Not All Leaks are What They Seem…
Last night I posted this on my Facebook page…
I’m really not getting why the fact that the Producer who was responsible the FnF Obama clip fiasco had his potential future job prospects at CNN splattered all over Mediaite and TVNewser. It was obviously a leak but the question is why leak it? What’s the motivation? Is it to make CNN look bad because they have an offer on the table for the guy? Or is to punish the guy by maybe making CNN think twice about the offer because of the controversy and yanking it? There’s gotta be a reason why this info, which had nothing at all to do with the story of the video, got such public prominence.
Well today yesterday’s “innocent tidbit” had its desired effect. The New York Times’ Jeremy W. Peters writes…
The producer, Chris White, had been offered a job by CNN before the video was broadcast. But on Thursday, a CNN spokeswoman said that the network would not be hiring him.
Mr. White’s fate at Fox News is unclear.
Congratulations to TVNewser and Mediaite for being played so expertly. Suckers. You should have known something was up when that total non-sequitur about White’s CNN plans got dumped in your lap.
Inside Cable News 
May 31, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Why just working for FNC deserves punishment. And blacklisting.
May 31, 2012 at 3:13 pm
If a leak is not newsworthy and likely malicious in purpose, why not just forget it?
May 31, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Because people are gullible and don’t think ahead enough sometimes.
May 31, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Just curious Spud. Why did you post your reaction to the FNC producer leak on your facebook page rather than here first. Are you planning to migrate your website to facebook? I sure hope not.
May 31, 2012 at 3:47 pm
I posted it on Facebook because it was too long to put out in one Tweet on Twitter and since my FB page has a Twitter bridge, I could post it on FB and get it on Twitter. I vacillated all day yesterday about whether I was going to put it on the blog before I decided to go with Twitter. Maybe I should have put it on the blog but I didn’t.
May 31, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Just wondering, do we know what CNN show White’s job offer was for? Perhaps I shouldn’t ask such things 😉
May 31, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I’m going to guess OutFront since that show had two recs posted recently. But it really could have been anywhere…
May 31, 2012 at 4:27 pm
^ HA, if that is true that totally wouldn’t surprise me. But, like you said, it could be anywhere. I was just curious.
May 31, 2012 at 5:53 pm
I and quite a few of my freinds are migrating away from Facebook for various reasons. Please tell me you’re not going that route and keep the blog the blog.
May 31, 2012 at 5:54 pm
good grief, friends
May 31, 2012 at 6:19 pm
So TVN and Mediaite was supposedly wrong for going with that leak? How so?
In fact, its perfect. It shows the stupidity once again of CNN. From Mediaite: CNN Panelist: You Can’t Tell Difference Between An Anti-Obama Ad And Fox News
Oh wait, so you mean the producer who created that –who you were going to hire?! Talk about egg on their face.
May 31, 2012 at 7:19 pm
They weren’t necessarily wrong. If they wanted to ensure they got the guy destroyed, they were right. Of course that wasn’t their plan at all. They were ignorant that they were being used and what the agenda was. Nobody likes to get played. They got played.
Please tell me you’re not going that route and keep the blog the blog.
I just changed the freaking colors. No, the blog isn’t going away. Facebook is just another delivery mechanism to talk about things that maybe aren’t blog worthy or (as was this case) not yet blog worthy. Consider FB and Twitter to be portals to ICN not the other way around.
May 31, 2012 at 7:22 pm
And Les, let’s stop pretending that this guy is anything other than a fall guy. He didn’t just whip this up on his own and put it on the air without anyone knowing. The anchors knew. The production staff knew. Anybody could have put a stop to it at any time and they didn’t. And yet this guy gets the blame? Rubbish.
Typical FNC behavior, look for a scapegoat and then make sure he gets trashed publicly for it and his career destroyed. If he had been a rogue element, that would be one thing. But this guy was no rogue.
May 31, 2012 at 7:42 pm
Yeah, like anyone bought the line that this guy was acting without anyone’s authority. Puhleeze, other people knew. Clearly, the anchors knew exactly what they were going to show. Chris White got screwed.
May 31, 2012 at 9:28 pm
FNC earned its reputation and large audience by being the alternative to news outlets that regularly ran stories from only one perspective and now they’ve come of age and are doing the same thing. FNC realised this was potentially very bad for them so getting Mr. White un-hired at CNN over this would help shift some of the distrust away from FnF and FNC. It’s a load of crap.
FnF’s hosts should step-up and accept the blame themselves because they just had to know this didn’t meet the standards they claim to have. There’s a widening credibility gap in morning cable news entertainment/POV programmes and CNN has a great opportunity to step in and fill it. That chance will blow right by them, of course, as that seems to be how CNN likes to roll.
May 31, 2012 at 10:50 pm
This is crap. Those smirking idiots on the couch knew what this was, and gave it hearty approval after it aired. Ailes can call F&F “entertainment” ’til the cows come home, but it’s presented in the news-and-features format of Today and GMA. It’s baldfaced rightwing propaganda presented as news, then falsely labeled. It’s an embarrassment.
June 1, 2012 at 6:59 am
Seems to be a lot of steamed outrage on this. Past FNC transgressions appear to be fueling the boiler.
June 1, 2012 at 2:10 pm
I’m not outraged, just disappointed. Again.
Stumbled upon FNC some years ago while flipping channels, I think because MSNBC or CNN cancelled an evening programme I enjoyed, and then I eventually gave FnF a try. One of the first things I watched was a discussion that basically painted a glowing picture of some stupid liberal proposal being pushed at the time. After the break, though, the next discussion covered the exact same topic but with a sincere conservative counterpoint to it. Whoa-ho-ho! Icing on the cake for me was the segue to a hard news segment that clear-as-day separated actual news from all of the opinion/discussion/entertainment stuff. Later it became apparent that it was usually a reporter or news anchor who read the news during FnF, and often the same person who anchored the next show. It really was fair, balanced, and they took ‘We Report, You Decide” to heart.
They’ve since dropped having a news reader for those segments. While they’ll still put on plenty of liberals for current event discussions, I never see the hosts themselves present an issue or story from a liberal perspective any longer… “mentioning” a differing perspective does not equal “balanced”. FNC is still better than most of their other nation-wide competitors but that’s not saying much, so this incident doesn’t go over well for me.