Fox News reporter Adam Housley: the anti-Anderson

Read this very terrific profile of Fox News reporter (and former professional baseball player) Adam Housley in the Napa Valley Register and be floored by how cool this guy is. If you watch him on Fox News you know he's an amazing reporter (he was one of the few journalists chosen to witness Stanley "Tookie" Williams' execution at San Quentin; his reporting from that day is unforgettable) but this article shows you a personal side of him that's really impressive. Like Shepard Smith, Housley is the anti-Anderson Cooper: devoted to bearing witness through strength, not tears:

During his career with Fox, he has been in Thailand, providing extensive on-site coverage in the wake of the Southeast Asia tsunami.

He was also the lead reporter for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2003 California campaign for governor and has covered six hurricanes, including Katrina and Rita.

“You’ve got to find a way to convey what’s going on, besides the sounds, the smells, everything,” he explained. “While you’re there, it’s not my job to be on the air and cry. It’s my job to be on the air and to tell people and show people what’s going on, to be their eyes and their ears. It can be tough, but it’s my job. It’s an on-going battle every day, when you’re covering a story like Katrina or the tsunami. You’re seeing things that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.”

Read on for the whole story of his journey from pro athlete to star reporter...

Hell hath no fury like an Olbermann girlfriend scorned....theoretically speaking, of course

Remember those emails Keith Olbermann sent calling Rita Cosby dumb? The ones Lloyd Grove then got his hot little hands on? Well, a tipster just steered me to this blog, which is apparently written by the female fan Olbermann originally sent the emails to....and now she's mad and letting it all hang out, but incrementally, in a drip, drip, drip fashion. Apparently, allegedly. It's your basic Who Knows at this point. Check it, including all the comments (some of which apparently originate at MSNBC) and see for yourself.

Pet tiger eats "View" co-hosts; owners stunned--"We thought it was a vegetarian"

Definition of "spare me": former "The View"-er Star Jones is going to be whining to CNN's Larry King tonight about her early dismissal from the show (which she totally deserved after the stunt she pulled, IMO.) Free country, terrible TV, but here's what I find fascinating: that ABC execs and Barbara Walters are shocked and stunned by Star's actions. Star Jones has built her entire on-air persona on the "I am woman, hear me roar and don't tell me what to do or YOU WILL BE SORRY" loose cannon archetype. So ABC decides not to re-up Star's contract, tells her so, and then still gives her access to a live television audience? And they are surprised that she burned them? What did they think she'd do if given the chance? People at that pay grade are supposed to anticipate flame-outs like this. Basically, that Walters and ABC are surprised at Star's behavior is like being surprised when your pet tiger eats you. Let's see how long it takes for someone to make this point during the call-in segment on LKL tonight.

O'Reilly vs. Kerry on The Factor tonight

Check out the The O'Reilly Factor tonight on Fox News Channel at 8PM ET; Bill's previously-rained-out interview with Senator John Kerry airs tonight. Topics will include Iran's nukes and whether or not Congress is for sale...

Rita Cosby's boyfriend likes to wear WHAT?

What does Rita Cosby have against Lis Wiehl? As Lloyd Grove reports today, MSNBC "Live & Direct" host Rita Cosby's boyfriend was alone and unleashed at Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl's wedding, where he got busy putting a bizarre damper on the proceedings that managed to work in the image of him wearing Rita's clothing:

That was MSNBC personality Rita Cosby's devoted boyfriend, Tomaczek Bednarek, surprising the bride, groom, family members and guests at Mickey Sherman and Lise [sic] Wiehl's wedding the other night in Greenwich, Conn. He offered an intensely emotional, schmaltzy toast. Everybody listened wide-eyed as Bednarek, who was attending in Cosby's unavoidable absence, even talked about how the newlyweds will become so close that they'll find themselves wearing the same clothes. After he finished, Sherman got a big laugh by quipping: "That's why drugs are illegal!"

Great save by Mickey...but it sounds like Rita's bf should never be unsupervised in social situations.

Mexican election coverage restrictions: FOX News won't be censored

This is interesting...the LA Times' Matea Gold reports that Fox News will be off the air in Mexico in advance of the country's presidential election, starting today until after the polls close on Sunday in order to "steer clear of that country's restrictions on campaign ads and public surveys." What this basically means is that the Mexican government is putting restrictions on what the media can report, so, because Fox News refuses to be censored, the cable channel pre-emptively went off the air there at 12:01am today:

Fox News decided to temporarily halt transmission into Mexico because of concerns that the channel's coverage would violate a ban on disseminating opinion polls or campaign commercials in the days before the election, and jeopardize the standing of the cable and satellite companies that distribute its signal.

"I just don't think we had much choice," said Janet Alshouse, senior vice president of international distribution for Fox News. "We can't restrict our coverage."

CNN, by contrast, plans to say "how high" when the Mexican government says "jump" (except CNN calls it "working within regulations." (That has a nice state-run-media ring to it, no?)

It was unclear Wednesday whether any other organizations planned to pull their signal in advance of the election. CNN International and CNN en Espanol plan to remain on the air, said spokeswoman Caroline Rittenberry.

