Geraldo was on The O’Reilly Factor tonight. One of the things discussed was Allesandra Stanley’s article in the New York Times regarding an incident in New Orleans involving Rivera; and incident Rivera says never happened and offered photographic proof that it didn’t happen the way it was written in The Times. Rivera said he is proceeding with a legal letter if the Times doesn’t issue a retraction or correction. Johnny Dollar has the full transcript…
From TVNewser…
More importantly, why is this being discussed at all? Aren’t there more important things going on in the world? Promote the passion of your journalists and the quality of your coverage, not a P.R. hit on a late-night talk show…
While I agree with the sentiment that there are more important things out there, I can answer why it’s being discussed. It’s because there are no Dan Rathers, Tom Brokaws, or Peter Jennings left to do it. The fact that Letterman’s bookers chose a cable news anchor over their own CBS News personel is telling indeed and the biggest sign yet of cable news surplanting broadcast news in terms of significance. So the resulting fracas over whose anchor ends up there is an important part of the Cable News PR war…
Earlier today ICN noted the Salon piece that included a version of events in the Geraldo Rivera rescue of Floritta Greve, a version that was subsequently disputed with an explanation by a Fox News Exec here. Well Keith Olbermann just ran that bit on Countdown, labeling Rivera today’s “Worst Person In The World” but failed to note Fox’s explanation. I would have figured that word would have gotten out by now that Fox disputed the version of events in the article. So what’s the deal here?
Another “media finds its spine” analysis; this one courtesy of Gal Beckerman of CJR Online…
From Wednesday on, there were many examples of a new anger, a tone of indignation and frustration, creeping into the voices of our coolest and most collected TV personalities. Anderson Cooper cut off Senator Mary Landrieu while she was busy thanking her political allies, telling her that for local people her politicking “cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours … Do you get the anger that is out here?”
CNBC announced today that “Hurricane Katrina: Crisis and Recovery” will air Monday through Friday at 7 pm EST from now until further notice. Conan O’Brien’s program will move to 8 pm EST.
CNN reporters blog…
Gary Tuchman in New Orleans:
As we’ve been touring around the New Orleans area, we’ve seen packs of animals, packs of dogs. We were on Interstate 10 a short while ago and saw six Labrador retrievers walking together in a pack down the highway.
I’m actually quite embarrassed that I didn’t pick up on this until now but MSNBC has a dedicated blog to Katrina stories. The two writers, Mike Brunker, MSNBC.com’s West Coast news editor, amd Andrew Locke, in charge of editorial media strategy for MSNBC.com, have been traveling through areas damaged by Katrina and reporting on what they find. This blog has been going since last Friday at least. Here is a sampling of today’s entry…
While much of the relief effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has rightly been focused on those forced from their homes by the storm, another class of victim has gotten very little attention: People like Darvin and Madonna Sullivan, who are still at their homes even though they can’t live in them.
Fox News Channel had its highest Total Day average in 2005 on Friday with over 3,000,000 viewers. It beat the previous high which was set only the day before. It beat CNN and MSNBC combined in Primetime’s total average and the Demo. Studio B had its highest total viewer number ever with over 4.3 million viewers. Your World, Special Report, The Fox Report, The O’Reilly Factor, and Hannity and Colmes all broke their highs for the year…with O’Reilly and H&C topping the 5,000,000 mark.
In the show breakdown, MSNBC’s simulcast of the hurricane benefit did slightly better than Hardball but not better than Live & Direct or Scarborough Country. More surprising is that Larry King Live and Newsnight both were outperformed by Anderson Cooper 360 and Paula Zahn Now…
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From CNN:
CNN.com Labor Day Weekend Numbers:
Saturday, 9/03 - 1.6 million video plays, 41 million page views*
Sunday, 9/04 - 1.3 million video plays, 41 million page views*
Monday, 9/05 - 1.6 million video plays, 48 million page views*
Totals - 4.5 Million Video Plays, 130 Million Page Views
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Salon’s Stephen Elliot writes about conditions in New Orleans. But the odd part of the story and the one that caught ICN’s eye was this anecdote buried in the middle of the article pertaining to Geraldo Rivera’s rescue of Floritta Greve from Sunday…(sub/free pass req.)
UPDATE: An FNC exec tells ICN there was only one shoot. Flo forgot her bag and Geraldo and the camera crew took her back to retrieve it. Flo may be on At Large w/ Geraldo this weekend
Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She’s wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He’s wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. “Her relative called one of our stations,” Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.
