CNN's Hala Gorani: I'm "fair and accurate"

CNN International reporter Hala Gorani resorts to the sincerest form of flattery by appropriating Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" motto to describe her brand of journalism and the channel's management style. Either that, or she totally ripped it off.

For Syrian-American Hala Gorani, a reporter and anchor for CNN International, portraying events fairly and accurately has been her reward for putting numerous aspects of her personal life on hold and making several sacrifices.

Recent years and the so-called war on terror have seen CNN attract criticism from the Middle East for its coverage of regional events since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S.

The channel has been accused of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias, but Gorani rejects this accusation and her answer to her accusers is simply "watch my program."

She says she has "absolutely all the freedom to do anything" she wants and adds that never have any of her reports been censored or cancelled.

Gorani says what makes her professional is her constant battle to neutralize her opinions as much as possible and to give fair representation for everyone in her reports.

She describes herself as an independent observer whose "fair and accurate contribution" to the global pool of information alters this pool in a positive way.

Geraldo's Mideast peace plan, step one: Make an omelet

And how do you start making an omelet? By breaking a few eggs. This is a cool little Gail Shister interview in the Philadelphia Inquirer with my favorite Big Man on Campus, Geraldo Rivera, in which the "Geraldo at Large" host talks about what his life would be like with a seat in the Israeli Knesset:

Rivera says he was ready to relocate to Israel a few years ago and run for a seat in the Knesset in order to advance his strong views on the Palestinian situation.
Born in Brooklyn to a Jewish mother, Lilly Friedman, and a Catholic, Puerto Rican father, Cruz Rivera, Rivera was raised "mostly Jewish" and was a bar mitzvah, he says.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank "is bull," in Rivera's view, and it "dehumanizes" the Palestinians. "I want peace between Jews and Palestinians, based on equality between the countries."

Rivera says he went so far as to look for an apartment in Israel before his then-fiancee, Erica Levy, and her father put the kibosh on any move to the violence-plagued country.

"I would die for Israel," says Rivera, 62, whose syndicated news show, Geraldo at Large, launched in October. "Jews have been persecuted for five millennia. We can't be persecutors. We have to take a chance for peace."

As for the controversial Israeli wall, "I don't even mind it," he says. "There has to be a border. It might even be better. Let the people cool off for a couple of decades."

Rivera's not the cooling-off type. Had he made it to the Knesset, "I'd be punching out everybody every day."

Tom Friedman at Yale on Lou Dobbs: "Blithering idiot"

Check out the National Association of Manufacturer's blog, Shop Floor, and check out what the NYT's Tom Friedman had to say about CNN's Prince Pretentious himself, aka Lou Dobbs, during a closed-press lecture at Yale Law School last week:

"And then you have a blithering idiot like Lou Dobbs, in my view, who's using the platform of CNN in...the frame of a news show. This is not news. And so we have a political class not making sense of the world for people and that's why the public...is so agitated."

Here's the video.

"The control room...this is where you get to see mountain lions as they sit around trash cans"

Attention all FNC, Shep and Bill O'Reilly fans! Shepard Smith got loose with a roving camera and some impromptu commentary in an under-construction Studio B and the FNC studio, offices and cubicles yesterday, and Johnny Dollar has the video! It is some seriously fun stuff and a must-watch for die-hard Shep fans--with a bonus O'Reilly cameo that will make you laugh. Shep's commentary as the camera enters the super-secret and sanctified control room is priceless!

Movers & Shakers

Broadcasting & Cable's Jim Benson profiles Fox stations chief Jack Abernethy and writes that scratch cooking and slam dunks are talents that transcend their standard definitions to mean success in TV:

[Abernethy] has worked with Roger Ailes since the Fox News Channel chief became president of CNBC in 1993.

Abernethy had been VP/CFO at CNBC since 1990, after climbing the finance and operations ranks at NBC stations. Ailes, however, wasn't immediately impressed.

“The first time I met Jack, he was in shorts and gym socks, heading out the door at 11 a.m. to play basketball,” Ailes recalls. “I'd been hired to take over a network that was a bit out of control. When he was introduced to me at that moment as the CFO, I was pretty concerned.”

Later that afternoon, Ailes ran the sweat-soaked CFO through some hoops of his own, quizzing him on the details of the business. Abernethy's “extraordinary grasp” of financial and personnel details and his eye for overlooked business opportunities convinced Ailes.

“I don't know how his jump shot is,” Ailes says, “but his business skills are great.” When Ailes left to launch FNC in 1996, Abernethy was the first of the 82 CNBC staffers he hired away.

At Fox, Abernethy saw an overlooked opportunity in satellite radio, which he considered a more appealing new medium than the popular dotcoms of the late 1990s. His deals with Sirius and other satellite carriers made the little-known FNC the most listened-to new channel and has resulted in a new Sirius deal for news feed and talk channels.

Having helped to create several channels already, Abernethy is eager to exercise his knack for building things from scratch. In addition to My Network, he hopes to launch upgraded station Web sites, which Fox plans to program with original content before year's end.

