Posts filed under ‘ABC / Disney Media Networks’
Work Until You’re 90 — It’s Fun!
The ABC Evening News w/Diane Sawyer just aired a piece about how great it is to work until you’re in your 90′s. The segment featured a 90-year-old hairdresser who’s still going strong and yes, she seemed perfectly happy.
Kudos to her but I can’t help but wonder what the point was. If I know the “liberal media” like I think I do, what I just saw was an opening salvo in a campaign designed to convince already-exhausted Americans that hey, if the corporatocracy takes away your Social Security, any pensions you might have, your health benefits, your accrued vacation time, etc., life’s a beach but you’re just too spoiled to notice how great it is. And if you don’t like it, strap your boots on, put a smile on your face and work into your 90′s, and if you complain or physically can’t do that, there’s something wrong with you, not with the system.
Photo: AP
Newtmentum? What Mentum?
CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s big graphic tonight is:
Newtmentum
Newt “surged” to 28% in a (what a coincidence) CNN/ABCNews poll today so now we have Newtmentum?
Who wins a presidential election with 28% of the votes?
Oh, and we’re supposed to believe Anderson Cooper comes up with this stuff on his own? He doesn’t. He stole the Newtmentum thing from Z. Bryon Wolf. (Or maybe it was vice versa.)
It takes a village.
Follow the Media Brown-Nosers Here
Follow the happenings at tonight’s White House Correspondents Dinner, a gathering of lobbyists, elected officials (they’re supposed to represent us, no?) and elite media — the people who tell us what we should think and believe, as if they have any idea – on Twitter at #nerdprom and/or at #WHCD.
Is ABC’s Jake Trapper Drunk Tweeting?
Is Jake Trapper, ABC News’ “Senior White House Correspondent” drunk Tweeting tonight? I ask because one doesn’t see this kind of honesty coming out of journalists corporate media whores very often:
No Labor Officials Scheduled (Thus Far) to Be on Any of the Sunday Talk Shows
UPDATED below.
So hey, what was that again about the “liberal media?”
(Image via.)
I tend not to get into the business of questioning the guest choices made by the Sunday shows. But if there were ever a time the networks would want to book labor officials to appear, you’d think it would be now. The Wisconsin standoff is the most important domestic political story in the country right now, and as many commentators at those same networks have pointed out, both sides view this battle as ground zero in a national war that may determine the fate of organized labor in America.
But labor officials are beginning to fear that none of them will be invited on this weekend to give voice to the labor point of view. This, even as tough-talking anti-union governor Chris Christie is set to do a major appearance on CBS on Sunday.
One AFL-CIO official tells me that reps for the AFL-CIO and other unions reached out to all the big three network shows — ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, and CBS’ Face the Nation — to ask if they would invite on any labor officials. Thus far the answer has been cool to indifferent, the official says.
It is so true that average working Americans don’t have a voice on the corporate media — even on the “public affairs” shows.
UPDATED: After an afternoon of outrage, MTP adds Richard Trumka to its Sunday line up.
Now we wait to see what CBS, ABC, Fox and CNN do.
Is John Boehner President?
It’s that damn “liberal media” acting up again.
Julian Assange Walks Out of ABC News Interview
Julian Assange walked out of an ABC News interview today, calling the interviewer, “tabloid schmuck.”
Given all that has been revealed in the cables WikiLeaks has leaked thus far, and the myriad of extraordinarily important issues raised by those leaks, I couldn’t agree more. When the ABC guy asks Assange about the alleged rape in Sweden and “forcibly spreading her legs and ah, holding her down,” he walks out.
Good for him. Putting it that way IS tabloid schmuck-ish. Ask about the rape charges but come on, show some couth.
Good Reason Not to Watch Good Morning America
Word has it that ABC’s Robin Roberts will “spend a day with Sarah Palin in Alaska, talking with the former governor about her book, health care, foreign policy, and taxes.” Good Morning America will air the video on Friday.
Sarah Palin falls flat in interviews that aren’t scripted like the ones she does on Fox. If she feels comfortable venturing outside that bubble, it doesn’t speak well of her, it speaks poorly of the venue she chooses. In this case, Good Morning America, i.e., puff-ball “news.”
Sarah Palin Says She’s Under Cyber Attack by WikiLeak Followers
Sarah Palin says her website and credit card information are under attack by WikiLeaks supporters. Four words: I don’t believe it. Palin has a need to stick her nose into everything and to be a victim of everything. That’s how she gins up her followers, disses people she doesn’t like, and keeps her name in the media:
The website and personal credit card information of former Gov. Sarah Palin were cyber-attacked today by Wikileaks supporters, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate tells ABC News in an email.
