TV news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’

      by

      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

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’

      by

      Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’Check My Ads targeting news channel website at a time when its prominent hosts are downplaying January 6 insurrection After two years which have seen Fox News lunge even further towards the right wing of US politics, the news channel may now start to suffer the consequences, with the launch of a campaign to strip the news channel’s Foxnews.com website of advertising revenue.Check My Ads, an organization run by two former marketing executives, launched its campaign to target Fox News in early June, accusing the news channel and its website of “working overtime to fuel the next insurrection”.More than 40,000 people signed up in the first five days, forming an increasingly powerful lobbying group which aims to get ad exchanges to drop Foxnews.com.The campaign comes at a time when prominent Fox News hosts are downplaying the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC as “a forgettably minor outbreak” of “mob violence”, continuing to dabble in election conspiracy theories, and have most recently begun to brand school teachers and drag performers as “groomers”.Check My Ads was founded by two marketing executives who have a deep understanding of how advertising appears on websites. Despite its record of dabbling in misinformation, adverts for companies like Walgreens and Optimum can still be found on Foxnews.com. The adverts are largely placed there, Atkin said, by ad exchanges, which handle the distribution of adverts for advertising agencies.“Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredible legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable,” Atkin said.A number of large companies have already stopped advertising on the Fox News after various misdeeds by its TV hosts over the years. But ads for Walgreens and the like still pop up on the Fox News website, despite the obvious link between the two entities. Whereas viewers of the TV channel might see adverts for relatively little known companies, like Nutrisystem and Balance of Nature, visitors to the website see the names of big companies, which can suggest to the reader that this is a respected website.“When Fox is plugged into that ads supply chain, it gives them the legitimacy of a real news outlet, when in fact they are publishing disinformation regularly that leads to real-world violence.”In the two weeks following the 2020 election, Fox News cast doubt on, or pushed conspiracy theories about the result 774 times, according to Media Matters for America, a watchdog group. That helped to fuel anger among Donald Trump’s supporters – rage which came to the surface on 6 January, when hundreds of Trump’s adherents stormed the US Capitol.Since the Capitol attack, Fox News hosts have rubbished the idea that the storming of the building – done in an attempt to stop Joe Biden being declared president – was an insurrection. Fox News viewers have instead heard that it was a minor skirmish, one which may even have been orchestrated by the government.That’s why, Atkin said, Check My Ads is determined to trim the network’s wings.“Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence. And we all saw what happened on January 6. It’s not just violence, this was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence,” Atkin said.Ad exchanges vet certain websites before placing adverts on behalf of their clients. If a website meets their criteria – and the criteria often include statements that the website does not endorse or encourage harassment or bullying – then ads are placed on them.But the exchanges, Atkin said, are “not checking their inventory” thoroughly enough, and websites like Fox News are slipping through the cracks.Check My Ads’ campaign works by finding which ad exchanges are active on a given website, which is easy enough to do: typing https://www.foxnews.com/ads.txt brings up the list.The innovative part of Check My Ads is how the organization has set up a way for people to send swift, concise complaints to those ad exchanges. The organization sends out email templates to those who sign up, which they can send on to ad exchanges, flagging sites where the exchange has placed ads on sites which are incompatible with the exchanges’ stated policy.“The ad exchanges promise in their legal documentation in these policies that are available online to anyone: ‘We only work with premium publishers and we will never work with websites that publish election disinformation, the promotion of real world violence, all of these other things,” Atkin said.“That is providing a sense of false confidence to advertisers. Because as we know, these ad exchanges are still sending ads and money and data to the propaganda outlets that are doing our society the most harm, and who are the most brand unsafe.”In a statement, Fox News said: “Fox News Media strongly supports the first amendment and is proud to lead the industry in featuring more dissenting viewpoints on the major issues facing the country than our cable news competitors, which is why we attract the most politically diverse audience in television news.”The campaign isn’t going to financially cripple Fox News. Some 95% of Fox’s revenue comes from cable contracts, as opposed to advertising, NPR reported this year. But Atkin believes the campaign, as well as removing ads which lend legitimacy to Fox News, could also prevent Foxnews.com from collecting data on its users so that they can be later targeted with specific content – potentially anti-democratic content.Fox News is the most-watched cable news channel in the US, and is a huge opponent. But Check My Ads are hopeful that they have found a foolproof way to at least take away some of its power.“The fact is that the advertising industry, in general, has said one thing and it has done another,” she said.“We are opening the conversation up for everyone who wants to say enough is enough.”TopicsFox NewsAdvertisingTV newsTelevision industryUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      US networks to air January 6 hearings – but Fox News sticks with Tucker Carlson