Abernethy continues to pursue the right mix of syndicated shows, consistent audience flow, better news product, and improved branding, marketing and sales. While the stations' corporate ties to FNC have helped in efforts to develop national news and information shows, Abernethy sees little demand among his stations for a national newscast now.

"Richard Clarke saved Bin Laden's life"

This is amazing stuff: you have to check out Johnny Dollar's audio of an incredible segment on Friday's John Gibson show on Fox News. Gibson interviews Allan Parrot, a falconer and wildlife conservationist who has an astonishing inside take on the falconry camps of the U.A.E., or, as he calls them, Al Qaeda's boardrooms. And Parrot has some heavy insight into the larger ramifications of some of Richard Clarke's to-bomb-or-not-to-bomb decisions when Bin Laden was traveling freely in the U.A.E. This is high-priority listening.

To sum up Olbermann's petition antics: It's called bluffing

Phil Rosenthal writes on Keith Olbermann's reaction to Bill O'Reilly's petition to put "Countdown" out of its misery:

Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly is such a swell guy he's trying to help out a rival network--and maybe find work for Phil Donahue, while he's at it.

Oh, and if he could get MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann fired in doing so, well, that would be OK, too.

It's tongue in cheek, but some people might take it personally.

Not Olbermann.

Instead, on Friday's "Countdown," Olbermann and MSNBC staff signed the open letter to NBC Universal Chairman Bob Wright that visitors to BillOReilly.com are asked to endorse.

The petition urges MSNBC to dump "Countdown" in favor of Donahue's return. It expresses concern "about the well-being of MSNBC and, in particular ... the continuing ratings failure of the program currently airing" in the slot Donahue lost three years ago.

MSNBC, you see, canned Donahue because of lousy ratings.

Among the many programs crushing him at the time was Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor." So maybe there's a guilt thing going on here.

After all, O'Reilly's audience of more than 2 million viewers is four to five times the number Olbermann draws, even if the margin is somewhat closer in the advertiser-cherished age 25-54 demographic. At the time Donahue's show was canceled, he had one-sixth the number of viewers as O'Reilly.

In poker, there's a word for what Olbermann's doing: bluffing. Signing that petition doesn't give him any aces.

And then there's this:

If anyone really wants to worry about MSNBC, worry about the fact that the 1.6 million viewers who watched an Olympic curling match the other day--a sport David Letterman branded "the safe alternative to Lunesta"--marked its biggest audience since Iraqi war coverage in April 2003.

"You've got a `news' channel, and its highest ratings in three years are for curling, and you're proud," Harry Shearer wrote in his Huffington Post blog. "There's got to be a gold medal for that."

Don't they say that in gambling, you should only bet what you can afford to lose? Can Olbermann really afford to bet on his own demise?

MSNBC's heavy load

So MSNBC thought that airing the Olympics instead of the news would do something for their ratings. Instead, all the Olympics did was create a whole new arena to be ridiculed in. Rick Kaplan, meet the sportswriters! Even a simple story about Kansas University basketball isn't complete without a dig at the cable news network that specializes in layups in reverse:

A friend tells me the Olympics are over. I’m going to have to take his word for it. If it’s true, this is good news. Now MSNBC can go back to airing its compelling shows on true crime and politics and sometimes a blending of the two.

Contrary to what the panic button within you might be screaming, the Kansas University basketball season is not over....

The NYT, dropping the ball on the My Network TV annoucement

A TCG reader points out FTVLive's great inside take on the My Network TV annoucement and the NYT's total fumble in reporting it:

FTVLive first brought you the news yesterday that My Network TV was being announced by Fox at a Big Apple press conference.

Sources tell FTVLive that news conference was was packed. The announcement got a lot of media coverage Today in the papers and trades.

The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Post all checked in on it. But where the hell was the New York Times?

The Times resorted to a brief that they ripped off the wires.

Times editors had to be red-faced this morning when they opened up the Wall Street Journal . . . at the very least, this should have been a wake up call to them about how out of touch Times TV editor Steve Reddicliffe is.

When contacted about it by FTVLive, one Fox executive was laughing at the esteemed paper of record saying they were asleep at the switch yet again . . . "To get beat as badly as they did on this story, I'd just hope for their sake that they were all on vacation with their kids this week because there would be no other excuse for getting crushed like they did. "

Petition to save MSNBC from the ratings basement

Check out Bill O'Reilly's petition for NBC chairman Bob Wright to save MSNBC by giving Keith Olbermann his walking papers:


Chairman Robert Wright
National Broadcasting Company
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, New York 10112

Dear Chairman Wright:

We, the undersigned, are becoming increasingly concerned about the well-being of MSNBC and, in particular, note the continuing ratings failure of the program currently airing weeknights on that network at 8:00 PM EST.

It is now apparent to everyone that a grave injustice has been done to the previous host for that time slot, Phil Donahue, whose ratings, at the time of his show's cancellation three years ago, were demonstrably stronger than those of the current host.

Therefore, in an effort to rescue MSNBC from the ratings basement and to restore the honor and dignity of Mr. Donahue, who was ignobly removed as host three years ago, we ask that you immediately bring Phil Donahue's show back at 8:00 PM EST before any more damage is done.

