Are ‘White men’ the biggest threat to our nation?
“The biggest terror threat in this country is white men.” Could you imagine if the word “white” was replaced with “hispanic” or “black?” Think about it… “The biggest terror threat in this country is black men.” Or “the biggest terror threat in this country is hispanic men.” There would be almost nothing else being talked about television if a conservative pundit dared utter those words. But CNN’s Don Lemon did make the first statement on-air Monday night and very little has been made of it. Here’s the actual words he used: So, we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right. And we have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban. So, what do we do about that? We have got to stop with double-standards. It is not acceptable for anyone to say what Lemon said. No one, including him, should be able to get away with speaking such a vitriolic statement. Identifying and addressing the real problems we face is what we need to concentrate on: Not immigrants – illegal immigrants. Not Muslims – Muslim extremists. Not the media but biased journalist, media companies, and those who wage in disinformation campaigns. We have to identify the actual problems and stop demonizing everyone and everything else in between. When it comes to Republican, Democrats and even Independents — no one person, party or group is the problem. We should have zero tolerance for all extreme views. It’s not that complicated. We need consistency across the board when it comes to holding those in the public eye accountable for the outlandish things they say. That includes Don Lemon. As for Lemon’s words though, it should go without saying: Hate, divisiveness and turning a blind eye towards the people and issues that undermine the fabric of our nation — are our nation’s biggest threats.
CNN: Donald Trump attacks haven’t hurt the news network
The president of CNN said Thursday that neither the network’s journalism or business have been hurt as a result of President Donald Trump‘s attacks. Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, spoke Thursday at the same time Trump was holding a news conference in Washington in which he continued his barrage against media coverage of the administration. Zucker said he was worried enough about Trump’s labeling of CNN as “fake news” through the campaign and after that he ordered a study last month to see if it had damaged the network’s reputation with viewers. He said it hadn’t. Less than a third —or 31 percent — of 2,000 Americans surveyed said they believed CNN’s coverage of Trump had been unfair, the internal study found. The survey also reported that a little more than half of respondents said they trusted CNN, but that was well above the trust level for Trump or members of Congress. “The CNN brand has been as strong as it has ever been,” Zucker said. Network executives said CNN had its most profitable year in 2016 and was on pace to do even better this year. The administration has reportedly banned its officials from appearing on CNN, although there have been sporadic exceptions. The dispute has been most apparent on Sundays, where on two weekends Vice President Mike Pence and presidential aide Stephen Miller were guests on other network political affairs shows but not on Jake Tapper‘s CNN show, “State of the Union.” Zucker, who said he had not spoken with Trump since December on this or other issues, said it hasn’t affected CNN’s ability to tell the political story. “We don’t feel it’s hurt us in any way,” he said. Angered by the Pence snub, CNN said that it declined an administration offer to instead have aide Kellyanne Conway on Tapper’s show, saying she had credibility issues. Conway has said she wasn’t available that day. But Tapper interviewed her two days later. “Saying that we have questions about her credibility does not mean that we would never interview her,” Zucker said. Like its rivals, particularly Fox News Channels, CNN has benefited from extraordinary interest in the new administration. CNN’s ratings are up 51 percent this year compared to last, he said. That’s unusual because news network ratings usually tumble after a presidential election. Trump’s lengthy news conference on Thursday was filled with media criticism. But he took questions from a range of reporters; many White House reporters — including CNN’s Jim Acosta — had been concerned over the past week when Trump bypassed the mainstream media in three separate news conferences connected to visits by foreign leaders, instead calling on representatives from more friendly news outlets. On Thursday Trump even took questions from Acosta, but also specifically criticized some of CNN’s coverage of him. The president said that CNN’s 10 p.m. news show, hosted by Don Lemon, “is almost exclusive anti-Trump.” “I would be your biggest fan in the world if you treated me right,” Trump said. “I sort of understand there’s a certain bias, maybe by Jeff or somebody, you know, whatever reason. And I understand that. But you’ve got to be at least a little bit fair and that’s why the public sees it. They see it. They see it’s not fair. You take a look at some of your shows and you see the bias and the hatred.” Acosta, for his part, told the president that “just for the record, we don’t hate you. I don’t hate you.” After the news conference, CNN’s Tapper said the president was “unhinged.” He said that Trump’s performance might play well among people who voted for him, but “a lot of people are going to say, ‘that guy isn’t focused on me. I don’t know what he’s focused on.’” A few minutes later on Fox News Channel, Bret Baier said that Trump’s “mesmerizing” performance was an illustration of why people had supported him. “There are people who are going to say that it was unhinged, or their heads are going to explode at something he said, but this is Trump being Trump,” Baier said. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
CNN: Joe Biden can be a game-day decision for debate
