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      Layoffs, low ratings and a lurch closer to the right: is CNN in crisis?

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      Layoffs, low ratings and a lurch closer to the right: is CNN in crisis?New management outlines a course to cut costs and return to political middle ground, but there may be no easy fix in sight At some time in the next couple weeks CNN will begin to lay off staff, part of a slimming down strategy that is affecting the whole media sector but also a move that has shocked many at one of the household names in US news which now seems to be in crisis as it adjusts to new owners keen to slash costs.The original cable news network – and still a well-known name across the globe – has been shedding viewers, coming in last in ratings of US cable news networks during the recent midterm elections.The changes at CNN look politically motivated. That should concern us all | Robert ReichRead moreAt the same time, the cost-cutting new corporate management under the umbrella of Warner Bros Discovery has also indicated it wants to reel in a perceived left-leaning political bias in CNN’s coverage. Welcome to the painful cable news reset of late 2022, a TV drama freighted with questions about democracy, bias and the role of commercial journalism in what is supposed to a post-Donald Trump realignment of values – a premise that may itself be premature given the former US president is running for the White House again.Over the past year, incoming management at CNN outlined a course to return to a political middle ground and to the spirit of founder Ted Turner, who sought to “make news the star”. The course would be steered by CNN’s chairman and CEO, Chris Licht, and supported by Warner’s chief executive, David Zaslav, and libertarian cable king and shareholder John Malone.“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone said last year. That seemed to conform to what public polls indicate many viewers claim to want – unbiased news. But few can agree on what that looks like or if it exists. Nor is it clear they would tune in if it did.Add to that a splintering of audiences that shows no signs of abating, staffing dramas that saw some of CNN’s best known talking heads – Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, Jake Tapper – fired, dropped or shuffled, reduced cable carrier income and advertising revenue, $47.5bn in Time Warner-Discovery merger debt to help service, and a stock price that’s halved since April. CNN and Licht are now in an unenviable position.“I hate to say it but when I look ahead, I see problems without end,” one CNN executive told the FT last week.Licht, a former late night showrunner for Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, looked to shore up confidence in his vision at an all-hands meeting with staff last week.“I own the vision for this place,” he said, according to Insider. Under questioning from employees, Licht rejected the view that he is under guidance of CNN’s corporate parent. “I did not take this job to take dictation from anybody,” he said.But in an interview with the FT, Licht appeared to push back on that previously enunciated vision of seeking a middle ground. “One of the biggest misconceptions about my vision is that I want to be vanilla, that I want to be centrist. That is bullshit,” he said. “You have to be compelling. You have to have edge. In many cases you take a side.”New ‘objective’ CNN appears to be making itself objectively rightwingRead moreIt’s a debate that courses through newsrooms in search of audiences that may no longer exist in the way they once did. In this absence are arguments about where they would stand if indeed they did. “There is a mighty fine line between avoiding partisan hype, and journalism as difference-splitting, centrist triangulation,” noted Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review over the summer.Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, believes Licht’s vision of serving a hypothetical news-consuming family – “everyone’s network” – is not easy to achieve.“Chris Licht believes that CNN devoted too much time to Trump coverage and politics, and in looking for short-term ratings CNN became over-dependent, like a sugar-high, on Trump, politics generally and punditry. A lot of people would agree with that.”But the reality may be that it’s hard for any media organization to turn away from an era of political discord because it has been so good for ratings and profits. Also, in the short-term at least, the discord does not appear to be going anywhere.Projections by S&P Global Market Intelligence in August forecast that CNN’s profitability is on a pace to decline to $956m this year. That is still a hefty sum but it marks the first time it has fallen below a billion since Trump was elected.An easy fix might be to ramp up opinionated content again but that is not the vision that Licht has enunciated. “He thinks of CNN as a powerful news brand and wants to protect it,” Rosen believes.Sexy khakis and giant graphics: how US TV pundits spent election nightRead moreBut what could be broken is an old view of news and particularly political coverage. Standing between two parties, similar in structure but standing for different ideologies, was only possible when both had similar aims – acquiring power on agreed terms of play. With the rise of Trump and the embrace by large swathes of the Republican party of election denialism, that model no longer works.