Talk about being taken to the cleaners!
Sarah Palin uttered more than 189,000 words over 150 appearances on various FOX broadcasts during her three years as an analyst at the network, or $15.85 per word
With the three-year contract now expired between FOX News and Sarah Palin, there is a wealth of commentary made by the former Alaska Governor and GOP Vice-Presidential nominee to dissect.
Yeah I say Fox got screwed in this deal!
But don’t worry. I’m sure Fox will gladly give him more time on the air:
Veteran journalist Juan Williams was fired from his job as senior news analyst for National Public Radio late Wednesday because of comments he made about Muslims and terrorism on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News Channel.
NPR said in a statement that Williams's remarks--including that he gets "worried" and "nervous" when he sees people dressed in Muslim-style clothing on airplanes--"were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."
Williams, 56, made the remarks after the show's host, Bill O'Reilly, asked him whether he thought the United States was facing a "Muslim dilemma." "The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet," O'Reilly said.
Here’s the video of Williams making his comments on O’Reilly:
Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has signed on as a contributor to the Fox News Channel.
The network confirmed that Ms. Palin will appear on the network’s programming on a regular basis as part of a multi-year deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Ms. Palin will not have her own regular program, one person familiar with the deal said, though she will host an occasional series that will run on the network from time to time. This person would not elaborate, but the network does have a precedent for such a series. Oliver L. North is the host of an occasionally running documentary series on the military called “War Stories.”
Yesterday Michael Steele took to the airwaves and told fellow Republicans who criticize him to “shut up”. Now the backlash starts coming out from Steele’s comments:
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele, under fire this week for a string of controversial statements he has made while promoting his new book, has so angered the party's congressional leaders that their aides said they told Steele's handlers to "get him to stop."
Steele, who has been making regular television appearances, said Monday that he did not believe Republicans could win back their congressional majorities in 2010. "Not this year," Steele told Fox News Channel, saying he was just beginning to look at races, even though the party has been recruiting candidates for many months.
Believing that Steele's off-the-cuff remarks threaten to damage the party's brand -- at the very time when Republicans are trying to capitalize on a national political environment that may hurt Democrats -- senior aides to top Republican leaders confronted Steele's staff on a conference call Wednesday.
They don’t like their party leader “going rogue” it appears. But to make the situation even worse for the GOP, this is now costing them money at a time when they are having fundraising problems already:
Some wealthy contributors are shunning the Republican National Committee and donating instead to the other GOP campaign committees or directly to candidates - in many cases because of discontent with the leadership of Michael S. Steele, the party's national chairman.
(Updated below the fold)
The Justice Department has subpoenaed indymedia.us for it’s visitor logs for a certain date. While this raises big flags regarding online privacy, something else happened with this action that is very odd. They recipient of the subpoena was told she could not talk about it unless authorized by the Justice Department – an essential gag order.
Of course news like this would send the right into a full frenzy that Obama is trying to silence the media, even a left leaning site like indymedia. Here’s Hot Air’s take on it:
Did the White House try to open up a two-front war on the media? Before the Obama administration launched an all-out battle with conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, the Department of Justice demanded the records of all visitor information of left-leaning Indymedia.us in an remarkable subpoena of a media outlet, for one specific day. No one can recall any precedent for such a wide-ranging probe into the records of a media website, but it may provide a challenge to a national-security law if the DoJ presses hard enough:
But there’s a problem with this “blame Obama” mentality. The original source of the article is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and this is what they say about the subpoena:
For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.
It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to help bring it to at least a temporary end.
There has been all this talk from the fat of how he wants “Obama to fail”. Well now that the government has such a large stake in General Motors, the fat one is calling for a boycott of General Motors. Bob points out the irony here:
Just a couple of weeks ago, the wingnuts were crapping their cages over the fact that a suspiciously high number of soon-to-be closed GM dealerships were owned by Republicans. The "conspiracy" that President Obama was taking out some political revenge on McCain supporters made it all the way to Fox News Channel. It turned out that the political party affiliation of dealership owners was merely reflective of the fact that 86 percent of all car dealerships are owned by Republicans.
And now they want to boycott GM, a move that will surely hurt all the dealerships.
To the educated this can only be seen as a flip-flop, as John Cole points out:
These idiots can’t even keep an internally consistent wingnut meme going for a couple weeks. No wonder the rest of the country has no clue what the hell they are talking about.
To me it takes me back to my original point. This is Rush’s plan to try and get our government to fail. And you thought that was talk you would only hear from people like Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-il or Ahmadinejad.
These are the type of family values to keep the kids from:
TVNewser tipster tells us Aaron Bruns, a producer in the Fox News Channel Washington, D.C. bureau, has been arrested and charged with one count of possession of child pornography. A Fox News spokesperson confirms, telling TVNewser, "We are aware of the arrest and he is currently suspended without pay."
Bruns is in federal court in Washington, D.C. this afternoon appearing on the felony charge.
Bruns has been with FNC for more than six years. He was an embed producer with the Hillary Clinton campaign last year.
Developing...
It turns out that this is not Burns first arrest either. He was busted for the same thing in 1999. Way to go FOX!
Hannity has lost his sidekick:
FOX News Channel's (FNC) Alan Colmes will relinquish his role as co-host of Hannity & Colmes at the end of the year.
