Tagged: O’Reilly
How Many Republicans Are Allowed On MSNBC Prime Time?
The news that two opinionizers, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews, will be co-anchoring MSNBC’s “hard news” coverage of the inauguration along with a diminished Brian Williams seems to have been greeted by media watchers as it always is: with a yawn. Like the increasing use of opinion people in reportorial roles it’s all but ignored as “media reporters” write eyewash about MSNBC’s newfound commitment to hard news and straight reporting.
Similarly, writers like Gabriel Sherman call Tucker Carlson’s ascension to FNC prime time “Trump TV.” Silly to anyone who actually follows Carlson’s career and libertarian instincts, even sillier when it’s used to characterize the entire channel. But when was the last time you heard Gabriel Sherman refer to MSNBC as “DNC TV?” Your Cable Gamer took a closer look at MSNBC prime time, using the last day where full posted transcripts were available: January 16. Who were the hosts, who were the guests, and how did they align? How many were left? Right? Pro- or anti-Trump? Let’s go to the transcripts:
- Ted Lieu (D)
- Hakeem Jeffries (D)
- Debbie Stabenow (D)
- Jonathan Chait: Pro-Obama
- Ilan Goldenberg: Anti-Trump
- Cedric Richmond (D)
- April Ryan: Ostensibly impartial but praises Obama
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell:
- Jonathan Capehart: Anti-Trump
- Mark Thompson: Anti-Trump
- Wesley Clark (D)
- Richard Stengel: Obama appointee
- Howard Dean (D)
- Steven Brill: Pro Obamacare, anti-repeal/replace
In three hours of prime time there was quite a spectrum of opinion: from pro-Obama to anti-Trump. But if you hoped to hear even one person with a viewpoint in favor of Trump or his proposals, you were watching the wrong channel, because there were none at all. Zero. It was as close to DNC-TV as you could get without just putting Donna Brazile in charge of leaking the questions.
In contrast, that night’s opinion programs on Fox News, while reflecting a right-of-center perspective, included people from the left like Mary Anne Marsh (D) and Jehmu Greene (D). Bill O’Reilly goes out of his way to include opposing views on his top-rated hour. Tucker Carlson Tonight, the show that so alarmed Sherman, has made its bones with the lively, often-riveting exchanges between Carlson and people who vehemently disagree with him. Only Hannity had no dissenting voices on January 16 (though usually he has at least one Democrat on).
Your Cable Gamer just made up the moniker “DNC-TV” for MSNBC prime time. Yet it’s far more truthful and on-point than the “Trump-TV” taunts from anti-Fox partisans like Gabe. Meanwhile, tomorrow MSNBC will reduce the discredited Brian Williams to the role of sidekick for two partisan co-anchors: a political hack, and a far-left talk show host. And call it “news coverage.”
Gender Bender
There’s a new report out from the folks at Gender Avenger, the site that tracks how many women get invited to panels, cable news shows, and the like. Whatever you think of the validity of this exercise The Cable Gamer thinks it’s a good thing to have straight, impartial statistical data of this sort. But is everything what it seems?
The announcement for the month of May is described as follows:
Who Talks? monitors the highest-rated morning and evening shows on three major television news networks: CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. Any guest who is not the host (or substitute host) and is asked to comment substantively on the 2016 presidential election is counted as an analyst. We count the total number of election analyst of each gender in each show and then compare aggregate numbers and proportional representation. Data is published monthly.
Sounds pretty straightforward. Here are their May stats on the percentages of female pundits:
- New Day: 31%
- Fox & Friends: 22%
- Morning Joe: 24%
- Anderson Cooper: 48%
- The Kelly File: 15%
- Rachel Maddow: 33%
You’ll note CNN shows win in both morning and evening categories. In fact several times Anderson Cooper has been singled out for “hall of fame” status. In one odd case he made the “hall of fame” for a 43% week, even though Rachel Maddow scored 50% (sorry Rachel, no “hall of fame” for you!).