“The picture doesn’t fit the world if you have a candidate running against the system and trying to blow up what the other party is doing as a normal party. The press can try to say we’re in the middle between a war of extremes, but it isn’t that and it’s produced a crisis for consensus practice,” Rosen said.And that’s what Licht, CNN and others in the media may now be facing. “The press has to decide how to do journalism in the presence of a threat to the democracy that permits the journalism we do,” Rosen said. TopicsCNNTV newsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Sexy khakis and giant graphics: how US TV pundits spent election night

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      Sexy khakis and giant graphics: how US TV pundits spent election nightThe midterms brought less drama than expected, but anchors had to fill the airwaves with something

      US midterm election results 2022: live
      US midterm elections 2022 – latest live news updates
      Before the first polls closed in Virginia and Georgia, CNN’s John King stood in front of his infamous magic board to plead with viewers to avoid unconfirmed news: “Stay off social media, folks.”Jake Tapper, who took over Wolf Blitzer’s usual duties after a last-minute switch up, let out an uneasy laugh. Then King made a case for CNN’s frantic coverage of 2022’s midterm season: “If you’re trying to figure out ‘are there really issues with voting’, trust your local officials and trust us here,” he said. It was a line that conservative pundits would jump on as fear-mongering. (“CNN in Panic mode,” Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson tweeted.)‘No Republican blowout’: our panel reacts to the initial US midterm results | PanelRead moreMoments later, Tapper stood in front of a gigantic countdown screen, the much-less-fun cousin of Times Square’s New Year’s Eve clock. A bold number 1 blazed across the screen in red. It represented the only seat Republicans needed to pick up to win back power in the Senate. The screaming, Super Bowl-esque graphic reminded us that cable news coverage of midterm results was back in all its frenetic excess.Such breathless, wall-to-wall coverage is enough to give anyone election stress. The New York Times suggested to its readers “evidence-based strategies that can help you cope” with the effects of doom-scrolling. It was helpful, if a bit unsettling, advice.“Breathe like a baby,” said one step. “Focus on expanding your belly when you breathe, which can send more oxygen to the brain.” Another tip skewed more Wim Hof: “Plunge your face into a bowl with ice water for 10 to 30 seconds.”Readers who came up for air would be rewarded with MSNBC’s “Kornacki Cam”, a loop that played in the corner of TV screens during commercials. It showed live, behind-the-scenes shots of the fan-favorite national reporter Steve Kornacki, only partially aware that he was being filmed. Kornacki took water breaks, had one-way conversations with his interactive district map, and gave viewers the perfect shot of his geek-chic brown khakis. Those pants, his beloved trademark, earned him a spot on People’s Sexiest Men list in 2020.They remained a rare highlight of our fractured democratic process. “Happy Steve Kornacki day for those who celebrate,” read one tweet. As the reporter rifled through his notes on screen, another fan wrote, “Steve Kornacki finding his documents during this stressful race is extremely relatable.”Kornacki’s data-driven approach represented to some a bastion of stability on otherwise crazed election nights. But head over to the rightwing outlet Newsmax, and things were a little more unpredictable: especially when Donald Trump took a moment to call in.The former president teased a “big announcement” he plans to make at Mar-a-Lago on 15 November. This appears to be a thinly veiled promise of a 2024 election run. But why wait a week? Trump said he didn’t want to “take away” from the significance of election night – specifically, JD Vance’s Ohio Senate race – but he seemed to be doing just that by opening his mouth.On Fox News, Tucker Carlson repeated conservative concerns about voter fraud and election integrity. “We’re not really serious about democracy if we’re using electronic voting machines,” he said.Cable news producers have to fill their seven-hour-long slots with something, even if it’s a whole lot of nothing. At about 9pm on Tuesday, as some polls were closing but results were not yet in, Savannah Guthrie and Lester Holt tried to stay cheery as they talked through a list of tight gubernatorial races. “Stop me if you’ve heard this before: too early to call,” Guthrie said.Pundits also found humor in the triumph of Maxwell Frost, the night’s youngest winner and the first Gen Z member of Congress. Frost, who