earth not to be jerks," he says.

"I used to be all about getting ahead. Now, the illness has made me more appreciative of the day-to-day. There's not a day I don't think about dying."

CNN's Blog Chicks: What are you doing watching us when you could be online?

Ok, I know we're all supposed to be charmed by CNN's "internet reporters," aka "The Blog Chicks" profiled in this week's New York Observer. Much cooing and aw-ing has been done over The Situation Room's Abbi Tatton and Jacki Schechner. Yes, cute as buttons, just dedicated, adorable little gals smart and sweet as licorice whips and all that (don't get on me for the "little gals" remark please, I'm a little gal myself and I like it that way, thanks.) I'm sure they're very nice people. They seem normal, as normal as any adults who caress touch-screens on national television for a living can be, anyway. (Let's admit it: The Blog Chicks are basically weathermen, except with news. The exuberant yet restrained gesturing, the gracefully vague waving of hands at big screens as they nod their heads backwards to wordlessly plead for viewer comprehension...yep, weathermen. Weatherpersons. Whatever.

And the official rationale for the "Inside the Blogs" segment is a masterpiece of pseudointellectual nothingspeak:

David Bohrman, CNN’s Washington bureau chief and creator of the segment, explained the purpose of an MSM outlet (that’s blogspeak for “mainstream media”) setting out to explore the blogosphere. The information that Ms. Tatton and Ms. Schechner find on blogs is important. But “filtering it and judging it and weighing it is complicated,” he said, “and that’s where the CNN DNA comes into play.”

"CNN DNA"? What? Is that the $20 term for "common sense"? Which, according to Bohrman, is "complicated" for the average cable news viewer? Gosh, if only I were smarter I'd know whether to be offended or not.

But here's the deal: all CNN is really doing is pushing viewers away from the television. (Ok, I know that it's The Situation Room, so that's not exactly difficult, but still.) Especially yesterday, when A & J reported on a pornographic web site (enticing or offensive, depending on your point of view) that also featured graphically gory photos of Iraqi war dead (again, enticing or offensive, depending on your point of view; either way, you're going to want to go online to validate your opinion):

JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN INTERNET CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, this is a great example how a story can bump around online a little bit before the mainstream media picks it up. It caught our eye when the photos from the pornographic Web site were reposted at americablog.

Now, the photos that are reposted have been censored. We have actually censored them further because we don't want to identify anybody. We also want to make this very, very clear that no one has been able to authenticate these photos. That is very important. What we wanted to give you was the back story of how this came about.

Now, Mark Glaser at the "Online Journalism Review" points out that it was an Italian blogger, Fabio Contilla (ph) who found the gory photos on the pornography site. He posted about it on August 16, on his blog. Some other Italian media organizations wrote about it in Italian.

An American blogger, Helena Cobban, on her Web site, justworldnews.org, asked her readers to help her translate the Italian into English. On August 24, and then again on August 15, she posted about story in English.

ABBI TATTON, CNN INTERNET CORRESPONDENT: Questions about this site and the stories around, really getting a lot of traction online last week when the "Online Journalism Review" piece came out. Also there have been bloggers looking at the Web site and pushing the story.

Isthatlegal.org -- this is the blog of University of North Carolina law professor Eric Muller. He's been looking at the site and asking questions. Also D.C. blogger Andrew Sullivan, a popular long- time blogger here, looking around the Web site as well and digging deeper.

Online news stories as well have been advancing this story, pushing it further. The "East Bay Express," is an alternative weekly in the San Francisco area. Their story last week by Chris Thompson has been widely circulated. We have seen it even on an Egyptian blog.

Another one, "The Nation" magazine, in their Web-only version, they've also written about the story of this Web site.

SCHECHNER: It's very important for us to point out, Wolf, that the photos that are posted on americanblog are reposts. They are censored, and again, no one has been able to authenticate these photos.

Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Thanks very much, guys. Very disturbing story indeed.

Jeez. Why doesn't Wolf just say, "Yes! Very very very disturbing story, viewers! You better turn off CNN and check it out yourself online, pronto! Thanks for giving out the site address, Abbi and Jacki! It makes it so much easier to not have to watch any commericials, which, last time I checked, pay my salary. Off you go, viewers, to look at that site and the other dozen cool sites the Blog Chicks mention every day!"

My point is, CNN is giving viewers reasons to turn away from the television and to the computer. That can't be good for ratings. So why are they doing it? (Oh, that's right, Jon Klein thought it was a good idea. Never mind.)