These scorecards get a lot of play from friendly media sites, some of them quite knowledgeable, so The Cable Gamer is mildly surprised that none of them spotted a disconnect in the methodology. The criteria state they monitor the “highest-rated” evening shows on the three cable news nets—so where is Bill O’Reilly? O’Reilly has had the #1 program on cable news for “15 years and counting” (as viewers are reminded every evening). Yet The Factor has never been rated by Gender Avenger.
The Cable Gamer recently asked GA how it is that they skipped over the undisputed “highest-rated” evening cable news program, and got this response:
We too noticed the error in describing all the targeted shows as “highest rated” and have since amended our references to “popular” to encompass all. The reason we picked Megyn Kelley [sic] is that we wanted to follow all the 9 o’clock hour shows in the evening.
Yeah, well, we aren’t sure exactly where “highest-rated” as been amended to “popular.” The Cable Gamer couldn’t find it on the GA website, where “highest-rated” still appears in the criteria. And if the intention is to cover the 9 o’clock shows, why not just say that? Mind you, CNN doesn’t always run Anderson Cooper at 9 o’clock; sometimes they have documentaries and series like The Eighties in that time slot. What effect does that have on the stats?
This seems like a lot of finagling in what would otherwise be a straightforward contest among highest-rated shows. But what if it was as advertised: a contest among the most-watched programs? The results would be mostly as they are, except The O’Reilly Factor would replace The Kelly File. We started too late to capture the first part of May, but other than that we made a count, sticking to the criteria, and got these results for the last three weeks of the month:
- The O’Reilly Factor: 40%
In fact for the week of May 16th O’Reilly scored an impressive 46%—that’s higher than the measly 43% Anderson Cooper scored in his “hall of fame” week. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Mr. O’Reilly has a repertory company of female guests who appear regularly: Katie Pavlich, Eboni Williams, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lis Wiehl, Martha MacCallum, Monica Crowley, Mary Anne Marsh, Dana Perino, Kirsten Powers, etc.
One would think Gender Avenger would want to throw a little “hall of fame” action O’Reilly’s way, as an encouragement to people who do provide the diversity GA calls for. But the rules have been quietly bent just enough to exclude Bill O’Reilly from contention. Funny that.
Meet CNN’s Newest Media Writer
CNN has announced the hiring of yet another media reporter: Brian Lowry of Variety. Does that name sound familiar? Maybe you’ve heard of him:
BILL O’REILLY: As you may know, a variety of Americans who despise FOX News are using the Dr. Tiller story to bash me and this network. A few examples: Variety magazine TV writer Brian Lowry has written more than 100 negative pieces about FOX News over the years. Here’s Lowry’s latest:
“O’Reilly said any criticism of his attacks on Tiller were being mounted by his enemies — FOX News ‘haters’ and ‘vicious individuals’ on the far left — implying that no rational person could find the heated and repeated rhetoric emanating from the channel toward a private citizen troubling.”
A private citizen? That sounds like my mom. As usual, Lowry dishonestly portrays what was in play with Dr. Tiller and his criminal prosecution. Lowry is a FOX News hater.
Oh, that Brian Lowry. He’s made a name for himself in exactly the fashion that makes him so desirable to the suits at CNN. Inside Cable News has said they “don’t give much credence to Lowry’s FNC pieces because they are almost always slanted or otherwise negative towards FNC.” The Cable Gamer has a few examples:
Megyn Kelly might be the new kid in the Fox News primetime lineup, but she’s mastered the oldest trick in the network’s playbook – namely, playing the victim.
Since its inception, Fox has emulated the “If it bleeds, it leads” mindset of local news, garnishing its presentation with snazzier graphics and more urgent production values. The canny post-Sept. 11 adaptation has been, “If it scares, it airs.” Race is just the latest and perhaps ugliest aspect of that equation.
