ANOTHER REALITY CONTESTANT SCANDAL SURFACES

For years, producers of reality shows have promised to do a better job of vetting contestants after news reports have revealed that several of those contestants have lied about their past. In 2009, a contestant on a VH1 reality series turned out to have been a murder suspect. He later committed suicide. The latest scandal […]

CBS NEWS BEEFING UP FOREIGN COVERAGE

After reportedly laying off “dozens” of staff members last year and some 120 members of its 1,600-person staff in August of this year, CBS News is beefing up its international news coverage, the Washington Post reported today (Tuesday). The newspaper quoted CBS News chairman Jeff Fager as saying that as part of the news division’s […]

NATO ADMITS U.S. SOLDIER KILLED BBC REPORTER

After initially maintaining that a BBC journalist covering a NATO operation in Afghanistan in July had been killed by insurgents, NATO acknowledged on Thursday that the reporter, Ahmed Omed Khpulwak, had been shot by a U.S. soldier who, it said, mistook him for a suicide bomber. According to the NATO report, the soldier saw the […]

OBAMA’S SPEECH ON AFGHANISTAN NOT A BIG DRAW — FOR HIM

President Obama’s 15-minute address to the nation on Afghanistan Wednesday night was watched by 25 million viewers on nine networks, Nielsen Research reported on Thursday. It was the smallest audience for any Obama address during his presidency. (His announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden last month drew 56.5 million viewers despite the fact […]

25 MILLION VIEW OBAMA’S SPEECH ON AFGHANISTAN

President Obama’s 15-minute address to the nation on Afghanistan Wednesday night was watched by 25 million viewers on nine networks, Nielsen Research reported today (Thursday). Networks carrying the speech included the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, as well as cable networks CNN, Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and TF.

WOODRUFF FOUNDATION TO PRESENT AFGHANISTAN PLAYS

The Bob Woodruff Foundation, set up by the ABC News anchorman who was seriously injured while covering the war in Iraq, is teaming up with the British Council to screen a 7-hour three-part play, The Great Game, to military personnel at the Pentagon. The play, created by Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre in London, traces the history […]

MEDIA IGNORE RELEASE OF SECRET WAR LOGS

While revelations about torture, civilian deaths, and out-of-control private contractors contained in the latest WikiLeaks documents — nearly 400,000 of them — made international headlines over the weekend, they were given short shrift by U.S. broadcast and cable news services. Germany’s Der Spiegel observed on Sunday: “Neither the Afghanistan war nor Iraq are issues in […]

AL JAZEERA REPORTERS RELEASED BY COALITION FORCES

Two Afghan journalists working for the Arab satellite news network al-Jazeera were released by coalition forces on Friday after being arrested in their homes the previous Monday on charges of aiding “insurgent propaganda networks and their affiliates.” The arrests of Mohammad Nadir and Rahmatullah Naikzad, who worked for both al-Jazeera and the Associated Press, had […]

MADDOW: WHEN ANCHORS TRAVEL, THEIR RATINGS SHRINK

Despite the widespread perception that TV news organizations send their top anchors to scenes of major events in order to boost their ratings, the opposite may be the result. Appearing on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night talk show on NBC, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow conceded that her on-the-scene reports about the pullout of the last combat troops […]

SWEDEN’S PIRATE PARTY OFFERS ASYLUM TO WIKILEAKS

Sweden’s Pirate Party, which currently hosts the Pirate Bay, the BitTorrent site that has repeatedly clashed with the movie and record industries and government authorities over alleged copyright infringement, has offered to give the controversial WikiLeaks.com a safe harbor. The offer came after WikiLeaks released more than 90,000 secret U.S. government documents about the war […]