...then sign!

The Newshounds: "Stark Staring Bananas"

My hero Johnny Dollar is at it again (with video!): pointing out the collective Fox-News-hating insanity over at Newshounds.us with such detailed, razor-like logic and evidence that I wouldn't be surprised if the Newspoodles changed their name to "Humiliated Haters Anonymous" after reading his latest:

The spin is out of control! The Fox haters have gone stark staring bananas. It's like they don't even care any more if they tell the truth, or how stoopid they look when they get caught. If you doubt that, let's pay another visit to the kook kennel, home of the newshounds (another fine product of the Outfoxed cabal). It's just one thing after another.

J$ goes on to really nail the "Alliance for Ignorance" headed by professional neo-Pravdian propagandist Newspuppies Chrish and Marie-Therese, and asks the simple, yet incredibly telling rhetorical question: "Now why lie about something that anyone can disprove with just a click of the mouse? For that matter, why lie about Iraq coverage?"

Read on as the Newshounds' lies are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the cold light of fact!

Roger Ailes: "Let's take the next hill"

Paul Gough writes in the Hollywood Reporter that with the launch of My Network TV, Fox chief Roger Ailes continues to re-define what it means to be a truly great business leader:

While Fox saw the losses with UPN and had an inkling that something might be up, it hadn't decided whether it would renew the affiliation agreements for the stations whose deals ran out in August. The CW's surprise announcement made those plans moot. But it also gave Ailes an opportunity to remake those stations as well as recruiting outside stations to sign up for the My Network TV primetime block on a syndication-style basis. When he saw that window of opportunity opening, Ailes says he jumped at the chance.

"I knew that network (UPN) was having a lot of problems and issues, so we got 'Desire' ready to run in syndication or to run in primetime in our stations, which we thought we might have to do," Ailes said. "Ultimately, we were very happy we had it. I just had a premonition that I was going to need it."

Ailes and other News Corp. executives deny that they were caught flat-footed by the news that CBS Corp. planned to shutter UPN in the fall in favor of a joint venture with Warner Bros. in the CW. Ailes said he already was planning for a world without UPN for that network's Fox-owned affiliates.

On a separate track -- but one that would become key to the plans for My Network TV -- was Twentieth Television's proposal to produce a telenovela titled "Desire." Fox Television Stations CEO Jack Abernethy and Twentieth Television president Bob Cook made a presentation to Ailes in the fall about the telenovela, with Ailes greenlighting the pilot and directing the two to come up with a business plan for the show.

"I looked at it, and I was glad I greenlighted it, and I said, Let's keep moving -- and go into production with it and put it into primetime if UPN falls," Ailes said Wednesday. At the time, there was no affiliation deal with UPN, with Ailes and Moonves meeting about it once in the fall.

Although he is happy with the production quality of "Desire" and its companion telenovela, "Secrets," it was by no means the only card Fox could play immediately. There were about a half-dozen shows Fox could have put in there, and there are at least two layers of backup plans in case the current strategy doesn't work.

"We were not uncomfortable at all with the UPN announcement. We knew were going with the strip programming mode, and we could deliver programming for that," Ailes said.

Ailes also credited News Corp. president and chief operating officer Peter Chernin for his fast action on the new plan for the stations.

"He has provided great leadership on these issues. I've got to give Peter the credit all around for creating the synergy in the company," Ailes said. "He was able to basically pull a meeting together with all entities, lay out the parameters of what needed to be done."

Yet Ailes is no stranger to quick action, either. One of his hallmarks -- almost as much as success -- is his take-charge attitude and his quick, reasoned decision-making skills. One of Ailes' first actions in charge of the stations group was to cancel "A Current Affair" and replace it with "Geraldo at Large," putting that show on the air in five weeks. At Fox News, Ailes started working in February 1996 and got the news channel up and running by October. And it took even less time -- two months -- for Fox News to create a Sunday morning public affairs show.

He already has done other things at the station group, including upgrading the look of the stations and turbocharging the promotions as well as increasing the synergy between Fox News and the stations. He also hired Dennis Swanson, the renowned TV station executive who has logged successful tenures at ABC, NBC and CBS before moving to Fox last year, to assist Abernethy.

"There have been a lot of things that have happened. I think we're moving faster than any station group has ever moved in history, and that's what I like to do," Ailes said. "If I add anything, it's 'let's take the next hill.'"

"Losing is highly overrated as a learning experience"

News Corp contines to define the art of the possible with the introduction of a new mini-network, My Network TV. Newsday reports:


News Corp. announced Wednesday it would launch a new mini-network called My Network TV that will supply prime-time shows for the 10 local TV stations the company owns that were left without programming after UPN announced that it would close.

The new lineup will be centered around two serial dramas that will air six days a week with 13-week story lines, similar to the soap opera-esque "telenovela" format that has been a big success on Spanish-language networks like Univision.

Other daily, serialized shows are also in the works, including a quiz show, a reality show called "Celebrity Love Island" and a supermodel search show.