Bill O’Reilly’s Logic Lurches Into Looniness
With Megyn Kelly Move, Fox News Makes a Cosmetic Change…Fox remains the same: A conservative-leaning channel dominated by older white men, with a few younger women thrown in for an audience that remains skewed toward senior citizens who still enjoy seeing a pretty face or two while hearing about how Obama is destroying America.
There is also an undeniable genius in Ailes’ we win/you lose approach, covering Democrats in a way no journalist would if they wanted their phone calls from sources returned, then bashing those who won’t respond for being hypocrites or cowards if they shy away from the channel.
FNC rise: screeching to the choir?…Fox and its key talent would also have us believe that the surge reflects disenchantment with other media and a shift in the political winds. More likely, though, it’s just a case of preaching to the same like-minded anti-Obama choir, for greater periods of time.
You know you’re going to get objective analysis when when you see the term “screeching” used about a cable network or when drawing more and more of “the choir” is treated like a sneer. As usual, the innate assumptions and biases of the author, are utterly invisible to him.
Brian Lowry says, “Extrapolating from ratings is always hazardous, given the uncertainty of measuring audience sentiment. But drawing sweeping conclusions about the zeitgeist from such data is specious at best.”
But what the hell….he’ll do it anyway…
There is nothing in Lowry’s piece that factually disputes the claim that FNC is now appealing to more moderate democrats, independents, and to libertarians (even IF people are keeping their televisions tuned to the channel for longer periods of time — an action that is politically significant in itself)….
Frankly, the essential condescension and sheer disdain so many in the media reveal in their unconscious assumptions just puts your heart in your toes and your stomach in your throat.
Readers of The Cable Game will be pleased to know that Brian Lowry uses the word “definitive” to describe the reporting of Gabriel Sherman:
It pretty much puts the lie to any assertion FNC might make about the channel not being essentially an adjunct of the Republican Party. This won’t come as a surprise to many people, naturally, but it blows up the “fair and balanced” claim in an undeniable way.
The “it” that Lowry was quick to take at face value was another Shermanesque “scoop,” this one that Roger Ailes was selecting and recruiting Presidential candidates for the Republican Party. Whatever happened to that scoop, by the way? The Cable Gamer wonders if it has worked out as well as some of those other exclusives.
Meanwhile, The Cable Gamer stumbled across this observation from Brian Lowry, which may or may be relevant to CNN’s need for another media writer:
Kurtz appears seriously compromised, and looked even worse Sunday compared to CNN’s Brian Stelter…
Surprise!
Hat-tip: johnnydollar.us
Lie to Me: Slandering Bill O’Reilly Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
The Cable Gamer isn’t sure how she found herself at a Fox-hating site this afternoon. Perhaps it was nostalgia for the days of The Cable Game 1.0, when exposing lies from the NewsHounds was a regular feature. But as soon as we dropped by we spotted this:
Bill O’Reilly Uses Bogus Quote To Attack Time Magazine Journalist
Don’t be shocked, but that headline is false. Whoops, we should have given a spoiler alert for that. But since the post is by NewsHound Priscilla, that really wouldn’t be much of a spoiler.
When somebody else says something that he feels is not accurate, he [O’Reilly] unleashes his patented fatwa, such as when he recently attacked a journalist for lying – an attack based on an O’Reilly lie!
The Cable Gamer will remind you you said that, Priscilla. John Anderson of Time described the movie version of Killing Jesus as a “critically eviscerated tv movie based on Bill O’Reilly’s novel.” O’Reilly took issue so naturally Priscilla had to take the other side:
The movie version of “Killing Jesus” did get some negative reaction.
So does just about every movie ever made. That doesn’t make it “critically eviscerated.” In fact, it was nominated for a best-movie Emmy! Aware of how lame that comeback was, Priscilla moved on to what she claimed is her main point, the O’Reilly “lie:”
The other bigger problem is that O’Reilly changed Anderson’s quote. Anderson did not use the word “novel” to describe “Killing Jesus.” He wrote, and I quote, “Killing Jesus, last year’s critically eviscerated TV movie based on Bill O’Reilly’s book, broke NatGeo viewership records.”