will represent Florida, is 25 years old. “That means he was born in 1997,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said as her fellow anchors laughed in disbelief. “I literally have liquor older than him.”When the Republican surge some had predicted failed to materialize, MSNBC hosts started patting each other on the back. “I looked at you weird earlier when you said Joe Biden was going to be one of the most successful presidents ever as measured by the midterm performance of his party,” Rachel Maddow said to her colleague Lawrence O’Donnell. “I owe you not an apology, but a tepid climb-back.”On Fox News, Karl Rove was wistfully talking about the hinterlands of Georgia with votes still to report, but there was a clear sense that things weren’t quite going to plan any more.TopicsUS politicsUS televisionCNNFox NewsMSNBCThe news on TVTV newsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Fox News and Republicans try to shift attention to crime as midterms loom

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      Fox News and Republicans try to shift attention to crime as midterms loomRightwing leaders push ‘soft on crime’ narrative to propel Republicans this fall, as most voters focus on abortion rights With most US voters indicating that the preservation of abortion rights is their chief focus as midterm elections loom, the face of Fox News and Republican politicians appear to be trying to shift attention to crime, a progressive media watchdog has warned.As Democrats seek to maintain razor-thin advantages in both congressional chambers, an analysis from Media Matters for America notes that on 19 August, the highest-rated Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, implored “every Republican candidate in the United States” to pitch themselves as favoring “law and order and equality under the law”.‘He could be a good president’: is Tucker Carlson the next Donald Trump?Read moreSince then, the word “crime” has appeared in 29% of Republican political ads, up from 12% in July, Media Matters said, citing reporting from the Washington Post.In one of the most closely watched contests, the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, Dr Mehmet Oz, then launched ads attacking his Democratic rival, John Fetterman, on criminal justice.Blake Masters – a past Carlson guest and Republican Senate candidate in Arizona – last week derided the Democrats as “the party of crime”.A new survey by the Pew Research Center showed 56% of voters said abortion would be “very important” at the polls after the US supreme court struck down the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that established the right to terminate a pregnancy.A separate poll from the Wall Street Journal found that 60% of voters support abortion rights in most or all cases.Media Matters said it is not new for Republicans – who hailed the supreme court ruling in June – to fixate on crime and the concept of “law and order” as a topic in national elections.The left-leaning nonprofit pointed to a notorious ad about a convicted murderer, Willie Horton, that George HW Bush aired during his successful run to the Oval Office in 1988. The ad accused his Democratic rival, Michael Dukakis, of being soft on crime while Massachusetts governor because Horton raped a woman and robbed a man during a temporary furlough from prison in that state.Media Matters also said that Carlson and Republicans have echoed each other before. For instance, Republicans joined the star Fox News host in characterizing Black activists’ protests against police brutality after the 2020 murder of George Floyd as a threat to safety.But despite the increase in overall crime that the US has experienced in recent years across Democratic and Republican cities and states, murder and other violent offenses remain well below levels in the early 1990s, part of which was under a Republican White House.While property crime rates have fallen, murder rates have increased roughly equally in Republican-controlled cities as in their Democratic counterparts, said a Brennan Center for Justice report cited by Media Matters.The analysis also found that Republican candidates have not clearly outlined what federal-level policies they would adopt to drive down crime.Despite claims that Joe Biden has done nothing to address crime, the president recently signed both the first federal gun safety bill in nearly 30 years and the American Rescue Plan, under which he successfully pushed for $10bn for policing and public safety.Every Republican in Congress opposed the American Rescue Plan, which was aimed at helping the national economy recover in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.A spokesperson for New York City-based Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Media Matters analysis.TopicsRepublicansFox NewsUS television industryUS politicsTV newsTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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      Correspondent abruptly leaves CNN after calling Trump a ‘demagogue’