Hackers in London apparently affiliated with “Operation Payback” – a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts.
“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange’s antics,” Palin emailed. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”
Why “professional journalists” like Jake Trapper fall for her BS is beyond me. Woops, slap me upside the head: Ratings and hits.
ABC News Tells Andrew Breitbart: Never Mind
This afternoon ABC News canceled its invitation to Andrew Breitbart to be a part of their online election coverage (yay!).
This is the letter they sent him:
Dear Mr. Breitbart,
We have spent the past several days trying to make clear to you your limited role as a participant in our digital town hall to be streamed on ABCNews.com and Facebook. The post on your blog last Friday created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News. We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited along with numerous others to participate in our digital town hall. Instead of clarifying your role, you posted a blog on Sunday evening in which you continued to claim a bigger role in our coverage. As we are still unable to agree on your role, we feel it best for you not to participate.
Sincerely,
Andrew Morse
Gosh, I think I can hear Breitbart yelling something about liberals hating free speech all the way out here in Colorado.
Schadenfreude.
ABC’s Breitbart Insanity
Tweet of the day, from JayRosen:
This is called trying to prove you aren’t a part of the “lamestream media” while cutting your own throat.
Andrew Breitbart, Sign the Petition Asking ABC News Not to Include Him in Their Election Night Coverage
I assume you heard that ABC News hired right wing propagandist Andrew Breitbart to be an “analyst” on Election Day.
Breitbart is the guy who edited and leaked the Shirley Sherrod video and the bogus ACORN pimp video.
If you think news organizations should hold themselves to a higher standard and that it’s wrong for ABC “News” to legitimizing this scumbag, please consider signing the petition at ColorOfChange.org asking ABC not to put him on on Tuesday.
Thanks.
Andrew Breitbart as an ABC News Election Day Talker?
I don’t think so.
If you agree, go here.
Oh, and here’s more about ABC’s ah, “bipartisanship.”
It’s laughable.
The U.S. Media as Government Henchmen
As I noted yesterday, during the Watergate era, Nixon’s henchmen were assigned the task of trying to discredit Daniel Ellsberg. Fast forward to today, and the U.S. media — working as an arm of the government — has assumed that role when it comes to Wikileaks and Julian Assange.
Here is another case in point:
On the October 22 broadcast of ABC World News With Diane Sawyer, the anchor weighed in on the WikiLeaks Iraq War documents by noting, “Arab television is already trumpeting the revelations.” Not exactly a promising start, but the correspondent Martha Raddatz did a pretty good job of conveying the findings: hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed at checkpoints, thousands of unreported civilian deaths and torture of detainees.
Then the report went back to Sawyer for a follow-up question:
“I know there’s a lot of outrage about this again tonight, Martha. But tell me, anything more about prosecuting the WikiLeaks group?”
Gee. Whatever happened to an independent media? Wikileaks is doing the U.S. media’s job for it and they can’t stand it.
Now that corporations are buying our government, the term “corporate media” is taking on a whole new meaning. The media is government is the corporation. They’ll soon be one and the same.
During Watergate, Nixon’s Goons Tried to Destroy Daniel Ellsberg. Today, the Media Is Assuming That Role With Regard to Julian Assange of Wikileaks
Glenn Greenwald nails it, as always:
After Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing the lies, brutality and inhumanity that drove America’s role in the Vietnam War, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger infamously plotted to smear his reputation and destroy his credibility.
[...]
This weekend, WikiLeaks released over 400,000 classified documents of the Iraq War detailing genuinely horrific facts about massive civilian death, U.S. complicity in widespread Iraqi torture, systematic government deceit over body counts, and the slaughter of civilians by American forces about which Daniel Ellsberg himself said, as the New York Times put it: “many of the civilian deaths there could be counted as murder.”
Predictably, just as happened with Ellsberg, there is now a major, coordinated effort underway to smear WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, and to malign his mental health — all as a means of distracting attention away from these highly disturbing revelations and to impede the ability of WikiLeaks to further expose government secrets and wrongdoing with its leaks. But now, the smear campaign is led not by Executive Branch officials, but by members of the establishment media.
This is a horrifying turn of events. The media is supposed to hold government accountable — not be its partner.
Case in point:
This would be Howard Kurtz, of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” today, talking about Julian Assange walking out on a CNN interview Friday.
Watch the video here. The interviewer wanted to talk about office intrigue at Wikileaks instead of the contents of the 400,000 documents Wikileaks dumped overnight on Thursday. It was silly and a waste of Assange’s time (and judging from what Kurtz said, CNN didn’t learn a thing from it).
