Media | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 40
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Media Tag

Our completely unbiased media has awoken from hibernation. For the first time in a long time, they're preparing to hold the government accountable, particularly the White House. Jack Shafer of Politico sounds quite excited about this new era of hard hitting journalism:
Trump Is Making Journalism Great Again Donald Trump and his forthcoming presidency may be the greatest gift to Washington journalism since the invention of the expense account. His unorthodox approach to politics and governance has vaporized the standard, useful, yet boring script for reporting on a new administration’s doings.

Liberal pundit Bob Beckel will reunite with Eric Bolling, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Greg Gutfeld, and Dana Perino on Fox's The Five starting today. Fox released a press statement announcing his return:
In making the announcement, Murdoch said, “Bob was missed by many fans of The Five and we’re happy to welcome him back to the show.” Beckel commented, “I’m thrilled for the opportunity to go home again and join my television family around the table of The Five. I have no doubt it will be a vigorous yet entertaining debate.”

The media has gone ballistic during the first week of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees since the most of them have different views than Trump. Trump has shown thin skin with those who disagree with him so of course the press has attempted to stir the pot even more, but it has not worked.

On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough ripped as "repulsive" Sean Hannity's "bromance" with Julian Assange, and more generally criticized the Republican change of heart on Wikileaks.  Background on the evolution of Hannity's views on Assange here [note: from Daily Beast.] Scarborough noted that when Wikileaks divulged information about a CIA operation some years ago, Assange became the Republican "enemy #1." In 2010, Donald Trump himself tweeted that WikiLeaks was "disgraceful" and that there "should be death penalty or something."

As soon as Yahoo's Bianna Golodryga said she didn't want to "turn political," you knew that was precisely what she was about to do. But when Golodryga proceeded to criticize the Texas open-carry law this morning, you might be surprised that it was Meredith Vieira who—excuse the expression—shot her down. Vieira was a guest on Morning Joe to discuss a documentary, for which she served as executive producer, about the University of Texas Tower shootings in 1966, in which Charles Whitman shot 49 people, killing 16. The gun-control shoe was bound to drop, and after her "not to turn political," Golodryga launched into a criticism of the new Texas open-carry law, fretting that it could prevent UT from attracting "students and the top talent in teaching for fear of this law." Retorted Vieira: "It's interesting. On that day, the students were allowed to carry on campus and the police relied on them. One of the police -- they didn't have SWAT teams back then and they didn't have the equipment either to get to somebody who was up in the tower. So they were asking students: does anybody have a shotgun? The police themselves didn't have shotguns. And the students helped them."

Sen. Joe Manchin (W-VA) told Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe that he will not attend a meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss how to save Obamacare:
“No, I’m not. I just can’t, in good conscience, I can’t do it,” he said. “If anyone listened and paid attention to what the American people said when they voted, they want this place to work.”

NBC News has released a statement confirming that Fox News superstar Megyn Kelly will join its news organization:
Kelly will become anchor of a new one hour daytime program that she will develop closely with NBC News colleagues. The show will air Monday through Friday at a time to be announced in the coming months. As part of the multi-year agreement, Kelly will also anchor a new Sunday evening news magazine show and will become an important contributor to NBC’s breaking news coverage as well as the network’s political and special events coverage.

For crying out loud. More fake news by the media. First outlets claim that Russia hacked the election and now they say that Russian hackers penetrated a Vermont power grid. Look at this Washington Post headline:
Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say.
NO. That is NOT what happened. The fact that the Post did not even bother contacting Burlington Electric makes this even worse.

Add CNBC's John Harwood to the long and growing list of liberal media types who still have no idea why Trump won and the Democrats lost. You may recall John Harwood as a member of the worst team of debate moderators ever. You may also know that Harwood was exposed by Wikileaks for sucking up the Democrats during the election. Now he's floating a new theory about why his party lost. Mediaite reports:
CNBC’s John Harwood: ‘White Fear’ Partly Responsible for Democratic Losses Under Obama CNBC host John Harwood argued on Twitter Tuesday that the Democratic Party suffered electoral losses under Barack Obama‘s leadership in part because of “white fear” in the age of the first black president.