You expect this type of thing on biased right wing media, but isn’t Bill O’Reilly supposed to be a legit “no spin” journalist? If you’re going to be “fair & balanced,” be accurate.
A classy, sophisticated graphic is included to drive the point home:
So why does The Cable Gamer say the NewsHound headline (“O’Reilly used a bogus quote”) is false? Because it is. O’Reilly’s quote was 100% accurate. It’s Priscilla who is not being truthful.
Guess what appears at the top of the article Priscilla quoted from? This:
A correction! Why did Priscilla leave that out? Guess what appears at the bottom of the article?
Did it, really? Why did Priscilla leave that out? Doesn’t this make two bold-type announcements above and below the article that Priscilla carefully avoided telling her readers about? But wait, let’s see how the article read before the correction—back when Bill O’Reilly spoke out about it. Thanks to the internet archive we have that information for you:
So the correction that Priscilla hid from her readers was Time changing “novel” to “book”—exactly the issue raised by O’Reilly. A correction that just happens to prove the NewsHounds post to be a worthless falsehood. Remember how Priscilla called Bill’s complaint “an O’Reilly lie?” It wasn’t. The only person who actually told “an O’Reilly lie” is Priscilla herself. But that’s to be expected from a NewsHounds writer with a record of flagrant fabrications about Fox News.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the apology to Bill O’Reilly. Why do you think Top Dog Ellen Brodsky keeps Priscilla around after years of brazen dishonesty? Certainly not to say she’s sorry for doing her job: lying about Fox News.
hat-tip: @johnnydollar01
A Big, Fat Black Eye for Mediaite
When you see a tweet, the first thing any writer should do is verify that it’s not a fake. Except at Mediaite. Consider Ken Meyer:
O’Reilly on Trump’s Cancelled Rally: ‘A Sign of What’s to Come’ Under President Sanders
Meyer offers a “screengrab” that isn’t even a screengrab; it’s just indented text:
BREAKING: Bernie supporters shut down free speech, a sign of what’s to come under a socialist government. #TrumpRally
— Bill O’Reilly (@oreilIyfactor) March 12, 2016
From the get-go this should raise red flags. Bill O’Reilly doesn’t sign his name to tweets. He uses BO’R. And sure enough, when you look closely at the account Ken Meyer is citing, you’ll note that the second “l” is actually a capital “I”. It’s a hoax account.
Meyer’s post was up long enough to acquire a hundred comments, many of them pointing out the obvious forgery, yet it was still there for over an hour. Just as we were about to publish, the article vanished; perhaps someone finally read our tweet:
There is now no sign of Ken Meyer’s post ever having been there, let alone any acknowledgement of the error. But on the internet, it’s not so easy to bury your mistakes.
Ken Meyer did no verification, not even the rudimentary step of looking at O’Reilly’s twitter account to see if the tweet is there. Instead he served up smart cracks about O’Reilly taking a “pot shot” and hit “publish” without even a smidgen of fact checking. And he’s given Mediaite one big, fat black eye.
CNN Tweets Fabricated Megyn Kelly Quote
Hard on the heels of a very special Reliable Sources almost entirely devoted to talking about Fox News, CNN continued to post online articles about FNC. You could read about Trump masterfully splitting the Fox News audience, or you could peruse Brian Stelter’s exposé about the “personal feud” between Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly. The latter, a thinly sourced piece with little news and much speculation, was given a little extra PR push when the Editor of CNN Money gave the story his personal endorsement:
But there’s a problem with Mr. Mooney’s tweet, and it’s this:
Megyn Kelly feels “betrayed” by Bill O’Reilly…
There is no such quote in Brian Stelter’s “great story.” Ms. Kelly is not quoted as saying she felt betrayed, and what’s more no one else is quoted saying Megyn Kelly felt betrayed. One anonymous Megyn Kelly “supporter” (who may or may not know her) described the situation as “a betrayal” but did not say that’s how Megyn Kelly felt about it. Yet here’s the editor of CNN Money somehow divining that Ms. Kelly feels “betrayed.” Where did this come from? Did he just make it up?
