Posts filed under ‘CBS Inc.’
Sunday’s Face the Nation — Six Republicans, One Democrat
Ah yes, the “liberal media:”
I don’t know who “Barry” is but Debby Wasserman Schultz is the only Democrat among Newt Gingrich, Reince Priebus (the head of the RNC), Michelle Bachmann, Rep. Allen West of Florida (R-Insane), Donald Trump and Diaz-Balart (there are several prominent people in Florida’s Diaz-Balart family. I don’t know specifically which one will be on on Sunday, but they’re Republicans.
Anyway, this is CBS. Righties point to CBS as one of the most liberal outlets in the nation.
Yeah. Right.
Gimmie Some More Politics!
Geezus, as if we don’t already have it up to here with D.C.-centered political “news:”
The half-hour Sunday public affairs program on CBS, “Face the Nation,” will become an hour-long program next spring, matching its rivals on other television networks.
“I cannot remember when I’ve been happier to break a story than I am to tell you this,” the program’s moderator, Bob Schieffer, said as he told viewers about the expansion on Sunday morning.
“Face the Nation,” which dates to 1954, is one of the longest-running news programs on television and is a point of pride for CBS News. Executives within the news division have wanted to expand the program to an hour for many years, but they have not succeeded until now, in part due to the differing schedules of the network’s local stations.
The hour-long format will start in April and will initially stay in place for 20 weeks, at least through the political conventions next summer. The executives hope that the format change will then become permanent.
Blarg.
CBS Rewrites History of the Iraq War
This happened last night on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley:
A December 1 CBS Evening News report about the Iraq War managed to mislead viewers about the start of the war and severely diminish the loss of civilian lives.
Reporting on the handover of the U.S. military headquarters to Iraqi forces, anchor Scott Pelley announced:
What began in 2003 as an effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein became a vicious religious war, pitting Iraqi against Iraqi–with the U.S. caught in the middle.Of course, the United States invaded Iraq with the stated aim of disarming Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist. Any serious conversation of the war should include this fact.
And the United States, as the instigators of that war, cannot credibly be considered to be “caught in the middle.”
Ah yes, the poor United States. It got “caught in the middle” of a religious war so hey, the poor widdle country (the US) couldn’t help that it had to stay there for such a long time.
Wow.
In Canada, lying during a newscast is illegal. I wish that were so in the US.
UCDavis Live via CBS
At 9:16 p.m. ET: Here’s a live feed from the campus of UCDavis (see below if you don’t know what’s going on there).
Granted, it’s via the corporate media — CBS — so it could go dark at any minute but it’s on now, here.
CBS’s Scott Pelley Implies The World Has Turned Against Wikileaks
Just minutes ago I was watching the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. Pelley was reporting on Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and his impending extradition to Sweden, “to face rape and sexual molestation claims.”
Photo: Graeme Robertson, The Guardian (UK)
Toward the end of his report, Pelley said Wikileaks funding has “dried up,” implying that the world as a whole has turned against the organization. What Pelley didn’t tell his audience is that there has been an organized campaign by the 1%-ers to starve Wikileaks of funding because the documents Wikileaks has leaked (and has the potential to leak) threatens their control of the planet:
Gotta love the “liberal media,” huh?
CBSNews: A Dead Homeless Man is a “Street Creature”
In an apparent effort to reinforce the fascist state, Tom Mustin of CBS4Denver reported this evening about a protest today in Denver calling attention to the one-year-anniversary of the death of a homeless African-American man who died under extraordinarily suspicious circumstances while in custody of the Denver Police Department.
Insofar as the establishment tries to make the police/state look like they’re in the right, and lowly citizen are in the wrong, Mustin referred to the dead man as a “street creature.”
A “street creature?”
What with more and more of us suffering in this financial crisis, how long will it be before we become ostracised, faceless “street creatures?”
When a “news” organization is this cold when referring to a segment of our population, we’re in deep trouble.
Oh, and I say this having spent 8 hours in the last two days at a food bank, handing out food to mothers and fathers and kids. I.e., “street creatures.”
Schwarzenegger Rumor Reported as Fact by CBS4Denver’s Shaun Boyd
This is how rumors get started: The top story tonight on my local CBS4News in Denver was the saga of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The segment, reported by Shaun Boyd
concluded with Boyd reading the text of this Tweet by Patrick Schwarzenegger from minutes ago earlier today:
Boyd concluded her report with: Patrick “signed the Tweet, Patrick SHRIVER.”
He did? Anyone see that?
I don’t know where Boyd got her information but obviously, she didn’t confirm it. It would have taken five seconds.
I know what’s going on with the Schwarzeneggers isn’t Earth shattering but this is indicative of how “journalists” have lost their way around here.
Bottom line? Don’t trust a thing you see on teevee. Rumor, hearsay and gossip is now reported as fact. “Journalists” are apparently too busy or too underpaid or too whatever to do their basic job.
(I will post video if I can find it. I didn’t have my DVR on when this happened.)