Putting daily, serialized dramas on the air in prime time is highly unusual. Fox executives said the two new shows had been in the works for several months, before the announcement about UPN shutting down was made.

The new lineup will launch on Sept. 5 on stations in major cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas with initial coverage of 24 percent of the United States, News Corp. said. Executives said they hoped to sign up other affiliates as well.

Roger Ailes, the head of Fox's television station group, will be in charge of the new My Network TV operation...News Corp. has had other experience going up against incumbent networks in the past, taking on CBS, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and General Electric Co.'s NBC with its Fox network.

"In life, I've learned that losing is highly overrated as a learning experience," Ailes told a group of reporters at a news conference in New York.

Translation: "Between the rain & the bullets in Bayji that day, only FNC represented"

Spc. William Jones,a soldier with the 101st Airborne in Iraq, writes in his terrific Ashland City Times column that a Fox News reporter was the only member of the media getting rained on in Bayji, Iraq recently:

God does not like military ceremonies. I know this because I have witnessed the Almighty summon a rain cloud the size of parade field out of a clear blue sky. I'm sure that theologians the world over are trying to figure this mystery out.

God's dislike for military ceremonies is hardly limited to the United States. Oh no! He's doesn't like them in Iraq either!

The sky was blue and it was 70 degrees when I got up this morning.
A little while ago I was at an Iraqi military ceremony with four hundred Iraqi soldiers, a dozen dignitaries, a small contingent of American soldiers and one Fox News reporter.

The closer it got for the ceremony to start, the darker and colder it got.

As the first soldier stepped onto the parade field, the bottom fell out, and it poured. The rain stopped when the ceremony ended and blue skies appeared.

This reporter isn't identified further in the item, but it could only have been the indefatigable Steve Harrigan, force of nature, who writes in his blog:

I sat around a table in a courtyard with the S1 and his Iraqi counterpart. 750 Iraqi soldiers were part of the unit when it was in Tikrit. Here, 350 made the trip. If the others don't show after five days, the Iraqi colonel said they would be fired. They were trying to figure out exactly how many were here.

I asked him why the missing soldiers didn't show. Rudden handed me a wireless mic and I handed it to the translator. He pinned it on himself. He was used to microphones. The colonel had a big star on his shoulder. He said the men did not show up, not because they are cowards, but because the job will be different here. The job they signed up for in Kirkuk was close to home, and all they had to do was man checkpoints. Now they are being asked to leave home and to come into a potentially hostile place — Kurds from Kirkuk coming into Sunni Bayji. Plus, they will now have to go out on raids. He said 14 of his men have been killed in the past year and the Iraqi Defense Ministry has not compensated the families. These guys had real security concerns about going forth between Kirkuk and Bayji.

"Law & Order: The News Desk"

Tom Shales either praises or puts down--I can't tell which--Elizabeth Vargas' tendency toward dramatic readings of the news but mostly has one big point: say, Elizabeth, why not sue ABC for David Westin's ineptitude?


Woodruff had been on duty such a short time as co-anchor of "World News Tonight" that it was hard to form an opinion on his performance. It was hard to get a fix, too, on how he and his very dramatic co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas were getting along on the air because they were so very seldom together. They appeared hardly to have been introduced. They rarely talked to each other or shared a two-shot or exhibited any of the togetherness one expects from such an arrangement. If you don't get that, then why are they co-anchors in the first place?'

They were co-anchors in the first place because [ABC News President David] Westin was chicken; he was frightened when Charles Gibson, the obvious and most logical candidate for the job-and not as anybody else's co-anchor, either-wanted a contract that guaranteed he'd stay on until the next presidential election....this reportedly scuttled talks between Westin and Gibson for Gibson to succeed the late Peter Jennings as anchor.

No one could have foreseen the terrible fate that awaited Woodruff on one of the innumerable hazardous roads of that wretched country of Iraq, though it graphically illustrates the inherent danger of letting your top anchor go on assignment in the middle of a war zone-another bad decision by David Westin, a kind of tragic sequel to the bad decision not to make Gibson the "WNT" anchor in the first place?

....My personal suspicion is that we haven't heard anything like the full story on the Westin-Gibson gap that like so many of the best-laid plans went awry. Couldn't part of Westin's motivation have to do with a kind of executive solidarity drive, a sense that here was a chance to continue a trend of the last few years that has seen the balance of power shift back from the superstars-the glam anchors and big-time correspondents-to management, those bureaucrats and party faithful who answer directly, and obediently, to the keepers of the bottom line?

...Westin's move was, then, a kind of power play (he's no Richard Salant, the kind of news boss who stands up to management), but one that had ghastly reverberations. In Woodruff's absence, which simple propriety demands be looked upon as temporary...why not just give the newscast to Vargas to run by herself, despite her insistence on dramatizing every story with an array of facial and vocal inflections? (It brings to mind one of Barbra Streisand's songs as Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl": "I've got 36 expressions/Sweet as pie to tough as leather/And that's six expressions more than all them Barrymores put together!")

Whatever her difficulties, Vargas has paid dues (some if not all), the audience deserves a chance to like her and she could always be supplemented with a co-anchor later if things didn't work out.