Talk faster, Aaron: Anderson Cooper's staying at NewsNight

TV Newser follows up this morning on The Cable Game's Monday exclusive on the Anderson Cooper/Aaron Brown primetime shakeup at CNN:


...the expanded time slot and additional duties for Cooper are becoming permanent -- "or at least as permanent as anything is in this business," Jon Klein told staffers at a meeting on Wednesday.

The content of the 10pm broadcast will certainly change, an insider says. The title may change, too. Aaron and Anderson will continue to co-anchor the two-hour block.

Oh, Aaron. Those long, thoughtful--some would say sedated-sounding--pauses of yours as you think out loud on the air may not be long for this world.

Aaron McGruder's revenge

Controversial--the polite word for "vicious and mean"-- cartoonist Aaron McGruder gets unfunny in the Washington Post funny pages today:








Say...wasn't McGruder developing a cartoon version of "The Boondocks" for Fox before McGruder jumped to The Cartoon Network over "creative differences"? And say, doesn't Time Warner, parent company of CNN, also own The Cartoon Network? The combination of revenge/backstage sucking up/below-the-belt shots of McGruder's gambit is breathtaking--and all on the funny pages before 9am!


I would love, love, love to see Bill O'Reilly debate McGruder on "The Factor." Because even though this strip today is beneath contempt, it's not beneath a challenge. But whether McGruder would put his honor where his hate is, is in itself up for debate.

McGruder has done one thing--he's made "Doonesbury" cartoonist and drooling, snarling, FNC-hating propagandist Garry Trudeau seem like a real kitten by comparison. Take this strip from July of last year:



Trudeau hates O'Reilly? O'Reilly can take it. Trudeau wants to invent data and lie nonstop about FNC? Hey, First Amendment.

Call an entire organization racist? Libel.

Katrina bumps up quarterly cable news ratings

The Hollywood Reporter breaks it down:

Fox News, which was already having a standout summer, jumped 31% over the year-ago period in total day to 1.2 million viewers and 29% in primetime to 2.3 million viewers, Nielsen said.

CNN averaged 693,000 viewers in total day (up 39%) and 1.1 million in primetime (up 29%). MSNBC averaged 300,000 viewers in total day (up 11%) and 471,000 in primetime (up 12%).

FNC's Lis Wiehl off the market

The NYP's Page Six reports today that she's getting hitched:

Fox News' legal analyst Lis Wiehl and defense lawyer Mickey Sherman are engaged and thinking about a Spring 2006 wedding. Lis is so giddy with joy, she wrote one friend, "Pinch me!"

The NYT finds a way to issue Geraldo correction and save face: it lies its a#$ off

Now THIS is genius. The level of cold-blooded, unapologetic, elitist intellectual dishonesty at work here is total George Orwell territory: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. There is work waiting for the NYT's editors in any totalitarian country's secret police/propaganda HQ is all I can say. If you're short on time I can sum the correction up in two words: "F%^# you."

Here's the deal: The NYT issued its correction to Alessandra Stanley's Geraldo Rivera piece by saying:

The editors understood the "nudge" comment as the television critic's figurative reference to Mr. Rivera's flamboyant intervention...

Numerous readers, however - now including Byron Calame, the newspaper's public editor, who also scrutinized the tape - read the comment as a factual assertion. The Times acknowledges that no nudge was visible on the broadcast.

Of course! A "figurative reference"! We're all such literal-minded cretins to believe what we read in the NYT! Only single-celled organisms could be so stupid. I feel like algae right now.

Seriously though. There's only one word to describe this non-correction: dishonorable. That's a real multi-tasker of a word, because now it describes the NYT itself, too.

The Cable Game exclusive: CNN prime, slashed and burned

The Cable Game hears that CNN prez Jon Klein has taken the big machete off the wall and is making cuts in primetime....and as a result, guess which CNN personality is getting 2 hours of airtime a night, at 7pm and 10pm? (10pm! But that's NewsNight with Aaron Brown's slot. I didn't know there were any 10pm tee times at the better golf courses upstate...)

NYT on Geraldo: We're sorry. Sorry we got caught

The NYT has now-famously declined to issue a correction to the infamous Alessandra Stanley column that asserted, with no factual basis, that FNC's Geraldo Rivera "nudged" an Air Force rescuer out of the way at a retired nuns home. (See the vid here, courtesy of thepoliticalteen.net.) Now cometh the NYT's ombudsman, Byron Calame, who says even a "four-letter word" like Geraldo Rivera can't be gratuitously slimed:


One of the real tests of journalistic integrity is being fair to someone who might be best described by a four-letter word.

