FILM PROMPTS RIOTS, MURDER OF U.S. AMBASSADOR

U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three members of his staff were killed early today (Wednesday) in Benghazi, Libya by protesters angered over a two-hour film, Innocence of Muslims, ridiculing the Islamic religion in general and its Prophet Muhammad in particular. The State Department did not immediately confirmed the death of the ambassador, but news reports […]

YET ANOTHER ARREST IN NEWS CORP’S NEWSPAPER SCANDAL

Add a 22nd name to the list of journalists working for Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, the London Sun, and the now-defunct Sunday tabloid News of the World, who have been arrested in connection with the ongoing investigation into voicemail hacking and the alleged bribery of police and public officials. Acting on information received from News […]

LIBYA COVERAGE: AL-JAZEERA FIRST WITH CRITICS; FOX NEWS, WITH VIEWERS

Al-Jazeera English attracted most of the critical praise for its coverage of the assault on Tripoli by Libyan rebels this week, but with only a handful of cable outlets carrying it in the U.S., that’s about all it got. Among the major cable news outfits, Fox News Channel drew the most viewers, averaging 950,000. CNN […]

CNN: THE TIDAL WAVE TURNS

CNN has yet to discover a formula for holding on to the viewers who flock to it when disasters strike. With interest in the tumult in Libya fading and with the Japanese nuclear crisis waning, audiences deserted the cable news network and returned to the provocative commentators on Fox and MSNBC. Today’s (Friday) New York […]

IS WHITE HOUSE SNUBBING FOX NEWS AGAIN?

Reviving the conflict between the White House and Fox News, Fox News Sunday‘s host Chris Wallace on Sunday complained that while the White House had made Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates available to NBC, ABC, and CBS for their Sunday-morning public-affairs programs, it did not make them available for […]

CNN GOES TO COMMERCIAL DURING LIVE OBAMA ADDRESS

CNN appeared to be asleep at the wheel on Saturday when it failed to provide live audio coverage of President Obama’s statement in Brazil about the U.S.’s planned intervention in Libya. While Fox News and MSNBC aired it live, CNN was broadcasting a commercial and made no mention of it until after the president had […]

AL-JAZEERA, COMCAST OPEN TALKS

In the wake of overwhelmingly positive critical and public reaction to its coverage of the upheaval in the Middle East, available in the U.S. via the Internet, al-Jazeera English has begun negotiating with Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, hoping finally to land an outlet on its system. In an interview with Reuters, al-Jazeera English […]