One of my biggest media complaints is how modern news reports condense all news into 30 second sound bites when the truth is most news stories deserve much more coverage.
Well tonight NBC News has turned back the clock to the good old days of broadcast journalism when people we trusted gave us the news, people like Huntley Brinkley on NBC.
Save Savannah
They are the only broadcast network going to prime time news coverage from 9-11 eastern with constant news coverage of the elections, and coverage will resume after the local news from 11:30 to 3:30 am.
Brian Williams and the news staff will finally give us the type of balanced news coverage we deserve and NBC should be cheered for restoring journalism values to network coverage. .
It seems that the lower they slip in the Nielsen ratings the more radical MSNBC has to become to try and distort the record of Fox News. Every time MSNBC starts to do something right their seemingly overwhelming jealousy of the Fox News network led by Roger Ailes who consistently over-powers MSNBC in the ratings causes the liberal leftists to do something stupid.
Yesterday Fox landed a prized one-on-one interview with President Obama. Since Fox is regularly on the White House hit list it was a little surprising unless you know politics in which case you would know Obama was smart in risking the interview to reach millions of conservative and independent Americans he normally cannot reach.
The interview with Bret Baier was not without it's lively exchanges and of course the President and Baier both had a job to do. In the end Obama wins points just for entering the lion's den with Fox. He might even win over some support for his health care bill.
But leave it to MSNBC to take a news event and edit the tapes to make it look like Bret was badgering the President with constant interruptions. Obama does not need false news reports by MSNBC to protect him. His own ratings far exceed the MSNBC leftist ratings and by now he knows what to expect with Fox and does quite well.
The edited tape was used on all the MSNBC shows today and of course the wailing liberals are screaming that Fox embarrassed the President. Nonsense. The Pres did quite alright. It was the network that embarrassed itself. Morning Joe, the MSNBC program claiming to give balanced reporting though it can never quite give up their hope to destroy conservatives and Republicans, started using it with Joe mentioning that the tape had been manipulated. But by the second and third hours of news when the tape was shown not a word was mentioned about manipulating it.
In recent months Morning Joe had started to be interesting and informative to even us non-comrades as they seemed to back off on the unfair tactics and actually do a little reporting even if the guest list is dominated by liberals. When they fall back into smear reporting and crass tactics they ruin everything they have done to improve their image. Fox News and Sarah Palin are not the enemy of MSNBC, they only dominate their competitor burying them with almost five times the number of viewers.
Dirty tricks like editing tapes to make it look bad are yellow journalism tricks of the past, I thought. I have launched a campaign to save Savannah Guthrie from NBC and MSNBC for the very reason that MSNBC reporters cannot simply report but must toe the party line, even if it means using dirty tricks. It is actions like today on MSNBC that will forever keep them buried by Fox in the ratings because though the producers may think it is cute, the people know it is stupid.
There are not many reporters out there in the media wonderland whose careers seem worth saving as there are not many reporters left period. Most have chosen to get sucked into the television ratings game and have lost their objectivity as they now play a variety of roles from reporting to speculating to advocating positions to biased news analysis.
Now there is nothing fair and balanced about it and anyone from Fox, MSNBC, CNN or even PBS that claims to be fair and balanced has clearly lost their marbles or ability to tell the truth. The truth is the media business is all about sensationalism, partisanship, making someone look bad or good depending on that person's conformance to the network party line, and even manipulation of truth.
Why the bizarre behavior of cable network and even major media reporters would drive a journalism purist to suicide if they took them seriously. Yet after all the exposure of so called news celebrities it seems as if the people of America have got better things to do. Of course that's not what you would think listening to the ego maniacs on the air pontificating on what you need to believe.
However, facts are facts and these are the facts. On a typical weekday on cable TV news, which includes Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, HTN (CNN Headline News) and CNBC, Fox has the 13 top ranked shows on cable news. In a dismal response by the liberal MSNBC, viewership and target audience numbers are both down from last year with Keith Olbermann, the flagship of MSNBC, losing 29% of average viewers and 43% of the target audience the past year. Perhaps people are tiring of the nonsense.
Base on average number of viewers, the top morning and prime time shows at Fox are O'Rielly 3.5 million viewers, Beck 2.8 million, Hannity at 2.5 million, Baier at 2.5 million and Shep at 2.1 million. At MSNBC Olbermann is 963,000, Maddow 802,000, Matthews 580,000 and Ed at 500,000. Fox and Friends has 1.1 million while The Morning Joe show has 340,000. The news isn't much better off at CNN as the Rick Sanchez and Wolf Shows have lost 52% of their target audience and 43% of average viewership the past year.
