The Hazards of Live TV: #25,190

Things got a little out of hand between Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman this morning on Squawk Box…

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Ouch…being corrected on live TV is never a good thing…

After O’Brien called the “lazy” comment “not nice,” conservative commentator Will Cain and CNN reporter John Berman jumped in to provide context for Ailes’ comment.

“Everyone’s latching on to the fact that he called the president lazy,” Cain said. “Roger Ailes did go on to say that ‘I’m only quoting from the president directly.’ He talked about an interview that President Obama gave to Barbara Walters where he said, ‘I grew up in Hawaii, which is pretty laid back’. Roger Ailes wasn’t coming up with that on his own. And he made a point of making that.”

“Okay, so the ‘pretty laid back’ to ‘lazy’ is a little bit of a leap to me,” O’Brien pushed back.

“Barack Obama used the word ‘lazy,’” Berman jumped in.

“Oh, interesting. I didn’t know that,” O’Brien said.

“He did. Barack Obama said he feels a laziness in himself that he attributes to his laid back upbringing in Hawaii,” Cain continued.

“Hmm. Interesting,” she replied.

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Is this Jeff Zucker’s idea of enhanced sports coverage?

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I never get away clean on a trip without having to post about something after putting the blog in park and this trip is no exception. I’ll let NewsBusters’ Brent Baker tell the tail…

CNN anchor Deb Feyerick asked Saturday afternoon if an approaching asteroid, which will pass by Earth on February 15, “is an example of, perhaps, global warming?”

Moments earlier, before an ad break, she segued from the Northeast blizzard to a segment with Bill Nye “the science guy,” by pointing to global warming: “Every time we see a storm like this lately, the first question to pop into a lot of people’s minds is whether or not global warming is to blame? I’ll talk to Bill Nye, ‘the science guy,’ about devastating storms and climate change.”

She never got to that question in the subsequent interview at about 3:25 PM EST during CNN Newsroom, instead transitioning from a snowfall update: “Talk about something else that’s falling from the sky and that is an asteroid. What’s coming our way? Is this an effect of, perhaps, of global warming or is this just some meteoric occasion?”

Nye resisted confirming her hypothesis.

Ugh. Trip or no trip, I couldn’t let this one go by without piling on. What an embarrassment for CNN. Truly horrendous. Baker put this as his headline…

Parody or Does She Believe It? CNN Anchor Blames Asteroid on Global Warming

There is absolutely no way this was a parody. If I was in charge of CNN’s anchor rotation, Deb Feyerick would have just seen her last day anchoring a CNN program.

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NewsBusters’ Ken Shepherd reports that Martin Bashir fell for a hoax…

While the mainstream media has been transfixed with the Manti Te’o fake girlfriend story, it seems many outlets in the gullible liberal media were biting on another hoax, this one involving Florida Gov. Rick Scott and a band of Satanists supposedly set to stage a rally expressing their support for the Florida Republican.

Among the journalists taken in by the fake story was MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, who could not wipe the devilish grin off his face as he reported what he thought to be a legitimate news story on his January 14 program, in a segment entitled “Dread Scott.”

“Yes, the Satanic Temple in Florida is organizing a rally next week to support Mr. Scott for signing a 2012 law that essentially would allow student-led prayer in school,” Bashir explained, adding that “We spoke to one of the Satanists today about why they support the law” and that the spokesman, one Lucien Greaves, explained “that the law would prevent the marginalization of Satanism and other smaller religious groups and lead to, quote, a boom in religious diversity.’”

Just a few days earlier, Bashir compared Scott to the late Communist despot Nicolae Ceauşescu, so a story like this, although too good to be true, was just too good to not run, apparently.

But alas, the Satanic Temple is not a real, well, Satanic temple. Bashir’s first clue might have been that there’s no physical address or even mailing address listed on TheSatanicTemple.com’s website.

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(via TVNewser’s Alex Weprin)

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Someone on Jansing & Co.’s staff isn’t up on their Jon Favreaus apparently…

However, in a segment on Jansing and Company today, MSNBC accidentally aired a photo of actor/director Favreau in place of Obama speechwriter Favreau. For some reason, this is endlessly funny to me. Like, I literally can’t stop giggling at the screengrab.

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I don’t know about you but I think Bartiromo just plain lost it. You should never lose it as an anchor, no matter how annoyed with the guest you are.

