Kerr-Gate: CNN Busted. Or Is It Better to Say, "Outed"?

One of the many portals/blogs jumping all over the Keith Kerr story--I call it Kerr-gate, or maybe just Kerrgate--is a blog called Arlington Cardinal, out of suburban Chicago. Welcome to The Cable Game, AC!

Speaking of AC, The Cable Gamer is starting to wonder if the the other AC, Anderson Cooper, didn't play a role in the biased question-selection:

The YouTube video by Keith Kerr in August elicited a flurry of comments in his comment section comparing the gay policy to racism. Most comments are either against gays or against people who think "the government can tell people who they can love."

Anderson Cooper has remained private about his personal life and sexual orientation, but in May 2007, Out magazine ranked him second among "The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America."

Indeed, so he was so listed.

Meanwhile, Fred Barnes echoed my argument--that CNN tilted the debate's questions--in the online daily editionof The Weekly Standard:

By my count, of the 30-plus questions, there were 6 on immigration, 3 on guns, 2 on abortion, 2 on gays, and one on whether the candidates believe every word in the Bible. These are exactly the issues, in the view of liberals and many in the media, on which Republicans look particularly unattractive. And there were two questions by African Americans premised loosely on the notion that blacks get nothing from Republicans and have no reason to vote for them.

These questions would better be asked of Democrats at one of their presidential debates.

CNN, Newsbusted, Sneaking a Hillary Clinton Supporter Into GOP Debate--Why Am I Not Surprised

Some Cable Gamers think that I am being too hard on CNN. And yet whenever I start to wonder about my judgment, I get reminded--this time by Matthew Balan of Newsbusters-that CNN really is in the tank for the Democrats.

But don't take my word for it--here'the verbatim:

CNN, as part of its Republican debate with YouTube, failed to mention that retired general Keith Kerr, who announced he was gay after his retirement from the Army, is a member of Hillary Clinton’s "LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee." Not only did General Kerr ask the question via a YouTube video, but he was also present in the audience, and got to ask the candidates for a "straight answer" (pardon the pun).

General Kerr’s, whose question came 47 minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour the debate, is also part of the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network's advisory council, an organization "dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and related forms of intolerance"

[See updates below: Bill Bennett mentioned Kerr's possible Hillary connection on CNN 30 minutes after the debate, and Anderson Cooper confirms this at the close of the 10 pm Eastern hour.]

I Knew It--Campbell Brown and CNN Use a Political Documentary To Attack Fox News

Does CNN care about getting the story straight, or does it just want to slime its rivals? Now we know the answer: CNN is pushing its liberal agenda.

From the moment I first saw Willie Horton on CNN just now, I knew that CNN would use Campbell Brown's special as an excuse to attack Roger Ailes and the Fox News Channel.

And of course, CNN Prexy Jon Klein couldn't resist the opportunity to turn a special on negative campaign advertising into an opportunity to trash Ailes and Fox, reaching all the way back to 1988, in the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis.

CNN and Klein's mouthpiece, Campbell, were happy to make it seem ss if the formal Bush presidential campaign was behind the "Willie Horton" advertisement,when, in fact, that particular spot--the one showing Horton's pic--was done by an independent expenditure campaign group, "Americans for Bush," led by Floyd Brown. And that Brown, Floyd, had no connection to the Bush campaign back in '88.

But CNN was happy to quote Dukakis saying, in a recent interview: “For George Bush and the people around him to use it was racist and despicable.” Clever wording from Dukakis: "George Bush and the people around him." That's a pretty loose phraseology, huh? But CNN, of course, made no attempt to clarify or correct Dukakis.

And then CNN piled on by quoting David Schwartz, some sort of film historian, saying that the Bush campaign engaged in “outright lies or at best gross misrepresentations.”

And then, to pile on, CNN quoted Stephanie Cutter, John Kerry's 2004 campaign spokesperson, saying that--yup, you knew it was coming--Fox News was in bed with "right wing bloggers."

No fairness, no balance, and certainly no discussion of CNN's close connections to the Democrats and to liberals.

It's Chad Cleanly Time--Oops, Make That Bill Hemmer Time.

Now this is really interesting--Bill Hemmer has a double life.

First, he's a recent star on Fox News, thoughtfully profiled by Felix Gillette in The New York Observer.

Second, as a cartoon character, Chad Cleanly.

Both are cool! I want my own strip!

Campbell Brown Leads Off Trashing Republicans

I thought that "Broken Government" was supposed to be about governmental corruption and all that. Instead, I am watching Campbell Brown host a show called "Broken Government: Campaign Killers"--about negative campaigning.

And what kicks it off? A picture of Willie Horton. And then she launches right into a deconstruction of the anti-John Kerry "Swift Boat" ads. Imagine that--CNN targeting Republicans.

This is CNN, Pushing Its Liberal Anderson Agenda

Just got through watching the CNN/YouTube debate. A few reaxes:

First, all the GOP candidates ran right over Anderson Cooper. AC failed to ask Rudy Giuliani, for example, a follow-up to the hottest story of the day, about Rudy's expenses.

Second, CNN seemed determined to flog its own liberal line--which, in turn, had two elements:

A) Present the Republican YouTubers, whenever possible, to look as thuggish as possible: the questions were heavy on gun owners and Confederate flag displayers.

B) Push its own agenda, as with the gay general, who got not only a lengthy YouTube question, but also got to stand up and trash the Republican field. And there was another question, too, starring Log Cabin Republicans.

Nothing wrong with gays, of course, but La Cooper seemed to be pushing his point of view too hard.

Sorry, Couldn't Resist

This cool website is a LII--Leading Internet Indicator--as to where The Cable Game is heading. Imagine being able to "mashup" your own version of the news.

(Look closely at the sign, above.)

I Assume That This Is Some Sort of Joke--Save Tucker Carlson?

To repeat: Save Tucker Carlson?

Fred Thompson, Whiner, Loser--And Worst Of All Bill Clinton Imitator!

So Fred Thompson is now attacking Chris Wallace for being unfair!

It was the same Wallace, of course, the dogged but mild-mannered anchor of "Fox News Sunday," who was so famously YouTubed by Bill Clinton earlier this year. But even then, Wallace kept his cool.

Now Thompson is doing the same thing, attacking Wallace, although don't ask me why. I mean, for Clinton, maybe, the attack made some sense, insofar as Bill was trying to reinforce Hillary Clinton's standing with the left-wing-crazy Fox-hating base of the Democratic Party. But how is Thompson going to be helped, in his campaign, by attacking Fox?

Beats me.

Ironically, despite being an actor, Thompson's attack on Wallace wasn't nearly as theatrical as Clinton's. Once again, I don't worry about Chris--he'll be fine. And fireworks, of course, are fun for Cable Gamers. It's just a strange campaign strategy for Thompson, that's all, given the primacy of Fox News to so many activist politicos.

Even more ironically, it's worth recalling that it was Thompson's appearance on "FNS" back in Marchthat touched off the whole Thompson-for-President boomlet in the first place. Talk about ingratitude!