CNN says it will allow Vice President Joe Biden to participate in the first Democratic presidential primary debate even if he decides that day to be a candidate. The network released its criteria for the Oct. 13 debate on Monday. Since Biden has achieved an average of one percent support in three polls — even though he isn’t a declared candidate — CNN said he needs only to file the necessary paperwork or say he will that day to be in the debate. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb have already been invited. Anderson Cooper will moderate the Las Vegas debate. Dana Bash, Don Lemon and CNN en Espanol anchor Juan Carlos Lopez also will question the candidates. Biden aides have cited the CNN debate as one of the major factors in the vice president’s timing in making a decision. They have described it as an important opportunity, if he runs, to establish him as an alternative to Clinton. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Dominating TV, Donald Trump a ratings draw
Opinion polls are one thing, but Nielsen numbers speak more loudly to television executives: Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump‘s ability to pull in viewers makes him catnip for news programs and wins a level of coverage that feeds on itself. NBC’s “Meet the Press” had its biggest audience in more than a year for its Trump interview on Aug. 16, leading that show’s biggest competitors — ABC’s “This Week” and CBS’ “Face the Nation” — to feature phone interviews with the New York businessman this past Sunday. After CNN turned Jake Tapper‘s interview with Trump into a prime-time special last week and earned its best ratings at that hour in a month, the network repeated it two nights later. Two Trump interviews on Sean Hannity‘s Fox News Channel show this month both brought in around 2.2 million viewers, well above his typical audience. Trump is generally considered the biggest reason why Fox reached a startling 24 million people for the first GOP presidential debate earlier this month — the most watched program in Fox News history. That instantly made him a big “get” for TV producers, and the media savvy ex-reality show host has eagerly played along. Keenly aware of his drawing power, Trump suggested in a Time magazine interview that he could ask CNN to pay $10 million to charity for his participation in the next GOP debate. “He’s getting a lot of attention that he should get because he’s doing so well in the polls and he’s getting a lot of attention because he’s Donald Trump, and you never know what he’s going to say,” said David Bohrman, a television consultant and former CNN Washington bureau chief. “It’s not negligence to cover him,” he said. Aware of that drawing power, cable news outlets cover Trump events with an intensity the other 16 Republican candidates can only envy. A town hall meeting in New Hampshire last week drew live coverage. CNN and Fox News both cast aside regular programming Friday to pick up Trump speaking at a rally in Alabama. Trump’s unpredictability is a bonus. His critical comments about Fox’s Megyn Kelly for her debate questions, made during an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon on what would normally be a sleepy August Friday night, put that show in headlines for the entire weekend. Viewership during the seven call-in interviews that Trump has given to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” since June 18 rose 22 percent from what the talk show averaged 10 minutes prior to his call, the Nielsen company said. On July 24, the size of the audience jumped 47 percent in only a few minutes when Trump spoke. Danny Shea, editorial director of The Huffington Post, compared the attention news networks are giving to Trump to CNN’s non-stop coverage of the missing Malaysian airliner last year. He was on “Morning Joe” last week to defend HuffPo’s declaration that it would only cover Trump’s candidacy in its entertainment section, a decision that grows harder to defend with each new poll. “There’s an open secret that (Trump’s campaign) is a joke and a spectacle,” Shea said, “and by going wall-to-wall on it you’re just legitimizing it.” Morning Joe co-host, Joe Scarborough, rejected the argument that Trump had more ratings than news value. During off-the-air meetings, “nobody ever says, ‘OK, Donald Trump is great for ratings.’ What we say is, ‘what the hell is going on? Can you believe this? What is happening?’ He is a very real story, and the longer he stays in front, the more of a story he’s going to be.” In past campaigns, the media’s “invisible primary” gave bursts of early attention to candidates before voters settled things, to which Gary Hart, Howard Dean, John McCain, Jimmy Carter can attest. None matched Trump for attention, said Thomas Patterson, acting director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Only two months ago the GOP had a shapeless field of candidates, and now the non-Trumps are so starved for attention that some will struggle to survive until voting begins. Bohrman said Trump is getting a level of attention he normally doesn’t see until spring of an election year, when nominations are all but decided. “It’s kind of a ‘no time for losers’ policy in the newsroom,” Patterson said. Trump frequently mixes it up with the media, often through Twitter. Sometimes he’s playful, like suggesting that “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski be paid more than Scarborough. Often he’s quite serious, and his reaction to Fox’s Kelly struck some who heard it as offensive. At the Alabama rally, Trump asked the audience what they thought of cable networks. Fox got cheers and MSNBC boos, making the latter network’s decision not to televise the speech live fortunate. At this point, it’s hard to tell how much attention Trump is receiving because he’s a frontrunner, and how much is because producers know he’ll provide a reliable ratings bump. “At the end, does it really matter if both are valid reasons for covering him?” Bohrman said. “There’s not a lot of other compelling stuff on television now. It’s the reality show of the season.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