Several dozen readers - including some who said they aren't admirers of Mr. Rivera - have questioned the fairness of The Times's decision and asked the public editor to look into it.

I have been involved in scores of correction disputes over the years at another newspaper, but this one is unusual in that there is very little to argue about. Since Ms. Stanley based her comments on what she saw on the screen Sept. 4, the videotape of that segment means everyone involved is looking at exactly the same evidence.

My viewings of the videotape - at least a dozen times, including one time frame by frame - simply doesn't show me any "nudge" of any Air Force rescuer by Mr. Rivera. (Ms. Stanley declined my invitation to watch the tape with me.) I also reviewed all of the so-called outtakes shot by Mr. Rivera's camera crew at the Holy Angels Apartments in New Orleans on the morning of Sept. 4. Neither the video nor the audio revealed any nudge of an Air Force rescuer. As for the Air Force, the matter "is not an issue," a spokesman told me last week.

My, my. How very gracious of the NYT. Noblesse oblige and all that, no doubt. The title of the piece was a nice touch too: "Even Geraldo Deserves a Fair Shake." I think the original proposed title was "Kiss our ring, we're not apologizing for jack#$#*, but we'll hint that we should to keep the lawyers out of it a little while longer."

Yeah, yeah. I think this is a classic case of "too little, too late." The NYT and Stanley deserve each other. The public sure doesn't.

AP: Shepard Smith says anchor chair on Fox broadcast would be "so cool"

FNC anchor and rising star Shep Smith talks to the AP about Katrina, the nature of the news and his future:

"There was a disconnect in the early days of this story, with people going 'Oh, my God, these reporters are out of their minds, talking about bodies all over the place, fires burning in the distance and a Third World feeling.' You weren't in touch with the facts yet, how it was. Sometimes things are just so big and awful that you just can't believe it at all."

His passionate reporting won critical praise, helped renew interest in his nightly newscast and earned him his first visit to David Letterman's couch. Letterman's people called even before Smith's memorable exchange with Hannity.

Fox's chief anchor will increase his profile even more with a nightly radio newscast that begins airing today on more than 260 Fox affiliates.

"I didn't get into this to be an advocacy journalist," he said. "I think our job is to tell people what's going on and let them make their decisions on how to react to things based on the facts and just the facts. It's a very difficult world we live in, in this business, to just stick to the facts, and I try very hard to do that."

With Fox News chief Roger Ailes expanding his authority to the Fox-owned local stations, there's talk the Fox broadcast network might want to begin a nightly newscast. Smith would be the obvious choice to anchor.

"It would be so cool," he said, "and if they wanted me to do it, I certainly wouldn't turn them down."

FNC's Hemmer in New Orleans: "This is a city that is nearly dead"

With his Rita reporting, FNC anchor Bill Hemmer continues to establish himself as a serious-minded, empathetic man behind the GQ looks. His report yesterday afternoon from the physical and psychic wreckage of New Orleans evoked a real living-room understanding of the devastation. Hemmer's EQ--his emotional intelligence--clearly at least matches his IQ, and that's a rare and valuable thing.


The City of Houston is starting to come back to life, here in New Orleans this is a city that is nearly dead. Look at this street down here, Martha [MacCallum]. There is no one here. We are almost four weeks removed from when Katrina first struck here. You’ll get an occasional police car coming by here, an occasional energy truck, an occasional National Guard troop. We started our day here like we have the past ten days. We get up at daybreak and we drive to where we think the story is but there are no people here and we rely on the locals and on the police every block or two to give us help or give us direction, but there is no one out here and today when we were driving around it became increasingly more difficult to get around the city of New Orleans. You have got that standing water and also the levees that are still an issue, and it was frankly very difficult for us to get around anywhere today. And you really get a feeling here in New Orleans that this is a defeated people. They see that water coming water coming back into their neighborhoods and they look at you and they think, when is this going to end? We were at St. Bernard’s Parish a few hours ago you cannot get back into that parish, which is the same scene we saw in St. Bernard’s three weeks ago. I talked to a few people over there and they just throw their hands up in the air. They think "how much longer do we have to tolerate this?" Every time they think they are getting to the point where they think they can turn the corner and start getting this city uprighted again another blow comes in here. This is a town that is down on its knees again after Rita.