In announcing his decision, Colmes said, "I approached Bill Shine (FNC's Senior Vice President of Programming) earlier this year about wanting to move on after 12 years to develop new and challenging ways to contribute to the growth of the network. Although it's bittersweet to leave one of the longest marriages on cable news, I'm proud that both Sean (Hannity) and I remained unharmed after sitting side by side, night after night for so many years."
Colmes will continue to have a presence on FNC as he will serve as a liberal commentator on a variety of FOX News programming, including Foxnews.com's The Strategy Room and continue hosting his radio program, The Alan Colmes Show on FOX Talk, a division of FOX News Radio. He will also begin developing a weekend program.
I wonder if Colmes will be replaced next to Hannity, or if he will go solo. It’s a shame that Robert Gibbs got his new gig as press secretary. I would love to see him co-hosting with Hannity.
A new ethics complaint has been filed against Sarah Palin:
Zane Henning, a North Slope worker from Wasilla, said he filed the complaint with the attorney general. He says Palin is promoting her future political career on state property, pointing in particular to the governor's Nov. 10 interview with Fox News Channel host Greta Van Susteren.
"The governor is using her official position and office in an attempt to repair her damaged political image on the national scene," Henning wrote.
The GOP’s sweetheart is also become the countries most ethically challenged Governor. Ernie Fletcher may have met his match
Little miss “terrorist fist jab” has now found herself without a job:
TVNewser has learned veteran Fox News Channel anchor E.D. Hill will not be renewed when her current contract expires. Hill, who has been with Fox News for more than 10 years, will continue with the network for the next few months until her current deal expires.</p>SVP of Programming Bill Shine tells TVNewser that he "chose not to renew E.D.'s latest contract" but noted that "Hill has been a valued contributor to the success of FNC over the years, and we wish her all the best."
I doubt any other cable news network will pick her up. She ended up destroying herself with the “terrorist fist jab” comment earlier this year. Out to make controversy, she just made herself the fool. So long loser!
This is a clip from FOX's new show, "The Half Hour News Hour", their "competition" to The Daily Show:
Oh this is going to be a massive bomb. The first reviews are out and they are very un-raving. First from the TV Gal Blog on the Seattle PI-
A few television series simply aren't worth profound analysis. It could be that the odds of their survival look so incredibly low, and the creative effort that went into producing seems so shoddy, that the energy it would take to expend coming up with zingers describing its overall failure would be better spent doing something else. (In my case, I'd rather pack to leave town.)
OUCH! But there is more. Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel has his own take on the new show:
Looks like FOX is trying to do whatever they can to get their ratings back:
Fox News Channel might air two episodes of a "Daily Show"-like program with a decidedly nonliberal bent on Saturday nights in late January, with the possibility that it could become a weekly show for the channel.
The half-hour show is executive produced by "24's" Joel Surnow and Manny Cota and creator Ned Rice, who previously wrote for "Politically Incorrect" and "Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson" through This Just In Prods. It would take aim at what Surnow calls "the sacred cows of the left" that don't get made as much fun of by other comedy shows.
"It's a satirical news format that would play more to the Fox News audience than the Michael Moore channel," Surnow said. "It would tip more right as 'The Daily Show' tips left."
The show was pitched as "This Just In" when it first got life as a 20-minute pilot presentation for Fox Broadcasting Co.'s late-night division. But when that network passed, Surnow said it attracted the attention of Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes.
So FOX News Channel wants to put on a satire show? Isn't everything on FOX satire? We all know they aren't news. But what happened to Colbert speaking the truth for liberals? That is what Tom Delay said about a year ago.
I guess with CNN and MSNBC quickly gaining on FOX in the ratings game, they are desperate. Of course this article talks about FOX television and FOX News as one. That means it must be a lie in the eyes of Bill O.
From Raw Story:
The ratings for CNN and MSNBC in the month of August have risen since last summer, while Fox News Channel's prime time ratings plummeted.
According to the Nielsen ratings, as compiled by TV Newser, Fox News Channel's total viewership dropped 7 percent from last August, and it's prime time audience is down 28 percent.
Meanwhile, CNN's ratings increased 35% in total and 21% in prime time as MSNBC moved up 26% and 6%.
A few weeks ago, after Turner Broadcasting System CEO Phil Kent told the Hollywood Reporter that CNN was "closing the gap" on its "primary competitor," a Fox News spokesman accused them of "employing fuzzy math."
"It almost harkens us back to the days of the AOL-Time Warner accounting scandal," the Fox spokesman told TV Newser.
Ratings for The O'Reilly Factor fell 15 percent, while MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann increased 55% and CNN's Paula Zahn Now rose 32 percent.
Couldn't happen to a nicer network.
This is a very interesting decision:
Fox News Channel is going off the air in Mexico in advance of Sunday's presidential election to steer clear of that country's restrictions on campaign ads and public surveys, cable channel executives said Wednesday.
Fox News decided to temporarily halt transmission into Mexico because of concerns that the channel's coverage would violate a ban on disseminating opinion polls or campaign commercials in the days before the election, and jeopardize the standing of the cable and satellite companies that distribute its signal.
"I just don't think we had much choice," said Janet Alshouse, senior vice president of international distribution for Fox News. "We can't restrict our coverage."
Sounds like Mexico is more out to protect their democracy than we are. As soon as I read this, I thought back to the 2000 election. That night when all the networks were predicting Gore the winner then all of the sudden FOX is breaking ranks and predicting Bush the winner. This of course forced the other channels to switch their prediction and we know what happened after that.