"CNN is a global broadcaster with multiple global networks and we are used to trying to work within the regulations of the countries that we serve," she said.

"Hold on Jon, there's another shell coming in"

Fox News' Mike Tobin practically got hit by 155mm shells in the northern end of the Gaza Strip live on the air just now. His amazingly detailed reporting on the situation there was periodically interspersed with calm "Hold on, there's another shell coming in..." BOOM! "Hmm, that one shook me..." Jon Scott interrupted his report and asked incredulously, "Mike, are you safe there? It looks like those shells are landing just a couple hundred meters away...[NOTE: Jon Scott later noted it was actually closer to a hundred meters]" To which Mike replied, "Well, they are pretty precise...hold on, here's another one..."

If you're not a Tobin fan yet you have got to check him out. His reporting under fire and everywhere is jaw-droppingly good. Check out this video of his live shot from Gaza during Studio B with Shepard Smith yesterday...

Here's Tobin's latest must-read Reporter's Notebook...

...As soon as I hung up the phone with [our bureau chief Eli] I could hear the wind-like sound of an F-16 over Gaza at high altitude. Within minutes jet engines roared, backed up by the sound of propellers from Israeli drones. The sound of the aircraft would fill the sky then fade away. The music from a wedding across the street stopped and the streets emptied. Hundreds of Hamas gunmen took up positions armed with rifles and RPG’s. They put homemade bombs into the ground and in a futile effort they hid behind sand berms, which they hoped would slow an Israeli advance. The silence between the over flights was eerie — like watching someone in a horror movie walk into the abandoned house. You knew something violent was going to happen. It was just a matter of time....

Great anchoring on the Gaza situation by Jon Scott, and terrific commentary by former Senator John Breaux this morning too..

Department of "Worth a Thousand Words"

Great chart, left, courtesy of Inside Cable News, showing CNN's decline in the demo in living color.

And while we're talking the pure language of simple math, check out this numbers-don't-lie program ranker for the second quarter of '06, also over at ICN. It's a definite bookmark for handy future reference. Fox News continues to squash the competition mercilessly; CNN and MSNBC continue to search for new and different paper bags to wear over their heads. Like they say in the Navy SEALs: "Pays to be a winner."

Oh, and ouch, then there's this: another ICN chart showing another angle of CNN's free-fall and also, upon close examination, MSNBC's love of being lodged in quicksand. ICN points out:

At first glance this looks impressive for MSNBC but there are two signs that point to trouble for the network. First, it is clear from the following two charts that the gap closure has less to do with MSNBC’s gains than it has to do with CNN’s fall in the Demo. Second, MSNBC itself is trailing off a bit in the Demo this year so far.



Yeah, where's Anderson Cooper when you need him? Oh, uh, never mind.

NYO on CNN's Cooper: The beginning of the end?

Rebecca Dana writes a fascinating piece--it actually reads a little bit like a CNN-career post-mortem, truth be told--on CNN's Anderson Cooper in the 7/3 issue of the New York Observer. It's a deeply fulfilling read: packed with juicy, thoughtful, vivid observations on Coop, CNN and 360 from anonymous cable and broadcast news execs. Why is Cooper failing so spectacularly? A multitude of opinions join the fray, and the piece isn't so much Monday-morning quarterbacking as it is like watching a spectacular loss in the Superbowl while listening to incredibly talented commentators:

Even Mr. Cooper’s great June triumph, the Jolie postpartum interview, trailed The O’Reilly Factor in total viewers, though it won the night among young viewers. At 1.33 million viewers, the Jolie interview was markedly smaller than a big night on Larry King—when Mr. King landed Elizabeth Taylor earlier this year, 1.8 million tuned in.

Why don’t more people tune in? One theory is that the evening cable news audience is more interested in Fox fare than the emo-cocktail offered up on 360. Another is that 360 itself is an inconsistent show, varying widely in topic and tone.

Another—a surprisingly popular one—is that Mr. Cooper himself, for all his vaunted good looks, is aesthetically ill-suited to television. The silver hair and piercing blue eyes make him all light and no contrast, a human green screen. “He’s wispy,” said the head of one cable news network. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

...There’s buzz he might climb the ranks at CBS, and more buzz on top of that, so much that it seems to have drowned out the little voice of Nielsen.

“I just don’t get it,” said one cable news executive. “I watch the show, and there’s nothing there for me. All of a sudden, I’m looking at the upfront for CBS, and he’s one of the faces of 60 Minutes. One of the three faces of 60 Minutes! How did that happen? It keeps rolling along, this media-sensation thing.”

Rolling and rolling and rolling. The Jolie interview alone helped to bring more than 500 Nexis mentions in two weeks. “He benefits from this P.R. machine that supports him and just propels him out there,” said one broadcast-network executive...