Insisting from the outset that the revamped "WNT" must, on most nights, have two anchors is a slap in the face to Vargas. I wonder if her agent couldn't threaten to slap ABC with a big fat lawsuit over this insult. But then I love wondering about big fat lawsuits.

Wow! Drama plus litigation plus intrigue: sounds like a "Law & Order" spinoff. I know it's an NBC show, but still.

The book I wish Anderson Cooper would write

It was bound to happen: an excerpt of Anderson Cooper's forthcoming book,"Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival" has been leaked. Who knows if it's for real, or just, oh, I don't know, some critic's satirical commentary on the state of CNN? (Even though the book hasn't been released yet, it's slowly but steadily climbing up the Amazon.com sales ranker.)Check it out:

Chapter Six: Hurricane Katrina

I almost don't know what to write here. The things I saw and experienced after Hurricane Katrina both made me wonder if there is a God, and at the same time proved His existence. Katrina may not have been punishment, but her trajectory was so lethal, so precise, as to be almost choreographed by an unseen hand, and the miracles conceived in the rubble seemed similarly engineered by an entity that has been engineering the expansion of human limits for a very long time.

What I saw in New Orleans made my heart feel as fragile as glass, and my heart didn't just break: it was pulverized into dust, into knife-edged atoms small enough to tear apart everything it touched at a microscopic level. I guess when those particles get into your soul, it's like certain kinds of shrapnel wounds sustained in combat: they can't be fished out in surgery, so you'll just have to live with them.

That's why I can't understand why my boss, Jon Klein, keeps bragging to the press about the authenticity of my emotions. Of course they're authentic, they're so authentic I'm pretty sure I have an ulcer. If I hadn't been completely grey before Katrina you can bet my hair would be snow-white now. And Klein just can't get enough of it--he's the first grief pimp to ever run a national news network. Doesn't he understand that urging more live-on-TV grief, more vividly re-enacted post-traumatic stress, and more please-God-make-it-stop-the-sadness-is-killing-me remembrances, he's just cheapening what Katrina's victims have gone through and strip-mining my empathy? Doesn't he understand that I'm a reporter with feelings, not a bundle of feelings that reports? Can't Klein get it through his head that in his quest for ratings he's making CNN into the worst kind of reality television, the kind where spontaneous, uncontrollable emotions are written into the script and about as spontaneous as brain surgery?

Yeah, I cried and screamed on air when I was covering Katrina. I'm only human. A lot of other serious reporters from other nets did the same thing. But most of them didn't have a wanna-be Quentin Tarantino calling the shots from his director's chair back in New York, trying to yank more and more cry-til-you-puke grief out of them like he did out of me. Note to Klein: it's precisely because I'm only human that I can't in good conscience put on an Oscar-winning performance every time the news is sad. Here's some breaking news for you: a lot of the news is sad, and to some extent television news reporters exist to tell the public that we all have to stay steady and not fall to pieces over every little thing, or else we'll all be on anti-depressants. Reporters need to report, not emote unless the news is especially grim, like Katrina. But now, Jon, it's been months. I'm not a dancing bear, yet here I am tap-dancing on a desk in the CNN studio, a emoting dancing bear with great hair in a suit. Well, no more. I quit. I'm taking my camcorder and my cool bump music and going anywhere where I can do investigative reporting without being encouraged to mist up on cue. Good luck with those ratings, Jon.

Kidding. Cooper didn't write this, I did. This is just what I wish he'd write. But talk about emotional authenticity if he would put something like this in his book, though. Keep hope alive, I guess.

Champion Nitwit of 2006 crowned in February

I think the voting for Champion Nitwit of '06 needs to close early: check out this column by Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara in which she bemoans the media glare so cruelly inflicted on Mr. "Hey, he might be innocent" Neil Entwistle:

Is it safe to turn on a television set?

Are the motorcades and the stakeouts over for now? Have the helicopters landed and the telephoto lenses been capped? Is Nancy Grace revisiting the Natalee Holloway case yet?

The evening news is now probably a Neil Entwistle-free zone, at least until the accused killer's next court appearance in March. These periodic media storms blow through with the same intensity as last week's northeaster and melt away about as fast as last week's snow.

Not that those of us in the business of peddling voyeurism as news ever acknowledge as much. Between live shots of the darkened windows of police cruisers, we give the coverage the sheen of social commentary with psychobabble about the nature of family violence, the lure of Internet porn, and the isolation that might have befallen a debt-ridden Briton suddenly relocated to the colonies.

We have no idea what we are talking about, but that never stops us when the subject is murder and the victims are white suburbanites.


"We have no idea what we are talking about"? Ahem. Ellen, there's a word in clinical psychology for what you just wrote. It's "projection," and it means YOU don't know what you're talking about, so you'll project that deficiency onto everyone else.


Financial pressures or a secret life of Internet porn might have driven Neil Entwistle to kill. Revenge might have motivated a customer scammed by the Internet entrepreneur to do the deed. Cyberspace is chock full of theories and that is where they belong, not on the front page or on the evening news.

Brilliant, Ms. McNamara. The news should just stop covering criminal justice altogether, because that's the internet's job, right?