Shep Smith on Rita: "Sometimes you say, ‘What have we done?'"

FNC anchor Shepard Smith's reporting from Beaumont, TX last night continued to show more of his formidable talent. He's almost starting to channel Faulkner and Hemingway in his forceful and evocative descriptions, and in his stoic but impassioned delivery. The transcript doesn't do the footage justice:

Saturday Sept. 24, 2005:

12AM

Describing what the rain and wind feel like, while holding onto a pole to keep from being knocked over:

"It's like you're in a speedboat...I remember being out water-skiing in Sardis Lake in North Mississippi and we had this old yellow and white boat and it would get up to about 45 miles an hour. And if you were going into one of those windy North Mississippi afternoons, (the water) would feel like needles in your face -- it's very unpleasant. This is three times that. It's striking."


On the storm stalling:

"2.7 million people evacuated from the region. It was a difficult evacuation but it went well, all things considered...getting them back in here with all the rain and weather complications is going to be very difficult. You have to get the power lines back up and get the infrastructure restored. Doing that in New Orleans and South Mississippi with no rain for three solid weeks - they had no rain to work with. But this, with whatever damage there is that we find in the morning, whatever parts of lives that are shattered - having to pick up from all of that in a driving, driving rain - not for a day or two, but for five days...sometimes you say, ‘What have we done? What is it that all of the sudden is bringing all of this to us?’ The meteorologists say this is a cyclical thing - we went through it back in the 50's and 60's - ending, if you want to pick a point, with Hurricane Camille. For 30 or 40 years it hasn't been quite as bad. Now we're in a period of time where it's going to be bad again. If this is a sign of things to come, people may start second-guessing living on the coast, because this is a rough life, Sean [Hannity]."


1AM
On the force of the storm:

“The needling rain has gotten to the point where you can feel it - it feels like it's tearing your lips as it hits. You have to close your eyes to keep those drops of rain from pounding your eyeballs. And it's a very stinging, difficult feeling; anyone who has ever been out in a storm like this knows what I'm talking about.”


On the storm’s damaging affects:

“This pounding is relentless, and it's chipping away, just chipping away at the buildings. It's taking a shingle here and a shingle there - knocking a wall down there, taking a sign there.”

"MSNBC couldn't attract a crowd if it broadcast the Apocalypse"

The LAT's Tim Rutten writes on the Hurricane Effect on cable news:

Katrina and Rita have taken the cable news operations and the network newscasts by their collective ears and shaken them back into a sense of what they're really supposed to be about. After months of celebrity trials, missing white women, a suffocating storm surge of on-camera attitude, television news resumed being just that — news — and its audience responded.

For example, between Aug. 28 and Sept. 13, Fox News averaged 3.29 million nightly prime-time viewers and 2.06 million over the course of the day. CNN averaged 2.37 million viewers in prime-time and a daylong audience of 1.48 million. MSNBC, which apparently couldn't attract a crowd if it broadcast the Apocalypse, reached less than a million viewers in prime-time and just over half a million during the day.

Tina Brown, standing close enough to Bill Clinton to hopefully be groped by fame again

Hard on the heels of TV Newser's genius Tina Brown/Courtney Love "Separated at Birth?" item comes Ms. Brown's latest masterpiece of negative self-advertising:
her painfully obvious (Clinton is older and wiser!) helplessly celeb-referential (I breathed the same air as Brad and Angelina!) and ultimately incoherent, knee-jerk-anti-Bush, anti-business take on Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference in Thursday's Washington Post:

The White House doesn't seem to realize it yet, but we are entering a post-spin era in public life. The shift has long been underway in the business world, propelled by the Enron catastrophe and the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Process, not perception, is king in boardrooms today. After so much corporate malfeasance it all got too dire to put up with fake CEOs anymore.

(No, but I, Tina Brown, the woman whose middle name is "Glaring Red Rocket of Public Failure," I know the zeitgeist like I know how to get ratings on my own television talk show! Okay, scratch that, but I know the zeitgeist like I know how to marry name-dropping with dropping all pretenses of being relevant anymore! And the future is the post-spin era of public life. Now that's profound as all bloody get out. Somebody should put me back on the air so I can spin myself as someone who doesn't need spin to keep her show on the air. Really, let's be honest. When you've got an accent like mine--you know, The English Accent, designed to make every American's peasant soul bleed with inferiority on contact--you should get paid just for that. Especially if it's your only talent.)