If Cooper jumped totally to CBS, it wouldn't surprise me; I've been saying for a while now that Cooper, an intelligent man, can't be incognizant of the fact that he's tanking at CNN, and may be hinting at leaving. And historically, he's been a traveling man, talking wistfully about life on the road with his camcorder. If you're Anderson Cooper, why not fly away from the pirate ship that's treated you like an especially beautiful trained parrot, complete with the gilded cage of a set?

The U.N. Vs. Fox News, continued

Cliff Kincaid has a must-read column on the U.N., Fox News, and Fox News correspondent Eric Shawn over at Accuracy in Media today...check it out:

When the number two man at the U.N., Mark Malloch Brown, complained about Fox News being one of the "loudest detractors" of the world body, he was referring mostly to Eric Shawn, the Fox News correspondent who covers the U.N. and just published his book, "The U.N. Exposed." In fact, Shawn is a moderate fellow who has called for reform, not abolition, of the U.N. Even U.N. boss Kofi Annan claims he supports U.N. "reform." But Malloch Brown may also have been referring to the Fox News Dayside program running an interview on May 31 with Sally McNamara of the American Legislative Exchange Council. She discussed a global IRS and U.N. international taxation schemes-topics that the U.N. and the major media are careful not to talk about. The U.N. knows that the American people, whose nation was born in a tax revolt, might not take kindly to the idea of U.N. bureaucrats taxing them...

...U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D. understood that Malloch Brown was really commenting not so much on the influence of Limbaugh and Fox News but on the intelligence of the American people, who rely on Fox News and conservative talk-radio for information that is not generally available through the so-called mainstream media...

Read on...

MSNBC: "Can you feel the progress?"

Tim Graham at National Review Online makes an interesting point in the wake of MSNBC "Countdown" anchor Keith Olbermann's latest publicity ploy (naming Fox News chief Roger Ailes one of his "Worst People in the World" for the offense of, according to Broadcasting & Cable, being a strong leader who demands excellence from his troops. It makes sense that this would arouse Olby's ire: people hate what they don't understand, after all.) Graham writes:

Brad Wilmouth and Rich Noyes at MRC have counted up all the “Worst Person in the World” awards from Olbermann in the last year. Unsurprisingly, almost nine out of ten political targets was conservative. It’s comical that Olbermann named Bill O’Reilly as a world-class jerk 42 times, but Saddam Hussein only twice....

Comical, yes. But not surprising. After all, Saddam Hussein doesn't whip Olbermann in the ratings night after night after night. A poster at Olbermann Watch sums up that pathetic situation:

Good thing Abrams is basing his entire vision for the future of MSLSD on this failed propagandist.

Friday 6/23/06

8PM total viewers:

1. OReilly 1,826,000
2. Zahn 617,000
3. Grace 514,000
4. Meltdown 326,000

HALF of Paula Zahn's number. Absolutely horrendous.

8PM "DEMO" viewers

1. OReilly 254,000 (almost = to Olby's Total Viewers!)
2. Zahn 190,000
3. Meltdown 152,000
4. Grace 150,000

Can you feel the progress? Can you see why the MSLSD management loves this HIT SHOW!

Why don't people tune in to Olby? Why oh why? Is everybody dumb? Or is everybody too smart?

Newsweek: No (non-MSNBC, non-FNC) anchor's transformation was more impressive...

So, CNN's Soledad O'Brien has been named by Newsweek as one of the "15 People Who Make America Great." Newsweek sets forth its evidence:

In a drowning city, who spoke out for those in despair? She did.

...Simple, human kindness—the kind you can teach a child—was embarrassingly absent in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. As the country watched in horror as state and federal officials did little to help the stranded multitudes, television anchors, who so often act as though they're not of this world, for once understood the outrage. As the days wore on and the city continued to flounder, they articulated our astonishment at the vast incompetence we all witnessed.

No anchor's transformation was more impressive than O'Brien's....

This has got to be one of the single most dishonest and inane rationalizations for an award I've ever heard (and when you live in Washington, you hear a lot of those.)

So allow me to translate what MSNBC-sibling Newsweek was really saying about why they chose O'Brien as the cable news representative of the 15:

"We couldn't pick anyone from MSNBC or NBC for their work during Katrina, because it would be laughable favoritism. We're certainly not going to pick the obvious and correct choice--Shepard Smith of Fox News--because we hate FNC for its success and its fair and balanced principles. That leaves CNN. We're not picking Anderson Cooper, because everyone's sick of him, even him. So lessee here...wait! I've got it! Soledad O'Brien! Nobody can get mad at that--she's the human version of a wedding cake! Nothing sweeter, nicer or more wholesome. Soledad, you win! As soon as you can step over the bleeding, crying, shaking figure of your latest celebrity interviewee curled up in a fetal position on the 'American Morning' set floor, come right over here for pictures..."

Latest Catherine Herridge and baby Peter update, via GretaWire

Yay, there is an update on the post-surgical recovery of Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge and baby Peter--and it's directly from Catherine herself, via "On The Record" host Greta Van Susteren's GretaWire blog! Here's Catherine's email to Greta, posted on FoxNews.com today:

Hello from Pittsburgh!

