All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Note to Fred Thompson: Fox News Channel ain’t your only problem.

On yesterday’s installment of “Fox News Sunday,” Fred Thompson criticized the Fair and Balanced folks for what he considered an anti-Fred tone to their coverage.

According to the Politico:

Fred Thompson attacked Fox News on Sunday for what he called a "constant mantra" that his floundering campaign for president is troubled, and he accused the network of skewing things against him.

Thompson certainly isn't the first politician to make that accusation, but he's the first high-profile Republican to do so.

The exchange has been one of the big topics in the media today, with people questioning his tactic of criticizing the channel that had given him a forum multiple times in the past.

Maybe this is the week that Fred sets the record straight?

If so, now that he has taken on Fox, he can move down the list to:

The New York Times

Newsweek

Time

Slate

Fortune

The Los Angeles Times

The Washington Post

Reason

These are but a few of the media outlets that have trotted out the stereotype of Mr. Thompson as “lazy” in recent memory. So he better get going, if he’s trying to win the perception game.

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I’ve often thought that great minds think alike. I just never thought my mind would process and conjure up the same things as the mind behind “Xanadu.”

A little less than two years ago, when the FCC started publicly considering/lofting-trial-balloons about possibly adopting an a la carte cable pricing strategy – where you could pick and choose the exact channels you wanted to subscribe to – I, in my previous existence as a think tank-er, was interviewed by Networking on the topic:

"Couldn't this continue the overly personalized media world -- with conservatives opting to not pay for MSNBC or CNN?" Matthew T. Felling, media director at the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a think tank in Washington D.C., told Networking.

Left-leaning consumers, meantime, might permanently tune out Fox News and conservative shows like "The O'Reilly Factor" and not just change the channel in angst.

Yesterday afternoon, Broadcasting & Cable reported that Robert Greenwald -- who directed “Xanadu” before he became a progressive documentary filmmaker – had uploaded a video online and started an Internet campaign pushing a la carte for that very outcome.

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Can’t get enough Dennis Kucinich? Just tune into MSNBC.

Today in party-line news network boycotts, it’s been reported that in Republicans are turning their back on MSNBC in response to an interview conducted by the network’s David Shuster.

According to The Politico:

Word is, a growing number of GOP lawmakers have become mysteriously “unavailable” when asked to appear on MSNBC. Numerous meetings have taken place in both the House and the Senate side regarding the interview and “what to do about it,” Hill sources report.

One MSNBC producer told a Hill staffer, as relayed to us: “We can’t even get any republican senators!” While other offices immediately declared “absolutely not” when they heard the host was Shuster.

“There’s no difference because sending your boss over to David Shuster or the Democratic National Committee at this point,” sniffs one high-placed House source.

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It’s off.

The Democratic presidential debate originally scheduled for September 23rd has been cancelled. The debate – co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute and to be aired on Fox News Channel – had already been boycotted publicly by frontrunners Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. According to the Associated Press:

Fox News and a black political group say they will not hold a Sept. 23 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, which the leading candidates already were planning to skip.

A new date had not yet been set, Fox News spokesman Michael Murphy said Thursday.

The campaigns of U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards had said they would not participate in the debate. Opponents have criticized Fox as biased against Democrats.

Keith Olbermann, no fan of Fox News Channel, advised the candidates against this a month ago. We here at Public Eye made our feelings known in May when the invitees began begging off:

America’s media landscape is already polarized enough. Partisans listen to their own radio shows, watch their own media outlets and generally seek out information that reinforces their political leanings. The Democratic presidential candidates are missing out on an opportunity to get their message out, confront the channel they view as a foe, and define themselves in their own words, rather than letting themselves be defined by what they see as Fox's mischaracterizations.

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We had a bit of fun with the CNN-YouTube debate last month keeping track of how many times CNN decided they’d toss in a quote-unquote story about the fact that the night’s debate was “groundbreaking” and “first of its kind.” (Though not as much fun as Billiam the Snowman, who seems to be trying to parlay his appearance on the debate into a role as a snowy kingmaker.)

It got messy. On the day of the debate, there were 117 mentions of it on CNN and its sibling CNN Headline News combined.

