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By Patrick Cockburn
$16.08
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By Chris Hedges
$19.00
$22
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“There was a point when we started praying for people to die,” Libby Phelps Alvarez, the granddaughter of the man who founded the church, told NBC’s “Today” in an interview that aired Wednesday.
Posted on Feb 6, 2013
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“In 1983, 50 corporations controlled a majority of media in America. In 1990 the number had dropped to 23. In 1997, 10. And today, six,” Bill Moyers says in conversation with Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont.
Posted on Dec 11, 2012
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It’s not often a televised professional football game gets purposely political. But Sunday night’s matchup did just that after an apparent murder-suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher.
Posted on Dec 3, 2012
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Jon Stewart takes aim at NBC for its decision to edit out a tribute to victims of the 2005 London subway bombings during the Olympics opening ceremonies and instead show Ryan Seacrest interviewing swimmer Michael Phelps.
Posted on Jul 31, 2012
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It’s the kind of mashup only the crazy Internet boomers of the ’90s could cook up: Why don’t Microsoft—or MSN rather—and NBC get married? Now that Keith Olbermann is off to college, the romance just isn’t there anymore.
Posted on Jul 15, 2012
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asterix611 (CC-BY)
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By Justin Elliott, ProPublica —
Many of the country’s biggest media companies—which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations—are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.
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How are we to process the media-made spectacle that was Sarah Palin’s cameo on Tuesday’s “Today” show? Do we care? Not really, but it does make good material for Jon Stewart and his “Daily Show” cohorts, particularly the hilarious John Oliver, who has the entertaining (if alarming) task of interviewing Palin’s fans outside 30 Rock.
Posted on Apr 4, 2012
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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By Adam Hochschild, TomDispatch —
For all the spectacle of thundering cavalry charges, muddy trenches and wartime love and loss, the current popular storytellers of the First World War skip over the conflict’s greatest moral drama by leaving out part of its cast of characters.
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YouTube
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The funny thing about certain TV watchdogs getting their collective knickers in a twist over upstart pop star M.I.A.’s bird-flipping antics during her performance with Madonna and Nicki Minaj at Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show is that millions of Americans might otherwise have blinked and missed it.
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Jeffrey Beall (CC-BY-SA)
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After negotiating various new agreements, Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN and DirecTV will altogether pay close to $6 billion a year to broadcast NFL games to a football-addicted America.
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Wikimedia Commons / Kyle Cassidy (CC-BY)
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Because this is just what the gravely endangered journalistic profession needs, NBC has elected to pluck former first daughter Chelsea Clinton from her hardscrabble life and groom her to become a special correspondent for “NBC Nightly News.”
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Meredith Attwell Baker, one of two Republican FCC commissioners, voted in late January to approve the merger of Comcast and NBC. Less than four months later, she announced that she is leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for the merged company. (more)
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That’s what MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said on his show last week, when he admitted to his viewers that Donald Trump’s recent “presidential tour” was never anything but a PR campaign by NBC to promote the next season of Trump’s show, “The Apprentice.”
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Flickr / cursedthing
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Speaking to a Netroots gathering, the Minnesota senator called net neutrality the “free speech issue of our time” and condemned the FCC’s decision to “create essentially two Internets.” Franken also said of the FCC-approved union of Comcast and NBC, “I hate this merger” ... (more)
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“The Simpsons” took a cheeky jab at the media in general, and Fox News more pointedly, in Sunday’s opening sequence of the long-running cartoon—which, it should be observed, makes its home on Fox as well.
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msnbc.msn.com
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Perhaps it was in the name of being fair and balanced, but whatever the reason, MSNBC brass decided to give “Morning Joe” anchor Joe Scarborough the Keith Olbermann treatment for making campaign contributions—but in this case to Republican candidates.
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Those of you who watched the sort-of-enlightening “60 Minutes” episode last weekend in which Conan O’Brien carefully cha-cha’d around the issue of Jay Leno’s late-night hijacking of his “Tonight Show” gig might find this “Funny or Die” spoof, well, funny.