Let's be clear about what I think McNamara's real beef is with coverage of the Entwistle case is. Her real problem is, I believe, with the power of the media to shine a light into the dark places where criminals hide; television has shown itself to be an unapologetic force for good in this regard. McNamara would rather consign discussion of guilt and innocence to the internet, which has an untrammeled ability to harbor stupid theories while being so huge that it's difficult for any single one to really nail or excuse a single accused criminal. TV news has the power to call attention to those, like Entwistle, who would rather hide. So columnists like McNamara call that voyeurism. Last I heard, it's the internet that's a clearinghouse for voyeurs....voyeurs like Neil Entwistle, Mister Escort Service and student-of-homicide himself, for example. When television news calls attention to people like Entwistle, that's not voyeurism. That's justice.

The NewsHounds, Haters Extraordinare

Johnny Dollar explains so thoroughly what it takes to be a Fox News hater I think he just earned his Ph.D. in the subject. Check out his breakdown of the latest from the Master FNC Haters, the NewsHounds:

What are the requirements to be a Fox hater? Are there certain
qualifications that have to be met? We wondered as we skimmed over some of the howlings from the newshounds (another fine product of the Outfoxed syndicate). If we were to go by the ravings of deborah, we'd have to say that proficiency in lying would be the key....

J$ goes on to relentlessly pound away at these losers and to call them on some real outrages...it's some great stuff.

Bias: the media's version of fire insurance

Jim Pinkerton made an excellent point on Fox News' always thought-provoking News Watch tonight (it repeats at 2:30am, for you TiVo-heads who didn't catch the 6:30pm just now.) Talking about CNN's Jack Cafferty's jealous, cheap-shot dismissal of FNC as the "F-word network," Pinkerton said:

If Bill O'Reilly had said that CBS was the "C-word network," or if NBC was the "N-word network." there would have been a firestorm that would have evaporated this building.

Now, Bill O'Reilly would never say anything so horrible, of course, but it's a great example of the institutionalized bias of the mainstream media. There is no question that what Pinkerton says is true; Cafferty can get away with saying something hideous, but if O'Reilly had said something similar? We're talking scorched earth, people. Ah, bias: the media's version of fire insurance. But Cafferty says it, and the MSM just goes into oh-that-lovable-old-curmudgeon-Cafferty mode. Cafferty's one of their own; he won't get flamed. He might flame out, though; a disposition that bad, even if it is for show, can't be sustainable. Even Moe from the Three Stooges retired eventually.

Now that I think about it, that's my new nickname for ole Jack C. Moe, always sticking a finger in someone'e eye, always getting a finger jabbed in his in return, and never learning his lesson.

Gibson: the "F-word network"?! Would somebody please get Cafferty a cork?

Great audio at Johnny Dollar's place of Fox News' John Gibson lacing into CNN's toothless, "terminal jealousy velocity" over Brit Hume's Cheney interview, and that Jack Cafferty should really put a cork in it:

Gibson: "...the typical political venue for somebody who wants to go and give their side of the story and not be challenged in the least is Larry King....Cheney did not avail himself of that venue; he went to Brit Hume....Brit's no chump; he's going to ask the questions...."

Excellent, excellent point! My man John goes on to point out that Jack Cafferty's talk is pretty tough considering he's losing 2 to 1 at 5pm...the whole clip is classic Gibson.

Is is negligent homicide if Keith Olbermann kills his own career?

The real-time documentation of the death of Keith Olbermann's career continues; Olbermann Watch points out that the "vast holes" KO says are in the Veep's account of the shooting are actually vast holes in KO's head:


There was Big News on Countdown Thursday night. Keith Olbermann even put it in the opening tease:

"The Vice-Presidential announcement that he has the right to declassify secret stuff!"

It's another victory for Olbermann Watch! No sooner did we ridicule KO for glossing over this important piece of news, than Keith suddenly makes it a headine 24 hours later. But Olby had more important fish to fry in Thursday's #1 story, namely:

"...the vast holes in Vice-President Dick Cheney's explanation of how he accidentally shot a man last Saturday."

This ought to be interesting, but instead of telling us what all those "vast holes" were, it was off to bash the Sheriff and his investigation. Why all of a sudden is the Sheriff in KO's sights? Remember that yesterday Olbermann Watch reprinted the sheriff's quote that he decided when he would interview the Veep. So Olby can no longer pretend like the time was set by Dick Cheney. Olbermann Watch scores another success. What's a sports guy to do? Shift the gunsights! The new target: Sheriff Salinas!

Thomas DeFrank came in to speculate about friction between the President and the Veep. Neither Mr DeFrank nor Keith documented any "vast holes" in Cheney's explanation, but they both seemed to agree that it raises questions about "who's running the store".

Then it was back to bashing the Sheriff again, as well as witness Armstrong. According to Keith, she didn't see everything. Cover-up! What's more, she said they had Dr Pepper at lunch, but Cheney said he had a beer. Liar! Creepy Liar! Olby cited a New York Times report that a deputy had been sent to the ranch that night but did not stay. Keith made no mention of the more detailed article in the Washington Post explaining that the deputy went there to escort the ambulance, but it had already left. Neither did he say just what those "vast holes" in Cheney's description of the shooting were.