CNN's presidential historian Douglas Brinkley this morning accused Donald Trump of "big-mouthing" President Obama by speaking out on policy issues during the transition. Co-host Poppy Harlow had teed Brinkely up to slam Trump, worrying that Trump had flouted the "one president at a time" tradition, and fretting that by doing so Trump was "confusing our allies and our adversaries. Brinkley was only too happy to run with the ball, responding: "I think it's very wrong-minded of Donald Trump to be doing this . . . what you don't want to do is to be big-mouthing and big-footing a sitting president . . . . I find it troubling, but I'm not going to be able to stop him from doing it."

Television host Mike Rowe spoke with Tucker Carlson about the value of college, hard work, and alternate paths to a four year degree last night. Their conversation began with the social justice warrior from Hampshire College who recently appeared on the show but quickly moved on to other topics. One of the most fascinating aspects of their discussion was when Rowe brought up the massive amount of student debt in America today and pointed out how that affects all of us, not just students. From the FOX News Insider:
Old Glory was taken down from a flagpole and burned around Veterans' Day and Daniel Vogel defended the flag's removal to protest discriminatory behavior in America and to show his support for perceptively underprivileged workers.

Nice little company you got there. Wouldn't want to see nuthin' happen to it . . . CNN's Alisyn Camerota suggested this morning that Donald Trump used a "threat" against United Technologies to get its Carrier subsidiary to agree to keep manufacturing jobs in Indiana. Even the Indianapolis Star reporter who had criticized the deal as being "an extremely expensive campaign promise" took issue with Camerota's suggestion of a "threat." CNN: the network that would depict President-elect Trump as using mob-boss tactics.

Much of the commentary about Kellyanne Conway's Meet the Press appearance this morning has focused on her criticism of the prospect of Mitt Romney as Secretary of State. We'll discuss that in a "Note" below but would like to highlight a striking statement by Chuck Todd that immediately preceded the Romney discussion. Todd was grilling Conway over potential conflicts between Trump's business interests and his role as president. Conway eventually had enough, and observed "I went back and looked at what all the press clips and the conversations on shows like this eight years ago. It was basically debating just how cool Barack Obama is. . . . if we're not going to do that about President-elect Trump, we should at the very least trust him to do the right thing and comply with the law here." A visibly annoyed Todd shot back: "I understand. Every knee-jerk pushback is going to be to blame the media. It's a crutch. I get it. And I'm used to it. But it's not the fact."

The internet went crazy this morning after a report surfaced that Boston's CNN channel aired 30 minutes of hardcore porn. Media took off with it, but I have to admit that the details appeared sketchy because how does a major cable provider like RCN unknowingly air 30 seconds let alone 30 MINUTES of hardcore porn? Looks like they didn't:
"We are in the process of researching this incident but see no evidence our CNN network feed was compromised last evening in Boston," Jeff Carlson, svp and general manager, RCN Boston, said in a statement to THR.
The account @solikearose has protected her tweets, but she shared pictures of her TV to BuzzFeed News to prove that she did not fake this story. Turns out a glitch may have caused it.

The New York Times public editor Liz Spayd's op-ed contains a lot of harsh truths and realities for those who write for one of the world's most famous newspapers: drop the bias. Her office has received "five times the normal level" of complaints "and the pace has only just recently tapered off." Spayd does not flat out say that, but she portrays it in her eloquent article:
But I hope any chest thumping about the impressive subscriber bump won’t obscure a hard-eyed look at coverage. Because from my conversations with readers, and from the emails that have come into my office, I can tell you there is a searing level of dissatisfaction out there with many aspects of the coverage.