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      Correspondent abruptly leaves CNN after calling Trump a ‘demagogue’ John Harwood is out as the company’s new head signals shift away from liberal-leaning political coverage A White House correspondent for CNN – whose new leader wants the channel to adopt what he considers a more politically neutral voice to its coverage – has departed the network after calling Donald Trump “a dishonest demagogue” on the air.John Harwood announced his exit from CNN on his Twitter account Friday, a day after he spoke favorably of a nationally televised speech by Joe Biden in which the president said that Republican forces loyal to his Oval Office predecessor, Trump, imperiled American democracy.“The core point [Biden] made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true,” Harwood said on CNN after the address, which was in primetime. “Now that is something that is not easy for us as journalists to say.”“We’re brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view, and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s not what we are talking about. These are honest disagreements. The Republican party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.”By midday Friday, the 65-year-old Harwood tweeted that he was out at CNN.personal news:today’s my last day at CNNproud of the workthanks to my colleaguesi’ve been lucky to serve the best in American media – St. Petersburg Times, WSJ, NYT, the NBC family, CNNlook forward to figuring out what’s next— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) September 2, 2022
      “Personal news: Today’s my last day at CNN,” said Harwood, who added that he has been “lucky” to serve other prominent American media outlets like the St Petersburg Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and NBC. “Proud of the work. Thanks to my colleagues.“Look forward to figuring out what’s next.”CNN didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Harwood’s departure was motivated by his remarks supporting Biden’s speech and criticizing Trump. Network officials instead issued a statement saying, “We appreciate John’s work covering the White House, and we wish him all the best.”Harwood had two years still left on his contract at CNN when he announced his exit, veteran media reporter Dylan Byers said later Friday.According to the Hollywood Reporter, which cited an anonymous source with insight into the situation, Harwood learned “last month” that he was out at the channel.New leadership took over at CNN in April, having been appointed by its owners, Warner Brothers Discovery. CNN chief Chris Licht – who inherited his post after Jeff Zucker’s departure in February – has been open about wanting to tone down its shows’ opinions and return to an older school, straighter and in his interpretation less overtly liberal style of reporting.Harwood’s exit comes after the 21 August departure of Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s media affairs show, Reliable Sources, which was canceled after 30 years on the airwaves.Stelter was doggedly criticized by conservative viewers over his coverage of the Trump administration, which – among many other things – tried to sow doubt about the validity of the results in the 2020 election that he lost to Biden.Stelter, on his last show, also invoked the word “demagogue” as he verbally rebuked CNN’s new brass.“It is not partisan to stand up to demagogues,” said Stelter, who also reportedly had multiple years left on his CNN contract at the time of his departure. “It’s required – it’s patriotic.”Harwood joined CNN in January 2020, about a year before Trump supporters mounted a deadly attack on the US Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of the former president’s electoral defeat to Biden.Before that, he was the chief Washington DC correspondent for CNBC, where in 2019 he drew significant attention for another remark that was critical of Trump and his Republican supporters.Harwood at that time had said that Trump and the Republicans who buoyed him to the Oval Office in 2016 were “fundamentally broken”, making them particularly challenging to cover for journalists who operated in good faith.TopicsCNNTelevision industryTV newsUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Broken News review: fired Fox News editor has broadsides for both sides

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      Broken News review: fired Fox News editor has broadsides for both sidesChris Stirewalt helped call Arizona early and right, enraging Donald Trump. He has harsh words for the US media in general Late on 3 November 2020, Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden. In that moment, Rupert Murdoch’s US flagship upended Donald Trump’s re-election bid. Chris Stirewalt, a decade-long Fox News editor, was part of the team that put the state in the Democrat’s column. One insurrection and two months later, the network fired him.‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysRead moreFox called it a “restructuring”. Others, including Stirewalt, shared a different view: he and more than a dozen others had been sacrificed to mollify Trump, Republicans and Fox’s fanbase.