As I wrote while tracking the mentions that day: “CNN owes its viewers more than an 8 hour pre-game show during their broadcast day … Today’s cable news hucksterism insults the most casual viewer.”

But at least the YouTube debate could be called a news event.

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There’s a new Pew Research poll out today on media users and their attitudes, entitled “Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations.” And the mainstream media is allowing that title to steer a lot of the media coverage of the study. Editor and Publisher followed Pew’s bread crumbs by writing it up this way:

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that more than half of Americans say U.S. news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on.

Respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news -- which is roughly one quarter of all Americans -- were even harsher with their criticism, the poll reported.

More than two-thirds of the Web users said they felt that news organizations don't care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.

But as is so often the case with studies of “psychographics” and “attitudes,” there is more meaty stuff in here than just the normal Paranoid Internet User meme/stereotype that is prevalent in the mainstream media. If you go to the actual study and scroll down a tad – past the falling favorability and gender breakdowns – you’ll get to a subhead that reads “Fox Viewers More Critical.”

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Democratic operatives and contributors writing in the Washington Post’s Outlook section.

An MSNBC study showing journalists’ political donations.

The chummy relationship between news people and newsmakers seems as incestuous as ever, breeding cynicism and distrust.

Add to that mix this morning’s New York Times piece about the friendship-slash-association between Fox News Channel head Roger Ailes and Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani.

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The majority of Democratic presidential candidates have been criticized – even by sympathetic soul Keith Olbermann – for their refusal to participate in a September debate to be broadcast on Fox News Channel.

It’s starting to look like boycotts may be a bipartisan trend.

The Washington Post reports today that the September GOP CNN/YouTube debate – the Democrats' one this week was all the rage, just ask CNN
– has received only two RSVPs from the Republican field: Ron Paul and John McCain.

Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, both with dozens of videos on their YouTube channels, have not signed up. Neither have the rest of the Republican candidates, including Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.), whose "Tancredo Takes" on his YouTube channel draw hundreds of views. Sources familiar with the Giuliani campaign said the former New York mayor is unlikely to participate. Kevin Madden, Romney's spokesman, said the former Massachusetts governor has seven debate invitations over a span of 11 days in September.

"We haven't committed to any of them yet," Madden said.

In an interview Wednesday with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Romney said he's not a fan of the CNN/YouTube format. Referring to the video of a snowman asking the Democratic candidates about global warming, Romney quipped, "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

Whether it's Frosty or Jim Lehrer asking the questions, these nationally-televised debates are a singular chance to reach potential voters. Candidates who give them the cold shoulder lose the opportunity to make their own case and voluntarily hand opponents the chance to misportray them.

A month ago, MSNBC’s Morning Joe news anchor Mika Brzezinski famously refused to read a story about Paris Hilton, going so far as attempting to set her news script on fire. (Unfortunately, her partner’s Bic lighter wasn’t up to the task) And in doing so, she became a YouTube celebrity, with the footage now having been viewed nearly three million times.

And yesterday, CNN’s lovable curmudgeon Jack Cafferty went so far as to – on live TV, mind you – ask/demand that the Lindsay Lohan story be removed from his teleprompter. On the grainy YouTube footage, he says “I wonder if we could get the Lindsay Lohan DUI arrest out of the teleprompter and put my script in. Is that possible?”

What’s going on nowadays?

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The Information Revolution – Fought To a Draw:

Wired magazine reported on a study suggesting that us Americans aren’t a whole lot more up on current events than we were back in 1989.

More than a decade after the Internet went mainstream, the world's richest information source hasn't necessarily made its users any more informed. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans, on average, are less able to correctly answer questions about current events than they were in 1989.

While it’s surprising to us that Americans can’t name Vice President Dick Cheney as readily as people used to know Vice President Dan Quayle, in Americans defense we’re more aware of political facts like “Who is the Speaker of the House?” and “Is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court conservative, moderate or liberal?”

And sure, “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” viewers score higher than CNN and Fox News viewers, but they didn’t even ask Public Eye readers. We know you’d ace the quiz.

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