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Twitter.com / conanobrien
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Late night chatterbox Conan O’Brien, whose career woes briefly made him the perfect entertainer for a nation of unemployed people, is headed back to work. TBS, which already has a late night show helmed by George Lopez, managed to secure the rights to Conan’s yuk-yuks ahead of Fox.
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adrian8_8
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Days after the luge accident that killed a Georgian Olympian, we still can’t shake the disturbing images and sound of his body flying off the track at 90 mph and striking a steel pole. That trauma was delivered in full high definition by the three major networks, which all reached the same appalling decision to air the footage. (continued)
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NBC’s “Tonight Show” meltdown has given plenty of fodder to the network’s late night competitors, who, for the most part, seem to side with Conan O’Brien over Jay Leno.
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By David Sirota — Thousands of miles from the San Fernando Valley’s seedy studios, the adult entertainment business is alive and panting in Haiti. Like any X-rated content, this smut is all flesh and no substantive plot.
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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The suddenly controversial comic Jay Leno, who’s still embroiled in a public spat about “The Tonight Show” with outgoing host Conan O’Brien, will be the main act at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where well-dressed members of Washington’s media elite rub elbows with politicians ... (continued)
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Until they shut him down, “Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien is free to spend NBC’s millions doing things like dressing up the world’s most expensive car as a mouse and giving it a Rolling Stones theme song. This may be a bit unseemly in the middle of an economic meltdown, but as revenge goes, it’s pretty sweet.
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Flickr / vtdainfo
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If you think things get nasty in the world of electoral politics, consider all the fun that’s gone down in recent days in late-night comedy circles, what with the sticky tangle that NBC execs got themselves into after handling the highly charged Jay Leno-vs.-Conan O’Brien “Tonight Show” debacle with all the delicacy and subtlety of a jackhammer. ... (continued)
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Wikimedia Commons / Efloch
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This is a time when celebrity can come in handy, and one star in particular, George Clooney, is lending his power to the cause of helping earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The actor-director is also rallying some of his famous friends to join him for a “mega-telethon” he’s planning, according to The Wrap.
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flickr.com / TechFever
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In a deal that will dramatically affect both the story lines on NBC’s “30 Rock” as well as the future of media conglomeration, Comcast, the country’s biggest cable provider, has acquired NBC Universal from General Electric for an estimated $30 billion.
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Flickr / Edgar Zuniga
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Cable giant Comcast, feeling the pressure from an expanded field of video and Internet access competitors, has decided to go ahead and buy NBC-Universal. The deal, which is all but done, makes Comcast one of the biggest media conglomerates (on par with Disney), and the proud owner of this.
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femexvoleibol.com
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The American television industry is in crisis, according to Advertising Age critic Bob Garfield, who figures prominently in The Wrap’s two-part look into the future of the industry. In fact, says Garfield, we’re seeing early signs of “the total collapse of the network television model.”
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Flickr / NCinDC
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Since the year 2000, National Public Radio has increased its audience by 47 percent, with an 8.7 percent jump in the last year alone. That might have something to do with the collapse of the news media over the same period. While newspapers try to compete with Craigslist, NPR has acquired more foreign bureaus—and a bigger morning audience—than the major network news divisions.
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Conservative scarecrow Ann Coulter insists she was banned by NBC, and to prove it, she accepted the network’s invitation to appear on air. Wait a second! The ban, like so much of what Coulter talks about, seems to exist only in her head and the pages of the Drudge Report.
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original: drudgereport.com
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NBC has been taking heat for scheduling a book-pushing session with Ann Coulter, but according to the author, her “Today” show appearances have been canceled. Drudge adds that “insiders” at the Peacock say the network has banned ol’ skin and bones for good, though that seems too good to be true.
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The news that Pastor Rick Warren, who opposes gay marriage, will give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration caused many gay Americans to take offense. NBC’s Ann Curry point-blanked Warren about his politics in Friday’s edition of “Dateline NBC.”
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John McCain and his running mate respond to Colin Powell’s endorsement of the other ticket, which the general said was motivated in part by McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin.
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It’s hard to make fun of someone to their face, although Alec Baldwin made an effort when Sarah Palin stopped by “Saturday Night Live” for some free PR. Tina Fey managed to dodge a direct confrontation with the woman she has so ably mocked.