      by

      US networks to air January 6 hearings – but Fox News sticks with Tucker CarlsonPublic hearings by House committee investigating Capitol attack will be broadcast live on all main TV networks except Fox News The public hearings by the House committee investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, which start on Thursday, will be broadcast live by all main TV networks and cable channels in America bar one – Fox News.The historic proceedings kick off at 8pm New York time, and in Watergate style will attract near-blanket live coverage on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and more. By contrast, the most-watched TV news channel, Fox News, will stick with its primetime show, Tucker Carlson Tonight.The decision pits Carlson’s introductory monologue against the opening remarks of the January 6 committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, as the latter outlines how Donald Trump tried to undermine the 2020 election in order to hang on to power. Carlson has used his platform consistently to belittle the investigation and to downplay the significance of the Capitol attack that led to the deaths of seven people and forced the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to flee a violent mob.On the anniversary of the attacks, Carlson said on air that the insurrection “barely rates as a footnote”. He has championed false conspiracy theories about it, including the claim that the attack was a “false flag” operation spearheaded by federal officials to discredit conservatives.News coverage of the hearings will be relegated from Fox News to its sister channel, Fox Business Network. As CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, Fox News is the leading cable news network at prime time with more than 3 million viewers while Fox Business on average attracts fewer than 100,000.The scheduling plan drew fire from members of the January 6 committee. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of the committee who are participating in the hearings in defiance of their party, accused Fox News of hiding the truth “if it disagrees with your narrative”.Kinzinger, a representative from Illinois, made a direct appeal to Fox News staff: “If you work for Fox News and want to maintain your credibility as a journalist, now is a good time to speak out, or quit. Enough is enough.”The relentless efforts of Fox News stars to diminish the significance of January 6 stands in contrast to what some of them said on the day itself. As hundreds of Trump supporters were storming the Capitol building, Laura Ingraham sent a text to the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, saying “the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”Later that night, Ingraham used her show, The Ingraham Angle, to blame the violence on antifa.Brian Kilmeade, co-host of the morning show Fox & Friends, and primetime star Sean Hannity, privately made similarly frantic appeals to Meadows as January 6 unfolded.Fox News’s response to the congressional hearings forms part of wider counter-programming against the proceedings being waged by the right. Top Republicans including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, are planning aggressive pushback, including a rapid response unit and talking points that describe the proceedings as “rigged”.Republican leaders and others who remain loyal to Trump are also hoping that “January 6 fatigue” will have set in, and that large sections of the American public will fail to tune in.TopicsFox NewsUS Capitol attackTV newsUS television industryTelevision industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Psaki swaps White House for MSNBC as politics-to-TV pipeline chugs along

