Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
(SCANDALOUS) READ: The White House Calls Out FOX News And Glenn Beck On Lies…
In a new post on the official White House blog, Online Programs Director Jesse Lee calls out Fox News for perpetuating lies about President Obama’s push to bring the Olympics to the city of Chicago.
Lee writes that Fox News, and in particular Glenn Beck, continues to ignore the facts “in an attempt to smear the Administration’s efforts to win the Olympics for the United States.”
The White House blog post continues to delineate what it deems misleading rhetoric on Obama’s Olympics efforts. An example:
(POLITICS/MEDIA) Obama Snubs FOX News…
(Newser Summary) – Republican lawmakers are peeved because President Obama is—try not to laugh—snubbing Fox News. Obama will appear on every political Sunday talk show this week, except Fox News Sunday. “If people are going to be on the Sunday talk shows, they should be on all of them,” opined Joe Wilson, who last week talked to Fox News Sunday, and only Fox News Sunday. He also interrupted Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress—which only Fox, among the major networks, declined to air.
Pete Sessions of Texas said Obama had “handpicked” his audience, while Louisiana’s Steve Scalise accused him of “ignoring a very large segment of this country.” “I think that Fox News would ask some realistic questions,” said Sessions. “He’s the one who’s choosing not to take part in that.” Democrats saw no problem with the snub—one New York rep said Obama obviously knew “which networks are really fair.”
Source: The Hill
(MEDIA) WATCH: “Drop Dobbs”: CNN Pressured To Give Up Controversial Host…
Source: The Huffington Post
CNN is facing pressure on a number of fronts to drop Lou Dobbs from their roster of on-air talent, a move that would force millions of Americans seeking out news about the conspiracy to spread leprosy throughout America via illegal Mexican immigrants to turn instead to the guy who lives under the bridge by the old tire factory.
Leading the way in this effort are a coalition of organizations united under the “Drop Dobbs” banner, including Media Matters for America, the National Council of La Raza, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the New Democrat Network, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Writing for Media Matters’ County Fair blog, John V. Santore sums up their beef:
For years, Lou Dobbs has been one of the most dangerous hosts on cable news. He benefits enormously from the legitimacy of the CNN brand, which provides him with an unparalleled platform from which to mainstream the hate speech and racially charged conspiracy theories normally relegated to Fox News and other conservative news outlets. Dobbs calls himself an “advocacy journalist,” but he doesn’t even live up to that ambiguous standard. Good journalism enhances the discussion of serious topics, but Dobbs helps to undermine and debase that discussion, routinely infusing it with misinformation and fear. And when it comes to issues like immigration, he has more in common with birther Orly Taitz than with Anderson Cooper.
If CNN won’t drop Dobbs, it’s time that his advertisers did. It’s time to do more than simply highlight the damage Dobbs does and the threat he poses. We must demand accountability from the advertisers who, by their purchase of airtime on his shows, actively support his hate speech. READ MORE
(POLITICS/MEDIA) READ: Right-Wing Nut Job, Bill O’reilly Get’s Huge Ratings, Dispite The Enemies He has…
Source: oreilly-sucks.com
O’Reilly Factor Ratings For March of 2009
Rating – 3.1
Total Viewers – 3,300,000
25-54 Demo – 900,000
O’Reilly Factor Ratings For February of 2009
Rating – 3.3
Total Viewers – 3,500,000
25-54 Demo – 910,000
O’Reilly Factor Ratings For January of 2009
Rating – 3.0
Total Viewers – 3,200,000
25-54 Demo – 849,000
O’Reilly Factor Ratings For December of 2008
Rating – 2.6
Total Viewers – 2,800,000
25-54 Demo – 740,000
READ MORE (A lot more)
(FROM THE EDITOR) READ: Outsourcing Journalism…
Although this is an old news article, I just thought I’d share it with you. I was casually browsing a few websites that I haven’t read in awhile and came accross an interesting peice about how journalism is being outsourced to other countries, appalling:
Source: FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
By Megan Tady
Brayden Simms had only five months to warm his seat as a copy editor at the Miami Herald before he joined the long list of journalists across the country losing their jobs faster and more suddenly than a breaking story.