Memo to "Bloodlust" Olbermann: Harry Whittington is not your sacrificial lamb

Not content to merely secretly wish Harry Whittington would die, Keith Olbermann settles for open wishful thinking that the Vice President could be charged with negligent homicide. As NewsBusters reports:

Keith Olbermann’s first question to his first guest on Tuesday’s Countdown: “Do the changes in his [Harry Whittington’s] health alter how the event is viewed legally and, under the worse case scenario, could negligent homicide actually come into play?" The guest, Texas Monthly magazine Executive Editor Paul Burka, rejected the supposition: “I would doubt it, because a hunting accidents are seldom treated as homicides.”

This is just sick. Olbermann is doing everything but openly holding a death watch for Harry Whittington. Let's be clear here. Keith Olbermann is unmistakably hoping Harry Whittington will die just so the Veep can be punished on "Countdown." Olbermann lost his membership in the objective journalism club a long time ago; now he's trying to get fired from the decent-human-being society too. I'm amazed KO could keep a straight face when he said the words "worst-case scenario."

Sirius Satellite Radio & Fox News: Reunited

Fox News and Fox News Talk are back on Sirius Satellite Radio; beginning March 14, Fox fans can get their satellite radio fix on Sirius channel 131. Sirius announced the new long-term agreement today. From Business Wire:

Kevin Magee, Senior Vice President, FOX News Radio said, "We are pleased to be back on SIRIUS. The renewed agreement adds to our coast-to-coast footprint for both FOX News Radio, as well as our popular talk shows, and reinforces FOX as America's fastest-growing radio news network."

You want to talk 'both barrels"? You're talking Brit Hume

CNN's resident professional embittered curmudgeon, Jack Cafferty, is getting a lot of attention for his whining about FNC's exclusive with VP Cheney yesterday. "Jack Cafferty gave Fox and Dick Cheney both barrels this afternoon," sayeth FishBowlDC. Whatever--you want to talk "both barrels" for real? Check out interviewer Brit Hume's casual and much-needed kneecapping of the jealous competition, in an excellent Matea Gold piece in the Los Angeles Times today:

Hume...dismissed the suggestion that politics played into Cheney's decision to speak with him. After airing the interview on his show, "Special Report With Brit Hume," Hume said that a rival network crew had approached him outside the White House earlier in the day and asked if Fox News got the exclusive because the channel is "associated with conservative causes."

"I said, nah, I didn't think that was the reason," Hume recounted on the air Wednesday evening. "I thought it was probably because he wanted to go with the news channel with the largest audience."

CNN's Lou Dobbs: Still spacy after all these years

CNN host Lou Dobbs tells the NYT's Rachel Swarns that he's passionate about his passion for bias:

He says he has no interest in assuming the conventional role of the anchor who reports the news dispassionately. His mission, he says, is to tell American viewers the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or controversial.

"There's nothing fair and balanced about me," said Mr. Dobbs, tweaking his Fox News rivals' slogan, as he settled into his office overlooking Central Park one recent afternoon. "Because there's nothing fair and balanced about the truth. 'He says, she says' journalism is a monstrous cop-out."

Dobbs sure does love his, not truth exactly, but his truthiness, which should be good enough for all us idiots not in the magic media circle, apparently. Dobbs sounds like he's doing a dramatic reading of a Colbert Report monologue, not talking to a reporter. Dobbs is creating comedy here, not commentary. And besides, this is all pretty hard-nosed newsman talk from a guy who fled CNN to chase little green men with Space.com, then went crawling back to the news when it all dot-bombed.

But wait! There's more! Speaking of slapstick:

Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN's domestic networks, said CNN had been encouraging anchors and journalists to bring more personality to the news.

"You're seeing the passions of our journalists show up on television rather than being left on the newsroom floor," Mr. Klein said.

Note to Klein: when viewers want passion, they'll either turn on "Desperate Housewives" or pop in a DVD. If viewers have a hankering for heat, they want Teri Hatcher to emote, not Lou Dobbs to administer impassioned tough-love spanking to their intellectual sensibilities. To think otherwise, and in the face of all ratings data to the contrary, is pure space-cadetry. Good thing you have such an experienced space cadet in Dobbs!

Latest Olbermann: It takes sour grapes to make a fine whine

Fox News has scored an exclusive interview with Vice President Dick Cheney to discuss the Whittington shooting accident publicly for the first time. So lo and behold, immediately after it's announced, Keith Olbermann's daily "Countdown" email pops up in my email inbox, with this gem: Vice President Dick Cheney planned to break his silence Wednesday in his first televised interview about the Texas hunting accident in which he shot a 78-year-old lawyer. Cheney was to appear on Fox News Channel at 6 p.m. ET....John Dean joins Keith tonight.

John Dean?!!? John Dean?! Yes, Mister Watergate coverup himself...because, as Keith Olbermann would like you to believe, this wasn't just a horrible hunting accident--it has to be SO MUCH MORE, just waiting to be exposed! BirdGate!