“I got canned after very vocal and very online viewers – including the then-president of the United States – became furious,” Stirewalt writes.According to Stirewalt, viewer anger had bled on to Fox’s bottom line: “The high ratings born of a presidential coup attempt in the midst of a global pandemic were never going to be sustainable, but the decline was sharper than industry experts expected.”The suits in the Fox C-Suite and elected Republicans demanded scalps. But Stirewalt would have the last word.This past June, he appeared before the January 6 committee. Under oath, he testified that Biden won and Trump lost. He also accused the ex-president and his minions of seeking to “exploit” a systemic “anomaly”.Specifically, during the 2020 election, in states like Arizona where same-day votes were counted before mail-in ballots, Republicans appeared to lead early on election night.Generally, Democrats tended to vote by mail or before election day while Republicans appeared at the polls on election day itself. On the night, as the hours pass, an apparent Republican advantage may evaporate, leaving little but a red mirage – and enraged viewers.Stirewalt’s book is both a critique of the media and a rebuke of his former employer and Trump. He spares no one. The Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC and Joe Scarborough all fare poorly too.Substantively, he contends that much of the news business is about the pursuit of ratings. In part, the media inflames passions to monetize all that passes through its domain. No story is insignificant if it can double as clickbait.Stirewalt says Fox News failed to prepare Trump followers for the possibility that he would lose to Biden, a failure far beyond negligence. Fox News, he writes, stoked “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred”, in order to entice viewers to buy a $65 “Patriot” streaming service. These days, Fox is facing rather higher costs, battling defamation lawsuits arising from repeatedly airing Trump’s “big lie”.As for the Times, Stirewalt attacks the paper of record for using its 1619 Project, which casts American history in light of racism and slavery, as a vehicle to “upsell super-users from subscriptions to $35 books”. He also characterizes the 1619 Project as a “frontal assault on the idea of America’s founding as a new birth of freedom that it very plainly, if imperfectly was”.Stirewalt’s devotion to journalism spills on to the page. He places a premium on individual freedom and the classic liberal tradition. He is sympathetic to the intellectual underpinnings of liberalism and conservatism but casts a wary eye toward progressivism and nationalism. He takes both to task for fetishizing the collective will and distorting history.“Progressivism seeks to ameliorate the problems of humankind,” he writes “… but not necessarily within the framework of the American system or the humanistic concept of human rights.”By contrast, “nationalists believe that the appropriate aim of the federal government should always be the improvement of life for the greatest number of Americans, even when that comes at a cost to individual rights greater than a strict reading of the constitution would allow”.Steve Bannon, Sohrab Amari and JD Vance might disagree. Or not.Stirewalt also tackles the issue of the media and politicians being cowed by their bases. As Stirewalt sees it, the threat of the mob – real and virtual – leads people to avert their gaze from our national train wreck.He knocks “liberals who believe in free speech” but “look at their shoes when people are shouted down or fired for their beliefs”. Likewise, he takes to task those “seemingly normal members of Congress” who went “along with Trump’s efforts to steal a second term”.Not surprisingly, Stirewalt has little patience for performative politicians. He lumps together Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and pairs Marjorie Taylor Greene with Rashida Tlaib. He suggests such figures excel at triggering partisan outrage but lack Trump’s entertainment chops.Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump bookRead more“They’re Showtime after 10pm,” Stirewalt cracks. “Trump was hardcore.”Stirewalt is unsparing in his takedown of Cruz. Broken News recalls the Texas senator’s groveling for Tucker Carlson, for referring to the January 6 insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol”. Cruz was a “quavery mass of regret and humiliation” on Carlson’s show, Stirewalt writes.Turning to Carlson, Stirewalt lets us know the Swanson frozen-food heir is loaded, yet at the same time rails against the “big, legacy media outlets”. There is a lot of cognitive dissonance in prime time. For good measure, Stirewalt reminds the reader that Carlson’s employer is a “multinational corporation led by an Australian billionaire who owns arguably the single most powerful news outlet in America”.Stirewalt offers no easy way out. He “urges us to question our own assumptions when consuming news” but does not assure us that doing so will actually lower the volume and temperature. He hopes we can see the other side of the political divide, but sounds uncertain. He provides plenty of food for thought.
      Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back is published in the US by Hachette
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      Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’

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      Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’Chris Stirewalter, who was forced out after Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, says Fox failed its viewers with 2020 election coverage A former Fox News politics editor who was forced out of the conservative television network shortly after its opinions hosts’ preferred candidate Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race has said that the channel failed its viewers with its election coverage.In his upcoming memoir, Chris Stirewalt says Fox News resigned its duty to prepare Trump followers for the possibility that he would lose, instead stoking the “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred” which fuels white supremacist groups but translates into big ratings.Has the love affair between Trump and Fox News gone sour?Read moreStirewalt’s Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machines Divides America and How to Fight Back also reiterates the belief held by many that Fox fired him because he always defended – even on-air – his team’s decision to declare Joe Biden the winner of Arizona’s 2020 electoral college votes on the same night that polls closed.The call enraged Trump, prompting the incumbent president and his allies to mount a pressure campaign aimed at getting Fox to retract the decision while that camp pushed forth lies that electoral fraudsters in other battleground states were stealing the election for Biden.The New York Times obtained and reported on an advance copy of the book.Fox officials have previously said that Stirewalt’s departure from the network in early 2021 was simply a layoff amid a broader company restructuring, and they have noted that the employee who was actually in charge of the desk that made the Arizona call during that fateful hour remains at the company.A statement from the network Monday also dismissed its former editor’s other recollections about his time at Fox News by saying, “Chris Stirewalt’s endless attempts at regaining relevance know no bounds.”Nonetheless, in his memoir, Stirewalt maintains that Fox News’s alliance with Trump and other Republican political candidates has nothing to do with ideology. Instead it has everything to do with delivering ratings and fattening profits, without caring that its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, endorses conspiracy theories that radicalize violent, far-right white supremacists, including ones who staged the deadly January 6 Capitol attack.“Even in the four years since the previous presidential election, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectation,” Stirewalt’s memoir adds.That was even the case when viewers’ expectations amounted to “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred”, according to the memoir.Stirewalt says his team’s decision to accurately project on election night that Trump had lost Arizona to Biden in front of an audience who had been thirsting for the Republican incumbent to cruise to victory over his Democratic challenger “came as a terrible shock to their system”. The memoir likens that call to “serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice-cream sundaes for years”.Stirewalt also expresses disbelief that Carlson’s viewers portray him as bravely discussing topics that are taboo to the mainstream when – according to the ousted editor – he is simply regurgitating the things his audience already believes.“Carlson is rich and famous, yet he regularly rails about the ‘big, legacy media outlets’,” the memoir argues. “Somehow, nobody even giggles.“It does not take any kind of journalistic courage to pump out night after night exactly what your audience wants to hear.”Among the conspiracy theories that Carlson has espoused is the racist notion that white Americans, faced with declining birthrates, are being deliberately replaced through immigration. He suddenly went quiet on that idea after a white man who shot 10 Black people to death at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, cited it as his motivation.Stirewalt’s departure from Fox News – where he spent about 11 years – happened less than two weeks after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Biden. A bipartisan Senate report linked at least seven deaths to that attack.Since then, Stirewalt has been vocally critical of Fox News and testified before the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack, telling that panel he knew the Arizona call would be consequential because it involved a true battleground state on which Trump’s chances for victory depended.TopicsFox NewsTV newsTelevision industryUS television industryUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Brian Stelter rebukes CNN on final show: ‘It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues’