The CBS Evening “News?”
Just saw an ad for the Monday — April 11, 2011 — edition of the “CBS Evening News.”
I don’t remember what the ad touted, but that’s not the point. A “news” organization covers the news, right? The “news” means what’s happening at the moment, on that day. So a “news” organization that advertises on a Friday what it’s going to cover on a Monday can’t be about news.
Just sayin’.
Dumbed Down
Oy. Just saw an ad for my local “CBS4 Morning News” (Denver).
They want me to watch because they’ve got a new daily feature: The “word of the day!”
So, they want me to sit through an hour-long show that cycles through the same three “news” stories and the weather and traffic every ten minutes so I can learn a new word? As if there aren’t other, less painful and boring ways of learning new words?
I don’t think so.
Geezus.
.
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.
CBS Reporter Lara Logan Assaulted in Egypt
On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a “60 Minutes” story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.
In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.
There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.
Wishing you all the best Lara.
Steve Kroft — You’re No Julian Assange
OMG. I just watched Steve Kroft’s 60 Minutes interview with Julian Assange.
HO; Sara Jaye Weiss
Right off the bat Kroft set Assange up to be hated: He’s “eccentric” and he has to wear an “ankle bracelet” because of [he didn't say dubious] pending charges against him.
Along the way Kroft said, “People in the United States think” you’re a “traitor” and, “There’s a feeling within the community [the corporate media] that you’re not one of them.”
I’m a “people in the United States” and I don’t think Assange is a traitor but then again, my head isn’t stuck in the toilet of DC power politics, protecting the 200-some families who rule the world.
Assange isn’t a member of the corporate media suck-up-to-power club? That’s the biggest complement anyone could pay him. You go guy!
Aaaaaahhh! More later but suffice it to say, Julian Assange will be remembered as a journalist but Steve Kroft won’t be.
Oh, and BTW, per the wingnutOsphere, this is the liberalist of the liberal media we’re talking about here.
More via Glenn Greenwald:
Exactly.
Julian Assange on “60 Minutes” Sunday
On Sunday, corporate media giant CBS will host a man who “some say” should be assassinated point-blank, forget due process and the right to a trial by a jury of his peers.
Can’t wait to see how this unfolds:
Katie Couric Has Been Co-Opted by the Right
Eight minutes into “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” tonight I hear Couric espouse this Republican talking point: Nancy Pelosi “beat back” her opponent and won the vote to become the House Minority Leader.
“Beat back?” How about: Pelosi “easily” turned “aside a nominal challenge from Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) by a margin of 150 votes to 43 votes.”
I repeat, Pelosi won by roughly a 75% margin. 150 yes votes versus 43 no votes. Is that what you’d call a “beat back?”
I call it a walk in the park er, a “nominal challenge.”
Katie, Katie, Katie. Yes, the people who are talking to you in your ear want us to think they’ve won their $75 million campaign to destroy Pelosi, but they haven’t (see above).
Sorry. No matter how you spin it, you and your corporate buds lost.
(Can’t believe the masses still think CBS is “liberal.”)
.
CBS Radio News is Obsessed With Sarah Palin and the Tea Party
I have had Denver’s AM760 radio station on in the background since 7:00 a.m. Mountain Time — five hours.
At the top of each hour there is a news break from CBS News. During every single break today, CBS has lead with a report about Sarah Palin and the launch of the “grassroots” Tea Party Express bus tour, which will “travel through 19 states in 15 days.”
And CBS is “liberal?”
UPDATE: I put the above post up just after noon Mountain Time. It is now 3:04 p.m. CBS lead with the Tea Party story at 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. but just now they lead with a story about the Bank of America. The Tea Party story came second.
Unreal.
Katie Couric and Bill Clinton at the World Cup
I saw a split-second shot of CBS’s Katie Couric sitting next to Bill Clinton today during the US/Ghana playoffs at the World Cup.
Let’s take bets as to how long it will takes Faux News to wave that in front of its zombie viewers as “proof” that the MSM is “liberal.”
CBS Says Faisal Shahzad on Terror Watch List Since…1999?
The idea of a “no-fly terror watch list” was hatched in November, 2002. But “sources tell” CBS News that the Times Square bomber was on that list as far back as ah, 1999?
Hey, I know, slamming Obama is de rigueur these days but hey CBS, a mistake like this makes you look totally incompetent. And this is indicative of the inherent problem of letting “sources” be your source for facts “news.” You know, think about it for a sec. Gosh, golly, gee, they just might have – ulterior motives!
Jesus.
Since When Is the Grand Opening of a Store “News”?
My local “liberal news” outlet, CBC4 in Denver, just aired a report about the grand opening of a new store, Weekends Overstock Warehouse, or “WOW.” It was replete with shots of merchandise and it included an interview with the “merchandise manager.”
Hello. Excuse me. Since when is that “news”?
Sheesh. Talk about a corporatocracy.
When, oh when, will we have a decent media?
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.