"CNN Debate Team Comes Up Lame." Michael Buffer Could Do Better--At Least He Wouldn't Pretend That He Was Being Fair

Once the gold standard for all-news television, the Cable News Network used the night to make a convincing argument that it should never again be entrusted with a presidential debate.

That's not a Rush Limbaugh monologue, above, that's a verbatim quote from The New York Observer, not exactly a red-state publication.

Welcome to The Cable Game, Steve Kornacki! You seem to be mostly a political columnist for the Observer, but you have written a terrific piece on CNN's handling of the Las Vegas debate last week that's required reading for Cable Gamers.

In doing so, Kornacki went way beyond the nasty flap over the obvious unfairness of CNN inviting Clinton sidekicks James Carville and David Gergen to assess the debate, and got into the even more profound question of whether CNN was fair in the basic structuring of the debate itself.

Kornacki expresses himself clearly, and he even uses pop-culture references that TCG heartily endorses, as when he compared Wolf Blitzer to Michael Buffer, the "let's get ready to rumble guy" from pro wrestling. There's nothing wrong with showmanship, of course, even in the news--so long as show values don't trump solid journalism, especially when the White House is at stake.

Here's some more from Kornacki's brilliant piece, detailing how CNN brought pro wrestling ethics and values to presidential politics:

The network’s journalistic crimes are legion, starting with how the debate—which, at least in theory, is supposed to serve as a public service to voters—was promoted. In full-page ads, CNN cast it as pure sport, a boxing match in which “the gloves will come off.” Really? How would CNN know ahead of time that that this would be a contentious forum, especially after most of the previous debates had been tame, unless they were planning to force conflict? ...

It got worse when it was time for the actual debate. First, CNN persisted with the prize-fighting motif, with moderator Wolf Blitzer playing the Michael Buffer role and calling the candidates to the stage individually, like boxers entering the ring. Then Mr. Blitzer introduced Campbell Brown, John Roberts, and Suzanne Malveaux, fellow CNN personalities who would join in the questioning.

“They are part of the very best political team,” he informed viewers.

As the candidates were fitted with their microphones—shouldn’t that have been done backstage?—Mr. Blitzer awkwardly handed off to analyst Gloria Borger, who stuck with the boxing imagery as she told viewers which candidates could be expected to come out “swinging” in the public policy forum they were about to watch.

If CNN was intent on giving America a fight, it could have at least tried to put on a fair one.

But the audience at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas was slanted heavily in favor of New York’s junior senator. One of the first questions of the night, from Mr. Blitzer, sought to incite a tangle between Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton used her turn to criticize Mr. Obama’s health care plan, but when Mr. Obama began, loud shouts from the audience distracted him and viewers at home.

So pro-Clinton was the crowd that Mrs. Clinton needed only to pause for a beat during an answer and the audience would fill the vacuum with raucous cheers. Meanwhile, when Mr. Obama and John Edwards sought to engage Mrs. Clinton, they were shouted down.

Conspiracy theorists will say that CNN had packed the crowd for its old friend. But the audience imbalance, like the inclusion of Mr. Carville and Mr. Gergen, was more an indictment of CNN’s incompetence. The network farmed out the distribution of tickets without insisting on any kind of balance. The resulting Clinton rah-rahing was both distracting and misleading to viewers.

Similar incompetence was at work in the framing of questions. Time and again, candidates were presented with simplistic hypothetical scenarios and told to pick one side. They were invariably presented false choices—human rights or national security?—but if they failed to provide direct answers, they risked looking like typically evasive politicians.

And nothing but incompetence can explain why CNN decided to end on a “cute” question, prodding a UNLV student—who had hoped to quiz the candidates on the Yucca Mountain issue—to inquire if Mrs. Clinton preferred diamonds or pearls.

Knockout stuff.

TCG closing comment: At least in pro wrestling, you know what you're getting--you're getting a show, and nothing more. Now, maybe, people will know that, too, about CNN, thanks to Kornacki's insightful play-by-play critique.

See It Now! Why TV News Is Still The Best

There's nothing like breaking news to get the Cable Game going. When you see something hot and happening on the screen, you stop everything and pull up a chair to watch. That's the "unique selling proposition" of TV compared to newspapers, and even relative to the Net. Yes, the Net has streaming video, and many newspaper websites "stream," too, but it's still the case that no medium is as well situated to deliver breaking news as TV. That's why we all watch: Because we never know--just never know--what's going to happen next.

Ask Larry King, who is so laid back and world-weary--some would say "detached," or worse--that it's hard to imagine anything surprising him. But The King was, indeed, surprised on Tuesday night, when Dr. Jan Adams walked off the set. If you missed it live, you can at least see the video here, courtesy of CNN. But you shoulda seen it live, because it was like a mystery, taking an unforeseen twist. But imagine that the mysterious twist was unforeseen by the author, as well as by the readers! That's the essence of unpredictability: Nobody scripts it in advance.

The Cable Gamer is still saddened by the premature death of Donda West, mother of the extremely cool Kanye West. It's a shame that it had to happen--except, of course, that it apparently didn't have to happen. There is much reason to think that some sort of medical malpractice was involved.

And so we come to Adams, the doc who many think botched Donda's operation. He agrees to come on the show, and then he un-agrees, right on the air. I mean, who could've predicted that? Truth may or may not be stranger than fiction, but it certainly makes for good television!

So who knows what will happen next. Any guesses?

In the meantime, yes, more questions: legal, medical, and public-relations-al. I just came across a press release from Ronn Torossian, the President & CEO of New York City-based 5W Public Relations. Here are some of the p.r. issues in the case:

"There are a lot of questions surrounding the death of Donda West and it leaves Dr. Adams facing two courts; a court of law and a court of pub opinion. Clearly, walking off the set of one of America’s most widely regarded programs is not the way to convince Americans that you did nothing wrong. I would strongly advise Dr. Adams on two courses of action; a great legal team and an experience public relations firm to help convince anyone who is considering surgery that the practice is extremely safe and not always conveyed properly by the media.”

"People will be very hesitant to have Adams perform any kind of surgery on them and clearly his reputation is in vast danger as a result of the West death and even more so after walking off the set of Larry King. His reputation needs some serious fixing."

Torossian has some pieces of the puzzle, lawyers and doctors and others have other pieces. But the great jigsaw mystery of this case is going to be unfolding live, on TV, for months and maybe years to come.

And I, Cable Gamer, don't intend to miss any of it.

Judith Regan Sings!?

The Cable Gamer freely admits that one reason for posting this New York Observer story about Judith Regan is so that I can run this brilliant cartoon, by Observer's Robert Grossman.

The caption reads, “Ms. Regan chauffeurs Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Jane Friedman, Rudolph Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, O.J. Simpson.” (And note, uncredited, the little Fox pressed against the rock-wall--get it?)

Oh sure, Observer co-reporters Leon Neyfakh and Doree Shafrir do a perfectly creditable job of updating the lawsuit saga. And if they veer a little toward Regan, well, who can blame them--she gave the reporting duo a lot of access, and so they owe her.

