Zap2It’s Kate O’Hare reports that FBN’s new dayside lineup starts Monday…
As of Monday, Dennis Kneale joins Cheryl Casone (above) as co-host of the noon hour. Recent FBN hire Melissa Francis and Lori Rothman — who was a guest in the “leg chair” on FNC’s “RedEye W/Greg Gutfeld” last week — will continue as co-hosts of the 1 p.m. hour, with the fiery Tracy Byrnes and British-born, Los Angeles-raised Ashley Webster taking over as hosts of the 2 p.m. slot.
Can you say “FBN leak”? I knew you could…
This is a Fox News Alert. Dave Weigel writes in Slate about the destruction of the Breaking News story by cable news and the internet…
“Breaking news” is an old concept, codified by the Associated Press in 1906 when the wire wanted to designate “news of transcendent importance.” The AP used the term “FLASH.” Other news-breakers used “bulletin,” “alert,” whatever gave off the right “stop editing the crossword and print this” vibe. Something important had just happened. This news service had confirmed it. Now you knew.
This system was abused, obviously, and the misuse of “breaking” ramped up with the birth of cable news. We should cleave TV from the rest of the media—the Internet doesn’t need to be blamed for all the sins of harried 24-hour news merchants. But TV and the Internet got drunk on “breaking” on the same day. It was Sept. 11, 2001. Three cable networks and an evolving blogosphere had a story that changed minute-to-minute, with confusing details and rumors out of nowhere and, eventually, a hot war in central Asia.
Constant “breaking” news alerts made sense in those weeks. And then the news cycle slowed down. The TV channels shrugged and kept using “breaking” and “alerts” at a greater pace than ever. “It got trivialized and people couldn’t unring the bell,” says Craig Allen, a professor at Arizona State and a historian of TV news. “It’s just horrible now. We’ve got TVs on the wall I walk past in the morning. My eye is trained to notice a ‘BREAKING’ alert and pay more attention. So is yours. But half the time I see an alert, and it turns out it’s somebody announcing an announcement of an announcement of a news conference.”
Politico’s MJ Lee writes about something Martin Bashir said that got red blogs very upset…
Given what the book of Mormon is clearly saying, Mr. Romney has but two choices: He can either keep lying and potentially win the White House but bring eternal damnation upon himself. Or, he can start telling the truth. The question for him, I guess, is which is more important?” Bashir said.
Several conservative blogs are condemning Bashir for his choice of words, including the Right Scoop, which called Bashir one of many “jackholes” who cannot be taken seriously.
“It just doesn’t get more absurd than this,” the blog says. “[T]his is why people don’t take jackholes like Martin Bashir seriously, because they themselves are the most egregious of liars and are simply trying to cover for Obama’s bankrupting policies.”
News Flash: Bashir’s show is a POV show not a news show (despite MSNBC kind of disguising it as such by the format used). So expect Bashir to say outrageous things on the air…because that’s what POV hosts do.
There was a time when this would have gotten my attention the way it did Mediaite’s Noah Rothman yesterday…but that was before MSNBC came out and said Bashir’s show is not a news program. The rules are different for POV shows and the boundaries are basically wide open (despite what cable news network Presidents might say to the contrary). More importantly, my level of giving a crap about what POV hosts like Bashir say is much much lower than it is for straight news anchors (or people who are supposedly straight news anchors). I prefer to vote with my remote.
But when some MSM outlet like Politico runs with it, it deserves a notation if for no other reason than because the story is breaking out of the world of red/blue political back and forth and into the world of straight news. That kind of news cycle shift tends to shed unwanted light on networks and could lead to some kind of repercussion.
The LA Times’ Meredith Blake profiles Melissa Harris-Perry…
Harris-Perry’s unique approach has earned the praise of her MSNBC colleagues. “[Melissa and her producers] are beating their own path through the news in a way that is super-ambitious, totally unafraid, nuanced, aggressive,” says fellow academic-turned-broadcaster Rachel Maddow. “Melissa has a quiet confidence about her that allows her to do stuff that nobody else could do. She really raises the bar.”
Following in the footsteps of Chris Hayes, whose show “Up” leads into hers, Harris-Perry is the latest wonky and telegenic Nation magazine veteran to land a show on MSNBC. And, like Hayes, Harris-Perry got her start as a network contributor and guest host for Maddow before MSNBC president Phil Griffin convinced her to come onboard.
They provide a buoyant and brainy counterweight to the network’s more bombastic primetime personalities, like Ed Schultz and Chris Matthews, and despite their decidedly progressive politics, their shows rarely descend into partisan screaming matches.
“Sometimes I think to myself, ‘Do they know what they’ve done?’” Harris-Perry laughs.
“I think what we’ve created with her and with Chris is a new kind of television on the weekends,” Griffin says. “This is about ideas, about depth, about interesting people from broad backgrounds who maybe don’t look like the traditional anchorman or woman, but really have a lot to bring.”
