Ailes and Patraeus…

I hadn’t thought much about the Roger Ailes/Patraeus Bob Woodward story since I read it last night. I didn’t think it merited much notation. However with this article, Politico’s Dylan Byers has gotten me to rethink that…

Imagine waking up to this breaking news alert: “In spring 2011, Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, advised Sec. of State Hillary Clinton to abandon her plans for life outside the public sector and run for president against Barack Obama in 2012.”

The next breaking news alert you’d be likely to receive is this one: “Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, to step down.”

That would likely be true if it were the president of CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, The New York Times or any other news organization. But Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, makes his own rules. Last night, The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reported that in spring 2011, Ailes tried to enlist then-Gen. David Petraeus to run for president. Yet since news broke, Ailes has received no substantial criticism and the reputation of Fox News remains intact.

“If the President of ABC News did this, it would be a scandal, not least for the journalists at ABC News. At Fox it’s just part of the culture,” Jay Rosen, a professor of journalsim at New York University, told POLITICO.

FNC Election Fallout?

New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman writes about FNC after the election…

According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has a directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders to producers mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris. Both pundits made several appearances in the days after the election, but their visibility on the network has dropped markedly. Inside Fox News, Morris’s Romney boosterism and reality-denying predictions became a punch line. At a rehearsal on the Saturday before the election, according to a source, anchor Megyn Kelly chuckled when she relayed to colleagues what someone had told her: “I really like Dick Morris. He’s always wrong but he makes me feel good.”

A Fox spokesperson confirmed the new booking rules for Rove and Morris, and explained that Shine’s message was “the election’s over.”

The Hazards of Live TV: #25,182

(Via J$)

Black In America 5…

CNN announced its fifth Black In America special…

Soledad O’Brien Explores Racial and Ethnic Identity in Provocative Black in America

Who is Black in America? Debuts Sunday, Dec. 09 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT

“I don’t really feel Black,” says 17-year-old Nayo Jones. Her mother is Black; she was raised apart from her by her White father, and she identifies herself as biracial. “I was raised up with White people, White music, White food so it’s not something I know,” she says in a new documentary that explores the sensitive concepts of race, cultural identity, and skin tone.

For the fifth installment of her groundbreaking Black in America series, CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien reports for Who is Black in America? The documentary debuts Sunday, Dec. 09 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT and replays on Saturday, Dec. 15 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT.

Is Jones Black? Is Blackness based upon skin color or other factors? The 2010 U.S. Census found 15 percent of new marriages are interracial, a figure that is twice what was reported in 1980. One in seven American newborns were of mixed race in 2010, representing an increase of two percent from the 2000 U.S. Census. Within this context, O’Brien examines how much regarding race and identity are personal choices vs. reflections of an external social construct. Tim Wise, an author and anti-racism activist believes in self identification, but says, in practice, society often will remind biracial people like Jones of their Blackness, “in a million subtle ways,” he says in the documentary.

Bloomberg TV Lands Obama Interview…

Bloomberg TV announced that it will air an interview with President Obama today at 12:30…

BLOOMBERG TV TO INTERVIEW PRESIDENT OBAMA

Airs today at 12:30 pm ET

President Obama sits down with Bloomberg White House correspondent Julianna Goldman at the White House today for his first television interview since the election. Airing at 12:30 pm ET, Goldman and the president will discuss the fiscal cliff – now just four weeks away.

Preview video here.