And yet Regan appears determined to reveal her true self--she is truly out there, shall we say. How else to explain that she has decided, in her mid 50s, to launch a singing career:

Since her departure from HarperCollins, Ms. Regan's life has taken a new turn. Lately, she was spotted belting out a rendition of "My Way" at BINY, the karaoke bar in SoHo; a recording of the song later ended up on Gawker. ... And she's working on an album now-standards, mostly, but also some original songs, that she's recording with producer and composer Rod McBrien. "We're just in the talking stage about going further, but I think we will go further," Mr. McBrien told The Observer. "We don't have a deal with a major label-but we haven't shopped for one yet. There's a lot of things happening with her and we're just kind of riding them out. We're going to put this on the Internet so it'll be available online-we've just got to get a good picture and a good album cover." In college, Ms. Regan was a member of the Vassar Madrigals, and she plays the violin and the viola.

I mean, it's a free country and everything, but if she wishes to start singing, professionally, in her mid 50s, well, well, well.

And so back to the cartoon, which well captures Regan's, uh, eccentricity more vividly than anything.

But of course, we haven't seen, or heard, the album yet.

How's CNBC Doing Against Fox Biz?

Absent ratings for Fox Business News--still months away--it's hard to know exactly what's happening out there in this latest Cable Game showdown, between CNBC and FBN.

Bill Gorman, who runs the authoritative blog TV by the Numbers--which covers the Cable Game, and every other TV game, in a blanket of numbers--noted that he hasn't seen a depression in CNBC's ratings, which many had anticipated. What seems to be happening instead, Gorman suggested, is that FBN is pulling in new viewers, leaving CNBC's audience alone.

It's early, of course--so we Gamers have to stay tuned, to see what happens next!

But in the meantime, here's an interesting take from a blog that I had not seen before, Wall Street Fighter. Under the headline, "FBN Starting to Get Out News First," here's thew word from WSF:

I noticed today that Fox Business was way ahead getting out the report just out by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB). I turned on CNBC to get their version and I caught Paris Hilton. I think Fox is starting to realize in order to catch CNBC they are going to have to get the news out to investors first in order to build a viewer base. They have been getting flack for being too sexy. I'll take first on the breaking news and sexy any day.

The Cable Game Is A Bigger Game Than I Realized

I started this blog two-and-a-half years ago because I thought that cable news is fun--fun, but still small enough for me to handle, to grasp in my little mind.

Well, if Bill Carter is to believed in his report this morning--and who doesn't trust The New York Times?--Fox News is about to pay Shepard Smith between $7 and $8 million a year. That's more than Lou Dobbs, who is said to be making about $6 million, and Anderson Cooper, clocking in at $5 million. And about what Brian Williams is making at NBC.

My first reaction is to simply say, "Wow!"

My second reaction is, "Of course. Cable continues to eclipse broadcast as the primary medium for news, especially breaking news. It's a trend that has been gaining momentum, and will likely continue."

First, "Question-gate." But let's not forget, "Spin-gate." Two "Gates" Equals A Window Into CNN's M.O.

Talk about a fight within the family--the Democratic family. When The New York Times runs an article headlined "A Clinton Friend’s Role Sets Off Intense Criticism of CNN and a Re-examination," that's a sign that the "Clinton News Network" is back to its old tricks again. This time, instead of sucking up to Bill Clinton, CNN is sucking up to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Same difference.

Times reporter Julie Bosman deadpanned:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared for a battle with her Democratic rivals at the CNN-sponsored debate on Thursday night. She did not have much to fear from the postdebate round table.

Why?

Among the experts trotted out by CNN to comment was James Carville, a Democratic strategist and CNN commentator who is also a close friend of Mrs. Clinton and a contributor to her campaign.

Mr. Carville’s presence aroused the fury of rivals and bloggers. They called it a conflict of interest and criticized CNN.

And of course, one of the other "analysts" assessing Hillary's debate performance was Dave Gergen, another Clinton crony.

But Gergen, at least, is a smart enough guy who tries to be fair. Carville, by contrast, is just a completely egregious partisan hack.

And yet Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper thoght he was just fine as a debate analyst.

Tells you something about the way the CNN operates. And this is before Hillary gets into the White House. What happens if she actually wins the White House next year?

Then CNN will REALLY be the Clinton News Network, and be able to say it loud, and say it proud!

CNN's "Question-Gate"

The Cable Gamer predicts that heads are going to roll at CNN over the way that the Democratic debate in Las Vegas last Thursday night was handled. The blogs are swarming over the story in a way that reminds me of the scandal over Dan Rather's fake memoes back in 2004. You remember "memogate,"right?

Well now we have Questiongate. Allahpundit, posting on Hotair.com, identified some of the questioners as Democratic ringers, and then Doug Ross nails some more, including LaShannon Spencer, who seems to have put on a wig as part of her clever disguise for the occasion.

But it didn't work, thanks to some good digging by the pajamas media crowd.

If Fox News had filled up a Republican debate with Republican ringers, the MSM would be all over this story, demanding the resignation of Roger Ailes, the immolation of Rupert Murdoch, etc. Instead, it was CNN helping Hillary Rodham Clinton, and so the MSM isn't much interested.

But nonetheless, the counter-media is cooking on this story, discovering new fuel for the fire, and the temperature on CNN is rising. Jon Klein will have to address this soon enough--he won't be able to stonewall all the way to Hillary's inauguration.

Roger Parloff's Take on Judith Regan--Take Her Away, Please!

It's not hard to find the reliably, predictably, relentlessly pro-Democratic bloviators rehashing the Judith Regan case.

But what none of them are saying is that seems obvious to The Cable Gamer--that Judith is a case. A mental case? Maybe. But certainly she doesn't have much of a legal case. That was the brief made by Roger Parloff , legal-blogging for Fortune magazine, under the headline, "Judith Regan’s bizarre complaint against News Corp."

I report (in full) and you decide:

I can’t literally say that I’ve never seen a complaint like the one Judith Regan’s lawyers filed on her behalf two days ago against News Corp. (NWS), HarperCollins Publishers, and HarperCollins’s president, Jane Friedman.

When I first got out of law school and was clerking for a federal judge in Texas, I did see a few comparable pleadings, though those were usually filed “pro se” — i.e., by the plaintiff himself, without the assistance of a lawyer. One, I remember, was a civil rights suit naming as defendants the President of the United States, all nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, the plaintiff’s ex-wife, and a local Pizza Hut.

Like that complaint, Regan’s reads like one of those humor pieces in The New Yorker, where it not-so-gradually dawns on the reader that the narrator is out of his gourd. Even though you’re hearing only one side of the story, that’s enough to make up your mind against the griper.

You’ll recall that Regan, who headed the ReganBooks imprint at HarperCollins, was fired in December 2006 for allegedly using anti-Semitic language in a telephone call with company lawyers, which Regan denied. The call occurred not long after the twin publicity fiascos surrounding Regan’s plans to publish O.J. Simpson’s quasi-confessional If I Did It book and, shortly thereafter, a first-person novel about Mickey Mantle in which the author assumed Mantle’s voice and described, inter alia, a tryst with teammate Joe DiMaggio’s wife, Marilyn Monroe.