But here's the best part--Olbermann included this link to the MSNBC story about the FNC exclusive. And guess what this "news" story stressed? Check it out:

Many media observers consider Fox's coverage to favor conservative issues and see it as friendly to Cheney and other members of the Bush administration.

Classic bitter, jealous, cheap-shot bias from MSNBC. (Say, don't you guys have a luge medal ceremony to cover or something? Stick with your strengths.)

Back to Iraq with Steve Harrigan's personal Zen monk, aka cameraman

FNC's Steve Harrigan is at it again: "it" being defined as filing dispatches from Iraq that blow your mind and make you think, simultaneously. Check out the great Zen-master-level quote from Steve's cameraman Peter Rudden (pictured, left), followed immediately by the kind of classic Harrigan take on reporting from a helicopter mission with US troops that's fast turning him into the new Hemingway:

"The only way to know if the surf is good is to get in your car and see for yourself." — Cameraman P. Rudden

When Hueys land, experienced people turn around and take one knee because the force from the twin blades can knock you over. It did blow my Tumi messenger bag off into the sand. I had to get rid of my previous messenger bag after a suicide bombing. I had left it at my feet while reporting, and the bottom got soaked with blood. The rust-colored stain in the bottom reminded me of it every day back in New York, so I got rid of it, despite the fact that the bag itself was in good shape.

For most of the Iraqis it would be their first time in a helicopter. They had us get on and get off the helicopter quickly, several times, running out and getting into formation in the dirt as if we were under fire.

This was the first time I had my new body armor on. The side plates added considerable weight, as did the new neck protection. I felt like one of those knights, where once knocked off his horse he was done, because he was too heavy to get himself upright. They filed us in behind the Iraqis and we ran off and on the Huey, back and forth, even though the motors were still off. The Iraqis ran with order and enthusiasm.

The mission was to surround a terrorist safe house in the desert. You had to run out of the back of the Huey and run up a sand dune. At one point during the mission you had to go down into a tunnel. I had heard about the tunnel during the briefing the night before, and the risks associated with it. I made a mental note to avoid it. Fortunately, the snipers were posted at the top of the tunnel. I stayed with them. It is always a mistake to move around independently during an operation. For one thing, you are not in uniform, so either side could get you.

And check out this single Harrigan blog entry from a few days ago, in total:

Feb. 11, 2006 7:59 p.m.

It was a good day. No one got killed.

And you thought your job was tough.

ACLU Bloviation set for O'Reilly tonight

If, like me, you hold the modern ACLU in the deepest of contempt, you'll definitely want to check out tonight's O'Reilly Factor. Verne Gay writes in today's Newsday on tonight's upcoming "Bloviate with Bill" debate:


In a taped debate that'll air on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" just before 9 tonight, Dan Gavigan - who's never been on TV before and certainly never had the dubious pleasure of arguing with this guy - will come out in support of the American Civil Liberties Union. Longtime viewers can guess which side Bill O'Reilly will take.

"What's a good Long Island boy like you sticking up for the ACLU for?" the host begins. Answers Seaford's Own, "They're dedicated to protecting every single American's civil rights." And so it goes: O'Reilly tests the kid with a couple of jabs - "You know the ACLU is supporting NAMBLA; you OK with that?" - and the kid ducks and weaves. No blood is drawn. The bell rings after five minutes. A draw.

I severely doubt that, as Gay writes, that the debate was a "draw," but O'Reilly is going to call much-needed attention to the ACLU's institutional committment to defending evil, aka defense of NAMBLA, tonight and that's no bloviation: that's a public service.

FTVLive takes on the NYT's Steinberg over Klein story

FTV Live has a great take, with lots of insider stuff, on Jimmy Olson-ish NYT reporter Jacques Steinberg and his pitiful attempt at investigating the cable news wars:


One would think the New York Times would be ahead of the curve on TV coverage, but stories by Jacques Steinberg always seem to leave industry execs puzzled. Take today's profile of CNN honcho Jon Klein. One industry exec told FTVLive "Jacques stories always lack depth and today was another example. The story went nowhere. Klein is trying to right a sinking ship -- I get it -- that's been written fifty times . . . But I kept asking myself why was this story even written in the first place?"

Apparently editors at the Times feel the same way as the paper is often forced to partner Steinberg with more seasoned reporters to work on a story. Another source told FTVLive that the legendary Bill Carter is supposed to be on sabbatical writing a book about NBC, but keeps getting sucked back in to help out Steinberg. When Bob Woodruff was badly injured recently in Iraq, it was Carter who editors brought in to help Steinberg.

Said one exec, " . . . people look at Jack as a modern day Jimmy Olsen . . . he's eager, but a total lightweight."

When FTVLive called FOX for their reaction to the Klein story, the rep laughed and said, "The story was pretty typical of Jacques -- he's obviously still trying to find his sea legs."

One suggestion for Steinberg -- maybe he should log onto to FTVLive and actually read the ratings along with the various other scoops that we serve up on a daily basis. This way, perhaps he would earn respect from the industry, not pity.