But while media companies are slashing their staff rosters, consolidating newsrooms and forcing those journalists left standing to take on the job responsibilities of their laid-off co-workers, there was something unique about Simms’ firing: He would be replaced. But the new copy editor doesn’t live in Miami, or Florida, or even the U.S. The McClatchy Co., parent of the Miami Herald, is handing Simms’ copyediting duties to a company in India.
“My job has been outsourced to India,” Simms wrote—ironically, in a blog for his erstwhile employer (MiamiHerald.com, 6/22/08).
In June, McClatchy tapped the Miami Herald to eliminate 250 full-time positions. “Considering the recent spate of industry layoffs in South Florida, my forced buyout means I may need to relocate to find journalism work,” Simms wrote. He was reluctant to grant Extra! an interview in time for publication, as his severance check had yet to clear.
Taking over for Simms is Mindworks Global Media, a company headquartered near New Delhi. The company website boasts that “Mindworks’ staff edits and lays out newspaper pages, letting publishers reduce operational costs in print while keeping reporters and writers on the beat.”
McClatchy is the third-largest newspaper company in the U.S., behind Gannett and Tribune Co. Last December, the media giant handed over the Sacramento Bee’s advertising production to Express KCS (Sacramento Bee, 12/6/07), a company that offers “world class offshore advertising production to newspapers.”
McClatchy isn’t alone in looking overseas to parcel out newsroom functions. In June, the Orange Country Register announced, after a protracted period of layoffs and buy-outs (L.A. Times, 8/7/07), that it would also turn to Mindworks to copyedit some of the paper’s pages on a trial basis (Editor & Publisher, 6/24/08), and to take over layout design for a sister community paper (LAObserved, 6/24/08).
And in May 2008, the community online newspaper Pasadena Now hired two reporters to cover the Pasadena City Council—from India, via video. “A lot of the routine stuff we do can be done by really talented people in another time zone at much lower wages,” James Macpherson, the editor of the site, told the Los Angeles Times (5/11/07). READ MORE
(MEDIA) READ: Disney Buying Marvel For $4 Billion…
Source: The Huffington Post
LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Co. is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.
Under the deal, which was announced Monday and is expected to close by the end of the year, Disney will acquire the rights to 5,000 Marvel characters. Many of them, including the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, were co-created by the comic book legend Stan Lee.
Disney CEO Robert Iger said Marvel’s comic books, TV shows, movies and video games amounted to “a treasure trove of content.” Iger said the deal would bring benefits like the ones Disney got from buying “Toy Story” creator Pixar Animation Studios Inc. for $7.4 billion in stock in 2006.
“The acquisition of Marvel offers us a similar opportunity to advance our strategy,” Iger said, and “to build a business that is stronger than the sum of its parts.”
For Marvel, Iger said being in the Disney camp would mean better global distribution and better relationships with retailers to sell its products. Another storied comic book maker, DC Comics, has been under the wings of a major studio since 1969, when Warner Bros. bought the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
Marvel Chairman Mort Handel called Disney “a perfect home for our great collection of characters.”
One point of the deal is to help Disney appeal to young men who have flocked to theaters to see Marvel superheroes such as Iron Man in recent years. That contrasts with Disney’s recent successes among young women with such fare as “Hannah Montana” and the Jonas Brothers.
Marvel TV shows also already account for 20 hours per week of programming on Disney’s recently rebranded, boy-focused cable network, Disney XD, and that looks likely to increase, Iger said. The shows are “right in the wheelhouse for boys,” he said. Read More
(READ): “Today Show” Hires Jenna Bush…
Source: The Huffington Post
NEW YORK — NBC’s “Today” show has hired someone with White House experience as a new correspondent – former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager.
Hager, a 27-year-old teacher in Baltimore, will contribute stories about once a month on issues like education to television’s top-rated morning news show, said Jim Bell, its executive producer.
The daughter of former President George W. Bush said she has always wanted to be a teacher and a writer, and has already authored two books. But she was intrigued by the idea of getting into television when Bell contacted her.
“It wasn’t something I’d always dreamed to do,” she said. “But I think one of the most important things in life is to be open-minded and to be open-minded for change.”