Regan’s 70-page, 345-paragraph, 24-count complaint was filed in state court in Manhattan on Tuesday, and is available here. It mainly alleges defamation and breach of contract, but, almost in passing, it throws in a couple counts of sex discrimination, too. “Under Jane Friedman’s direction,” she alleges, “there is . . . a pattern within HarperCollins of firing high-level women in order to surround herself with men.” (She gives no examples besides herself.)

The complaint is signed by attorney Brian Kerr, of New York’s 175-lawyer Dreier firm, but it has an astoundingly unfiltered quality to it. Regan is also represented by famed Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Bert Fields, but the complaint doesn’t list him as counsel. (Through Regan’s spokesperson, both attorneys declined comment.)

Regan’s complaint boasts that she built a “publishing and media juggernaut,” whose recent publications have included, inter alia, “no fewer than three books related to the Scott Peterson case.” It quotes an article describing how Regan’s “early experience as a reporter for the National Enquirer was great training in the art of the popular,” and how her winter 2006 catalog featured a “cover illustration of Regan stretched across a pile of books,” prompting an “unprecedented” article in The New York Times. (The Times’s headline was, “She’s Not Just the Publisher, She’s the Cover Model, Too.”)

But what’s remarkable about the complaint is how far it ventures beyond merely disputing that she said anything anti-Semitic in that fateful phone call — a seemingly winnable, he-said-she-said squabble had her lawyers stopped her there.

Instead, they’ve allowed her to allege that News Corp. had actually been plotting her demise for at least five years before the Simpson debacle. “This smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.’s political agenda, which has long centered on protecting Rudy Giuliani’s presidential ambitions,” they write in paragraph 1 of the complaint. “Defendants knew they would be protecting Giuliani if they could preemptively discredit her,” the complaint continues.

As I understand it, Regan’s saying that News Corp. has been undermining her credibility for years because it feared she knew about unspecified skeletons in Giuliani’s closet that she had learned during her 2001 affair with then-Mayor Giuliani’s then-Police Chief Bernard Kerik and, further, that the company anticipated Regan might go public with if Giuliani ever ran for president. (Or maybe she is only saying she knew skeletons about Kerik, but those, by association, would have been harmful to Giuliani; I’m not sure.)

The company also needed to discredit her, she theorizes, in case she were ever to reveal that in December 2004 two senior News Corp. executives had allegedly advised her to lie to investigators and conceal evidence from them when they began probing Kerik.

A spokeswoman for News Corp. has called the suit “preposterous,” and a spokesperson for HarperCollins and Friedman echoed that sentiment to me.

The defendants’ first attempt to discredit Regan occurred in 2001, she alleges. (The timeline is puzzling, since Kerik did not first come under suspicion for criminal wrongdoing until 2004, and, as a consequence, it wasn’t publicly known until then that he might pose any problems for Giuliani, assuming Giuliani ever did announce for president, as he finally did this year. Kerik pled guilty to two state misdemeanor charges in 2006, and was charged in a 16-count federal indictment last week. He has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.)

Anyway, the 2001 incident was one that Regan’s former close friend Michael Wolff wrote about in a Vanity Fair article in May 2007. As Wolff put it: “Judith lost a cell phone on the set of her TV show [and] she was able to have N.Y.P.D. detectives sent out to the homes of the production-crew members she suspected of having snatched it.”

In the complaint, Regan protests that this was a false, nasty rumor spread by, once again, an unnamed senior News Corp. official. The truth was, she explains, that she had not sent the detectives out to catch the guy who had stolen her phone — no, not at all. Rather, it had been her lover, Kerik, who “used his authority as NYC Police Commissioner to send detectives out to investigate” and “who caused the detectives to knock on the doors of Fox News employees.”

In Regan’s mind, evidently, she has now set the record straight. In like manner, she then proceeds, point-by-point, to give her side of a litany of highly embarrassing events, unwittingly confirming most of them in most key respects. (An exception is the anti-semitic remarks, which she consistently denies.)

Along the way, Regan also dredges up some stories I hadn’t previously heard about and which, had I been her lawyer, I might have chosen to let lie. She complains, for instance, that some unidentified person — it’s unclear from the complaint if it’s even a News Corp. employee — had attributed Regan’s success to her “golden vagina,” but that “when Regan complained about this sexist and insulting remark, nothing was ever done.”

In any case, Regan alleges, News Corp. and Friedman, in pursuit of their farsighted goal of undermining Regan’s credibility, set about poisoning the minds of a great many people, evidently with considerable success. The defendants allegedly disparaged her “to prospective and new employees at ReganBooks,” worked to “turn them against” her, tried “to get them to file complaints against her,” failed “to curtail the activities of HarperCollins insiders” who were constantly making “disparaging remarks” about her; and, all in all, “encourage[d] a culture of gossip, back-stabbing, negative leaks and hostility inside and outside the company.”

Moreover, they “plant[ed] employees within ReganBooks to ‘keep an eye on Regan,’ and report back to the HR department at HarperCollins,” she maintains, and “fail[ed] to investigate the serious security breaches that resulted in (among other incidents) an extremely heavy lighting fixture falling out of the ceiling and shattering Regan’s desk.”

Ironically, one of the accusations that Regan says was unfairly leveled against her, according to the complaint, was that she was “out of control.” Yet, of course, that’s precisely the impression left by the complaint itself.

Slackjawed after reading the complaint, I was struggling to put into words my reaction to it. Now more curious than ever about Regan, I read Wolff’s Vanity Fair piece for the first time. I soon found a description of how I was feeling that seemed to fit perfectly, though he was responding to a different document. He was describing his reaction to the O.J. Simpson book itself, when he finally read it in connection with his story. It was such a “run-amok, phantasmagorical marketing-and-merchandizing scheme,” he wrote, “that all you do, as you read it, is consider the psychopathology of how it ever came into being.”

I can’t improve upon that.

Parloff is no News Corp. stooge. In fact, his employer, Fortune, is part of the Time-Warner empire, and so his bosses over at the Time Warner Center undoubtedly wanted him to pile on. But he didn't. What Parloff wrote speaks for itself as a model of honest journalism.

Is Judith Regan Right? Is Fox News Helping Rudy?

The Cable Gamer asked a Beltway-oriented Republican friend of hers whether he thought that Fox News was in the tank for Rudy Giuliani, as Judith Regan alleges in her spectactular lawsuit against the News Corp., which, of course, owns Fox News.

"Don't be silly," my Beltway Republican Friend told me, "everybody knows that Rupert Murdoch is for Hillary Clinton, not Rudy." And he pointed me to today's edition of The New York Post, which features two headlines, one reading, "Comeback Clinton Scores Big Win," and the other, "Hill Hammers 'Mud' Brothers." Now my BRF might be overstating things a bit, given that the NYP also recently editorialized, more negatively, "Hillary in the Headlights."

Of course, it is true that both Murdoch and News Corp #2 Peter Chernin have participated in pro-Hillary campaign events, although as I recall, Murdoch's support was only for her re-election to the Senate last year, not necessarily the presidency.