Who is this woman? Who is this train wreck in Jimmy Choos and $350 caramel highlights? Well, for starters, she's complicated and in her own way, extremely accomplished:

As editor of Vanity Fair in the 80's, she was a cultural and critical success (remember the nude-and-pregnant Demi Moore cover?) and a financial failure (remember the nude-and-pregnant Demi Moore cover?) Then at the New Yorker in the 90's she was a cultural and critical failure as well as a commercial failure, in spite of a reign of terror in which she fired 70-odd people. But wait! It gets worse! Moving on to the intellectual biohazard that was Talk magazine, she achieved a conflagration trifecta: critical, cultural, and financial ruin.

Then, on to cable! At CNBC, her Nielsen-flatlining talk show was distinctive for a single reason: it made John McEnroe look like a cross between Jesus and Johnny Carson as he hosted his own beyond-unwatchable talker.

Now, Tina's moving on to Meaning, the capital M-kind. What could her new focus be? World peace? World hunger? Terrorism? Natural disasters? Nope! She's writing a book about--and as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up--the late Princess Diana's legacy and impact on the media.

Oh, Tina, Tina. Don't ever change. Leave that to us, your public. We'll change anything we read or watch that you contribute to just to avoid you.

NewsHounds.us, praying for disaster in a Republican state

The collection of FNC-hating shut-ins that is NewsHounds.us openly wishes for Rita to visit death and destruction on a state with a Republican governor:

Shortly after 4:00 p.m. EDT today (September 22, 2005), during Your World w/Neil Cavuto, the mayor of Houston and some of his officials held a news conference to update the media on the state of the evacuation and preparations for Hurricane Rita. The presser grew contentious when several reporters asked about the jammed freeways. The mayor and his group became quite defensive and concluded by saying the traffic jams weren't, "part of the plan." Interestingly, and uncharacteristically, Fox did not carry the presser.The mayor of Houston is a Democrat but the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is a Republican. I think Fox decided not to carry the presser because it didn't want to draw attention to the, "lack of preparedness" in Texas.

I predict that when it comes to government response at all levels in Texas, FOX will be showing us a happy hurricane.

Oh, stop being so coy, NewsHounds, and come right out and say it: you're hoping that Rita will be even worse than Katrina so you can a) say "I told you so" re coverage you think is insufficiently panicked and b) so Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who you insanely charge FNC is "protecting," will look bad.

That's sociopathic to me, but I guess it's all in a day's work to NewsHounds.

CNBC looking over shoulder: Fox biz channel a go

TV Week reports News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch "remains committed" to launching a rival to CNBC:


Speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in New York, Mr. Murdoch said the launch of the Fox Business Channel would likely not happen in the early months of 2006, as he has indicated in the past, "but certainly soon."

Donahue vs. O'Reilly: Combative? Sure. So's a title fight!

Why is everyone pretending the Phil Donahue/Bill O'Reilly verbal dustup on The Factor is somehow shocking? (Well, we know why Newshounds.us is--because they've replaced the part of their collective brain that processes reason and logic with a Chatty Cathy chip that screams "We hate Fox News, but we hate ourselves for not identifying them as the winner, so we must continue to dig our grave with our stupid anti-Fox website in a hapless attempt to save face." So we know about them...) Donahue and O'Reilly are the definition of worthy opponents: they couldn't be more different, they're not afraid to disagree, and under slightly different conditions they'd probably settle it outside. They also clearly respect each other. It's like Rocky in the studio! The exchange between the two last night is a perfect example of why people love O'Reilly: he doesn't pretend that bared teeth are a smile, and he's taken to heart the wise koan of "never put yourself down--there's always plenty of people willing to do that for you." He's the Walter Mitty fantasy of every person who's ever silently suffered through one-way conversational idiocy cranked up loud as top-20 jazz at a fabulous cocktail or dinner party, and thinking, "Jeez, what would O'Reilly say to this bonehead nattering on in front of me?"


Crooks and Liars has the video--watch it here.

Jet Blue incident coverage: MSNBC's picture-in-picture wins

I have to give credit where credit is due--MSNBC had the best coverage of the Jet Blue landing tonight. They had the incident first, with a small screen with the detail of the malfunctioning landing gear in the corner of the big shot of the entire plane as it flew into Los Angeles.