We expected the author of the piece to step in and clear this up. And indeed Brian Stelter saw the tweet and quickly acted—to retweet it to his 333,000 followers, fake quote and all!
The Cable Gamer stuck her nose in and suggested to both Mr. Stelter and Mr. Mooney that a correction should be made for this fabricated quote:
But as we hit “publish” there has been no response to our tweet by Mr. Stelter or Mr. Mooney, and therefore no correction.
Publishing a fake quote is bad enough. Refusing to correct it takes things to a whole different level. And more ominously, it suggests intent.
Journalistic Outrage: Separate, and Unequal
Recently there was a disturbance in the journalism force when the Republicans decided they’d learned their lesson after the disastrous CNBC debate. As a result they pulled out of a scheduled debate on NBC (a corporate sister to CNBC and MSNBC) and took their business to CNN. And that was too much for the cognoscenti. Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple, a close follower of all things Cable Game, did not mince words:
RNC to broadcast outlets: No ‘gotcha’ questions, or else: When the Republican National Committee levels a threat, take note…High numbers explain the creepiness behind the arrangement. If you anger the RNC, that is, you stand to lose money, bonuses, congratulatory memos from the boss. The RNC’s actions against NBC will have a leveling effect. Get ready for a lot of network cautiousness in the coming debates, because sponsors know what will happen if they don’t play by the rules, ill-defined as they are.
Wemple’s concern that politicians should not “forum shop” to avoid unfriendly or challenging questions is a fair one. Inside Cable News took it a step further, coming down on CNN for agreeing to pick up the debate that NBC lost:
CNN should have refused the debate because it sets a bad precedent where political parties can shop their debates just to punish networks regardless of the validity of the “crime”…All the networks should have stood firm in supporting NBC given the circumstances (NBC being punished for something it had no part of).
“Spud” is making the point that NBC shouldn’t be blamed for CNBC’s lousy debate, but even if the lousy debate had been NBC’s own production, this would still be forum shopping. To be sure, as soon as the GOP voiced its criticisms over the CNBC questions (rightly so according to critics) there was President Obama to say Republicans were afraid of tough questions:
They can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators … If you can’t handle those guys, then I don’t think the Chinese and Russians are going to be too worried about you.
You would think the irony of the President’s critique would have been noted by somebody in the mainstream media. This is Barack Obama, the man who avoids Fox News like the plague. It took a Big Fox airing of the Super Bowl two years ago to get Mr. Obama into the no-spin zone, and that’s pretty much been it. How often do you see Hillary Clinton on Fox News? This past Sunday Mrs. Clinton did the rounds of all the Sunday news shows, except Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. At least a half-dozen serious FNC program hosts have repeatedly requested an interview with the likely Democratic candidate for President, and have been turned down. The Cable Gamer doesn’t recall Mr. Wemple’s post decrying this blatant forum shopping, but maybe we overlooked it.
Mind you, this sort of thing is encouraged by many blogs and anti-Fox sites. So Jason Easley congratulates Hillary for being afraid to go on Fox: “The Democratic Party has finally wised up.” As a side benefit this helps feed the narrative that Fox News avoids interviewing Democrats, even when it’s a lie.
And lies bring this discussion full circle, for it was a campaign of falsehoods and fabrications that succeeded in getting the Democrats to permanently boycott Fox News for any of their Presidential debates. In 2007 a pair of blogs cited a Fox News Democratic debate from 2003 and lied about Juan Williams’s questions, the language used, the post-game analysis, and—wouldn’t you know it?—how many Democrats were interviewed. To no one’s surprise, the Democrats cancelled their 2007 debate on Fox News, and the precedent was set.