But of course, the News Corporation is a big company, with lots of different fiefdoms. And so just because The New York Post goes one way, or both ways, that doesn't mean that other operatting units haven't made their own distinct choices.

So back to Fox News. What's it's stance in the GOP primary? The Cable Gamer is going to do some more digging on this matter, because it it is a pretty interesting question, given FNC's influence on the presidential race, especially on the GOP side. (Although once again, if Fox were so all-powerful in Republican circles, why did Mitt Romney refuse to appear in the next FNC debate?)

in the meantime, though, these data on GOP guest appearances on Fox News are interesting, courtesy of TV Newser:

When you look at the year-to-date figures, things change. Giuliani is the fifth most-booked GOP candidate on FNC.

• Tom Tancredo (candidacy declared April 2, 2007). Appearances on FNC year to date: 36.

• Mike Huckabee (candidacy declared Jan. 28, 2007). Appearances on FNC year to date: 33.

• Sen. John McCain (candidacy declared April 25, 2007). Appearances on FNC year to date: 24.

• Mitt Romney (candidacy declared Feb. 13, 2007). Appearances on FNC year to date: 24.

• Rudolph Giuliani (statement of candidacy with the FEC, February 5, 2007). Appearances on FNC year to date: 20.

• Fred Thompson (candidacy declared Sept. 5, 2007). Appearances on FNC year to date: 14.

• Ron Paul (candidacy declared March 12, 2007). Appearances on FNC year to date: 12.

Sorry Judith: If Giuliani is #5 on the list, with barely more than half as many on-air gigs as Tom Tancredo, it's hard to argue that FNC

CNN Scripts The Debate? Or Should That Be, "CNN FIXES The Debate?"

Marc Ambinder is one of those smart journalists making a name for himself as a reporter/blogger on the 2008 campaign trail; in his case, for a venerable title enjoying its own kind of surge: The Atlantic.com. He's got a helluva scoop here about the CNN debate in Las Vegas: CNN muscling a student at UNLV into asking one question, and not another. So as a result, Hillary Rodham Clinton got a puffball question, allowing her to exit the debate on a jokey, Q Rating-raising high note of levity.

First CNN takes a dive on the debate itself, and now this.

The fix is in--or was in. Or maybe still is in.

CNN sure had better hope that Hillary wins the presidency next year. Of course, if the Clintonians can flex this sort of media muscle, she probably will win.

"Lou Dobbs 4 President"

That's not my headline, that's the title of a new website dedicated to drafting Lou Dobbs to run for the presidency next year.

And lots of buzz, here, there, and everywhere--even from John Fund, the hard core political insider, and Cable Game regular, in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. And yes, the fact that the WSJ is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns a, uh, rival to CNN, makes the whole story juicier than ever!

But one question: How long can CNN keep Dobbs on its air? Aren't there laws against such presence?

WOLF TURNS 'LAMB'; CLINTON CAMPAIGN SAYS CNN HOST 'OUTSTANDING'

That's the headline atop The Drudge Reporton Friday. And as this cartoon, above, reminds us, the Clinton campaign leaned hard on CNN and Wolf Blitzer to go easy on their candidate.

And it worked. Not only did Blitzer go easy on Hillary in Thursday night's Las Vegas Democratic debate--no follow-up from the CNN moderator on her driver's license flip-flop, for example--but in the after-show analysis, two the four "analysts" were former Clinton lieutenants: James Carville and David Gergen. There's a place for both men in this media landscape, but they shouldn't be assessing their former boss, the ex-First Lady.

The cartoon is a little hard to read, but the key point is that it shows Clinton enforcers Carville, Howard Wolfson, and Harold Ickes all staring down at Blitzer, who says, quiveringly, "I promise guys, I won't be mean to her like Russert was."

Parenthetically, one might ask: Was Tim Russert really mean to Hillary in Philadelphia on October 30. I mean, he asked Hillary if she agreed Eliot Spitzer's driver's licenss-for-illegals plan. To which she hit back, that's a "gotcha" question. Well, as Michael Barone has said, is it "gotcha" to ask a Democrat if she agrees with a position that is rejected by 80 percent or more of the American people? If it's "gotcha" to ask a hard question, the Russert played gotcha. But The Cable Gamer just thinks that Russert asked HRC a tough question. That's known, in some circles, as good journalism--not that Blitzer would know, because he just took a dive. Happily, Drudge and Nana 484, who came up with the cartoon, called Wolf on it.

Is Lou Dobbs' Real Goal The US Senate?

A couple of updates on the Lou Dobbs story:

First, here's Steve Stark, writing about a possible Dobbs presidential candidacy at RealClearPolitics.com. Stark, by the way, is an old hand at populist long shots who went all the way; he was the issues director for Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign--the one that the Man from Plains won. Stark clearly thinks that lightning can strike again.

OK, that's one take. Now here's another.

And so secondly, a TCG source--I think I'll call this source "Deep TWC"--tells me that Dobbbs isn't serious about running for president. Instead, TCG hears, what Dobbs really wants it to get some more buzz and visibility, and not worry about an actual presidential run. Why? To sell more books? To up his speaking fees?

Nope, instead, Dobbs wants to run for another office--he wants to run for the US Senate in New Jersey, as a Democrat! The current incumbent in that seat, whose term comes up next year, is Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat who was born on January 23, 1924--which is to say, he will be nearly 85 years old in November. Hard to imagine that Lautenberg will run again. Hard to imagine, based on what I've heard, that Dobbs won't.

Howard Beale lives!?

You heard it here first.

Lou Dobbs For President?

Lou Dobbs is seriously considering running for President.   No kidding.

A well-placed Washington DC source tells The Cable Gamer that the CNN anchorman--who doubles as a populist spokesman on his show--is being told he could win as a third-party independent candidate, rallying the independents put off by too-liberal Democrats and too-conservative Republicans. 

The Cable Gamer is not surprised.  Dobbs was born in the US (Childress, Tx., to be precise) and has long espoused a kind of America-Firstism that many Americans will cotton to.  Maybe even most.  

We shall see what unfolds, but a possible Dobbs candidacy adds a potential new dimension to the Cable Game, that's far darn sure.   

"Rescue Memo to Jeff Immelt"

That's the headline atop a jokey-but-serious item from "Jack Flack"--my guess is that, uh, that's a pseudonym, perhaps aimed at giving, say, Jeff Bercovici some plausible deniability--appearing in Conde Nast's very cool Portfolio mag. Full of sobering advice to GE's Jeff Immelt. But I just report. You decide.

Now some of my fellow Cable Gamers think that I have been too mean to NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC, and poor Jeff Zucker. Now yes, it is true that I think--pretty sure that I know, actually--that GE is going to spin off NBC-Universal, right out from under Zucker, some time in 2009. (Of course, at such time Jeff would be free to put together his own buyout consortium, to take NBCU off GE's hands; and who wouldn't want the fellow who made NBC the #3 network as the part owner, as well as chief executive?)

But there I go again, being critical. So to immunize myself from such criticism, I am simply going to provide all this information, here, to all Cable Gamers, so that they can decide for themselves.