Over at CNN, Paula Zahn and her bizarre lisp kept busy asking gold-medal-stupid questions of a retired pilot like: "What's going through your mind emotionally when you're a pilot in an emergency situation?" The pilot paused for a second, no doubt to remind himself that it's not polite to guffaw at one's interviewer on national television, and replied somberly to the effect of, "Well, Paula, you really don't think about anything but actually landing the plane safely..."

Never discuss religion at the dinner table--watch it being discussed during dinner on CNN instead. Hide the steak knives!

CNN's new religion reporter, Delia Gallagher, tells the Buffalo News
she's got what it takes to ruin the family dinners of an entire generation:

"Private faith has become part of public scrutiny," said Delia Gallagher, who was just named CNN's first full-time faith and values correspondent. She is the only full-time reporter in that role on a commercial news network. ABC previously had a religion reporter.

"The reason CNN has created this position is that religion is big news now, not just in politics but in our lives," added Gallagher, who has a degree in theology from Oxford University in England and spent five years in Rome covering the Catholic Church as an editor with the magazine, Inside the Vatican.

"We're not just going to do reports when a religious story becomes a big issue, we want to keep it in the public mind when it's not in the heat of the moment," Gallagher said. "I hope we can bring background, depth and meaningful discussion to questions of faith."

Got to love forced "meaningful discussion" of a topic people will fake appendicitis at Thanksgiving to avoid. Will CNN viewers turn off the television when Gallagher reports during the dinner hour or merely duck the flying salt shakers when the fighting in the kitchen starts? Stay tuned!

Live half-hour script "Geraldo at Large" to debut in November; will replace "A Current Affair"

Twentieth Television today unveiled “Geraldo at Large,” a live first-run half-hour news strip hosted by Geraldo Rivera. Scheduled to launch on the Fox owned-and-operated stations in November, the show will be produced in New York and will focus on breaking news and in-depth investigative reports. The announcement was made today by Jack Abernethy, CEO of Fox Television Stations, Inc.

Bob Cook, president and COO of Twentieth Television, stated that "'Geraldo at Large'" will take our news programming strategy to an entirely new level. Viewers are demanding more topical coverage and stronger investigative reporting in their news. With Geraldo’s strong background and experience, we elected to further evolve our news program strategy by launching this show, as it will help us satisfy this requisite among the audience.”

“Geraldo at Large” will replace time periods on the Fox O&Os currently held by “A Current Affair,” which is slated to remain on the air through October.

Some guy declares strike on cable news appearances; no one notices

Just ran across this post on Poynter by some think-tanker declaring his boycott of all further cable news appearances until cable news, collectively, shapes up:

From BRUCE BARTLETT, senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis: Once again, I just got off the phone with a booker for one of the cable news channels who wanted me to play the role of the knee-jerk Bush supporter and I had to decline...

I understand that news shows want to show both sides -- or perhaps I should say two sides -- to controversial issues, lest they appear biased towards one position. But why must this always take the form of a debate? Why can’t they interview a person with one position separately and then interview someone else with another position in another segment? Wouldn’t this be a better way of achieving balance than by always having a debate?

On one occasion, my opponent called me a liar on air at the end of the segment, so that I could not respond. Afterwards, off camera, he conceded that I was right. But no one watching the exchange ever knew that.

My point is a plea to news bookers and producers: Please let me make my point. Have the reporter or anchor ask what they please. But don’t force me to engage in an artificial debate just to create “fireworks." And if I must debate someone, please make it someone of equal stature to myself. I was once forced to debate the minimum wage with an actual, honest-to-God homeless person. I refused to ever appear on that cable channel again, despite many requests. Thankfully, this channel no longer exists.

I believe that the news channel that adopts the approach I am suggesting will gain both in the quality of its guests and the quality of its programming, thereby gaining a competitive edge. I hope one of them takes me up on it. Until then, I expect to be busy with other things whenever one of them calls.

Ahem.

Where to start? How about who? Who is this, and why is this genius not president of one of the big three cable nets? I suspect that if he's not on television it's because bookers are afraid he'll segue into crying and throwing things after what is apparently his normal m.o. of whining a whole lot.

Okay, all kidding aside, I know he's a very important academic/author with a giant brain, and all that. But fair warning to all producers and bookers reading this: he thinks you all suck, so you better start asking his advice and counsel more often! And stop booking those icky homeless people (who do they think they are, anyway? You need to have a house in order to speak to your superiors on national television.)