      by

      Psaki swaps White House for MSNBC as politics-to-TV pipeline chugs along Summer switch to cable news likely to sharpen perception in America that both sides are just really in it for the moneyThe routine trafficking of political personnel in America to the nation’s television networks hit a road bump last week after staffers at NBC News complained about White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s rumor-as-fact plans to join the liberal news outlet MSNBC when she leaves her West Wing post this summer.The clumsily handled move, previewed in a leak to Axios, triggered anger among journalists who said they feared Psaki’s hiring would “taint” the NBC brand and reinforce the impression, already well-established in opinion polls, that the news business in the US works hand-in-glove with political factions.Capitol attack investigators zero in on far-right Oath Keepers and Proud BoysRead moreThe Psaki saga is hardly new. If the deal goes through, Psaki will join a long line of White House staff who have moved to media roles. In January, Symone Sanders, a former adviser and senior spokesperson for Kamala Harris, signed a deal with MSNBC to host a show.But the deals are unexceptional to either side of the political divide. Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany joined Fox News last year; Sean Spicer has his own show on Newsmax; and CBS News hired Mick Mulvaney as a paid on-air contributor – also triggering an internal revolt that even prompted late-night host Stephen Colbert to condemn it on his show.The anger is easy to explain. The pipeline between politics and lucrative gigs in the media in America is one that appears to sully the public view of both professions, creating a feeling that both sides are really in it for the money. It also encourages a sense that politics in the US is seen by the media in the same veins as sports – where hiring ex-players as commentators is common – where winning races is everything and actual policy means very little.“The pipeline from the White House to news organizations makes it more difficult for news organizations to have sufficient distance or be perceived to be credibly scrutinizing government,” said Ryan Thomas, an associate professor in the Missouri School of Journalism.“Partisans argue that people won’t care or won’t notice, but it is wrong irrespective of awareness. It’s like they are moving from formal to informal public relations apparatus that is unhealthy in its own terms, irrespective of its potential effects on press accountability.”Psaki’s hire comes at a time of press frustration that Joe Biden has given just eight open-access press conferences during his term, leading to an impression of scripted, artificial performances. Psaki’s tour of duty, transposed to a cable news with a more generous salary, is likely to increase perceptions that political spin and news coverage at cable news networks are so close as to be indistinguishable.The outgoing press secretary has said that she is undergoing “rigorous ethics training” as it relates “to future employment” before her move, adding that she hoped the press corps “would judge me for my record and how I treat you and I try to answer questions from everybody across the board”.Yet the transfer of Psaki to MSNBC seemed so natural that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) went so far as to launch a fundraiser. “She’s fought to restore trust in the free press after the Trump administration’s horrific attacks on the media,” it said in a statement. “And now, she’s planning to join MSNBC’s intrepid team of journalists to hold dangerous, far-right Republicans accountable.”Journalism ethics professors express concern that this type of high-profile hiring to a high-profile cable news network, publicized while Psaki is still in a political role, risks becoming the default image for what the public holds as standard practice for journalism at large.“There’s a trickle-down effect from the irresponsibility of cable news organizations to local news journalists who get tarred with the same brush,” Thomas said.Americans of opposing political parties are sharply divided on how much they trust the news reported by national media organizations, according to new research.A YouGov/Economist poll published last week found that while Americans are more likely to trust than distrust many prominent news sources, there are few organizations that are trusted by more than a small proportion of Americans on both sides of the political aisle.At the top of the list was the Weather Channel at 52%, followed by the BBC (39%), the national public broadcaster PBS (41%), and the Wall Street Journal (37%). At the bottom of the list, in descending order, came CNN, OAN, MSNBC, Fox News and Breitbart.A Gallup poll published last October found that trust in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly had edged down to 36%, making last year’s reading the second lowest on record. Only 7% of those polled said they had “a great deal” of trust and confidence in newspapers, television and radio news reporting. Thirty-four per cent said they had “none at all”.The issue of reporting bias, never far from the lips of ideological adversaries, comes as cable news ratings has experienced sharp post-Trump declines that helped expose arrangements that had long been in place but never fully acknowledged. One was the information pipeline between CNN’s Jeff Zucker, his top colleague Allison Gollust, and CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and his brother Andrew. The exposure of Chris Cuomo’s advice to his brother during the sexual harassment scandal that brought the New York governor down eventually helped cost the younger sibling his job, too.But it does not seem like media executives are learning the lessons of fraught ties and allegiances between their top hosts and the political establishment. According to the news outlet Puck, CNN and MSNBC programming executives were in Washington early in the year, courting potential on-air talent to fill holes in primetime slots exposed by the exit of Cuomo and soon-to-exit MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, whose support for Democratic causes is worn openly.One of the potential talents, of course, was Psaki who, Puck opined, had “achieved veritable celebrity status for her daily press briefings”.Wooing Psaki, Thomas said, presents an ethical issue that Psaki was negotiating a new job while determining access to reporters or responding to questions from staff at her future employer.In the longer term, he said, are questions over professional distance between political institutions and news organizations. “These press conferences are a performance of scrutiny rather than actual scrutiny. They become an audition process for a cable news gig,” he said.Not only does the rotation of seats damage the material ability of the press to hold government to account, he adds, but also raises issues of access. “The White House press corps is pretty addicted to access, so they’re easily tamed and shy away from asking tougher questions,” Thomas added.TopicsUS politicsUS television industryMSNBCTelevision industryTV newsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Chris Wallace: working at Fox News became ‘unsustainable’ after election