So Fox has been increasing while the other networks decreasing. A typical show at Fox gets 4 times the audience of the MSNBC show at the same time. Does that mean America is 4 times more conservative than liberal? What it does mean is that while 20 million or so watch cable news shows every day about 295 million Americans don't so maybe there is hope for America.
Then there is Savannah Guthrie, named NBC White House correspondent not long ago who was recently given a show, The Daily Rundown, by NBC on MSNBC following the Morning Joe Show. It is too bad that MSNBC had already lost a chunk of the morning audience before they gave it to her and that just 340,000 out of 315 million Americans are watching Morning Joe. What kind of promotion is that?
Truth is she was put on MSNBC to increase the ratings at a time when NBC, including MSNBC, was being sold by General Electric to Comcast Cable. What in the world will a profit driven owner like Comcast do with MSNBC? At least GE stood to make millions of dollars off Obama and his Green America programs so they had a reason to take the liberal position and support him.
As Obama collapsed in his ratings this past year so did MSNBC and it was no accident Obama's liberal agenda was not what America wanted or expected to hear from him. Yet he seems oblivious of the polls, the lack of support for his agenda, and the beating liberals are taking in the elections since he was elected. That does not bode well for MSNBC who attached their hopes to a falling star.
Savannah Guthrie has great credentials as a trained journalist and lawyer and has done an exceptional job of avoiding the tendency of NBC reporters to take the liberal slant to everything. You can bet MSNBC will be trying to mold her into one of their liberal mouthpieces like Olbermann, Maddow and Matthews. It could ruin her career.
So I want to start a Save Savannah campaign to get her out of MSNBC and NBC before Comcast takes over the networks. Fair and balanced is a phrase used by all these cable networks but none can really live up to it. She still does. Help Save Savannah before it is too late. Write NBC and MSNBC, and tell them to not make her into a liberal puppet. Better yet, write Savannah and tell her to get out before it is too late.
By the way, to be fair and balanced and fully transparent, let me say the fact she was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona and graduated from the University of Arizona has nothing to do with it. The fact I went to the University of Arizona and played basketball there also has nothing to do with it. The fact I used to go watch Linda Ronstadt sing in Tucson, met Sonny and Cher there, got to sing with the Kingsmen of Louie Louie fame, was a frat brother with Gary Lewis, watched two other fraternity brothers perform on the ABC TV hit show Hootenanny, and dated the Queen of the Rose Bowl parade who was in my class had nothing to do with it.
The fact Arizona is one of my favorite places in the world and I remain close to the Hopi Native Americans of Arizona also has nothing to do with it nor does the fact the Grand Canyon is one of the wonders of the world. Okay, the fact I have worked with the National Park Service exploring ancient and sacred Native American sites, some thousands of years old, also has nothing to do with it.
I admit that riding on horseback four hours up a deserted canyon above the Grand Canyon with Park Service archeologists and my crew to film one of these sites also had nothing to do with it. I mean I had a coyote, the trickster, cross my path and soon after got thrown from my horse, broke three ribs, was hours from medical help so I kept riding and filming for 8 more hours. How could that have anything to do with it?
No bias on my part. In spite of our University of Arizona and Tucson ties I've never met Savannah. But I have seen her work and we need her to report the truth to America about what is happening in our nation's capitol. Not the NBC liberal truth but the honest truth like she does. I say Save Savannah and there is hope for the future.
Let it not be said that those who report the news are not the news as that is one of the journalistic standards in this day and age of egocentric journalism. My stories often call attention to the violators of journalistic integrity disguised as our nation's news media, and the elitist media of major newspapers and television.
More often than not the elite reporters have agendas that checkmate their desire for objectivity, non-biased reporting or telling the story of the subject of the article. Such a mindset leads directly to the reporter judging rather than reporting on the person being discussed.
Another distraction from the truth for reporters of today is the intense pressure on them from bosses or peers to write books, once again essays in judgment and violations on the confidentiality of news sources for the purpose of creating celebrity status for the reporters. In the eyes of the newspaper or TV network such celebrity status translates to recognition, ratings and money.
Of course it is little different than the pressure put on university professors, especially scientists, who are viewed by the school administration as a revenue source more than a teaching instrument for kids. Often the grants brought in by these professors pay for the cost of the department or unit. It is an atmosphere for corruption as altered test results may make the difference between winning or losing millions of dollars.
In journalism, however, it never used to be that way until the reporter or TV anchor retired. No one ever wrote books while they were supposed to be reporting the news. When I was a reporter it was impossible to tell whether the seasoned old pros were Democrat or Republican, normally they were Independent, or how they felt on any topic. They reported the news, did not editorialize or inject bias into the stories.
