PELLEY SAYS SOCIAL MEDIA UNDERMINING SOLID REPORTING

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley had a response on Friday to those online critics of the mainstream media who say that they would rather get their news from social media than from CBS and the New York Times. “Twitter, Facebook and Reddit: that’s not journalism. That’s gossip. Journalism was invented as an antidote to […]

OH, YES, THERE WAS AN INAUGURATION TODAY

The TV networks this year are devoting far less time to the presidential inaugural ceremonies than they did a year ago. “The difference is startling,” the New York Daily News commented today (Monday). In an interview with USA Today, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer, who has covered 12 inaugurations, compared the second inauguration to a second […]

NBC WON’T AIR DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION ON WEDNESDAY

There was a time when all three major television networks broadcast the Republican and Democratic national conventions “gavel to gavel.” No longer. In more recent years, they’ve reduced their coverage to one hour per night. And now, it appears, NBC won’t present any coverage at all of the Democratic convention on Wednesday, Sept. 5. That’s […]

NEWS DILEMMA: OLYMPICS OR KILLINGS?

NBC News was faced with a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma over the weekend after seven persons were shot to death, including the perpetrator, and three were wounded at a Sikh temple in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek. Should it cut away from its coverage of the Olympics to report on the events at the scene […]

BBC JUBILANT OVER RATINGS FOR JUBILEE

The three-day celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 60th anniversary on the throne attracted massive TV audiences on each day, according to preliminary ratings figures. The BBC’s coverage of Sunday’s Jubilee pageant, in which the queen and Prince Philip proceeded down the Thames in the Royal Barge accompanied by a thousand smaller vessels, attracted 10.3 million viewers, […]

OLBERMANN COMPLAINS ABOUT CURRENT TV; CONSERVATIVES AGREE

For once, conservatives appear to be agreeing with the liberal commentator Keith Olbermann. Olbermann reportedly had been complaining about the lack of funding by Current TV for coverage of the Iowa caucus vote on Tuesday. On Wednesday he told the Hollywood Reporter that he had decided not to participate in Current’s coverage because “I was […]

LET THE TV PRIMARY COVERAGE BEGIN

To the relief of everyone connected with TV coverage of Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses, the polls turned out to be right on the mark. Political pollsters, who have sometimes proved to be embarrassingly off-target in recent elections, had predicted a very tight race between Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. No one had realized how […]

SO WHAT’S OLBERMANN’S CURRENT STATUS?

Speculation has arisen that Keith Olbermann is once again battling his bosses, in this case, the ownership and management of his current cable outlet Current TV. The New York Times is reporting that Olbermann will not be anchoring the channel’s coverage of the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary in January but will be […]

WEINER CAPTURES 33 PERCENT OF CABLE NEWS’S TIME

Cable news networks devoted 33 percent of their time last week to the sexting scandal involving Congressman Anthony Weiner. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the broadcast network television newscasts devoted 14 percent of their time to the scandal, slightly above online news websites, which nevertheless amounted to 14 percent of their news […]

TSUNAMI SWEEPS OVER TV

Japan’s NHK network has provided gripping coverage of the earthquake and tsunami that struck the country early on (Friday). Throughout the day, NHK tracked the devastating progress of the deluge, showing the massive tidal wave carrying boats onto farmlands, sweeping up homes and cars — and people — and carrying them away. The television network […]

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