Brian Stelter was up in arms today (and every other day) about Sean Hannity and the “pro-Trump media.” Already the tweets are flying:

CNN’s media critic has developed a serious concern that someone, somewhere, hasn’t been paying sufficient obeisance to the Special Counsel. Such dangerous talk must stop. The fact that Stelter targets Fox News (a network that regularly doubles or triples CNN’s viewership), well, that’s frosting on the cake:

CNN, and Stelter in particular, don’t like criticism of Mueller. They’re so rabid in their defense of the investigations that they could be on Mueller’s PR staff:

STELTER: You can’t understand fully how the Mueller probe is being perceived, how the public is understanding it, without understanding how conservative media is trying to discredit Mueller, discredit the FBI, and discredit the DoJ.  There is this concerted effort from pro-Trump hosts on Fox News, from radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, and from right-wing bloggers and social media stars, to tear down Mueller, demand his firing, and in some cases even demand his arrest.

Here are three examples of incendiary talk that CNN and Stelter would have you believe border on the treasonous:

He casually described the Special Counsel’s behavior as “criminal,” not to mention “frightening,” “absurd” and “unfair.”

The Special Prosecutor has become corrupt in the sense that Lord Acton meant when he said “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

There are serious questions of wrongdoing here, and I think we need a truly independent investigation of the investigation itself, so that we can know who’s behind these lies, who is behind these leaks, and let the investigation continue.

Brian Stelter did not hide his disgust over Hannity demanding an “investigation of the investigation itself:”

STELTER: See these “Muellergate” banners from Hannity the other night? It straight up says onscreen “Investigating the investigators.” Fox’s message is that Trump is the victim of a deep state plot to ruin his presidency.

That truly is the last straw. This time Hannity has gone too far. Except the quote your Cable Gamer used wasn’t from Hannity at all. It was spoken by Paul Begala and dates from the era of Ken Starr. (The other two quotes, slightly edited to disguise their origin, are also Begala’s.) Yes, the same Paul Begala who, like Brian Stelter, works for CNN, appears regularly on their airwaves, and has not, to our knowledge, ever been called out by Stelter for his “deep state plot” conspiracy theories.

Far from calling out Begala, Brian Stelter once gave a warm write-up to a cinematic glorification of Begala’s bare-knuckled style of political combat. As for Begala’s view of Stelter, they’re clearly BFF’s:

Paul Begala even gets invited onto Stelter’s Sunday show Reliable Sources. Because who could be more reliable than someone who promotes “deep state plot” conspiracy theories, just like that dangerous Hannity guy?

Meanwhile CNN and Stelter continue to bitch about Fox News:

Both Fox News and the Washington Examiner reported on highlights from the memo while other outlets were still scrambling to get their hands on the doc. This raised eyebrows: Chuck Todd said releasing details to conservative media was “not a good look…”

How dare Fox News scoop CNN by getting memo details first and reporting them accurately? No doubt a featured segment on the next, very special edition of Reliable Sources.

So the Democrats have decided to back out of the planned Nevada debate, hosted by Fox News. It’s a free country, of course, and so the donky party is free to bow down to pressure from the lefty blogosphere. But of course, regular middle-of-the-road Americans are free, also, to draw their own conclusions about the Democrats, and who they listen to.

David Rhodes, a Fox VP, told The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

News organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus which appears to be controlled by radical fringe out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party.

Pow!

Interestingly, the editorial page of the same paper, the Review-Journal, made the same point as Rhodes. Under the headline, “Meltdown Over Fox,” wise heads wrote, “Liberals’ aversion to Fox News has finally gone over the top.”

The edit page observed that the goal of the Nevada Democratic Party was to get more attention to the Silver State’s January presidential caucus—now the second the nation. Given that Nevada is a solidly red state at the presidential level, the Review-Journal asked, “What better way for the party to reach conservative and ‘values’ voters who might consider changing allegiances?”

But, the paper continued:

The socialist, Web-addicted wing of the Democratic Party was apoplectic. The prospect of having to watch Fox News to see their own candidates would have been torture in itself. So they set the blogosphere aflame with efforts to kill the broadcast arrangement, or at least have all the candidates pull out of the event.

And that’s what happened. The lefty blogospheroids prevailed. First they peeled away John Edwards, and then the entire Nevada Democratic party.