Shep Smith adds radio to the roster

FNC anchor Shepard Smith will anchor a five-minute newscast, The Fox Report with Shepard Smith, on Fox News Radio beginning Monday, September 26th. In making the announcement, Fox exec Kevin Magee said, “We are pleased Shep will become a permanent fixture on Fox News Radio. He is a star anchor and reporter and listeners will now be able to hear his familiar voice on both television and radio.”

The show will broadcast at 5PM/ET daily and will be offered to all five-minute Fox News Radio affiliates.

Los Angeles Times: We speak for Katrina's victims, and they request cheap shots at reporters, not housing or medicine

The LAT's Tim Rutten gleefully trivializes the suffering wrought by Katrina to take a swipe at Geraldo Rivera. Writing on the
recent refusal of the New York Times to correct a smear of Rivera by TV critic Alessandra Stanley, Rutten asserts that Rivera is responsible for increasing the suffering of Katrina's victims:


Seeing him descend bright-eyed and sweaty on wretched New Orleans, as he did in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, was like watching a vulture on crystal meth. The word that came to mind was not "reporting," but "feeding."

The only rational reaction was: Dear God! Haven't these people suffered enough?

What a cute, funny, incisive thing to write! I'm sure all sick, grieving, brokenhearted, penniless victims of Katrina feel so vindicated by Rutten's astute observation. Seeing Geraldo Rivera in their midst must have been agony above and beyond thirst, death and midnight-dark suffering! They must all be whipping off thank-you notes to Rutten right now!

But, fortunately, the career version of natural selection applies to jerkwad journalists with a national soapbox. Witness: Rutten gets greedy and steps on his zipper in his rush to another insult, and proves Rivera's point:

Rivera...assailed what he called the New York Times' "institutional bias" against his network. "Anything Fox does, there's a presumption of some kind of wickedness involved," he said.

Now, just because it's owned by Murdoch and run by Roger Ailes, why would anyone presume that?

Who's presuming who now, Tim?

There's a reason the New Yorker is a punch line for liberal-elite cluelessness, not an actual information source

The New Yorker's TV critic Nancy Franklin demonstrates to the world why she's a TV critic, not a TV executive:

We all know that news reporters bring something of themselves to their job; why can’t we let their biases, or inclinations, be acknowledged? Let them be themselves; let them bring all that they are to their jobs. Let them be stars, as they have been on the Gulf Coast, and then let them—make them—leave it at that. News anchors and reporters should stop appearing on talk shows, stop trying to be “beloved” personalities, stop kissing Jon Stewart’s pompadour. Fellas, don’t go on Letterman and talk about your fishing trips, your devotion to NASCAR, your anything; don’t pose for magazine covers; don’t accept lecture fees (if you know something that’s worth telling to the Wingnut Dealers Association for fifty thousand dollars, shouldn’t you be telling it to all of us on TV?); and don’t go to parties that are attended by the people you cover. (In other words, be more like the CNN anchor Aaron Brown. He is one of the few newspeople on TV who don’t try to hide how much of themselves they bring to the job, and yet I don’t know anything about him. He has resisted becoming a brand name, an ostentatiously humble Grand Old Newsman, or a hot shot around town. He’s odd, judgmental, thoughtful, and always interesting—qualities that don’t prevent him from delivering the news well.)

The earnest vapidity, the strenuous faux-know-nothingness in search of a pat on the head, the smug counter-cultural assurance that weird is always better, or at least a rebellion against always-corrupt Big Media: somebody make this woman Jon Klein's deputy.

Aaron Brown: Hurricane coming? Stock up on pixie dust!

Glenn Reynolds writes on Slate that CNN's Aaron Brown has blasted himself in an entirely new dimension of nit-wittedness. (It's notable that MSNBC.com picked up an unflattering-to-CNN item and put it in play--let the battle of the badly-reported-news vs. the no-news-reported-at-all networks begin!)

I was scanning across the news channels Friday night, and I came to CNN's Aaron Brown making this statement:

FOREMAN: (voice-over): It may be more important to understand the limits of government help.

FALKENRATH: People thought with all this attention to first responders and to incident management at the federal level that the federal government was really going to be able to respond instantaneously or very rapidly to a disaster. And that's just not the case.