She’ll essentially work two part-time jobs as a correspondent and in her school, where she will be a reading coordinator this year.
Bell said he got the idea after seeing Hager in two “Today” appearances. She was on the program two years ago to promote her book about an HIV-infected single mother, “Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope,” and it went so well that a short interview was stretched to nearly a half hour. She and her mother, Laura Bush, also co-hosted an hour of “Today” around the time their picture book came out. Read More
(READ): As boycott continues, Glenn Beck’s audience swells…
Source: LA Times
An advertising boycott against Fox News host Glenn Beck has succeeded in keeping most major sponsors from running commercials on his show even as the controversial commentator’s viewership has grown.
Beck attracted 2.81 million viewers Monday, his third-largest audience since his show launched on Fox News in January, according to Nielsen Media Research data provided by the network. On Tuesday, nearly 2.7 million viewers tuned in, his fifth-largest viewership to date. And the conservative host got a plug from former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who urged people to watch his program in a post on her Facebook page.
“FOX News’ Glenn Beck is doing an extraordinary job this week walking America behind the scenes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and outlining who is actually running the White House,” she wrote Wednesday to her 800,000-plus supporters.
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As a result, few major businesses remain as sponsors of Beck’s eponymous 2 p.m. PDT program. On Wednesday, the only big companies with a presence during his show were Bank of America and the Wall Street Journal, whose parent company News Corp. also owns Fox News. The rest of the commercials included spots for gold seller Rosland Capital; Ashley Furniture Home Store; Empire Carpet; Liberty Medical, a diabetes medical supplier; Johnson Law Group, an asbestos litigation firm; “Shadow Government,” a new book critical of Obama published by the National Republican Trust; and the anti-tax group TeaPartyExpress.org.
Fox News insists that the boycott has not affected its revenue, because advertisers have just moved their commercials to different time periods. And for his part, Beck appears invigorated by the challenge. “Even if the powers to be right now succeed in making me poor, drum me out … I will only be stronger for it,” he said on the air Wednesday. “And I will use American ingenuity and my ingenuity to pull myself up, and I will find another way to get this message out, on a platform that will be a thousand times more powerful. Because of my faith, I know how this story ends. The truth will set you free.”
Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/08/as-…
According to Color of Change, 10 more companies that have recently had ads air during Beck’s program have pledged not to run any further advertising on his show. The latest businesses to distance themselves from the Fox News host include Applebee’s, Bank of America, Bell & Howell, DirecTV, General Mills, Kraft, Regions Financial Corp., SAM (Store and Move), Travelers Insurance and Vonage.
(MEDIA) READ: Movie Theaters Cut Listings From Newspapers…
Source: The huffington Post
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Filmgoers who have long turned to the local newspaper to find theaters and show times for movies may have to start looking elsewhere as theater chains rethink the value of paper and ink in a digital age.
The top two U.S. chains, Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc., have begun in recent months to reduce or eliminate the small-type listings showing the start times for movies at individual theaters. Theaters typically must pay newspapers to print that information.
Looking to cut costs, the theater chains are instead directing consumers to their Internet sites or third-party sites, like Fandango, Moviefone or Flixster, which offer those listings for free and make money from the fees they charge for selling advance tickets to movies. Many of those sites also feature film reviews and movie trailers.
The effort may be gaining some traction, as U.S. Internet traffic to AMC’s Web site rose 21 percent in July compared with a year ago, according to comScore Inc., while visits to Regal’s Web site were up 18 percent.
The Newspaper Association of America doesn’t track revenue that newspapers generate from print movie listings, but believes the amount is relatively small. Yet every dollar counts as newspapers are forced to cut staff, reduce the frequency of print editions or even close completely amid the recession. Read More
I just have to plug this awesome progressive radio station
This has got to be one of the best radio station ever! Well it’s a lot more than a radio now a days (Former name was Air America Radio). It’s very hard to find liberal/progressive radio, since the conservatives like Rush Limbaugh dominate radio. The only one I don’t care for is Rhandi Rhodes (I think that’s the spelling) But everyone else on there is good. Ron Reagan is my favorite (He’s nothing like his father Ronald Reagan LOL!)
You can listen live without a radio by clicking here or here.
DNN Daily News Network 
