Things returned to normal Monday as FNC beat CNN across the board in primetime. MSNBC is still mostly in 3rd place, except in Prime Time where HLN beat it out. Scarborough Country continues to be MSNBC’s workhorse prime time program. And Scarborough’s high numbers gave a boost to The Situation which beat the Showbiz Tonight repeat at 11pm…
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Richard Bradley on TomPaine.com argues that CNN is taking this righteous indignation and emotion thing too far….(via Romenesko)

Forgive me for not salivating, but is crying on television and castigating U.S. senators really what a television news anchor “ought to be”? I don’t want my newscasters to be missionaries—there are too many missionaries in this country already. I want them to be reporters. And given how influential they are, I want them to at least try to be objective.

I don’t mean to beat up on Cooper, who, I’m sure, was genuinely moved by what he saw in New Orleans—who wouldn’t be?—and seemed a little embarrassed by all the attention. But just because we empathize doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for reporters to get so emotional. It is, after all, a lapse in objectivity. It turns the hurricane story into serial drama, infotainment, rather than a news event to cover. We may like the tears of rage this time, and be appalled or irritated or skeptical the next. Emotions are like that. Sometimes you trust them, sometimes you don’t.

In the long run, Cooper’s tears discredit both himself and CNN because they subvert the ideal of objectivity. Reportorial neutrality may be an impossible goal, but it’s still the best way to be fair, accurate and credible over the long term. Instead, Cooper’s emoting buttresses the idea that a television anchor needs to be a “personality,” whose credibility stems from our trust in his persona rather than the depth of the reporting he undertakes. It’s all about Anderson.

The Huffington Post’s Bob Cesca runs a truth squad blog entry on Bill O’Reilly from Monday night’s show…

First, O’Reilly had the falafel-sized gonads to say that the poverty rate in this country is lower under President Bush than it was under President Clinton. According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of people living below the poverty line DROPPED from around 15 percent in 1993 to just above 11 percent by the year 2000. That’s a 4 percent drop in Clinton’s eight years.

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Almost in the same breath, O’Reilly noted that because of Bush’s tax cuts, tax revenue has somehow increased. He justified it with a half-baked O’Reilly For Idiots version of supply-side economics. The only reason tax revenue under Bush appears to be higher is because it started high at the end of Clinton’s term. But since Bush’s tax cuts in 2001, tax revenue has steadily declined, with only 2004 seeing an ever-so-slight increase from the year before.

Page Six dishes that FNC’s Rick Leventhal popped the question…

THAT Fox News Channel reporter Rick Leventhal popped the question to his longtime girlfriend, News 12 Long Island anchor Lauren Sivan

CJR Daily’s Liz Cox Barrett thinks CNN went overboard giving a behind the scenes view of its New Orleans operation….

CJR Daily often faults cable news shows for not giving viewers enough information — skimping on context, allowing talking points to go unchallenged, simplifying complex issues. Yesterday, however, CNN provided too much information.

They aired their own dirty laundry — literally.

“Live From” anchor Kyra Phillips took viewers yesterday afternoon on an excessively long and detailed tour of CNN’s makeshift New Orleans bureau, pointing out — as the camera zoomed in tight — plastic bags of dirty clothing piled up outside of the RVs where CNN’s Big Easy-based employees are currently living. “This is just a small example of all the laundry that needs to be washed,” Phillips explained. “You can just imagine where it’s been in the past couple of weeks.”

Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith will be adding a five minute radio newscast to his duties. According to today’s release, “The Fox Report with Shepard Smith” will be broadcast at 5pm EST on the Fox News radio network….

Broadcasting at 5PM/ET each day, the newscast will wrap up the day’s events and the latest news in the familiar FOX News style and will be offered to all five-minute FOX News Radio affiliates.

“I’m excited to contribute to another platform of the FOX News brand,” adds Smith. “Radio is a fascinating medium and I’m eager to embark on this new opportunity.”

The Philadelphia Enquirer’s Gail Shister writes about the new New Orleans News Bureaus and whether they really are news bureaus….

NBC and CNN’s announcements last week that they had set up bureaus in post-Katrina New Orleans have been met with skepticism by their competitors.

“CNN’s doing it because NBC did it first,” says ABC’s Paul Slavin, senior vice president, worldwide newsgathering. “NBC did it because it’s a nice PR gesture.”

Slavin hesitates to call ABC’s presence a bureau, which he defines as “a place we intend to be for many years to come.”

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Due to a confluence of events (staying out till 3 am PST for a concert) followed by the DSL going down when I did wake up around Noon today, blogging was non-existent. It’s fixed now and I have to catch up. Sorry about that. I’d hoped that the east coast papers would have been online by 5:30 am EST when I checked them but alas they were mostly not.