      by

      Chris Wallace: working at Fox News became ‘unsustainable’ after electionJournalist’s new show begins on archrival CNN’s streaming service after nearly 20 years with the right-leaning cable channel Chris Wallace has said working at Fox News became “increasingly unsustainable” before he jumped ship to CNN last December after almost 20 years with the right-leaning cable channel.His departure dealt a blow to Fox’s news operation at a time when its opinion side had become preeminent. The veteran journalist’s new show begins on archrival CNN’s streaming service this week and the 74-year-old spoke to the New York Times.‘Tucker the Untouchable’ goes soft on Putin but remains Fox News’s biggest powerRead more“I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion. But when people start to question the truth – ‘Who won the 2020 election? Was January 6 an insurrection?’ – I found that unsustainable,” he told the newspaper.He added: “Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox. And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”When asked why he didn’t leave Fox News earlier, he said: “I spent a lot of 2021 looking to see if there was a different place for me to do my job.”And he acknowledged: “Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point…I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half. But I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris’.”After Donald Trump lost the November 2020 election to Joe Biden, Fox skewed further from news to comment, ending its 7pm nightly broadcast, firing the political editor who had been part of Fox accurately projecting on election night that Trump had lost the crucial state of Arizona and promoting Tucker Carlson, the populist commentator and host who has consistently downplayed the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by extremist Trump supporters, the New York Times noted.Carlson and other voices aired by Fox have spent the past four weeks playing down Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, going soft on Putin, and undermining the messages of the invaded country’s sovereignty and the Biden administration and Nato in supporting Ukraine.“One of the reasons that I left Fox was because I wanted to put all of that behind me,” Wallace said, adding that: “There has not been a moment when I have second-guessed myself about that decision.”Fox has won praise from the Kremlin earlier this month.TopicsFox NewsTV newsTelevision industryCNNDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden appears to insult Fox News reporter over inflation question

      by

      Joe Biden appears to insult Fox News reporter over inflation questionPresident caught on mic seemingly swearing at Peter Doocy as journalists left a news conference00:24Joe Biden was caught on a hot mic appearing to insult the Fox News journalist Peter Doocy, seemingly calling him a “stupid son of a bitch” after Doocy posed a question about US inflation.Biden calls Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch” Appeared to forget the hot mic pic.twitter.com/FtelbODMO0— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 24, 2022
      “Do you think inflation is a political liability in the midterms?” the reporter asked the president as journalists were leaving the room at the end of an event at the White House on Monday.Biden responded: “No, it’s a great asset – more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch.”The mic was right in front of Biden, but it appeared as if he were making the remark to himself or that he might have thought the mic had been turned off.The remark came at the end of a White House Competition Council meeting where officials provided an update on efforts to combat inflation, which recently hit 7%. Biden, who was also fielding questions about the growing crisis in Ukraine, had said he only wanted to address questions on the topic of the council, which Doocy appeared to be covering in his inquiry. The White House has said this month that inflation will only be a temporary problem, but some Democrats have worried about the potential for longer-term political consequences.‘Enemy of the people’: Trump’s war on the media is a page from Nixon’s playbookRead moreThe clip of Biden’s remark quickly went viral on social media, with some pointing out that Biden days earlier had muttered, “What a stupid question,” in response to another Fox News reporter’s question about Russia. Doocy went live on Fox News soon after and joked about the insult, saying: “Nobody has factchecked him yet.”Last year, Biden apologized to a CNN reporter after snapping at one of her questions. As vice-president, Biden got caught on a hot mic telling Barack Obama, “This is a big fucking deal!” after he signed healthcare legislation.Despite Monday’s gaffe, Biden’s first year in office has marked a return to civility after a tumultuous four years under Donald Trump, who labelled the media the “enemy of the American people”. Biden has described journalists as “indispensable” to democracy, although press access to him has been limited. The president held fewer than 10 formal news conferences during his first year, far less than Trump or Obama. His press conference last week, however, was longer than any given by either predecessor.TopicsJoe BidenFox NewsTV newsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More