We are spending all our time in the ICU with Peter. The nurses have nicknamed him "happy" because he is smiling so much now. Recovery is not a straight line, so we have some days when Peter makes terrific progress and others where he slips back. Peter has now been "extubated" (that means the breathing tube has been taken out of his lungs). This is a major step forward. He still has some breathing support from a thin tube that lies under his nose. Of course, Peter being Peter, he expends a lot of baby effort trying to pull it off!

I have a lot of respect for the ICU doctors. The day Peter started breathing on his own, he had severe withdrawal from the pain and sedation medication he had been on. So severe, that his heart rated dropped in half. The doctors, especially Dr. Shakar, stayed calm and helped Peter get through this. It seemed like the longest hour of my life. They didn't give up on him and they didn't do the easy thing either, which would have been to put his breathing tube back in. We are so grateful for their grace under pressure.

To deal with the withdrawal, Peter is now on methadone. Apparently, this is pretty common with transplant kids. My husband and I try to make light of it, by telling Peter we will help him "kick his habit" when he's better!...

I don't know how these doctors come in every day. The kids in an ICU are so very sick and many of them won't make it. But these teams give it their best shot every day, for families they have never met before, it's an amazing thing.

As for his liver, this is a critical time...

Read on... and please keep praying! Even though we have never met them, Catherine and Peter are on the prayer list of my parents' small church in rural Pennsylvania, because I believe every little bit helps.

CNN prez Jon Klein: "Sizzle is out"

If you are feeling even the tiniest bit queasy, don't read this David Carr New York Times piece on CNN's shameless celeb-interview whoring in the guise of news and CNN prez Jon Klein's shameless trademark doublespeak, because it will make you barf. If, however, you are up for a laugh, Carr does a great job slicing and dicing the identity crisis masquerading as a cable news channel that is CNN:

"Sizzle is out — audiences expect substance, and we deliver that in a way no one else does," Mr. Klein said. "We are feeling very good about the momentum we have gained and the fact that we are showcasing our reporting. Our gimmick is news."

Angelina Jolie talking about her tattoos is substance? What?

And if Klein can't figure out that 1) sizzle is NEVER out and 2) that sizzle is a successful lead-in to substance (hello), what is he doing running a cable news network?

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin's advice: "Leave your comfort zone"

I was absolutely riveted and moved to tears by this transcript of Fox News' Jerusalem-based correspondent Jennifer Griffin's interview with C-SPAN's Brian Lamb. The 5'10" Harvard grad from Alexandria, VA talks about raising her two small daughters in a war zone; her tragic experiences covering the tsunami and the heartbreaking mission she went on in Thailand; the snuff films terrorists sent to her bureau in Moscow that made her refuse to go to Chechnya; her friend, wounded CBS reporter Kimberly Dozier; unknowingly living next door to the first World Trade Center bomber, Ramzi Yousef, in Pakistan; how she'd like to be based in Tehran, Iran; the horrifically surreal nature of covering suicide bombings; what it's like to be a Fox News reporter married to a New York Times reporter (one of them usually gets a back turned to them at parties)...and so much more. And she still manages to talk about it all in such a calm, thoughtful, wise way. This is truly one of the most fascinating interviews about the journalism business I've ever read, and Jennifer Griffin is definitely one of the most amazing people in the business. It's a long piece, but it's the definition of a must-read.

Here's the video...

Chicago Trib on CNN's Cooper: When branding goes bad

Phil Rosenthal writes another terrific TV news column at the Chicago Tribune, and among other acid observations, points out the importance of managing your brand, especially if you're CNN's Anderson Cooper:

Cooper, the one-time ABC reality-show host officially cast as anchor/reporter but seeming to be gunning of late to replace Larry King, is being promoted as a personality at a network founded on the quaint premise that news--not newscasters and not glitterati--should be the draw.

If you're CNN, perhaps you're apt to try anything, having trailed Fox News Channel for so long. But having just about every show last Tuesday--Lou Dobbs' program was a notable exception--talk up Cooper's Jolie interview that night or the World Refugee Day cause Jolie wanted to promote probably isn't the long-term way to do it.

The interlaced campaigns to sell Cooper and his best-selling memoir pay off only if he delivers the goods. You would think a man whose mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, is a brand name herself would caution him, if not his bosses, about what happens when branding goes bad.

Does CNN really want to be known as the Celebrity News Network?

National Council of Churches General Sec'y: Jesus says no Fox News

Dr. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches and a former Congressman, addressed 400 moderate Baptists at a lunch on Thursday and said that Fox News presents a "challenge" to Christians:

Dr. Edgar told the assembled pastors that God calls all Christians to learn how to walk together “in the footsteps of Jesus,” actively leading today’s world to affirm values that Jesus taught and practiced, while addressing the challenges of “fear, fundamentalism, and Fox News”.

It seems to me that the attention-getting phrase "fear, fundamentalism and Fox News" is more of a PR strategy for Dr. Edgar's speech than a true thesis. It's also massively offensive to this Christian Fox News viewer, and I don't think I'm the only one.