Further reading: Broadcasting &Cable‘s John Eggerton adds his voice to the debate over debates…

Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Fox?

When Roger Ailes is right, he’s right. And he’s right. The Fox News Chairman/CEO warned political candidates Thursday night not to get pressured into bypassing his news operation by groups that don’t like the way it reports the news, saying it would be a “terrible mistake.

I might not have phrased it that way, but I can understand his unhappiness. He was receiving a First Amendment award and boycotts of news organizations are anathema to the free flow of information.

The Fox News Channel is the top-rated cable news channel, watched by millions of people. Fox TV station newscasts are on when a lot of people who have to get up early and go to work for a living can see them and still function at 6. a.m.

Whatever you think of its news coverage—and apparently a lot of people think a lot of it—it is an important voice in TV news.

Presidential candidates are adults and can refuse to answer a question if it seems over the top, or perhaps if they are smart enough, turn such questions to their advantage.

That’s strong stuff. And then Eggerton concludes:

Shame on John Edwards for pulling out of that Nevada debate under pressure from moveon.org. It looks like a cave, or a wilt, or a knee-jerk, or a turn-tail or something. But whatever it is, it was the wrong move.

And of course, since this powerful piece was published, the whole Democratic Party has followed Edwards ‘ lead. So shame on all of them.

Reposted from The Cable Game, 10 March 2007

The Cable Gamer likes gossip as much as the next girl. Gossip is good–but Jossip? I’m not so sure about that site any more. Not when Jossip runs an 11-day-old left-over, using such sloppy seconds, as an excuse to bitchslap Fox Business News. For doing that, Jossip itself deserves a spanking. At least.

It’s perfectly fair to criticize Fox Business News. For example, Rachel Sklar, the fun-loving brunette who posts for The Huffington Post, offered a piece on Monday headlined,“Launched! Fox Biz Network Goes Live (With Bloopers).” That’s fine: If Rachel catches a blooper, she is free to run with it. If, for example, Jenna Lee (another brunette, yay!) gets something wrong, as Jenna did when she said that Starbucks gives away free WiFi–it doesn’t–that’s fair game for fact-checking bloggers, such as, in this case, Rachel. Indeed, such flyspecking is actually healthy, in the sense of providing a good feedback loop for on-air talent and for keeping everyone on his or her toes. (TCG appreciates such constructive criticism, too, btw—it’s good for all of us!)

But here’s the point: Rachel was doing her homework! She was watching FBN—that’s how she caught the error about Starbucks.

But apparently, Jossip can’t be bothered! Instead, Jossip just ran a nasty item, which passed off an 11-day old item from The Deal.com as if it were something fresh. Now, Cable Gamers, let us reason together: With FBN on the air, there to be watched and critiqued, why would Jossip hang its sparsely worded, unwittily bitchy hat on a peg that’s nearly two weeks old? Mostly dismissing an amusing piece in Tuesday’s The New York Times by Allesandra Stanley, which referred to FBN as “perky,” a place where “the fun never stops.” By contrast, the Deal piece was nasty, and yet it was TheDeal that Jossip relied on for its own posting. And yet I am sure that even TheDeal doesn’t think that an attempted preview of FBN dated October 5 has much validity after FBN has been on the air for the better part of two whole days.

Oh, of course, Jossip made another mention of FBN, citing the same Stanley piece in the NYT; this equally brief and unfunny Jossip item dwelt on the supposedly “gravity-defying bosoms” of Fox anchors. It’s worth pointing out that Stanley made no reference whatsoever to “gravity-defying bosoms,” the quote is entirely the making of some Jossipist.

So what’s going on here? What is it with such sloppy and lazily fact-free gossip? Why would Jossip prefer to get its tone from a stale piece in an obscure publication such as TheDeal, as opposed to a fresh piece in The New York Times? The Times, is still, after all, despite its many flaws, the numero uno media outlet in the country.

