The AP’s Suzanne Gamboa writes about a charge of “hate speech” being leveled at certain commentators by a latino group…

National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia announced plans to pressure television network executives and candidates seeking their parties’ presidential nominations to clamp down on such remarks.

The group launched a Web site to counter the speech, http://www.wecanstopthehate.org, with clips of what it considers offensive comments on television as well as a tracking of hate crimes.

“Hate groups and extremists have taken over the immigration debate in an unprecedented wave of hate,” Murguia said. Although some comments could be considered free speech, “there is a line that sometimes can be crossed when it comes to free speech,” she said.

Some of the remarks the Hispanic group identified included referring to immigrants as an “army of invaders” or an “invading force,” associating immigrants with animals, accusing immigrants of bringing crime and diseases like leprosy to the U.S., and purveying a conspiracy theory that Latinos are trying to take back parts of the United States once ruled by Mexico.

Murguia named as offenders Pat Buchanan, who appears on MSNBC as a commentator, CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck of Headline News, a CNN network.

Post your reactions to CNN’s Democratic Debate here…

Tomorrow, FOX Business Network’s “Happy Hour” crew is taking their show on the road. FBN anchors Cody Willard and Rebecca Gomez will be hosting a pre-Super Bowl “Happy Hour” from Glendale, Arizona. Rebecca Gomez just left, halfway through today’s show, to catch her flight to Arizona.

The guest line-up for tomorrow’s “Happy Hour” include Steve Tisch, co-owner of the Giants; Rande Gerber, nightclub owner, Cindy Crawford’s husband and host of this weekend’s MAXIM party; Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com and Brian Griese, quarterback for the Chicago Bears.

Additionally, FBN’s “Money for Breakfast” and “Opening Bell” anchor Alexis Glick will continue her coverage from Arizona, featuring interviews tomorrow with Phil Simms, Super Bowl XXI MVP and Steve Tisch, chairman, executive vice president, and co-owner of the New York Giants, among others.

Alexis Glick will also ring the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange from Arizona tomorrow.

With the Republican California debate and its 4,000,000+ viewers, CNN won the night.

Daily Live+SD Ratings for January 30, 2008

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The Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins blogs about a Robert Greenwald backed protest of veterans regarding Bill O’Reilly and the back and forth over John Edwards’ remarks on homeless veterans…

Now, a group from Fitzgerald House, an “organization representing homeless veterans,” plans to bring their fight for recognition to Fox’s doorstep. They plan on visiting the Fox News Channel Studios today at 3:00 pm, and will come carrying a petition signed by 17,000 people demanding an apology from O’Reilly for his ignorance and abuse. In a press release, Brave New Films and Fitzgerald House say thay “have found that it is very easy to locate homeless veterans and are willing to help O’Reilly find them if his desire to help homeless vets is sincere.”

ICN hears that at approximately 3:15pm this afternoon - six veterans arrived, with two cameramen from Brave New Films in tow.

ICN has learned that O’Reilly Factor producers met, and spoke to the handful of veterans outside the News Corp building, took the petition they had prepared – and everyone quietly went their separate ways (including a camera crew from NBC, who promptly packed up their gear and left when the ‘protest’ never actually materialized).

Besides Greenwald’s hand held cameras, NBC was the only crew to show up to cover this.

Slate’s Jack Shafer looks at some of the more tabloidish stories that have appeared on cable news channel websites…

Although any story featuring sex, violence, death, or dismemberment can qualify a news story for heavy promotion on a cable channel Web site, nothing satisfies the sites like an endangered baby. If an infant or a toddler anywhere in the world has been harmed or placed in peril, the story is a safe bet to be featured by one of the Web tabloids. If the baby has suffered a gruesome injury or is rotting dead, it’s a cinch, as Foxnews.com’s “Manhunt After Infant Found Dead Near Car” and similar stories by the competition demonstrate.

If the wires fail to produce a baby-in-a-microwave story, the Web tabs are happy to fill the depravity gap by substituting accounts about slightly older children imperiled by sex monsters. In the past two days, Foxnews.com has promo’d both “Kindergartener Accuses 2 Classmates of Sex Assault” and “Elementary School Principal Charged in Sexual Assault.”

ICN hears that Karl Rove will join Fox News Channel as a contributor and will likely be used throughout Super Tuesday coverage…

CNN announced that Rafer Weigel has joined Morning Express as a sports anchor…

Rafer Weigel will be joining Headline News’ flagship morning program, Morning Express with Robin Meade, as a sports anchor, it was announced today by Ken Jautz, executive vice president of CNN Worldwide. Weigel’s first day on the air will be Monday, Feb. 4, when he provides insights about Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“The addition of Rafer to our Morning Express team gives our audience yet another reason to tune in every morning for all the news they need to kick off the day,” Jautz said. “Rafer’s breadth of experience and enthusiasm for the arena of sports news make him an ideal fit for the high-energy morning lineup. We’re happy to welcome him aboard.”
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Having a guest come on your show with their own agenda and hijacking the discussion…

FOX Business Network’s Alexis Glick was live from Glendale, AZ this morning interviewing business and sports celebrities before Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“Money for Breakfast” featured Phillippi Sparks, former Giants player and father of Idol winner Jordin Sparks; Tony Dorsett, former player for the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos; and Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots.