The “Liberal” CBS Evening News Leads With Boston Tea Party Story
CBS’s Katie Couric lead that, ahem, “liberal” channel’s primetime newscast tonight first, with a stat about how 18% of Americans support the Tea Party movement — a measly 18%! — and second with a report about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party rally in Boston today, pitiful as it was.
What the hell’s going on around here?!
Scott Brown’s Daughter Joins CBS
Ayla Brown, a daughter of Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R), has joined the “CBS Early Show” as a “special contributor.” Per TVNewser, Brown is a former “American Idol” contestant and she “performed” on the broadcast earlier this year.
The obvious comes to mind: (1) would she have been hired if her father wasn’t who he was, and (2) will her relationship to her father give CBS access to people it might not otherwise have had? But what struck me most about this report was TVNewser’s use of the word “performed.” Brown “performed” on the broadcast earlier this year. Sad but true. So much of what we see on quasi-news shows like the “Early Show,” is a performance.
“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.
The CBS Evening “News” Turns National Enquirer
The CBS Evening “News” w/Katie Couric led with the Tiger Woods apology tonight and stayed with the story for nine minutes. Nine minutes is an eternity in television “news.”
CBS = Corporate Bull Sh*t
The Raging Grannies of South Florida have their say over CBS’s decision to air the Focus on the Family’s anti-choice ad during Sunday’s Super Bowl. (I have no problem with CBS airing the ad per se, but I do have a problem with CBS refusing to air ads from the likes of MoveOn and PETA. They claim not to want to air “controversial” ads, but apparently, in their world, “controversial” means liberal/progressive.)
Why “Objectivity” in the News is a Very Bad Thing
Chris Hedges posted a new article over at Truthdig the other day: The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News.
A taste:
“The very notion that on any given story all you have to do is report what both sides say and you’ve done a fine job of objective journalism debilitates the press,” the late columnist Molly Ivins once wrote. “There is no such thing as objectivity, and the truth, that slippery little bugger, has the oddest habit of being way to hell off on one side or the other: it seldom nestles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view. The smug complacency of much of the press—I have heard many an editor say, ‘Well, we’re being attacked by both sides so we must be right’—stems from the curious notion that if you get a quote from both sides, preferably in an official position, you’ve done the job. In the first place, most stories aren’t two-sided, they’re 17-sided at least. In the second place, it’s of no help to either the readers or the truth to quote one side saying, ‘Cat,’ and the other side saying ‘Dog,’ while the truth is there’s an elephant crashing around out there in the bushes.”
[...]
This abject moral failing has left the growing numbers of Americans shunted aside by our corporate state without a voice. It has also, with the rise of a ruthless American oligarchy, left the traditional press on the wrong side of our growing class divide. The elitism, distrust and lack of credibility of the press—and here I speak of the dwindling institutions that attempt to report news—come directly from this steady and willful disintegration of the media’s moral core.
[...]
Objectivity creates the formula of quoting Establishment specialists or experts within the narrow confines of the power elite who debate policy nuance like medieval theologians. As long as one viewpoint is balanced by another, usually no more than what Sigmund Freud would term “the narcissism of minor difference,” the job of a reporter is deemed complete. But this is more often a way to obscure rather than expose truth.
[...]
Real reporting, grounded in a commitment to justice and empathy, could have informed and empowered the public as we underwent a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It could have stimulated a radical debate about structures, laws, privilege, power and justice. But the traditional press, by clinging to an outdated etiquette designed to serve corrupt power structures, lost its social function. Corporations, which once made many of these news outlets very rich, have turned to more effective forms of advertising. Profits have plummeted. And yet these press courtiers, lost in the fantasy of their own righteousness and moral probity, cling to the hollow morality of “objectivity” with comic ferocity.
So, so true and so, so sad.
CBS’s Chip Reid: Critics Say, Critics Say, Critics Say
I just watched Chip Reid deliver a report on the CBS Evening News about President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night. Reid repeatedly brought up something Obama said and followed it up with “but critics say,” as if what “critics say” is the truth. (This is what’s known as “fair and balanced news” these days.)
Has Chip Reid ever heard of something called fact checking? Why can’t he take what Obama said and fact check it instead of telling us what “critics say”? Or, at the very least, include the facts somewhere in his report?
And could Chip Reid change his rhetoric to: “…but critics Republicans say,” so we have a bit more context already?
Thank you!
The Stupidest Comment on Television Today
I’m watching the evening “news” on the local CBS affiliate in Denver right now. It just aired a promo for “what’s coming up” at 6:00 p.m.: “Conan O’Brien got $45 million to leave NBC. What should you ask for if you get the ax?”
Hey, I think I should ask for oh, maybe $30 million?
God. Give me a break.
Wish There Was Some News On The Teevee
It’s 5:44 p.m. MT and I want to watch some news. Do I watch CBS, NBC or ABC? Do I watch Lou Dobbs? Do I watch Fox talking about ACORN? Do I watch MSNBC talking about David Letterman?
Humm… I think I’ll go to the Food Network and get my news from the Internets.
