Television industry

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      As the White House changes hands, so will Fox News’ support of the presidency

      by

      When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.
      After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.
      All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.
      The rightwing TV channel, and its big name hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, will spend the next four years as the party of the opposition. The network has done this before, of course – the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency weren’t that long ago – but Biden presents a different challenge.
      “Of course we can expect it to be relentlessly negative, but it’s a challenge on some levels, because he’s a 78-year-old white man, fairly moderate history,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of film and media at MIT who studies conservative and rightwing media.
      “In the past they attacked Hillary Clinton very hard not only because she was liberal, but obviously there was some underlying sexism and misogyny there – and obviously the fact that Barack Obama was African American was central to rightwing attacks on him, either implicitly or explicitly, including on Fox News.”
      That’s not to say Biden’s government will escape attack, even if he dodges the worst.
      Kamala Harris will be the first Black vice-president, and could become a target for Fox News’ hosts. If Democrats win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, the Senate will be split 50-50, and Harris will cast the deciding vote.
      “[If that happens] she’s going to be out there front and center as a tie-breaker in Congress over and over again,” Hendershot said.
      “And every time that happens that is a way to tangentially attack Biden – it gives [Fox News and other rightwing outlets] a kind of ‘red meat’ to attack Kamala Harris, because she is both a woman and a person of color.”
      Biden claims he has nominated “the most diverse cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced”, with Janet Yellen set to be the first woman to be secretary of the Treasury, while Lloyd Austin, if confirmed, poised to become the first Black defence secretary.
      Pete Buttigieg, an occasional Fox News guest, is set to be the first openly gay cabinet secretary as head of transport.
      Fox News has already been attacking another diverse set of Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other female, non-white members of Congress.
      Matthew Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, said that’s a theme that has continued to dominate, even since Biden became the president-elect.
      “A lot of what we’re seeing right now is less of a focus on Joe Biden himself and more of this idea that he will somehow be a puppet for other figures that they find easier to attack – whether that is Kamala Harris, or Bernie Sanders, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Gertz said.
      “That is an angle they pursued quite a bit during the campaign, and it’s something they’ve focused on during the transition as well.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Fox News retracts Smartmatic voting machine fraud claim in staged video

      by

      Fox News has taken a further step back from Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of election fraud with a bizarre apparent legal retraction aired during shows hosted by some of the president’s most fervent supporters.First broadcast on Fox Business on Friday, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, and repeated over the weekend on shows hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, the segment was presented as a news interview with election technology expert Eddie Perez.In the three-minute video, described as “a closer look at claims about Smartmatic”, Perez answers questions posed by an unidentified interviewer about a Florida company that provided voting systems for the November election.Perez is asked questions such as “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the US in this election?” and “Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending US votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?”He says he has not seen any such evidence.Earlier this week, Antonio Mugica, chief executive of Smartmatic, sent legal notices to Fox News and two other networks promoted by Trump, One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax, assailing them for spreading “false and defamatory claims” in a “disinformation campaign”.“They have no evidence to support their attacks on Smartmatic because there is no evidence,” Mugica said in a statement. “This campaign was designed to defame Smartmatic and undermine legitimately conducted elections.”Trump lost the election to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and trails by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. But his false claims of voter fraud and irregularities in voting systems and technology have received sympathetic hearings on the three rightwing networks.The Fox News interview with Perez was described by a network source as “a fact-checking segment aired in the same format” as original reporting about Smartmatic.Speaking to CNN, Perez said: “My reaction was to observe, as many others have, how kind of strange and unique that particular way at presenting the facts was.“There was nothing in any of the preliminary conversations that I had with Fox News that gave me any indication that Smartmatic would be a matter of conversation. It was never mentioned that this was going to be a discussion about Smartmatic or even claims about private vendors. I was anticipating a broader discussion about the debate around the election [and] election integrity.”Perez said Fox News’ coverage of the election was “speculative and not based in fact” and conspiracy theories peddled by hosts were “harmful to enhancing public confidence in the legitimacy of election outcomes”.“I am not accustomed to seeing Lou Dobbs air very straightforward factual evidence,” he said.A Fox News spokesperson declined comment. Earlier, the network referred CNN back to the video.Erik Connolly, an attorney for Smartmatic, said the company would not comment “due to potential litigation”.In a statement to CNN, Newsmax denied making direct claims of impropriety against Smartmatic and said questions about the company and its software were based on “legal documents or previously published reports”.“As any major media outlet,” Newsmax said, “we provide a forum for public concerns and discussion. In the past we have welcomed Smartmatic and its representatives to counter such claims they believe to be inaccurate and will continue to do so.” More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Fox News' Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson distance themselves from Trump