FNC's Brian Wilson: "Dan was the man"

I was really impressed by this, because Fox News "Weekend Live" anchor Brian Wilson is a stealth poet in the way he sums up the themes of respect, ambition, and appreciation in one's chosen field in a few well-chosen Texas words. You have to read his "Wilson Watch" appreciation of Dan Rather, so recently and ignomiously drop-kicked by CBS:

When I began my television career in Texas, I didn't have much formal education. I learned by studying the television broadcasters I admired. As best I could, I tried to absorb Brinkley's acerbic wit, Cronkite's authority, Kuralt's gift for writing. The list of those from whom I have stolen goes on and on, but the guy I watched most closely was this pistol of a reporter on CBS named Rather. There was something about the way he addressed the camera — a focus and an intensity that grabbed your attention. When he was on the screen you could not look away. Like you, I watched his daring reports from Vietnam — his bold coverage of the Nixon White House — and who could forget those take-no-prisoner "60 Minutes" pieces he turned over the years.

I devoured his book, "The Camera Never Blinks." My heart raced each time I read his account of what it was like to be a reporter on the scene in Dallas on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. In my mind, Dan was the man. I vowed that, like Dan Rather, I would one day become a Washington correspondent for a major news organization...

Read on...

Soledad O'Brien needs a job

Soledad O'Brien needs a job. Oh yes, I know that the CNN "American Morning" host technically has one. And that job--wearing great clothes on a show that lags so far behind Fox News' "Fox and Friends" that it's practically in another solar system--has got to be strenuous full-time work. Keeping your head above that kind of water has got to be real exercise, you know?

What I mean is that Soledad O'Brien needs a job that doesn't hinge on ambushing celebrities with sleazy questions in the guise of interviewing them about their new movie, and then denying, with a straight face, that you ambushed them. Because that's what's passing for journalism in Soledad's world these days. TMZ.com reports:

David Hasselhoff responded Thursday morning to his wife's charges of abuse while on CNN's "American Morning." Hasselhoff told Soledad O'Brien, "The only person who broke my wife's nose was a plastic surgeon, darling."

Hasselhoff appeared upset when O'Brien brought up the allegations while he was on the show to promote the new movie, "Click," starring Adam Sandler.

"That's not what I'm here to talk about," Hasselhoff said.The two also had a contentious exchange when O'Brien brought up his kids:

O'BRIEN: And you've got little kids.

HASSELHOFF: Right. And you conned me into this, because you said you weren't going to talk about this.

O'BRIEN: No. Oh gosh, I never agree on conditions before I do any interview.

Watch the video, which has got to be seen to be believed. Hasselhoff's body language makes it very clear that the vibe on set screamed "Duck!" Sucker-punching celebs with the kind of he-said she-said verbiage that gets flung around all the time in divorce proceedings, during agreed-upon softball interviews, is not respectable journalism and it doesn't take talent, ability or intelligence. To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, what Soledad did is kind of like hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle and scope.

On second thought, that would be too mean to the penguins

Keith Olbermann should really re-evaluate his cable news career, and by that I mean he should move to Antarctica and tailor his viewing audience, to, say, penguins. Not only would they not understand a word he says and therefore not be able to catch him in any of his many lies, but his ratings would stay approximately the same.

Unfortunately for Krazy Keith, while he persists in trying to con cable news viewers and not flightless waterfowl into believing his fictional ramblings are journalism, Johnny Dollar's on his case.

Witness J$'s latest "Countdown" debunking on Olbermann Watch, specifically KO's attempted smear of Fox News Channel's "Big Story" host John Gibson. Olby just makes stuff up--but once again, he gets caught (bonus: J$ debunks an attempted smear of Geraldo Rivera, too!)

Check it out...

Judge Andrew Napolitano bears witness at Gitmo: "Compelling, terrifying"

Check this out--the incredibly cool and smart Judge Andrew Napolitano was on Fox News' "Big Story with John Gibson" today talking about his last-minute (he found out he was going less than 24 hours before departure!) Wednesday morning visit to Guantanamo Bay.

Some highlights of the Judge's report...it's scary stuff:

On learning that about 100 of the detainees have actually traveled to the United States:

“...John, it was terrifying. We received about eight or nine briefings starting on the flight down and concluding with as we were leaving Guantanamo Bay. Clearly the most compelling--and from my point of view the most terrifying--was from the FBI agents. There’s a full team of FBI agents down there and they track the behavior of many of the detainees and show that nearly a hundred of them collectively have visited 38 states in the United States. Legal, lawful entry into the United States some for as long as 2 years to attend...colleges, some for as short as two days. Many to visit traditional American tourist sites but that many of them had been there.”

On observing the interrogations:

“The people conducting the interrogations freely admit the procedures that they used before 2004 were more aggressive than now. When the Supreme Court came down with its eight to one decision saying the constitution applies, the treaties apply. The law applies and the federal court has jurisdiction. They stopped using the methods that the 5 FBI agents had complained about. So the interrogations that we saw, John, were about as mild as you and I conversing now...it's one detainee, it's three interrogators, one of whom is a translator. The whole thing is taped. Four people are watching the entire interrogation as it goes on. In my case they allowed us to watch it through close circuit so we weren't in the same room and we couldn't hear the words being used. We watched the guy being interrogated who’s the number two person there. The government has ranked them, all four hundred, in the order of their influence they have over the others. This is the number two person and they interrogate him about every two weeks just to see what information he wants to share with them or what lies he wants to give them which allows them to compare with what he said with what others are saying...."