For perspective on this perverse choice by Jossip, Cable Gamers must turn their attention away, briefly, from cable news. We must look over into the realm of new media in New York City. And our guide will be Vanessa Grigoriadis. Specifically, she has written a knowingly brilliant article in the new issue of New York magazine, entitled, “Everybody Sucks: Gawker and the rage of the creative underclass.” The headline tells the tale, although the entire 6000-word piece deserves close consideration. Grigoriadis looks piercingly into the hyper-competitive, hyper-nasty world of blogs and bloggers, in which underpaid and overworked 20-somethings compete with each other to be nastier and edger. And so everyone is “annoying,” or “slutty,” or a “douchebag.”

What a rotten, wicked bunch these bloggers are–at least for as long as they are doing what they are doing. Maybe they will clean up their act and shift away from the dark side, but so long as they work for the likes of Gawker‘s owner, Nick Denton, Grigoriadis is saying, they will be dwelling in websites of slime and sliminess.

And that’s Gawker.

Jossip, of course, is a notch even below Gawker, in terms of reputation and revenue.

Which explains everything about this stupid post, whose malicious intent is exceeded only by its maladroit journalism.

Update: Jossip has a new item, on Joe Scarborough’s reaction to FBN, here.

Reposted from The Cable Game, 16 October 2007

It was bound to happen: an excerpt of Anderson Cooper’s forthcoming book, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival has been leaked. Who knows if it’s for real, or just, oh, I don’t know, some critic’s satirical commentary on the state of CNN? (Even though the book hasn’t been released yet, it’s slowly but steadily climbing up the Amazon.com sales ranker.) Check it out:

Chapter Six: Hurricane Katrina

I almost don’t know what to write here. The things I saw and experienced after Hurricane Katrina both made me wonder if there is a God, and at the same time proved His existence. Katrina may not have been punishment, but her trajectory was so lethal, so precise, as to be almost choreographed by an unseen hand, and the miracles conceived in the rubble seemed similarly engineered by an entity that has been engineering the expansion of human limits for a very long time.

What I saw in New Orleans made my heart feel as fragile as glass, and my heart didn’t just break: it was pulverized into dust, into knife-edged atoms small enough to tear apart everything it touched at a microscopic level. I guess when those particles get into your soul, it’s like certain kinds of shrapnel wounds sustained in combat: they can’t be fished out in surgery, so you’ll just have to live with them.

That’s why I can’t understand why my boss, Jon Klein, keeps bragging to the press about the authenticity of my emotions. Of course they’re authentic, they’re so authentic I’m pretty sure I have an ulcer. If I hadn’t been completely grey before Katrina you can bet my hair would be snow-white now. And Klein just can’t get enough of it–he’s the first grief pimp to ever run a national news network. Doesn’t he understand that urging more live-on-TV grief, more vividly re-enacted post-traumatic stress, and more please-God-make-it-stop-the-sadness-is-killing-me remembrances, he’s just cheapening what Katrina’s victims have gone through and strip-mining my empathy? Doesn’t he understand that I’m a reporter with feelings, not a bundle of feelings that reports? Can’t Klein get it through his head that in his quest for ratings he’s making CNN into the worst kind of reality television, the kind where spontaneous, uncontrollable emotions are written into the script and about as spontaneous as brain surgery?

Yeah, I cried and screamed on air when I was covering Katrina. I’m only human. A lot of other serious reporters from other nets did the same thing. But most of them didn’t have a wanna-be Quentin Tarantino calling the shots from his director’s chair back in New York, trying to yank more and more cry-til-you-puke grief out of them like he did out of me. Note to Klein: it’s precisely because I’m only human that I can’t in good conscience put on an Oscar-winning performance every time the news is sad. Here’s some breaking news for you: a lot of the news is sad, and to some extent television news reporters exist to tell the public that we all have to stay steady and not fall to pieces over every little thing, or else we’ll all be on anti-depressants. Reporters need to report, not emote unless the news is especially grim, like Katrina. But now, Jon, it’s been months. I’m not a dancing bear, yet here I am tap-dancing on a desk in the CNN studio, a emoting dancing bear with great hair in a suit. Well, no more. I quit. I’m taking my camcorder and my cool bump music and going anywhere where I can do investigative reporting without being encouraged to mist up on cue. Good luck with those ratings, Jon.

Kidding. Cooper didn’t write this, I did. This is just what I wish he’d write. But talk about emotional authenticity if he would put something like this in his book, though. Keep hope alive, I guess.

Reposted from The Cable Game, 21 February 2006

Watch this space…