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      Brian Stelter rebukes CNN on final show: ‘It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues’ Host says, ‘It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue,’ after CNN cancels media show Reliable Sources Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s media affairs show Reliable Sources which was cancelled last week after 30 years on air, used his final episode Sunday to make a pointed rebuke of the network’s new bosses and their intention to pursue a more “neutral voice” to its coverage.“It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue,” Stelter said in his final monologue, which he stressed was unvetted by CNN management before he delivered it live. “It is not partisan to stand up to demagogues – it’s required, it’s patriotic.”He added: “We must make sure we do not give a platform to those who are lying to our faces.”CNN gave Stelter his marching orders last Wednesday, just four months after the network came under new leadership appointed by its owners, Warner Brothers Discovery. CNN head Chris Licht, who took over after the February departure of Jeff Zucker, has indicated that he wants to tone down the opinion quotient of its shows and “return” to an older, straighter and in his view less overtly leftwing style of reporting.It is perhaps predictable that Stelter was to become one of the first casualties among CNN’s stars under the new leadership. As NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik explained, Stelter was a thorn in the side of the Donald Trump White House, regularly exposing its lies and misinformation.As a result, he was “targeted for frequent criticism from conservatives for his coverage of the media during the Trump years”.Since Stelter’s booting, New York’s medialand has been rife with speculation about its causation. Some have pointed the finger at John Malone, a powerful Discovery investor who has led the charge that CNN is too partisan.Malone has criticized the network for broadcasting too much commentary and not enough on-the-ground reporting. Last November, Malone told CNBC that he would like to see CNN “evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing”.Other speculation has focused on Stelter’s CNN salary – reported to be almost $1m a year – amid intense pressure to cut the network’s budget given heavy debts within the new media conglomerate.So far the number of star scalps has been relatively small. A week before Stelter was axed, CNN’s chief legal analyst for 20 years, Jeffrey Toobin, announced that he was leaving.Toobin had previously been suspended from the network for eight months after he exposed his genitals during a Zoom call with colleagues of his then-other media outlet, the New Yorker.With Stelter’s departure, the focus at CNN is now likely to shift to whether further casualties of the new “neutral” reporting policy lie ahead. Speculation rippled through social media that Don Lemon and Jim Acosta, two of the more outspoken hosts, might be vulnerable, but according to the entertainment news website The Wrap they are safe for now.Part of Stelter’s argument as host of Reliable Sources, CNN’s longest-running show until its demise, was that it is the role of the media to hold power to account. That function was especially critical in the febrile age of Trump.With Trump hinting at another presidential run in 2024, Stelter appealed on Sunday to the bosses who had just fired him to remain resolute. “The watchword here is accountability,” he said. “CNN needs to be strong. I believe America needs CNN to be strong.”In his at times emotional last address on Reliable Sources, the largely bald-headed Stelter recalled his astonishment at becoming a TV star. “I never thought I’d actually be on TV – I just liked writing about TV,” he said. “I know this is going to sound like BS, but I thought I didn’t have enough hair to be on TV.”TopicsCNNTV newsTelevision industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims

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      Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims Rightwing networks Fox News, OAN and Newsmax could be found liable in cases brought by voting machine company DominionIn the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’Read moreIn June, Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to 28 states, was given the go-ahead to sue Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, in a case that could draw Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, into the spotlight.In the $1.6bn lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox Corp, and the Murdochs specifically, of allowing Fox News to amplify false claims that the voting company had rigged the election for Joe Biden.Fox Corp had attempted to have the suit dismissed, but a Delaware judge said Dominion had shown adequate evidence for the suit to proceed. Dominion is already suing Fox News, as well as OAN and Newsmax.“These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion,” Judge Eric Davis said.Davis’s ruling is not a guarantee that Fox will be found liable. But the judge made it clear that this isn’t some frivolous attempt by Dominion – and media and legal experts think Fox could be in real trouble.“Dominion has a very strong case against Fox News – and against OAN for that matter,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor who teaches constitutional law at Stetson University and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.“The reason Dominion is suing is because Fox and other rightwing news outlets repeated vicious lies that Dominion’s voting machines stole the 2020 election from Trump for Biden. But all of these conspiracy theories about Dominion’s machines were just pure bunk, and Fox as a news organization should have known that and not given this aspect of the big lie a megaphone.”