Oh but for the good old days. Today most reporters are not like that. Once the press was highly respected and their writing was the protection of the people from corruption. The Fourth Estate, as I like to attribute to Edmund Burke in 1792 was the English reference to the press who covered the actions of the English government. In America the press was considered important enough to protect with the Bill of Rights and the shield of the Constitution.
Today the definition of press includes almost every kind of trash known to men along with a few good papers and TV programs. Thus reporters who seem to uphold the principles of our founding fathers are few and far between. Most are entertainers like the O'Rielly, Beck or Hannity of Fox News or Olbermann, Matthews, Schultz and Maddows of MSNBC.
While Fox dominates the ratings as conservatives must dominate in America where limited federal government and states rights have long been held sacred, none of those mentioned from the right and the left would ever be accused of objective reporting. As TV network news self-destructed over the past 30 years the audience has moved from the big boys to the cable news where the news of the world must be in sound bites and 2 minute stories. It also ceased being news and became entertainment.
Once in while I come across journalistic performances so foreign to our normal trash talk and sound bites that I must draw attention to these reporters as they may be the last of the endangered species and you should enjoy them while they exist.
Two major recent stories have resulted in new candidates for the Coltons Point Times "Who can you trust" news reporters Hall of Fame. The tragic earthquake in Haiti was the first in which the real news people stepped forward to tell the real story of what was going on in the rescue and recovery effort. I must say I was surprised and pleased to discover gems of reporting amongst the many people covering this disaster.
First and standing alone in superior reporting was Anderson Cooper of CNN, a network that at least tries to report the news and to remain somewhat unbiased. As a result few people watch the network except when in depth news is sought like in the case of Haiti. Cooper should earn a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage from being one of the first on the scene to his fearless travels to every nook and corner of the disaster.
His stories pointing out the flaws of the rescue and recovery efforts when the government officials were telling a different story probably saved many lives. He discovered medical facilities with no medicine first, mass burials with no identification of bodies, the failure to distribute food, water and medicine when it was sitting at the airport for days, and on and on.
When Cooper reports you get empathy, compassion, emotion and truth in doses not often seen in reporters and you just know he will not stop digging for information until he finds the truth. His stories told the horrors of the thousands of deaths, the potential for thousands more from untreated injuries, and the sad failure to search for the 100,000 or more trapped under the debris. Cooper and his 360 program on CNN are a must if you seek truth.
Most surprising to me was the addition of Doctor Sanjay Gupta also of CNN. May times before I had seen him but the seriousness of the stories were never much so I did not notice him. But in Haiti, he performed as no other using his skills as a medical reporter combined with his skills as a neurosurgeon to tell the story and save a life by treating victims he found.
One night when a Belgium hospital team abandoned patients on the operating table for fear of their own safety Sanjay stayed at the tent and spent all night treating the abandoned patients. His reporting deadlines were sacrificed while saving lives.
When Cooper and Sanjay did joint reports which they did often they were always humble while upset over the treatment of the victims. Very subtly they asked critical questions about the promises for help and the failure to deliver and many times their reports resulted in help arriving.
The third reporter deserving recognition for her Haiti performance was Ann Curry of the NBC Today program who was sent to the disaster and literally scoured the city from one end to the other with no regard for the danger to herself in order to make certain the true stories of the tragedy were broadcast on the Today show every morning. I must say Curry was also a pleasant surprise since I was so accustomed to the entertainment aspects of the morning news shows but now I know she has a great news presence.
In regards to the Massachusetts Senate race the coverage was generally lousy as the bias of reporters dominated their reports. Thus the right was overly rejoicing and the left was overly depressed. It does not occur to either of them that the Independents embrace neither the right or the left but the middle.
However, I have been watching the evolution of Savannah Guthrie of NBC and she came into her own recently when they made her co-host of a morning show on MSNBC, The Daily Rundown this year. Ever since she left a lucrative law practice to be a journalist she has been on a fast track spending about a year with Court TV, jumping to NBC, and soon becoming a White House correspondent with Chuck Todd.
I knew there was something about Savannah that made her special and it took a while to discover she was a Tucson, Arizona native who graduated with honors from the University of Arizona, my school, and Georgetown Law School. She was always first in everything. Unlike most network correspondents she seems to have no axe to grind and no political philosophy to advocate but actually reports the news as fair and unbiased as you will find.
The Los Angeles Times named her one of the top female entertainment personalities in the nation to watch in 2010 this past December, she ranked #3, and was the highest ranked from the news media. As long as MSNBC does not corrupt her and she seems far too strong for that to happen she is a delight to watch and a fountain of truth and information. Her new show is a must see.
So Ann Curry and Savannah Guthrie of NBC are the two newest additions to my very limited Hall of Fame along with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN. You should give them a try as they are rocketing to fame based on talent and truth.
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