First, here's a writeup of the "Jack Flack" piece, from MediaWireDaily:

You know there must be a serious threat against CNBC by Fox Business News when an open letter that should have been addressed to Jeff Zucker goes over his head and is addressed to his boss at GE Jeff Immelt. In the open letter Immelt is reminded of the things he is that former GE boss Jack Welch wasn't and is reminded that if he doesn't act now it may haunt him. Though there are no available reports on how Rupert Murdoch's new channel is doing, people continue to refer to the ass whipping his Fox News has given CNN over the years predicting that it will happen again with Fox Business News kicking CNBC's ass. Should Jeff Immelt take this open letter seriously and order his media chief Jeff Zucker and his troops into battle? We kinda think so. Because as the saying goes, never bet against Rupert Murdoch.

And here, again, is that Portfolio story.

Hey Jeff Zucker! You and your e-surrogates can't blame me for being tough on you! I'm just playing the piano here. It's that other Jeff, who's writing the music.

Aren't You Glad You Have HD? Don't You Wish Everyone Did?

If you've ever wondered why Fox Business News looks so sharp on HDTV, it's because Fox Business News spent a fortune to upgrade their cablecast, as detailed in this interview with Greg Ahlquist, tech chief at FBN, appearing in Broadcast Engineering.

Here's a sample:

Could you give me an overview of the technology used to launch FOX Business Network in HD?

: We launched the FOX Business Network completely in 720p HD. We have two simultaneous feeds going out for our subscribers. One is a complete HD feed in which we do something special, which is the FOX HD Wing. We took the sum of both of the wings — those separate from the 4:3 center — and combined them on the side to add value with financial data for HD viewers. We also do a standard 4:3 center cut for the SD audience.

The studios and all of the cameras, the systems in the studios and the graphics system are all HD. We are using Evertz converters, Sony switchers, Viz graphics and Ikegami studio cameras for the HD conversion.

This is all pretty deep stuff, although even this notoriously low-tech Cable Gamer kept reading because she knows that this stuff is important. And I espied enough references to technology that I am at least somewhat familiar with, such as Apple's Final Cut Pro that I kept slogging through it.

The real point is that HD is coming. It's just that for some, it's already here.

Jenna Lee, Singleton

But not for long, is TCG's bet, especially if she getting this kind of exposure.

So Did I Miss Anything?

Sorry I was offline for a few days--but I knew that nothing would be going on.

St. Judith Regan, Martyr. Soon To Be Reincarnated As A Liberal?

Judith Regan, the former Cable Gamer--she had a show on Fox News for awhile--who got fired from her publishing "day" job by uber-Cable Gamer Rupert Murdoch is back, with a self-pitying, self-glorifying photo and article in the latest ish of Harper's Bazaar.

The article isn't very interesting, overall, insofar as Regan is seeking to spin her disgraceful book "written" by the despicable O.J. Simpson. But what is interesting is her own self-image, as a martry. In the text of the article, Regan compares herself to Faye Dunaway at the end of the 1967 movie "Bonnie and Clyde," when she and co-star Warren Beatty are shot and killed by about 100 bullets each. It's a heckuva scene, and no doubt young Judith saw the film when it came out, little knowing that she would be going out in her own blaze of media infamy.

But what's more interesting is the photo, showing her being pierced by arrows, like a female version of St. Sebastian--only, of course, without the saintliness.

But The Cable Gamer remembers another photograph, of David Brock, now the head liberal hitman for Media Matters.org. Back in July 1997, Brock published an article in Esquire, under the headline, "I Was A Right-Wing Hit Man." Only those with long memories will remember the days when Brock was a right-wing hitman, not a liberal hitman. But what was interesting about that article, a decade ago, was that contributed to his own "outing," as in being an "out" gay.

Oh sure, people knew, already, back in '97, that Brock was gay, but nobody knew what a full-fledged drama queen he was. That queenie-ness was obvious from the photo that accompanied the article--it was pure St. Sebastian, Brock the self-proclaimed martyr.

The Cable Gamer remembers that picture well, but has been unable to find it online. But here's a description of Brock and his pose, as it from David Horowitz, from FrontPageMagazine.com:

Accompanying the article was a staged photo of Brock tied to a tree, one nipple seductively exposed. The editors didn't say whether he was waiting to be shot, or to nurse.

And now, following in that, uh, distinguished tradition, comes Judith Regan.

Following David Brock that is, not St. Sebastian.

But The Cable Gamer now fully expects Regan to rehabilitate herself by becoming a liberal.

Jeff Immelt on Charlie Rose Talking About CNBC, The Possible Spinoff Of NBC, And Jeff Zucker

I am watching PBS's Charlie Rose interview GE CEO Jeff Immelt. The Cable Gamer has always liked Charlie, because he seems like a nice guy--and yet unlike Larry King , he has done his homework.

In the past few minutes, Rose has asked Immelt some polite but probing questions about GE's stock price--specifically, about CNBC, the prospect of spinning off NBC, and the fate of NBC-Universal prexy Jeff Zucker.

On CNBC, the context was sort of confused, at least to me, but it seemed that Immelt was criticizing the way that CNBC reports earnings, and how those reports affect stock prices--like his stock price. Immelt called the coverage "crazy."

As for NBC, Rose asked Immelt point blank about the possibility of GE selling off NBC after the 2008 Olympics. Immelt answered that he "never had a serious discussion." That leaves Immelt with some wiggle room, doesn't it?

As for Zucker, Immelt praised his NBC-U underling, but maybe he didn't praise him as much as one would expect. Said Immelt, "He still has a few things to learn."

TCG doesn't pretend to be a stock picker, or stock pricer, but it seems to me that Immelt left himself plenty of options.

I will be looking to the transcript when it appears on the CRS website.

Jerry Seinfeld Introduces Himself to Larry King

This video exchange on "Larry King Live" between Larry King and Jerry Seinfeld is hilarious. I know that King is famous for calling it in, but this YouTube video, in which King proves himself unfamiliar with "Seinfeld," is the classic of out-to-lunchness. Get Larry a resume, or maybe a script or some teleprompter copy.

And note to Larry: Francisco Franco is dead, too.

What Does C/NET Have Against Fox Business News? Oh, I Forgot--Everything. No Wonder C/NET Ignored Michael Eisner's Man-Bites-Dog Comment About CNBC

If a Cable Gaming talking head who works for one network praises a rival network, thus damning, in effect, his own network, that should be news, right? I mean how often does that happen? So if Michael Eisner, the onetime uber-mogul at Disney, who now does a small-bore gig on CNBC, goes out of his way to praise Fox Business News, that should be of some note, right? Well, yes, says Jeffrey Bercovici of Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine, and no, says Caroline McCarthy of C/NET.

C/NET?

You remember C/NET? Don't you? Dimly? Yeah, yeah, it's still around, even if you haven't heard of it for awhile. Back in the mid 90s, C/NET was one of those cool San Francisco-based Internet startups, complete with cool Clintonista politics. In fact, C/NET was so cool, back then, that it snagged the url www.news.com out from under all the existing news organizations. For awhile, C/NET even had a gig with CNBC--an early attempt to converge TV and the Net.