Watch a video excerpt of the Judge's conversation with John Gibson here...

Hannity gets "Whoopied"

This is a lot of fun--the one and only Whoopi Goldberg sat down with Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes to talk about her upcoming radio show and current events in a very lively interview--and while they were talking politics, Sean playfully tried to “Hannitize” her but also found himself “Whoopied” at the same time:

GOLDBERG: Listen, I -- I believe it is important for me to know people with whom I do not agree, because it keeps your mind working. Because if there is a point that you can make to me that makes sense, I mean, OK, let me think about it.

HANNITY: It's beginning to make a little sense to you, too. It's what we call Hannitizing.

GOLDBERG: I suppose that I'm beginning to make a little sense to you, too.

HANNITY: You do?

GOLDBERG: Oh, yes.

HANNITY: I'm getting Whoopied. All right.

Love it...Check out the video, and the transcript...

Cooper on The Daily Show, damning CNN with faint praise

Didja stay up last night to binge on EVEN MORE Anderson Cooper, featured guest on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart? No? Didja TiVo it at least? No? Hey, you better get right real quick, or the Jon Klein Sensitive Hipness Patrol will be at your door demanding you shed a tear onto your skinny Gucci tie to prove your hip-yet-sensitive CNN viewer bona fides.

But anyway, the interview was the "So tell us about your new book...so you really wrote 'Dispatches from the Edge' yourself, huh?...So, the Angelina Jolie interview..she's like the Bono of hotness, right?" softball that you would expect...but there were a couple of stand-out quotes. Like this one:

COOPER: "CNN is a nice place to work...there's a real sense of people being interested in the news."

Dude! NO WAY! People who work at CNN are INTERESTED IN THE NEWS?!!? Man, those are some above and beyond go-getters at that news organization, no doubt! It's hard to believe CNN's only in second place in the cable news ratings with that kind of fire burning in its collective belly!

This is what's known as "damning with faint praise." Cooper's not dumb. I'll say it again: it continues to look to me like Cooper's working on an exit strategy from CNN.

And this:

STEWART: MSNBC is the "let's copy Fox...when you're a parody, you go where the money is" channel....

Stewart has it mostly right, and he should get credit for that. MSNBC is a parody, but not of Fox News. Yes, in MSNBC's own wildly inept way, they attempt to copy the wildly successful Fox News. But mostly MSNBC just parodies being a real news organization. MSNBC's more like a donkey in the Kentucky Derby: not fooling anybody.

Jayson Blair's mentor Howell Raines, writing his own fiction

Jayson Blair mentor and fired New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines has written yet another fishing-metaphor-themed autobiography: "The One that Got Away." YAWN. Are you asleep yet? No? Well, in a desperate bid to seem relevant, Raines has embraced the first rule of PR for Losers: attack your betters in the hope that you'll be noticed, if only for attacking them. So surprise, surprise, Raines takes on Fox News, its viewers, and its leader, Roger Ailes, with invective as nasty as it is false. NewsBusters reports:

...Raines is still rising to the conservative-bashing bait.

On page 189, he lets fly with thoughts about liberal bugbear Fox News:

“Fox, by its mere existence, undercuts the argument that the public is starved for ‘fair’ news, and not just because Fox shills for the Republican Party and panders to the latest of America’s periodic religious manias. The key to understanding Fox News is to grasp the anomalous fact that its consumers know its ‘news’ is made up. It matters not when critics point this out to Foxite consumers because they’ve understood it from the outset. That’s why they’re there. Its chief fictioneer, Roger Ailes, had been making up news in plain sight for a half century.”

He puts down his fishing rod and picks up his brass knuckles to go after Fox again on page 242:

“Fox Television showed us the future -- outright lies and paranoid opinions packaged as news under the oversight of Rupert [Murdoch], a flagrant pirate, and Roger Ailes, an unprincipled Nixon thug who had assumed a journalistic disguise in much the same way that the intergalactic insect in Men in Black shrugged into the borrowed skin of a hapless hillbilly.”

My, my. There are certainly a lot of "outright lies and paranoid opinions" flying around, but they're not at or on Fox News: they're inside Raines' head and in his book. This is Psych 101 material: Raines is angry about being an irrelevant and embittered has-been with not much more to his legacy than being remembered as Jayson Blair's protector and protege, for his old politically correct ravings about Augusta National Golf Club's membership policies, and a pathetic Wikipedia writeup documenting his embarassing and multifocal professional failures, so he's lashing out. And there's a reason Raines has ample leisure time to sit at home and polish his nasty outright falsehoods about FNC, its founders and fans: he was fired from the Times for his staggering ineptitude and his willful disregard for anything even remotely resembling facts or responsible journalism.