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(Via J$)

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According to emailers things got a little screwy on CNBC earlier today when Brian Sullivan interviewed John McAffee via phone and  McAffee dropped more than a few Bombs which Sullivan subsequently apologized for. I really don’t understand why McAffee is getting any air time on CNBC for. He’s a fugitive but he’s not a business story.

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I wouldn’t categorize this Hazard as a joke like TVNewser did. I would call it a slip up. And pfft on MSNBC for editing it out for a re-air.

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Borderline homophobia, blatant ignorance of subject matter, and equating child rape with a desire for nudism…and all in one sentence. Bob Beckel has ceased being a parody of himself. He’s now crossed over into the world of walking human tragedy. He’s a bigger embarrassment for FNC than Glenn Beck ever was…

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Now you see him, now you don’t…

Witt gets a complete pass from me. The fault lies with the Senator who can’t sit in his chair for five minutes. Awwwwww. Poor baby…

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The Cycle has a flat…

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Ahhhhh…focus groups. You get a wide variety of people. You get some who can bite their tongue and you get some who…uh…can’t.

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Seattle has a new NFL team?

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Not much that needs to be said here. For years FNC has been playing with fire with car chases, notoriously more than its competition, and this time it finally burned them. It’s kind of surprising the network skated by this long without disaster striking on the air. Apologies for technical mistakes are fine and dandy…but if you really want to ensure that this never happens again there’s only one solution that is bulletproof…stop televising these gratuitous incidents either live or in delay. Period. Nothing else is guaranteed to succeed.

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Cylons invade MSNBC…

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Fox and Friends’ bookers need to screen people better…

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From an emailer…

I did not get a chance to record it, at 1:13pm ET on MSNBC going to break they had a graphic with the photos and names of the next three guests for Eugene robinson they had the photo of Ashely Judd. No correction from Andrea when they came back from the break.

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Somehow I doubt this will go in Andrea Mitchell’s highlight reel…

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He’s such a regular fixture I decided to modify my usual banner headline for today. Anyway bombs away…

(via J$)

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Banfield vs. Walsh. In a word…ugh. CNN should have realized the train wreck potential this segment would have and scrapped it….

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And this was the repeat airing. Nobody thought to bleep it out?

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This morning FNC gave itself a big black eye. At 10 am it runs the Saturday business block with Bulls and Bears at 10, Cavuto on Business at 10:30, Forbes on Fox at 11, and Cashin’ In at 11:30. This schedule has been like this for over a decade now. Set in stone. Unchangeable. Predictable.

Riiiiiiiiiiight.

This morning at 10, up popped Neil Cavuto. At first I thought it was another 2 hour live special that FNC occasionally does from time to time. Except there was no live bug. I checked my DVR’s program guide. It said Bulls and Bears. FNC’s website was no help because it lumps all four shows on the schedule into one two hour block called the “Cost of Freedom”, which is a very old umbrella brand term that dates back to 9/11. Was this a new scheduling lineup? Was Bulls and Bears cancelled? No idea.

It all came into place at 10:30 when Cavuto did his exit from his taped show by introducing Forbes on Fox and up came Bulls and Bears. FNC’s control room had racked the wrong tape at 10 am. This of course means that at the end of Bulls and Bears Brenda Buttner is going to “toss” to Cavuto and instead David Asman will show up.

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A few months ago when I wrote my epic story on MSNBC’s POV Metamorphosis I posited some questions that should be watched going forward. One of them was this…

3) How does NBC News and its staff fit in with Griffin’s POV designs for MSNBC? There may be no remaining firewall between MSNBC dayside and POV primetime because of all the crossover appearances taking place between the two, the increase of POV analysis shows, and the POV style seepage in most of its “newscasts”. But there is considerably more firewall remaining between NBC News and MSNBC in terms of POV creep.

But this could turn out to be very dicey going forward. Say a POV host or a POV inclined news anchor asks a loaded POV type question of an NBC News journalist; how does the NBC News person deal with that? Will they be expected to respond in kind? Will they push back against the question? Do they duck the question? What happens? This, I believe, is probably the single thorniest issue that will confront the two networks and the news division, especially where political and controversial news is involved.

I mention this because of what transpired on Martin Bashir’s show this afternoon. Mediaite’s Andrew Kirell writes about Martin Bashir trying to browbeat Luke Russert into agreeing with his conclusions…

When Russert refused to comply, Bashir became annoyed, interrupting the reporter by saying, “No. No. Luke, he’s right.”