      by

      Donald Trump continued to gravitate towards his new rightwing media allies at TV channels One America News Network and Newsmax on Tuesday, even as heavyweight supporters Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh distanced themselves from the president’s attempts to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.On Fox News on Monday, Ingraham said: “Unless the legal situation changes in a dramatic and unlikely manner, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on 20 January.”Carlson claimed “the 2020 election was not fair”, but admitted Trump had lost it.On his radio show, Limbaugh attacked Trump’s lawyers in Pennsylvania, led by Rudy Giuliani, for failing to provide any evidence to back claims of voter fraud in the state.“You announce massive bombshells,” he said, “then you better have some bombshells.”On Tuesday morning, Trump pinned Carlson’s monologue to his Twitter page. But he also retweeted a string of messages by Randy Quaid. In one, the actor echoed Carlson’s claims about trust in election infrastructure, demanding “an in-person-only-paper ballot re-vote”.“Are you listening, Republicans?” Trump tweeted.But in another message, shot in extreme close-up and flashing light and spoken in bizarrely hammy tones, Quaid quoted an old Trump tweet: “Fox News daytime ratings have completely collapsed. Weekend daytime, even worse. Very sad to watch this happen.“But they forgot … they forgot what made them successful. What got them there. They forgot the golden goose. The only difference between the 2016 election and 2020 is Fox News.”Trump has made many such claims about Fox News’ failings. Fox News has disputed his claims about ratings. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.One America News and Newsmax are devoted to supporting Trump. With a move into television among Trump’s possible post-White House plans, both are increasingly under the spotlight.Newsmax has enjoyed ratings growth and mainstream attention, including a Wall Street Journal report which said Trump allies had considered a buyout.OAN remains a fringe operator but on Monday, the Daily Beast reported that one host, Christina Bobb, had been working on the Trump team’s legal challenges.“Christina is an attorney and has helped with some legal work in her personal capacity and not on behalf of OAN,” Jenna Ellis, a Trump adviser, told the Beast.Ellis made her own headlines on Monday. Speaking to MSNBC, she said: “President Trump won by a landslide.”“Take a pause,” host Ari Melber interjected. “If you make false statements, you don’t run roughshod. You made a false accusation.”Trump lost Georgia by around 12,000 votes, Pennsylvania by around 80,000 and Michigan by more than 150,000. Biden won the national popular vote by 6m and the electoral college by 306-232. On Monday, Trump allowed the transition to proceed but continued to make baseless claims of fraud and insist he would be proved the winner.Trump is certainly suffering one landslide defeat: in election-related lawsuits. According to the Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias, the president has won one such case – and lost 35. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      CNN’s John King and his ‘magic wall’ keep viewers entranced

      by

      As the US election has dragged on and people remain glued to their screens, a new type of celebrity has emerged: the results analyst. And none has been more popular than CNN’s John King.
      King, CNN’s chief national correspondent since 2005, has been a nearly constant presence for viewers, fronting the broadcaster’s “magic wall” tirelessly through the week.
      With the coronavirus pandemic leading to vastly more postal votes, which take longer to process than in-person ballots, analysts such as King and MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki have become the must-watch stars of the small screen. The Los Angeles Times has said King’s indefatigable efforts and insight have made him the election’s “MVP”.
      King, who said he managed just two-and-a-half hours’ sleep on election night and four hours on Wednesday, has fronted The Wall at every election since 2008. A giant interactive touchscreen that allows CNN anchors to see up-to-date voting detail by district and to analyse every possible voting permutation, The Wall has come into its own as this year’s vote count drags on.
      The 59-year old has fronted The Wall for 12- to 14-hour shifts on-screen, dissecting updates county by county and state by state, and informing viewers of the changing “pathways” for Donald Trump and Joe Biden to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to make it to the White House. More