But then, unfortunately for Halsey Minor and all that crowd of Internet 1.0-ers, the bubble burst, and C/NET never really recovered. Now in its second decade, C/NET has not developed into an enduring news brand--today, there are zillion blogs that do exactly what C/NET was supposed to have once done. Oh well.

So these days, C/NET is not so much a news site as, seemingly, it is a compendium of ads and what might be called "newsfomercials"--ads and product-placements half-heartedly disguised as "news" stories. Once again, free country: caveat C/NET-or.

But occasionally, C/NET struggles to be journalistic. That's nice, but of course then two more of C/NET's basic weaknesses show through: First, its basic Bay Area bias--total blue-itude, politically. Second, perhaps, the legacy of the link to CNBC, combined with, possibly, the hope for a renewed relationship--that further biases its idea of "news."

So when Eisner said at a recent Nielsen conference that the Writer's Guild strike was "stupid," that was a newsworthy comment, and deserved to get plenty of attention. And both Bercovici and McCarthy wrote about Eisner's blunt comments.

McCarthy stopped there in her reportage. But the more enterprising and thorough Bercovici kept going, adding more valuable detail, incuding a terrific gem of man-bites-dog counter-intutive blurting out from Eisner.

Eisner, the man with the CNBC show, praising Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, the creators of FBN--that's news, huh? Here's the way Jeff put it:

Eisner, who hosts a show for CNBC, on arch-rival Fox Business Network's chances: "It's not crazy if you have [Rupert] Murdoch and [Roger] Ailes. it's probably crazy if you have two other people, but those guys are pretty good. So you can't bet against them."

I wonder what CNBC prexy Mark Hoffman thinks about Eisner's words. No doubt Bercovici is still on that trail, while McCarthy is doing--well, who knows what she's doing.

Keven Magee Rumbles With Jeff Zucker! FBN Chief Smacks Down NBC Suit

Kevin Magee is probably the most powerful Cable Game executive that even most Cable Gamers have never heard of. He's not well known, but he knows how to throw a punch.

For the past few years, Magee has been working for Fox--first he was helping on the news channel, then he was in charge of Fox radio, and now, he's the executive vice president of Fox Business News. And before all that, he worked at CNBC and ABC News. Which is to say, Magee's been involved in some pretty heavy TV work, while keeping a low profile.

And Magee used all of his throw-weight to clobber Jeff Zucker, the head of NBC Universal. Now Zucker, of course, is the opposite of a low profile guy; he is always available for interviews, always having his picture taken at some sort of celebrity event. But of course, such publicity-hounding and hobnobbing doesn't make you a good TV executive, as GE has discovered.

And even Zucker is figuring it out. When the NBCU man tried to dismiss Fox, Magee got right back at him. And Broadcasing & Cable's Marisa Guthrie was there to catch the fur flying. Guthrie asked, "What's your reaction to NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker's recent comments that Fox Business is not for viewers who actually want information about investing?"

And Magee answered:

Jeff really hasn't had any success since the Today show, so I'm not sure he's the best barometer for what's good for TV. Our people look like they're very happy to be on TV. And over at CNBC they look miserable. If I were working under Jeff, who sort of failed upward, I'd be miserable, too.

The fact is he's liable to get more shrill as we go along because he's got all the resources of NBC behind this. When they went into NBC 2.0 [cost-saving restructuring], the only exemption was CNBC because they knew we were coming. Anything that they wanted, any project they wanted to do, got funded. And if we get any kind of foothold or make any inroads after all of that, I think it's going to reflect very badly on Jeff.

Pow! In the world of media smackdowns, it doesn't get much smackier than what Magee did to Zucker.

"Fox & Friends" Wakes Up To Webcams

Webcams. You know, the little cameras, costing as little as $20--and included in Macs--are changing the Cable Game. Webcams are turning every cable channel into cable channels, plural.

Soon enough, every cable channel will have its TV outlet, and then another outlet--or outlets, into near-infinity--on YouTube. Oprah Winfrey recently established her channel, and she could easily have a dozen more. I mean, why not? Because YouTube is free, to you and me, and even to Oprah. The key, of course, to a successful "Net channel" is having good content--something that people want to see.

And now I see that Fox News is joining the Web Cable Game, with "The Fox & Friends After the Show Show." Here's the way co-hostAlisyn Camerota describes the new web-programming on her blog:

This morning we start a new feature that will reveal what really goes on behind-the-scenes here when the show ends. Our cameras will keep rolling live for the next five minutes and capture all the things we do once we let our hair down. Gretchen, Brian, Steve and I have no idea what we’ll say or do, though if it’s a typical day, you can bet they’ll be some loud music playing and possibly some dancing. We don’t really have a “plan” or “vision” yet for the after-show. Some days we’ll stay on the couch to continue chatting with a guest, some days we’ll eat our breakfast. So, you’ll be watching a concept-in-progress.

If you missed the show today, make sure you don’t miss it tomorrow … to check it out the After the Show Show tomorrow, at 9 a.m. ET click here and watch it live! If you can’t catch it then, check back here on my blog later in the day and we’ll have a link to the video. Let me know what you think of the unvarnished us!

It's all an experiment, of course, and nobody knows how it will turn out. But as noted, the key variable is finding people and programs that people want to watch. And that's always been a Fox News strong suit.

CNN Does Something Not Cool--Shameful, In Fact. Beware, Rick Sanchez & Kyra Phillips! The American People Don't Like Being Lied To, Or Insulted!

As noted yesterday, CNN might be moving forward into cyberspace in a cool way, but it is moving backward, into irresponsible liberal demagoguery, in a very un-cool way.

The un-cool case in point is CNN's excessive exploitation of "the noose" issue, as it has erupted on campuses in recent weeks. Stipulating that America has dark passages in its history--of lynching and brutal racial violence--it's also sadly true that more recently, race-baiters of a different kind have stepped forward to worsen America's racial politics. "Anti-racists" of the Al Sharpton variety have stepped forward to denounce racism in dangerous, even dishonest, ways--remember Tawana Brawley from 20 years ago? All those rape allegations, eagerly spouted by Sharpton, et al., proved to be a big hoax.

So now to today: Is there an American epidemic of race-related "hate crimes," as CNN insists on insisting? Some sharp critics, including Ann Coulter, have debunked past "noose" allegations, here. Yes, Coulter is herself controversial, but she's plenty smart, and when she dives into data, she does a good job. But read her article, fellow Cable Gamer, and decide for yourself.

In the same vein, other observers, such as blogger Steve Sailer, writing about the "Great Noose Mania of 2007," have put the whole issue of post-Jim Crow racial politics in a useful larger perspective.

Both Coulter and Sailer make the basic point that the liberal left exults in "noose" stories, since such "news" allows liberals to assert their moral superiority over everyone else. In other words, liberals need a steady diet of hate-crimes-reports, just to keep the alleged--and often, falsely and maliciously accused--larger population off balance and on the defensive, and thus ready to vote for liberals and their taxing/spending/regulating.

If so, then CNN might as well be an arm of the Democratic National Committee, or an agent of George Soros, because in trumepting such inflammatory pseudo-news, it is helping the Democrats to inflate their black vote, and deflate the morale, and voting strength, of conservatives.