Kraft told Alexis, “I feel I have great karma with the whole FOX family.” He mentioned, “This game has the potential to be the largest rated show in the history of television and I hope we do that.”

Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman looks at MSNBC.com’s “bridge tracker”…

Investigative reporter Bill Dedman and the rest of the MSNBC.com team posted an original story today that discovered that more than 17,000 bridges in the U.S. went more than two years between safety inspections. MSNBC.com acquired inspection data for 100,000 bridges through a FOIA request, and then mashed the data with Microsoft Virtual Earth, so you can see the condition and inspection schedule for bridges along your route. Cool.

Reuters’ Jennifer Coogan writes about the market taking a tumble after CNBC’s Charles Gasparino made a comment. (via Talking Biz News)

On Wednesday, the three major U.S. benchmark indexes had each been up by more than 1 percent after the Federal Reserve cut the fed funds rate by a half percentage point at 2:15 p.m.

Then, shares of Ambac and MBI tumbled abruptly at around 3:10 p.m. when CNBC On-Air-Editor Charles Gasparino made his comments about the companies. Major indexes quickly followed suit.

“My gut is telling me Moody’s and S&P are going to downgrade either one or both,” Gasparino said on air. CNBC later posted a report on its Web site saying the network had learned that the downgrade could come as early as Wednesday. The report cited no sources for the information.
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Silicon Alley Insider’s Michael Learmonth writes about FBN Executive Vice President Kevin Magee’s comments on the WSJ/CNBC deal and the “loopholes” therein…

Magee, speaking at the Always On conference yesterday, didn’t go into details about FBN’s plans to use WSJ staff. But he did lay out his case: “There are some restrictions. We can’t just go ahead and use anything. I believe the restrictions involve regularly-scheduled, branded segments. There is a carve-out for non-business news and there is a carve-out for breaking news.”

If this should sound familiar to ICN readers it’s because this was already chronicled back in January when Magee gave an interview to the Boston Globe and said pretty much the same thing…

FNC’s Judge Andrew Napolitano will be appearing on The Colbert Report tonight…

Bloomberg TV announced what’s coming up on this weekend’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff”…

This weekend on the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® program “Conversations with Judy Woodruff,” Woodruff interviews Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill and Representative Emanuel Cleaver. Both lawmakers discuss their endorsements of presidential candidates Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, the role of race in the election and predictions for next week’s Super Tuesday in Missouri.

Senator Claire McCaskill is supporting Senator Barack Obama and Representative Emanuel Cleaver is supporting Senator Hillary Clinton.

“Conversations with Judy Woodruff” airs on Saturday at 11AM ET and is repeated throughout the weekend.

TV Guide’s Cheers & Jeers writes about Morning Joe…

Cheers to Morning Joe for becoming a must-have fix for political junkies. Ex-congressman Joe Scarborough seemed like a poor man’s Bill O’Reilly on his old prime-time MSNBC show, Scarborough Country. When the cable net moved him to the morning shift, it seemed like a desperate stopgap in the wake of Don Imus’ sudden ouster. Then a funny thing happened: Scarborough lightened up. He traded his suits and ties for fleece pullovers and surrounded himself with appealing sidekicks like Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. As the presidential campaign has raged on, they’ve talked about — and with — the candidates in a relaxed yet informative fashion. Scarborough’s become the anti-Chris Matthews: Think of Morning Joe as Softball. And his team’s hitting it out of the park.

Unfortunately it hasn’t translated into a boost in the ratings much, if at all. Morning Joe continues to perform well off Imus in the Morning’s levels from the same time the previous year, despite all the politics going on with the primaries and debates.
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CJR Daily’s Liz Cox Barrett writes about the Florida primary and, in part, about how the cable nets sort of got duped by Hillary Clinton…

It was clear that some in the cable commentariat felt played/duped/forced by the Clinton campaign to talk about something they considered a non-event. As if this—covering a politician’s photo-op, something “ginned up,” as NBC’s Andrea Mitchell put it—were somehow new to them. This one, however, seemed to stick in some craws, and the resulting commentary took on a surprisingly shrill tone, at times, even by cable standards.
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Live +SD – Prime Time (8:00pm – 11:00pm) – Jan. 29th

FOX News Channel
P2+ - 2,512,000
Demo – 717,000

CNN
P2+ - 1,882,000
Demo – 639,000

MSNBC
P2+ - 1,257,000
Demo – 551,000

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