FOREMAN: So the new leader of FEMA is saying get ready. Have water, food, blankets, radios, flashlights, medicine. He says it's not paranoia to be prepared. It's simple prudence. Others put it more bluntly for cities and their citizens.

RANDALL LARSEN, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: In the first 72 to 96 hours after a big disaster, you're probably going to be on your own.

FOREMAN: Just like so many in Katrina's terrible wake. Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I shouldn't say this but when you see the pictures on the ground and you go to these towns in Mississippi and Louisiana and you see what's going on there now, still and you hear the official sound bytes, they sound a little lame.


Brown apparently thinks that it's "lame" for authorities to tell people to be prepared for disasters. I guess as soon as the hurricane winds slack off enough for their tiny translucent wings to function, the FEMA Fairies are supposed to fly through the broken windows and sprinkle pixie dust that turns into bottled water and MREs on contact with the survivors.

But if you look at these aerial photos showing damage to bridges and roads, or read this account of problems with downed trees in Southern Mississippi, it's obvious that in the real world getting disaster aid in takes time. If Brown thinks that government instructions to be prepared are just some sort of new CYA move from FEMA, then he's woefully ignorant of the subject, since in fact FEMA, and other organizations like the Red Cross and the Los Angeles Fire Department, have been saying that for years.

What's troubling is that some people may pick up on Brown's attitude, and fail to prepare. That could cost them their lives -- or the lives of rescue workers who have to save them, or the lives of other people whom rescue workers couldn't save because the system was overburdened looking after people who could have prepared to look after themselves, but didn't.

Sorry, Aaron, but that really is lame.

The NYT: You just can't trust cable news. Subscribe to the Times!

In a subscription drive/stealth political rally disguised as media criticism, the NYT's David Carr says that during Katrina's aftermath, cable news reporters needed to spend more time attacking the government and less time reporting the news, which, according to Carr, was done badly anyway:

It is a grand thing that during the most terrible days of Hurricane Katrina, many reporters found their gag reflex and stopped swallowing pat excuses from public officials. But the media's willingness to report thinly attributed rumors may also have contributed to a kind of cultural wreckage that will not clean up easily.

The Fox News anchor, John Gibson, helped set the scene: "All kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews. Thousands of police and National Guard troops are on the scene trying to get the situation under control. Thousands more on the way. So heads up, looters." A reporter, David Lee Miller, responded: "Hi, John. As you so rightly point out, there are so many murders taking place. There are rapes, other violent crimes taking place in New Orleans."

Later that night on MSNBC, Tucker Carlson grabbed the flaming baton and ran with it. "People are being raped," he said in a conversation with the Rev. Al Sharpton. " People are being murdered. People are being shot. Police officers being shot."

All true. All these horrible things happened. So why is the NYT continuing to bitch?

Some journalists did find sources. About 10 p.m. that same evening, Greta Van Susteren of Fox interviewed Dr. Charles Burnell, an emergency room physician who was providing medical care in the Superdome.

"Well, we had several murders. We had three murders last night. We had a total of six rapes last night. We had the day before I think there were three or four murders. There were half a dozen rapes that night," he told Ms. Van Susteren. (Dr. Burnell did not return several calls asking for comment.) On the same day, The New York Times referred to two rapes at the Superdome, quoting a woman by name who said she was a witness.

Because Carr needs to provide an out for the NYT's coverage, and assign it a pedigree by piggybacking on Van Susteren's reporting. Very clever. Not clever enough, though.

The utter surreality of The Situation Room, explained at last

The historical roots of that "somebody slipped something in my drink" vibe that is CNN's Situation Room are finally revealed:

The show owes much of its future-forward feel to CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman, whose tech credentials include having served as CEO of Pseudo Entertainment. Jacki Schechner is also a Pseudo alum; she was a former "EJ" at the network, hosting show-related chat rooms.

Pseudo was known at the time for surreal, Warholian mega-parties that defined the Silicon Alley scene.

"The party stuff was interesting, but what lasted is that we defined a new form of participatory programming that fused TV and internet," Bohrman told Wired News. "That's what I brought back with me when I returned."

Yes, the party stuff is very interesting. Viva 90's! Next up on "The Situation Room"--squint at the half-dozen plasma screens under the new blacklight! Can't CNN do better than ripping off the aesthetic vibe of the Dot-Bomb era and calling it the future of news? I have seen the future of afternoon cable news, and it is broadcasting live from a peyote ceremony at "Burning Man."

FNC's James Rosen: Staten Island boy makes good