Bashir said that “we sometimes see the White House say that there are those on Capitol Hill who are literally rooting for failure,” and then played a clip of Carney talking about that sentiment.

“I think that when you have a situation where action is not being taken on Capitol Hill — where it is obvious as outside economists will tell you what actions Congress could take to create jobs — there’s at least a failure to act,” Carney said in the soundbite.

“Very quickly, Luke. He’s right, isn’t he?” Bashir asked Russert, clearly hoping for the reporter to come out in total agreement with the White House.

Russert’s brow furrowed as he tried to answer in a diplomatic, journalistic fashion, saying, “It would seem that there is a desire on Capitol Hill not to allow the president…”

“Luke. He’s right,” Bashir interrupted.

“Not to allow the president to look good in any capacity,” continued Russert, before being interrupted again by Bashir, who insisted, “Luke, a quick answer. A quick answer!” (Code for: I want you to agree with Carney one-hundred percent.)

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The BBC plays too many video games apparently

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Your World was beset with audio troubles today but my ego is the real reason why I’m noting this one (you’ll have to get to end of the post to see why)…

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Ok, this incident between Tamron Hall and The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney has been tearing up the internet. Politico’s Dylan Byers writes that Carney emailed Politico about what happened…

I’ve always enjoyed the feisty back-and-forths that MSNBC appearances provide me. I hope and expect to continue these.

The question for the Romney bullying segment was “does the story matter?” I took that to mean “does this incident tell us anything about Romney would be as President.” I answered no. I maintained that position throughout the segment. Tamron thought I was ambushing her, apparently, and so she cut off my mic, I learned later.

It would be easy to take one side or the other in this spat as being right. But I’m not going to do that because it’s not that cut and dried as there are several things at play here.

Most of the blame here lies with Carney. Whether or not he thought he was answering the question regarding the subject he thought he was going to be discussing takes a big back seat to the subject of how he decided to answer the question. He decided to make this confrontational. That’s all on him. This wasn’t like the time MSNBC booked a known bomb thrower and provocateur like John Ziegler on Contessa Brewer’s hour. What ensued with Ziegler was easily predictable…what ensued with Carney was not.

But while I lay most of the blame for this with Carney, because it was his answer that started all this, it takes two to tango and Hall doesn’t get off the hook entirely. While her response to Carney was nowhere near as outrageous or over the line as Thomas Roberts calling out an empty chair, Hall could have and should have handled this better.

I know, I know…Phil Griffin likes his POV even if it’s supposed to be from his un-POV news anchors, but there are ways to react to Carney that are effective and ways to react to Carney that are not so effective. Thrusting yourself into the story is not one of the better ways to react to Carney. I don’t care if you take personal offense to it or not, the moment you “go there” you’ve lost the interview and the segment is unrecoverable and ruined and the storyline is no longer about Carney’s alleged attempt at misdirection but about your response to Carney. In other words a segment that wasn’t about you just became about you. That’s something one should try to avoid because it’s a loser scenario. Just ask Contessa Brewer how the Ziegler segment worked out for her in the court of public opinion. It’s scenes like this that are the reason why Cable News is the butt end of so many jokes.

Unless Hall herself did Carney’s booking, I find it questionable that she knew the exact terms that were used to book Carney and the words chosen to express them. Hall said this to Carney on the air according to Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher…

“You don’t want me to go anything on you,” Hall interjected. “You’re actually irritating me right now. I’m going to be honest with you. Yes, you are. You knew the topics we were going to discuss. You knew them. You agreed.”

But did Hall know exactly word for word how Carney was pitched? I’m going to give Carney some wiggle room here and suggest he release the emails of the pitch from MSNBC to prove the following assertion he made to Politico…

The question for the Romney bullying segment was “does the story matter?” I took that to mean “does this incident tell us anything about Romney would be as President.” I answered no.

Proving that Carney was indeed pitched that way would at least let him off the hook in my eyes for his line of response but not for how he chose his words.

That’s still all on him. Ultimately it’s still mostly Carney’s fault. Hall doesn’t get all aggro if Carney doesn’t throw the first punch. Yes, I wish she had not lost it like that and instead responded in a more restrained manner but she never would have responded at all if Carney hadn’t lit a fire under her.