    • 250 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      The media has mostly not taken the bait on dubious Biden claims – with some Australia-linked exceptions | Jason Wilson

      by

      The big difference between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections is that this time, mainstream media outlets are mostly not taking the bait on a dubiously sourced set of digital materials associated with the Democratic candidate.Outside the rightwing bubble, the exceptions are disproportionately connected with Australia: Australian writers, Australian outlets, and/or outlets associated with News Corporation, who, like its founder, has Australian origins.The New York Post, a News Corp tabloid, has been leading the pursuit of the story of a data cache which is purportedly a copy of the hard drive of a computer belonging to Hunter Biden. They’ve not had much support from other established newspapers, but News Corp’s Fox News and a flotilla of lesser conservative media outlets have been dutifully amplifying and even adding their own touches to the tale.On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Wednesday night US time, for example, the host implied that documents associated with the story, which his editorial team had shipped across the country, may have been stolen by people trying to shut down reporting on the cache.The Daily Beast reported on Thursday, however, that freight company UPS had simply misdirected the package, which has been recovered.The original New York Post Biden piece had huge problems on arrival, so much so that a journalist there reportedly refused to add their byline to it.The chain of custody was one of the issues. The data supposedly came from a computer, dropped off by an unidentified person, who was presumed but not positively determined to be Hunter Biden by the owner of a computer store in Delaware.That man’s story of how he retrieved the data from the machine and how he came to give it to the authorities and Rudy Giuliani has shifted. The FBI subpoenaed a computer from the store, which is reportedly connected to a money-laundering investigation, but it’s impossible to compare that machine with the supposed copy.Anyone who reports on leaked digital materials, as I have, knows that it is trivially easy to fake, modify, subtract from or add to, and otherwise mess around with any documents in any cache. Some documents carry indelible marks, such as any emails that are signed with DKIM security signatures, but everything else can be messed with.In this case, we haven’t seen the originals, just PDF printouts, and the New York Post has not been forthcoming with any detailed or satisfactory account of its own authentication process. It hasn’t said how it determined the authenticity of the cache as a whole, or individual items it has reported on, and has continued handwaving about the FBI subpoena, and the lack of denials from the Biden camp.If it does know for sure that the material is a genuine copy of Biden’s laptop, it isn’t letting on how. At least some of the material appears to be authentic. A sex tape released last week, for example, appears to really feature Hunter Biden. But that doesn’t mean that Giuliani has it because Hunter Biden took all that data to the computer shop. We still don’t really know who put them together, how, and for what purpose.This explains the queasiness of most mainstream outlets – of whom Giuliani told the New York Times that “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.” The Wall Street Journal and Fox News were both reportedly offered elements of the story, and each refused.(One of Fox’s news anchors, Chris Wallace, commented that “I can understand the concern about this story. It is completely unverified and frankly, Rudy Giuliani is not the most reliable source anymore. I hate to say that, but it’s just true.”)None of this appears to have been a concern for the leadership at the New York Post, which once again now includes Col Allan, its Australian-born one-time editor in chief, and an outspoken Trump supporter. Allan retired in 2016 but is now back there as a special adviser, and was reportedly leading the charge to publish the material quickly.Once they pushed it out, Fox News started running with the pack that the Post had whistled up.So too, at crucial moments, did Australia’s News Corp outlets. On Sunday 18 October, Sharri Markson hosted Steve Bannon on her Sunday evening program. Bannon crowed about an email from Hunter Biden’s lawyer which supposedly showed him asking for the computer back.Bannon told Markson that the lawyer called the shop owner, “and when the guy said I can’t remember, I’m going back to my shop, he sent a couple of emails in a panic saying ‘I’ve got to get my hands on this right away’”.That email was subsequently released by a Fox reporter, and merely contained a request that the proprietor “review your records” on the matter. The lawyer, meanwhile, is on record saying that the Bidens “have no idea” where the email came from.Markson’s show, like most of Sky’s fare, is not widely watched. But she’s willing to have Bannon on. One might say that he couldn’t get arrested in the US, except that he recently was, and charged with fraud in connection with a border wall crowdfunding scheme, aboard the mega-yacht of his reported employer, Guo Wengui, whose bitter fight with the Chinese government has driven him into exile.Giuliani’s material was good enough for News Corp’s post; Bannon’s record apparently posed no concerns to News Corp’s Markson. News Corp’s Australian commentariat, and expatriate New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, have all assisted in pushing the story, and pushing back on criticism.While most media outlets had a reckoning after 2016, it didn’t extend to crucial parts of News Corporation, including the most prominent faces of its Australian operation. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      CBS releases footage of Trump walking out of 60 Minutes interview