“What’s particularly bad for Fox is [that] Dominion asked them to stop and correct the record in real time, and Fox persisted in spreading misrepresentations about the voting machine company.”Indeed, in his ruling, Davis noted that “other newspapers under Rupert Murdoch’s control, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, condemned President Trump’s claims and urged him to concede defeat”.In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson said: “Limiting the ability of the press to report freely on the American election process stands in stark contrast to the liberties on which this nation was founded, and we are confident we will prevail in this case, as the first amendment is the foundation of our democracy and freedom of the press must be protected.”A potential precedent in the Dominion v Fox case could be found in a recent case involving Sarah Palin, who sued the New York Times. Palin claimed the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. In February a jury sided with the Times, finding that a Times employee had not acted with “actual malice” against a public figure or with “reckless disregard” for the truth – the criteria necessary to prove defamation.But the Times victory shouldn’t give Fox too much hope, said Torres-Spelliscy.“In the Palin case, the New York Times quickly corrected the mistake about Palin that had been added while an article was edited,” Torres-Spelliscy said.“By contrast Fox News kept up the bad behavior and repeatedly told myths about Dominion’s voting machines. This is likely why judges in several of these Dominion defamation cases have not dismissed them.”Dominion isn’t the only company seeking damages from Fox and its contemporaries.Smartmatic, an election software company which provided voting software to precisely one county in the 2020 election but found itself subjected to claims that it was founded “for the specific purpose of fixing elections” by associates of Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela who died in 2013, is suing Fox Corp, Fox News and associates for $2.7bn.Still, Fox News is the most-watched and arguably most influential cable news channel in the US, and is probably too big to fail.But that isn’t the case for the smaller rightwing networks OAN and Newsmax, which are also both being sued by Dominion and Smartmatic – in June, a Delaware judge refused Newsmax’s motion to have the Dominion case dismissed, but did not weigh on whether Newsmax was innocent or guilty.“I think OAN is going to be wiped out from the litigation costs. Forget about any judgment,” said Angelo Carusone, president and chief executive of Media Matters for America, which monitors rightwing media.Carusone pointed out that OAN is already struggling to survive, after it was dropped by the DirecTV cable company – which was reportedly responsible for 90% of OAN’s revenue – in April.“We’ve started seeing, already, them scaling back programming, they’ve been laying off staff, they’ve been cutting back the number of programs. So it’s pretty clear that they don’t have sufficient resources to weather a protracted litigation.”Newsmax, which is still carried by DirecTV, is “relatively cash flush” in comparison to OAN, Carusone said – enough to survive a trial, if not to pay the billions of dollars Dominion and Smartmatic are seeking.In a statement, Newsmax said it had “reported on allegations made by President Trump and his surrogates and at no time did we report these allegations were true. We also reported on critics of the Trump claims”.It added: “The Dominion suit is an assault on a free press and endangers all press outlets if it were to prevail.”OAN did not respond to a request for comment.As for Fox, the most significant thing could be if the Murdochs are subjected to discovery – where they and Fox could be forced to hand over documents potentially including communications data – as part of the legal process, Carusone said.Text messages obtained by the January 6 commission have already revealed that there was communication between Fox News hosts and White House officials regarding the insurrection – and it seems unlikely that is the only thing that was discussed.“I think once you start to pull the discovery material, what you’re going to find is there was a lot of communication between the Trump people both internally and externally about pushing very specific lies and narratives,” Carusone said.While Fox is more financially comfortable than OAN and NewsMax, it is not invulnerable. Fox News is due to renegotiate its contracts with cable providers at the end of this year, and Carusone said cable companies could use the lawsuit to drive down prices.The Dominion and Smartmatic cases are likely to drag on for some time, and it remains to be seen how Fox News, OAN and NewsMax will react.As for the news channels’ conspiratorial claims of election fraud, at least that is one thing that has already been settled.The courts, the Department of justice, election officials have investigated and dismissed the accusations, as has the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.“The November 3 election was the most secure in American history,” the agency said in a statement in 2020.“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, put it in rather less sophisticated terms.The claims of election interference, Barr told the January 6 committee, were “bullshit”.TopicsFox NewsUS politicsRepublicans21st Century FoxUS television industryTelevision industryUS press and publishingnewsReuse this content More