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collage: Flickr / videocrab / transplanted mountaineer
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Flush with cash, Barack Obama has purchased air time on at least two networks for a half-hour special to air a week before the election. No word yet on how much a half-hour of prime-time sweeps air costs, but it’s certainly more than Ross Perot paid back in ‘92.
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Parody is the best policy, as evidenced by the boost that “Saturday Night Live” has recently enjoyed, thanks to Sarah Palin lookalike (and sometime comedy star) Tina Fey. We kid, but so do Fey, Queen Latifah and Jason Sudeikis—playing Republican VP candidate Palin, PBS’ Gwen Ifill and Democratic VP pick Joe Biden, respectively—in this clip from the show’s Oct. 4 episode.
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Satire by Andy Borowitz —
A member of the U.S. Olympic diving team was disqualified from competition today when it was learned that he did not have a sufficiently compelling human story line to exploit on the NBC telecast of the worldwide sporting event.
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In case you missed it, here’s part of President Bush’s sit-down with NBC’s Olympic host Bob Costas on Sunday, during which a somewhat squirmy Bush talked about what he said to Vladimir Putin during the opening festivities, lamenting how the fighting in Georgia was conflicting with the spirit of the Olympics.
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jossip.com
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When two big TV pundits with larger-than-life egos play out their personal grudge match on their shows, and their respective parent networks join in the fray, guess who loses? In the case of Keith Olbermann v. Bill O’Reilly, just about everybody loses, according to this piece from Variety.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak, file
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By Chris Hedges — Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers.
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Flickr / soldiersmediacenter
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Coverage of the Iraq war on American newscasts gets a fraction of the airtime it has in past years. Some network journalists complain that they have to beg to get Iraq stories on the air. Although the war in Afghanistan has recently gotten more coverage, no American network has a full-time correspondent on the ground there.
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U.S. Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ben A. Gonzales
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Brian Williams filled in for the late Tim Russert on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” but it was announced that his own predecessor as anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” Tom Brokaw, will be the moderator of “Meet the Press” through Election Day.
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After his rather startling Rupert-Murdoch-as-evil-pirate impression, Keith Olbermann takes a moment in this clip to fire back at a report, printed Friday in the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column, that he’s angling for the late Tim Russert’s job as anchor of “Meet the Press.” Regardless of whether there’s truth behind the rumors, it’s apparent that Olbermann has a very rosy view of how entertainment agents operate.
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popwatch.ew.com
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NBC News will keep its Sunday lineup intact by giving Brian Williams a temporary stint as host of “Meet the Press,” replacing the late Tim Russert for the time being. Because Russert and Williams teamed up for the Jan. 15 Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, many viewers might be primed to make the transition along with Williams.
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flickr/hyku
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Veteran journalist and “Meet the Press” moderator Tim Russert died Friday of an apparent heart attack while recording voice-overs for Sunday’s show, according to NBC. Russert, 58, was also the network’s Washington bureau chief and had grilled politicians and public figures on “Meet the Press” since 1991.
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DoD / R.D. Ward
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By Scott Ritter — As a critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, especially when unsubstantiated allegations of weapons of mass destruction are used to sell a war, I am no stranger to the concept of questioning authority. It’s too bad more journalists can’t say the same thing.
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NBC political director Chuck Todd, basking in hypotheticals, repeatedly explains that, while it simply isn’t done, “if we called things like this ... you would say, ‘OK, the pledged delegate count is over.’ ” Guess which of the candidates featured this video on his YouTube channel?
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By Amy Goodman — One pundit called the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas “a lovefest.” It may well have been, but only because the corporate sponsor of the debate, General Electric-owned NBC News and its cable news channel MSNBC, rescinded its invitation to candidate Dennis Kucinich.
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bp1.blogspot.com
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich just can’t catch a break in Nevada. First NBC invited him to its debate there, then told him to stay away. A court intervened and said he could appear, but then just an hour before the event, the Nevada Supreme Court decided that NBC could bar Kucinich.
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New Iranian President Wants to Heal ‘Old Wound’ With U.S.
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