Eight years later Fox News is still proposing Democratic debates, but the Dems won’t give FNC the time of day. Forum shopping has become their default. The champions of capital-J Journalism get worked up when the GOP cancels a debate with the parent company of Lean Forward. But when Fox News is frozen out, election cycle after election cycle, people like Mr. Erik Wemple can’t seem to summon up the same level of outrage. But why should they? After all, it’s Fox. Bret Baier? Megyn Kelly? Chris Wallace? Who really expects the Democrats to talk to those people?
Throwback Thursday: The Callous News Network’s ’05 Blunders…Their Loss, FNC’s Gain
MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman gives out Media Web’s good, bad, and ugly of 2005:
THE CALLOUS NEWS NETWORK – CNN’s media relations team dropped the ball and looked like the Cartoon News Network when CNN threw Aaron Brown overboard (not that CNN looked much classier when it cut loose Bill Hemmer). By the way, practically no single news event in 2005 sparked as many emails from outraged Media Web readers as Brown’s unceremonious exit.
And points out that no matter how you feel about Bill O’Reilly, he’s still the king:
IF YOU’RE GOIN’ TO SAN FRANCISCO, BE SURE TO WEAR SOME FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR – Yes, I mean YOU, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, since you sounded off in your trademark delicate way last month about one of America’s great cities. “Listen, citizens of San Francisco,” MSNBC.com, among others, breathlessly quoted O’Reilly as saying, “if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead… And if al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.” Coit Tower is a San Francisco landmark. Bill O’Reilly is a landmark loudmouth – and a genius at self-promotion.
Reposted from The Cable Game, 16 December 2005
Re-Hiring Olbermann Would Brand MSNBC as The Place for Prevaricators
It’s not enough that MSNBC has a serial liar anchoring the biggest news stories on the network. Now, according to the latest scoop from the always-connected Joe Concha, they’re toying with the idea of bringing back their flagship “news anchor,” Keith Olbermann. The Cable Gamer knows all about him. The previous incarnation of this site occasionally cross-posted with Olbermann Watch, whose made it their mission to chronicle (and ridicule) Olby’s world of smears, falsehoods, and outright lies. And no matter how bad you think it was, it was even worse.
Olby attacked Scott Brown with a flat-out false accusation, and never corrected it. He invented and doctored quotes at will to suit his purposes. He lied about facts as required to fit his spin. Olbermann Watch assembled year-end reviews that documented dozens more of the worst.
But it wasn’t just OlbyWatch that was onto Keith’s scam. Other sites, including some on the left, nailed him as well. Bob Somerby detailed how “cosmically wrong” Olbermann and David Shuster (who played Robin to Olby’s Batman) were on a story they gave huge play to. Tommy Christopher nailed Keith for smearing Alan West. And Johnny Dollar notes how quickly an Olbermann Lie spread through the echo chamber.
Mr. Dollar, a sharp Cable Gamer on the topic of Fox News, has documented scores of untrue Olby attacks on FNC, often a nightly feature of Countdown. And when Eric Burns on Reliable Sources said his attacks on Bill O’Reilly were “completely substantiated,” Dollar quickly assembled a plethora of contrary examples:
- Item: Olbermann attacks O’Reilly by lying about what he said.
- Item: Olbermann uses a phony quote to attack O’Reilly.
- Item: Olbermann lies about O’Reilly’s Haiti coverage.
- Item: Olbermann uses doctored quotes to smear O’Reilly and Rupert Murdoch, after being called out does it again.
- Item: Olbermann makes up an attack by O’Reilly, who hadn’t even mentioned him.
- Item: Olbermann doctors an O’Reilly quote to smear him as sub-human.
- Item: Olbermann makes up an O’Reilly quote he never said.
- Item: Olbermann falsifies a quote and lies about an O’Reilly guest.