FOX News has hired Manny Alvarez as a Medical Contributor. Alvarez, known as “Dr. Manny”, was most recently the Health Science reporter for Telemundo and developed a nightly news segment called “A Dose Of Health”. He has been the Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Science at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey since 1996. Additionally, Alvarez is Adjunct Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at New York University School of Medicine in New York City.
Bill Shine, Fox News Senior Vice President of Programming said, “Dr. Manny is a distinguished professional in the medical field, who brings unique expertise that will be a great asset to the network.”
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Aaron Barnhart over at the Kansas City Star’s TV Barn blogs about Fox News Channel’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina and says the network has “arrived”. Don’t dismiss this as a puff piece because it’s not…
What better sign that Fox News Channel has arrived than the fact that Shepard Smith was the guest on “Late Show with David Letterman” last night? True, Shep is stepping into a vacuum — CBS does not currently have a permanent news anchor and Letterman’s old pal Tom Brokaw has retired. But then why not call on CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who I’m sure would’ve found an excuse to get back to New York?
TV Week’s Michelle Greppi…
It had been increasingly clear over the last several weeks that Mr. Shapiro’s exit was not a matter of if but when. This summer, there were reports that the network was searching for NBC News president candidates who would be capable of overseeing not just the news division proper and MSNBC but even CNBC, which has been a standalone division that no longer even relied on NBC News to supplied prime-time programming.
Broadcasting & Cable’s John M. Higgins:
Shapiro asked to be released from the gig last May, though network executives believed that NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker was poised to swing the ax. Shapiro is ultimately responsible for the fate of one of NBC’s major profit centers, the Today show, whose executive producer, Tom Touchet, was ousted in May.
Shapiro’s also in charge of MSNBC, which has stumbled for years trying to find a ratings groove. Shapiro did successfully manage the transition from retiring NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw to replacement Brian Williams, a shift that many industry executives expected would crunch the No. 1 evening newscast
TVNewser has the details…
I’m kind of surprised, given the wide speculation over Shapiro’s status going back months, that Zucker hasn’t got a successor lined up already. If the reports were true that Shapiro was on his way out why didn’t Zucker start looking earlier? Would the bad PR of searching for a successor to a position that then was not currently vacated be such a deterrent to prohibit mounting such a search? But what NBC has now just prolongs the situation because Capus isn’t going to start instituting new policy changes as an interim head. Unless Zucker personally directs Capus to make it happen, it isn’t likely to expect changes at MSNBC outside of what Rick Kaplan himself institutes.
The BBC’s Matt Wells
As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
But unlike Watergate, “Katrinagate” was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis.
Instead of secretive “Deep Throat” meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power.
Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.
Blogger Andy Carvin writes about CNN’s “war correspondents” being used for Katrina coverage… (via WHAC)
Has anyone else noticed how CNN has mobilized its best war correspondents - Christiane Amanpour, Nic Robertson and Jeff Koinange, most notably - to cover Katrina? I’ve watched reports from Amanpour and Robertson, and heard some of Koinange’s reportage; for all intents and purposes, they’re covering it as if they’re embedded in a war zone. Robertson patrols a neighborhood, describing harrowing accounts of Hurricane victims fighting for survival; Ananpour wears a khaki vest that feels as if it’s one fashion step away from a flak jacket.
USA Today’s Peter Johnson writes about the media’s new found critical eye of governnment in the aftermath of Katrina…
UPDATE: Accidentally linked to the wrong Peter Johnson article. He wrote two today. Fixed.
Reporters covering Hurricane Katrina on the scene showed their human — and often angry and frustrated — face as they questioned the slow response over the weekend.
“The government said, ‘You go here, and you’ll get help,’ or ‘You go in that Superdome and you’ll get help,’ ” Fox News anchor Shepard Smith fumed on-air from New Orleans Friday, in a tone echoed by other correspondents. “And they didn’t get help. They got locked in there. And they watched people being killed around them. And they watched people starving. And they watched elderly people not get any medicine.”
On Letterman last night, Shepard Smith talked about the hurricane Katrina disaster. This was once a role that a Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather from the broadcast networks would have played. But now it’s a cable news anchor in that role. Times have indeed changed. Here are some quotes from the show…
Shep: “They need so much help - this is going to go on for months and years”
Shep: “Hindsight is very clear”
TVNewser blogged about MSNBC being stretched thin on its behind the scenes resources today. I do not find this surprising. ICN has periodically received information the past couple of months from people at MSNBC about things being chaotic. And there is some resentment. One source pretty much agrees with the comments TVN has gotten.
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