      by

      US president halts recording after question about his use of social media and name-callingUS politics live – the latest updatesFootage of the US president abruptly walking out of a CBS 60 Minutes interview has been released by the network, in a row that has been rumbling since the interview was taped on Tuesday.Donald Trump had already posted clips on his own social media, in an effort to show he had been mistreated by the interviewer, Lesley Stahl. He had called the segment “fake” and “biased” in advance. Continue reading… More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Why Donald Trump failed his TV interviews

      by

      Opinion

      Donald Trump

      Why Donald Trump failed his TV interviews

      The president selects his media appearances carefully – but has been skewered twice recently

      Play Video

      0:59

      ‘You can’t do that’: Trump argues with reporter over Covid-19 death figures – video

      What is remarkable about an interview with Donald Trump that went viral last week is how much it has been remarked upon, given that – on the face of it – it is so unremarkable. Interviewer sits down with politician and asks questions; politician is evasive and makes baseless assertions, so the reporter, Jonathan Swan from Axios, asks him questions like “What do you mean?”, “What’s your basis for saying that?”, “Why?”.
      Isn’t that what we do in interviews?
      But it was exceptional because that is not how Trump is normally interviewed.
      The American president is highly selective about who he allows himself to be interviewed by (declaration of interest: despite repeated efforts, and coming very close once, he has not done an interview with me – although has answered a lot of my questions at news conferences). I would say that he gives 90%-95% of his interviews to the Murdoch-owned Fox News network – and he always knows his interviewer well.
      He knows Swan, too. The charming Australian is fabulously well connected and, though an outsider, has cultivated the White House key players like an insider. Trump thought he knew what he was getting when the two men sat down together. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      'It’s a massive joy': the programme-makers bringing back quality British kids' TV

      by

      While the BBC’s dollops of Bitesize Daily has reminded the country of the value of children’s television, there is another public-service initiative quietly climbing the charts. It is the awkwardly named Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF), which was launched in 2019 to reverse a collapse in the number of original British children’s programmes, where funding has fallen by 40% in 10 years.No one knew if devoting £60m to a three-year-long experiment to subsidise programmes for four- to 18-year-olds could revive a creative sector that was dying on its feet or reintroduce variety beyond bought-in cartoons. But as the YACF enters year two, it is judged to have had a good start despite the pause in most TV production. Floella Benjamin, who championed it, says: “It is a success – it has opened the door to people whose voices have not been heard. The BBC can only do so much.”It is also delivering a lockdown dividend, after it improvised by inviting children and teenagers to become involved in short, quality programmes for broadcast, after only a quarter of children polled said television reflected their lives.If you want to see the output for yourself, try sampling the six-part Letters in Lockdown, available on All 4. One that touched me was made in three weeks, with Soham, a 16-year-old boy from Coventry, who writes to his absentee father in the Middle East: “I never felt I had a father figure; you drifted away,” he says, remarking he would have liked tips on shaving. As they share the letter, his father has teary moments and they reconcile.An experiment in May called See Yourself on Screen challenged children to compete to make a short TV show (with mentors) resulting in 15 that made it to broadcast. I loved one from a young girl, Betsy – called Squeaks and Wheeks – about her guinea pigs. “My best friends in lockdown … they can sometimes get a bit smelly,” she says. So she gussies them up with a shampoo and groom in preparation for a guinea-pig tea party. This was all mentored by Jessica Hynes. More