- Item: Olbermann gets nearly everything wrong in attack on O’Reilly and Jesse Watters.
- Item: Olbermann uses deceptive editing to lie about O’Reilly.
- Item: Olbermann attacks O’Reilly with fraudulent quote; followup.
Dollar goes on to cite Olby attacks on Brit Hume, Neil Cavuto, Major Garrett, and other Foxers. And as bad as some of these write-ups make the “journalism” of Keith Olbermann look, it’s even worse when you see it with your own eyes:
Because of his ego and intransigence, Keith rarely corrected or apologized for his many falsehoods. Instead, he would lie about his own words, or flat out deny he said what he clearly did say:
Do you see why The Cable Gamer thinks rehiring this congenital liar is the worst idea MSNBC could possibly entertain? And we’ve only dealt with his truthfulness, not all the other disturbing elements that are part and parcel of having Olbermann infest your cable news operation, like the temper, the days in the bathtub, the hypocrisy, and the name calling and personal attacks.
MSNBC has enough of a hill to climb with Brian Williams’ credibility problem. Adding Olbermann to that mix would take the simmering honesty question and splash it onto an IMAX screen. In 3-D no less. It will make MSNBC The Place for Prevaricators. They will regret it.
Forget It, Jake…It’s Zuckertown
The Cable Gamer has been following the career of Jake Tapper with interest and admiration, and congratulated CNN when they picked him to anchor State of the Union. He’s still doing his afternoon hour (The Lead) and today was covering the horrors of the Charleston murders. But…well, let the Washington Post‘s resident Cable Gamer Erik Wemple take it from here. He quotes from a South Carolina politico J. Todd Rutherford who was Jake Tapper’s interview subject:
It’s a place that they can feel free to desecrate and leave blood everywhere, and that’s what this man did. And he did so on some ill-gotten belief, on some wrong belief that it’s okay to do that. He hears that, because he watches the news and he watches things like Fox News, where they talk about things that they call news, but they’re really not. They use that coded language, they use hate speech, they talk about the president as if he’s not the president. They talk about churchgoers as if they’re not really churchgoers. And that’s what this young man acted on. That’s why you can walk into a church and treat people like animals when they’re really human beings.
At this point, journalist Jake Tapper says there’s a lot to “unpack” in all that but proceeds to change the subject, and in short order the interview draws to a close.
Really, there are all sorts of questions that might occur to a reporter after being handed that spiel, like how did Fox News demean churchgoers? When did they ever say the President is not the President? But the most glaringly obvious journalistic response might have been to challenge what appears on its face to be an unsupported, fact-free, utterly invented claim:
Bingo. How do you know he watches Fox News? How do you know what he acted on? Bill O’Reilly asked Rutherford that question. A copy boy on a high school newspaper would know to ask such questions. Instead, Jake Tapper went wow, that’s a lot to unpack, so let’s talk about something else. As Bernard Goldberg put it: “He let it go. He didn’t challenge it.”
The Cable Gamer is not going to insult Mr. Tapper by suggesting these questions never occurred to him. So there has to be another explanation. What could it be?
- CNN boss Jeff Zucker says Roger Ailes’ Fox News is just a GOP house channel
- Jeff Zucker Ushers CNN Into New ‘Attitude’ Era
- Did CNN’s Jeff Zucker Cross A Line Hosting The Obamas For Dinner?
- CNN Boss Jeff Zucker Calls Out Fox News As a Front For the Republican Party
The Cable Gamer would like to think Jake Tapper’s journalistic instincts were better than to let a preposterous smear of Fox News air without challenge, but that’s just what he did. Was he taking his cue from the words of his boss? Perhaps he was reluctant to deviate from the company line. Or maybe he was told “Forget it, Jake…It’s Zuckertown.”
Hat-tips: Erik Wemple, Johnny Dollar.
Update: Jake Tapper has responded to TCG on twitter:
The Cable Game 