Coulter and Sailer make this "hot" argument, which is beyond the power of this humble Cable Gamer to fully evaluate.

However, I do know that Matthew Felling of CBS News' "Public Eye" ombudsman shop (a post-Dan Rather institution) is no right-wing bombthrower.

And so, using cool language and analysis, Felling demolishes CNN's editorial stance on the "noose" non-issue.

So while Rick Sanchez and Kyra Phillips might not look like demagogues, that's what they have become, in the hands of prexyp Jon Klein, or whoever at CNN is pulling the editorial strings.

Those two CNNers might think a bit more before trusting Klein with their careers. Sanchez and Phillips might think that they have an excuse, because they are just reading out loud the liberal agitprop copy put in front of them. But they are trodding dangerous ground.

For better perspective, the two newspersons might look back to the spectacular fall of one of their colleagues, Peter Arnett. He, too, thought he could get away with just following orders, on an earlier CNN hoax, "Operation Tailwind." And now Arnett is free-lancing, or whatever he is doing with himself these days .

Sanchez and Phillips might ask themselves: "Do we really believe that we can report fiction--fiction that effectively maligns the silent majority of tolerant and law-abiding Americans--and not pay a severe price, in terms of our Q Score?"

CNN Does Something Cool

Blogger Cory Bergman of Lost Remote reports that CNN is making a jump into virtual reality. Bergman makes note of this, and then makes a pretty good point at the end--this v.r. technology will be a lot better if it is blended into existing social networks or games:

Reuters did this a long time ago, and now CNN is opening a bureau and a bunch of kiosks in Second Life in an effort to solicit more user content for iReport. Just about everyone I know who created an avatar on Second Life have moved on, but I think virtual spaces have tremendous merit as the technology improves — especially if merged with Facebook or an Xbox Live environment.

The Cable Gamer sees virtual reality as A Next Big Thing, but it might not be THE Next Big Thing because the technology is so radical. I think that people are going to have to ease into it, through some sort of hybrid of "live" and "virtual."

Reuters Peddles The Same Old "Diversity" Hemlock To The MSM -- And Praises Them For Drinking It!

"ABC wins top grade for diversity"--that's the condescending headline atop Nellie Andreeva's story in The Hollywood Reporter, eagerly distributed by Reuters. Here's an excerpt from this all-too-typical "news" story, which singled out ABC's "Ugly Betty" for special praise and attention:

The success of "Betty" earned ABC an A-minus for the 2006-07 season, the highest grade for any network rated by the Multi-Ethnic Media Coalition.

The group's seventh annual diversity report card grades the broadcast networks for hiring minority talent in front and behind the camera and in the executive ranks, as well as "overall commitment to diversity initiatives."

No doubt lots of people in New York and LA and DC care a lot about these sort of ratings, carried out, as they are, by liberal/ethnic pressure groups.

But as Cal Thomas and others have argued for decades, the real issue of diversity isn't gender or skin color, it's diversity of thought and character. And that latter sort of diversity, of course, is not at all important to these ratigs outfits, nor to THR, nor to Reuters.

Thomas, who is a regular on "Fox News Watch," says that sex and race are much less important than what people think, and how they behave--"the content of their character," as Martin Luther King Jr. declared.

But the MSM, steered along by these pressure groups--which seem to spring into existence only when it's time for a press release or a lawsuit--choose to define "diversity" as everything but ideology and partisanship.

That is, the MSM & Co. just assume that every good person is a liberal, and so there's no need to worry about diversity on that score, because the distinction is not beween different kinds of "diverse" peoples, but rather, between good and evil.

And nobody wants "evil," right?

Well, the whole point of true diversity is that we get debate on these issues, starting with, as Socrates asked, "What is The Good?"

If we can't get honest and sincere debate about that question, and all the questions that flow therefrom, then it hardly matters whether they faces we see on TV are different colors or not. The real problem is that they all think the same.

And the even greater problem for the MSM, of course, is that people are on to them now. People know that arranging for liberals to get patted on the head is no subsitute for true debate, true argument--and true diversity.

That's why eyeballs are migrating elsewhere, to the New Media, and the Newer Media, even as ABC and their ilk continue to pile up awards and Reuters continues to act like these awards are a big deal.

People who want true diversity in the media have to look in lots of places--more and more, away from the MSM.

Who Says Fox Business Channel Is In The Tank for Business? While Maria Bartiromo, Uh, Snuggles Up to Citigroup, Meredith Whitney Plays It Straight

I wonder if Citigroup, the big bank, thinks that Fox Business Channel is slavish in its coverage of the business world. While CNBC's Maria Bartiromo has been, shall we say, on a long lovely trip with Citi, FBC's Meredith Whitney has been an honest voice of ethical and independent journalism.

It's important to get this right, because the "meme" has gotten around that somehow Fox Business Channel is pro-business. It's a relative of the misapprehension that has dogged the Fox News Channel these last 11 years--that FNC is somehow pro-Republican.

In fact, FNC is merely fair & balanced, playing it down the middle, and compared to the MSM, that comes across to some as biased to the right. And the same holds true with FBC--Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, when they announced the new biz channel, said explicitly that they would not be anti-business, but also that they would not be pro-business. What they said was that FBC would be pro-market, pro-hard work, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-upward mobility. That's a thoroughly admirable objective, in tune with the hopes of dreams of hundreds of millions in America, and billions around the world.

But at no time did FBC ever intend to be the mistress--oops, make that, the patsy--for anyone. And so we come to the difference between CNBC's Bartiromo and FBC's Whitney.

Bartiromo, as everyone knows, has had what might be called a love affair with Citigroup for a long time--an overly friendly interview with former Citi chairman and CEO Sandy Weill in 2003, and a great relationship with bounced Citigroup exec Todd Thomson that spilled into the news in 2007. But as we now know, Citibank has been falling off a cliff: after huge losses in the mortgage market, the stock is down by a third, and CEO who replaced Weill, Chuck Prince, is about to be pushed out the door.

Now we might ask: Which business channel got that story? Well, FBC had a big piece of it. But don't take my word for it: Here's the hot story in The Times of London on FBC's Whitney, which reports that Whitney braved past even death threats in her effort to share the truth as she saw it. And it looks as if she has been proven completely correct about Citi.

Here's some good stuff from The Times' Tom Bawden:

[Whitney] also downgraded her recommendation on Citigroup’s shares to “market underperform” in the note that set off America’s biggest stock market decline since August.

Ms Whitney, Forbes’s second-highest ranked stock picker for 2007, told The Times: “People are scared to be negative, especially when a company has such a wide holding. Clients are not pleased with my call and I have had several death threats.

“But it was the most straightforward call I’ve made in my career and I am surprised my peer analysts have been resistant. It’s so straightforward, it’s indisputable.”

In other words, she looked deep into the data, put her mouth where her clients' money was--and has been vindicated!

On the personal side, Whitney is an interesting character, but the main point, to business-news viewers, is that she is fearless and honest. That's what investors want, and that's what all news-minded viewers and clickers want.