So now it's just Howell Raines and his fishing rod, casting wildly into the void that is the public's regard for him, hoping to hook something, anything that will make him look like anything but the washed-up curmudgeon that he is. But for all Raines' devotion to the fly-fishing theme, he still hasn't grasped that in order to catch something, you have to bait your hook with something sturdy and real. Raines has baited his hook with garbage and lies. It's no wonder nobody's biting.

Slate: CNN couldn't cover popular culture with a tarp

And then there's this: Slate TV critic Troy Patterson takes on Cooper's handling of the Jolie interview AND compares him unfavorably to Britney-wrangler Matt Lauer:

...Early on, Cooper set up one of his fawning questions by referring to problems Jolie has had getting her message heard through "this blur of sort of endless suffering in Africa." Then he went on to duplicate it, introducing a slew of indistinguishable dispatches about inhumanity in the sub-Sahara. The various reporters did very little in terms of explaining the tribal pasts, the political presents, or the long-term futures involved with half a dozen catastrophes. Rather, they simply spoke over shot after shot of people on the edge of death. Just as I was wondering when they'd tell me what I could do for the price of a cup of coffee, CNN showed a 1-800 number. Maybe this was admirable, but the footage of so much inhumanity with so little context doesn't do much to humanize the victims.

In the almost-a-year-now since Cooper surfed Hurricane Katrina to superstardom, has anyone forwarded the idea that the key to his particular success as a newsman is that he is a Vanderbilt? Whereas the on-air styles of such anchors as Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather are bound up with their urges to bounce up and out of the middle-American middle class, an aristocrat like Coop is acting, in some way, out of noblesse oblige, and it showed both in his righteousness in New Orleans and in his courtliness with Jolie. He would never even begin to think of slithering around the what's-off-limits agreement his producers worked out with the do-gooder's handlers.

Thankfully, Matt Lauer, though a son of Manhattan's upper middle class, has no such inhibitions. It has now been 20 months since Barbara Walters retired from 20/20, and Lauer's June 15 Dateline NBC sit-down with Britney Spears—a conversation focusing on her career, her judgment in selecting spouses, and her "so-called mommy mistakes"—suggests that he is the new master of the celebrity interview, which is not an art but, like boxing, a science. In "Britney Spears Speaking Out," Lauer looked like Sugar Ray Leonard at the '76 Olympics....

But enough about you, Angelina...

The New York Times' Alessandra Stanley has THE take on the Anderson Cooper/Angelina Jolie CNN interview... check out these highlights:

....Mr. Cooper, the silver-haired CNN anchor, did not conduct an interview with the elusive actress; he held a conversation in which he seemed a little too eager to put himself on par with his guest as if the two of them belonged to an elite club of the concerned and caring. "You're not just talking the talk; you are walking the walk," he told Ms. Jolie, and then proceeded to talk a lot about his own walk through war zones and disaster areas, as if somehow that was an eccentric choice for a journalist.

He even managed to wedge in a mention of Hurricane Katrina: "One of the stories that we're doing, in this program, is about Niger," he said. "And I was there last summer right before Hurricane Katrina. And one in four children in Niger dies before the age of 5, which to me, I still cannot wrap my mind around."

...As much as Ms. Jolie used the occasion of motherhood to showcase her humanitarian work on CNN, the network used her humanitarian work to showcase its own talent. And that was a bit much. Mr. Cooper, who just published his autobiography, "Dispatches From the Edge," and was on the cover of Vanity Fair, has surely received plenty of publicity and praise.

For understandable reasons CNN relentlessly promoted the exclusive, and the network even persuaded Paula Zahn and Larry King to take time from their shows to interview their colleague about his scoop. Both seemed a little put out by the task. "You're talking more about the interview than the interview," Mr. King said to Mr. Cooper. "Are you getting a little tired of it?"

...[Cooper] praised Ms. Jolie for doing the interview solely to draw attention to the plight of refugees and not to promote a movie. He then seamlessly moved on to vigorously promote his best-selling book.

With journalists like that, its a small wonder celebrities are starting to do their own reporting.

FNC's Estrich to CBS: What goes around may come around

Fox News contributor Susan Estrich writes a must-read column on FoxNews.com on CBS's bad-faith treatment of Dan Rather:

CBS has every right to replace Dan Rather in the anchor chair. That's their business, and it is a business. If they think Katie Couric can rate better, so be it. If they think an entirely new team will repair their relationship with the White House, so be it.

But when people serve you loyally, you don't trash them, step all over them, treat them like dirt, then kick them out the door – and expect your customers, consumers, your audience to look the other way, and keep watching. At least I hope we won't, once we make the connection....

...I met Dan Rather in 1987, when I took over the Dukakis campaign. He had always been one of my heroes. I knew he was smart as a whip, and knew politics, but I didn't know what kind of man he was. There were stories that he was tough. I was the first woman in a job like mine, and one of the youngest. He could have treated me like what I was: a kid. But he was unfailingly gracious, helpful, kind, a man of his word, old fashioned in the best sense of the word.

