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Archive for August 30, 2009
Rating Afghanistan Reporters: Update…
Posted in Miscellaneous Subjects on August 30, 2009 by icn2Following up on this, Stars and Stripes’ Kevin Baron writes that the Pentagon is canceling the ctonract with the Redon Group. Redon was producing reports on reporters covering Afghanistan…
The U.S. military is canceling its contract with a controversial private firm that was producing background profiles of journalists seeking to cover the war that graded their past work as “positive,” “negative” or “neutral,” Stars and Stripes has learned.
“The Bagram Regional Contracting Center intends to execute a termination of the Media Analyst contract,” belonging to The Rendon Group, said Col. Wayne Shanks, chief of public affairs for International Security Assistance Forces–Afghanistan.
The announcement follows a week of revelations by Stars and Stripes in which military public affairs officers who served in Afghanistan said that as recently as 2008 they had used reporter profiles compiled by The Rendon Group, a private public relations firm in Washington, D.C., to decide whether to grant permission to embed with troops on the battlefield.
What’s Hot/What’s Not: 08/30/09
Posted in What's Hot/What's Not on August 30, 2009 by icn2What’s Hot:
Ted Kennedy – Kennedy’s death pushed just about everything else to the side the last half of the week.
Beck tops O’Reilly – Like him or not, the fact that Beck had bigger numbers than O’Reilly one day this week is no small achievement…
What’s Not:
FNC’s early morning Kennedy coverage – Not what should be expected from the cable news leader.
Non-business news pandering – FBN interrupting its business coverage to talk about Michael Jackson’s autopsy results with a forensic pathologist raises serious questions about the network’s dedication to business news.
Ratings spat – Olbermann and O’Reilly went at it again this week. This time over who has the most young viewers.
Hyperventilating – Too many commenters threw objectivity out the window when covering Kennedy’s death. This applies to both those who agreed with the Senator and those who didn’t.
Cash Cow? or Beached Whale? – The ruckus over Beck advertisers taking their money elsewhere continued to get played up. Problem is that money didn’t leave FNC. Just Beck.
Previewing O’Reilly’s next line of GE attack..
Posted in FNC, MSNBC on August 30, 2009 by icn2The Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carey gives Bill O’Reilly an early X-mas Christmas present. O’Reilly will have a field day with this. And for a change, he’ll actually be on somewhat solid ground… (via The Cable Game)
“The intersection between GE’s interests and government action is clearer than ever,” General Electric Vice Chairman John G. Rice wrote in an Aug. 19 e-mail to colleagues.
Rice was calling on his co-workers to join the General Electric Political Action Committee. “GEPAC is an important tool that enables GE employees to collectively help support candidates who share the values and goals of GE.”
The full letter suggests that “share the values and goals of GE” really means “support policies that profit the company.”
Steve Milloy, a pro-free market investor at the Free Enterprise Action Fund, obtained this e-mail and says it reveals General Electric for what it really is. “GE is lobbying to become the biggest rent seeker this country has ever seen,” Milloy told this column. Rent seeking is using government legislation or regulation to generate private profits the free market wouldn’t provide.