Is David Gregory Afraid or Arrogant Beyond Belief?
Why won’t David Gregory, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, allow PolitiFact.org to publicly fact check what happens on his show? Jay Rosen has some ideas:
David Gregory, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, has painted himself into a strange corner with his assertion that there’s no need to fact check what his guests say on the air because viewers can do that “on their own terms.” His competitor, Jake Tapper of ABC News, disagrees. Tapper has instituted the after-the-show fact check on This Week. I am a participant in the story of how this happened, as you can see from the time line I have constructed. At the bottom of the post, I offer a brief comment on what I think is going on here.
[...]
Interpretation: So… what is going on here? As with his defiant claims that the press did well in questioning the Bush Administration’s case for war, David Gregory believes he always and already asks the questions necessary to get at the truth. (So what’s your problem?) If the truth does not emerge from his interviews, it’s not his fault because he–always and already–asks the tough questions. That’s who he is. It’s in his DNA. The criticism he gets is therefore partisan chatter. Or it comes from people who want him to go beyond asking the tough questions to the point of conclusion: that man is lying.
David Gregory thinks that is not his role.
Look at it this way: the Washington politician who’s been on Meet the Press more than any other is John McCain. On April 6, Politifact’s truth-o-meter rated McCain a pants-on-fire-liar for claiming that he never called himself a maverick. See what I mean?
I see two other possibilities for his refusal to adopt the fact check: one banal, the other more troubling. The banal: He’s too proud to adopt something that a competitor picked up on first; it would look like a “me too” response and he is the market leader, first in the ratings and heir to the chair that Tim Russert held. The more disturbing possibility is that he thinks Tapper’s policy may give Meet the Press a competitive edge in booking guests who won’t want to be checked so vigorously. (As opposed to competing with an even better fact check, which would probably cause Bob Schieffer at Face the Nation to adopt the same policy, forcing the guests to accept the new rules or flee to cable, which has a fraction of the viewers.)
Well, at least Jake Trapper has the guts to make this innovative move so kudos to him and to the people who in turn have the guts to go on his show. What we may learn in the end, if Meet the Press and Face the Nation refuse this challenge, is just exactly who the wimp politicians are who tell such tall tales that they afraid to face Trapper and PolitiFact and to appear on This Week.
New Crisis at the White House: Joe Biden’s Choice of a Cheesesteak Sandwich
Vice President Joe Biden was in Philadelphia today. While there, he stopped at “Pat’s” cheesesteak. “Geno’s” cheesesteak is across the street. The two have been rivals for years.
Jake Trapper, the “senior White House correspondent for ABCNews” and his colleagues thought Biden’s choice was a big enough deal to tweet about it (this would be what “journalists” concern themselves with these days folks):
Reminder: Disney owns ABCNews. That pretty much says it all.
“Congress Failed to Pass Extension of Unemployment Benefits?” (UPDATED)
The headline today on the cable “news” shows, including the “liberal” ones, is that unemployment benefits run out today for thousands of Americans because congress failed to pass an extension before it left for Easter recess.
Technically that’s true but there is a more accurate and informative way of reporting the story: Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma Blocks Unemployment Bill.
UPDATE: And don’t forget — unemployment “benefits” are better referred to as unemployment “insurance” (my bad on that). Money is deducted from our paychecks for unemployment “insurance,” so Coburn’s concern about how the “benefits” will be paid for is BS. The money’s already in the bank. And it’s our money.
UPDATE #2 (4-7-10): Now Republicans are boasting about screwing people. Check it out.
Christiane Amanpour Leaves CNN — No Reason to Watch Anymore
Christiane Amanpour is moving from CNN to ABC to host “This Week.”
Can’t think of any reason to watch CNN anymore.
Christiane Amanpour Reportedly Offered “This Week” Job
Fishbowl D.C. is reporting that,
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour is telling her CNN colleagues that ABC News has offered her the job of “This Week” host and she is telling people that she might take it. As of this moment she is declaring a 50-50 chance that she’s going to accept the offer.
I can’t stand the “Sunday shows” so I don’t give a sh*t about this but I thought some of you might.
John Roberts Is Such a Delicate Guy
John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court — the guy who orchestrated the yes vote on granting corporations personhood in the Citizens United case — a decision that is universally hated – can’t stand the heat:
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Tuesday criticized President Obama for rebuking the high court’s decision striking down some campaign finance reform laws at the State of the Union in January.
Poor, poor baby.
Oh, and don’t you just love the way ABC’s Jake Trapper worded this? The high court’s “decision striking down some campaign finance reform laws?”
Come November 3, that just might win as the understatement of the year.