He was, in short, everything that the top brass of CBS has not been in its dealings with him.

Dan Rather will be fine. He has been humiliated, but he will land on his feet. But there is a lesson here. The news business is a tough business, but what business isn't? Thank Goodness I am lucky enough to work for Roger Ailes, who heads Fox News, and is the most loyal man in network news....

Read on...

Crossing the line: Huffington uses military deaths as straw man to attack Fox News

Conservative elitist turned liberal elitist Arianna Huffington writes a truly offensive "My compassion is bigger and better than your compassion" column for The Huffington Post, in which she takes new WH press secretary Tony Snow to task for not grieving showily enough over military deaths in Iraq, and by extension knocks Fox News for the same apparent violation.

Some lowlights:

....[Snow's] reaction to the U.S. death toll in Iraq hitting 2,500 was "It's a number."

His response to the kidnapping of Pfc. Kristian Manchaca and Pfc. Thomas Tucker was to grumble about the media "focusing on them" instead of the fact "that since Zarqawi was killed, hundreds of bad guys have been rounded up."

...It's becoming clearer by the day: you can take the man out of Fox News, but you can't take the Fox News out of the man....

...First, to help him remember that 2,500 dead is not just a number, he should stop by the summer-long vigil Military Families Speak Out will be holding outside the Cannon House Office Building in D.C. Starting Thursday, the Families will be displaying pairs of boots for every U.S. soldier killed since last Thursday, when Congress voted to "stay the course" in Iraq (the Families will also display pairs of shoes to represent the Iraqis who have died since then).

Then to help him put the focus being given to the kidnapped American soldier in perspective, he can make two phone calls: one to Daniel Pearl's widow, Mariane, and one to Nick Berg's dad. In between, he can pick up John McCain's book, Faith of My Fathers, and read over the parts about McCain's tenure as a POW.

Finally, I'll do my part by giving Snow a special preview of some scenes from John Cusack's latest film, Grace Is Gone -- a deeply personal look at a family man whose soldier wife is killed in Iraq. I know Tony is busy, so maybe I'll just send him the scene where Cusack's character, Stanley, a former soldier, tells his daughters that their mother won't be coming home. ...

Oh, she'll do her part, huh? She'll reach deep into her lefty movie star buddy connections and host a fictional screening of fictional grief so we'll appreciate her deeply fictional understanding of the sacrifices made in war? Somebody get me a barf bag--when Hollywood elitists become caricatures of their already cartoonish selves, it'll turn your stomach like nothing else.

Earth to Arianna: your real beef is showing, and it's not your supposed indignation about, and your supposed limitless depth of concern for, the deaths of American servicemen and women. No, your real problem is that you don't like Republicans, so you don't like Tony Snow, and that like any good elitist, you don't think much of spinless free speech either, so you don't like Fox News. Now, it's a free country, thanks to those who've died for it, so you're at liberty to write any revolting piece of claptrap about how your grief is better than anyone else's grief over the most ultimate of sacrifices, dying for one's country.

But if you have any interest in remaining a pundit that people take semi-seriously on occasion, and if you have any interest in evolving as a human being, do yourself and the rest of the country a favor. Quit appropriating grief that you couldn't possibly understand, unless you've personally experienced it, for political purposes and to score personal points against news organizations that have the guts to objectively report the news, not mold the news to the tastes of the ruling elite, of which you are, indisputably, the empress. And really, unless you have a spouse or a child in Iraq we don't know about, you've really stepped in it this time. You hate Fox News, free country. You think Tony Snow's a heartless expletive deleted, free country. But don't you dare use grief you could never possibly fathom as a tool to buff your absolutely fabulous cocktail-party media-elite chit-chat, anti-Bush, anti-FNC bona fides to a high gloss. It truly makes me sick and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one.

Reuters: Fox News biz channel to launch in '07

It's really happening: a Fox News biz channel will launch by the middle of 2007. Reuters reports:

Fox News plans to launch a business news channel by the middle of next year, according to an analyst report on Tuesday that cited recent comments by the network's chairman and chief executive, Roger Ailes.

"Mr. Ailes noted an early-to-mid calendar 2007 target for the launch of a Fox Business Channel," UBS analyst Aryeh Bourkoff said in a note to clients after meeting with Ailes.

"Ailes sees opportunity for a competitor to CNBC," Bourkoff wrote, noting that Ailes was president of CNBC, the General Electric Co. controlled incumbent business news channel, in the 1990s.

Dan Rather's exit: the contrarian view

Variety's Brian Lowry offers a much-needed contrarian perspective on the departure of Dan Rather from CBS News, and the larger lesson to be had:

We lament when elder statesmen like Dan Rather are ushered out of a place like CBS News, yet largely ignore such veterans and praise them too little while panting after Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric or the next "It" guy or gal. Fixtures like Rather and Mike Wallace suddenly become newsworthy only when somebody prods them toward retirement, at which point we magically rediscover them, even when they're several years past the age at which most of us would welcome lying on a beach somewhere.

The thrill of Brazil, Time Warner-style