Tag: cable
Trump Demands That Networks 'Lose Licenses' For Displeasing Him

Trump Demands That Networks 'Lose Licenses' For Displeasing Him

In a speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Donald Trump hit on a familiar (and fascistic) theme: his desire to suppress unfriendly media.

“Last night, it was amazing,” Trump said, referring to what was actually an underwhelming victory in the sparsely attended Iowa caucuses. “NBC and CNN refused to air my victory speech—think of it—because they are crooked, they’re dishonest, and, frankly, they should have their licenses, or whatever they have, taken away.”

Unsurprisingly, that was a lie. Both networks aired portions before cutting away to the other candidates’ speeches, which is how these things are typically covered. But Trump insisted he’d been unfairly singled out. “They put on Nikki Haley. She came in third, a distant third—like, I mean, a distant third,” Trump continued. “And they put on Ron DeSanctimonious [DeSantis], who came in a boring second.”

This type of dictatorial rhetoric isn’t new for Trump. For years, he’s been railing against the “fake news” and calling the free press “the true Enemy of the People,” the “opposition party,” and “a bunch of very dishonest, crooked bastards.” He has threatened to open a “treason” investigation into Comcast, the owner of MSNBC, for what he said is their “endless coverage of the now fully debunked SCAM known as Russia, Russia, Russia, and much else,” calling it “one big Campaign Contribution to the Radical Left Democrat Party.”

Coincidentally, on MSNBC Monday evening, Rachel Maddow explained why MSNBC and other networks “stopped giving an unfiltered live platform to remarks by former President Trump.”

“It is not out of spite. It is not a decision that we relish,” Maddow said. “It is a decision that we regularly revisit,” she continued. “And honestly, earnestly, it is not an easy decision, but there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things. And that is a fundamental truth of our business and who we are.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Before Lewandowski, CNN Said Contributors Getting ‘Paid’ By A Campaign ‘Would Not Be Permitted’

Before Lewandowski, CNN Said Contributors Getting ‘Paid’ By A Campaign ‘Would Not Be Permitted’

Published with permission from Media Matters for America

CNN’s decision to continue employing Corey Lewandowski, who is being simultaneously paid by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign, clashes with its own years-long stated policies. The network has previously said that a person being “paid” by a campaign “would not be permitted to be a CNN contributor.”

Trump’s recently filed Federal Elections Commission report revealed that Lewandowski received $20,000 for “strategy consulting” in August through his company Green Monster Consulting LLC. CNN hired Lewandowski as a paid contributor in late June after he was fired from the Trump campaign. The new payment from Trumprenewed criticism of CNN for continuing to employ the Trump insider, who is reportedly still advising the Republican nominee.

The Trump campaign has claimed the disbursements are for “monthly severance payments,” but a spokesperson did not respond to a New York Times question about “why the payments were not described as severance to the F.E.C.”

CNN’s defense of its Lewandowski employment clashes with its own stated policies toward contributors over the years.

In 2011, the New York Daily News raised questions about whether Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher could simultaneously work for President Obama’s campaign and CNN. The news network responded by stating that if a contributor gets “paid” by a campaign, that person “would not be permitted to be a CNN contributor”:

Belcher did not respond to requests for comment, but a CNN spokeswoman tells us the pollster is currently “not being paid by the Obama campaign. If he were,” she added, “he would not be permitted to be a CNN contributor.”

Presumably, Belcher will cease to appear on CNN when his work for Obama’s campaign begins.

In 2010, Media Mattersdocumented that the Republican National Committee paid $12,000 to CNN contributor Alex Castellanos for “consulting.” Castellanos said he returned the payment because it went against “CNN’s preference and policy.”

In October 15, 2009, the Republican National Committee paid $12,000 to CNN contributor Alex Castellanos, a payment that apparently violated CNN’s stated policy. When contacted last week by Media Matters, Castellanos said he was initially unaware of the payment and returned it last year when he “found out.”

“I was not aware of the payment because ours is a large business and an employee who handles and processes payments for me dealt with the RNC transaction,” Castellanos said.

“CNN’s preference and policy is that I don’t work for the RNC or political candidates. When I found out that I was being paid by the RNC, I returned it,” Castellanos said. “I wish I could keep it. I would like to add to the economic recovery.”

The New York Timesreported at the time that CNN said contributors could continue working for the network as long as they weren’t getting paid by candidates or political parties:

Mr. Castellanos, who previously drew criticism from Democrats for owning a firm that produced advertisements for the Chamber of Commerce and health insurance companies, was named this week as an image consultant for the Republican National Committee.

On Tuesday, a CNN spokeswoman said the appointment would not disqualify Mr. Castellanos for working as a paid commentator because his job for the R.N.C. was an unpaid position. The spokeswoman, Edie Emery, said CNN had allowed Democratic political advisers like Paul Begala to continue working as long as the jobs they did for the party or candidates were unpaid.

In July, CNN temporarily suspended its contributor contract with Donna Brazile after she became the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee. Brazile is reportedly being compensated by the DNC for serving as interim chair.

CNN is overturning years of precedent by employing Lewandowski — yet another reason the network should cut ties with him immediately.

STUDY: Cable News Devotes 13 Times As Much Coverage To Clinton Health As Trump Foundation

STUDY: Cable News Devotes 13 Times As Much Coverage To Clinton Health As Trump Foundation

Published with permission from Media Matters for America

Cable news networks spent less than an hour in total on September 12 discussing a new investigative report about how Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump retooled his charitable foundation to “spend other people’s money.” By contrast, they devoted more than 13 and a half hours of their airtime that day to covering Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s health.

Over the weekend, which marked the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Clinton fell ill at a memorial event commemorating the victims of the 2001 attack and later revealed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

The same weekend, The Washington Post published an investigative report by David Fahrenthold revealingthat Trump had “retooled” the Donald J. Trump Foundation to transform it “from a standard-issue rich person’s philanthropy into a charity that allowed a rich man to be philanthropic for free.” The report detailed how Trump has stopped donating to his own foundation, instead filling its coffers with donations from business partners and others; that he uses the money as he pleases, including potentially illegal purchases for himself; that he lies to other charities and the public by suggesting that the foundation’s donations are his own money; and that the foundation has broken both the law and IRS rules.

On Monday, September 12, the two issues drew immensely disproportionate coverage. CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC devoted 13 hours, 41 minutes, and 41 seconds of combined airtime between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. to discussing Clinton’s pneumonia. The same networks devoted less than an hour of combined airtime to thePost’s revelations about the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

Among the networks, MSNBC covered Clinton’s health the most with nearly five and a half hours of time devoted to the topic, but much of their evening coverage stood out for devoting substantial time to discussing the history of presidential illnesses, debunking conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health — which right-wing media have spent months pushing — and criticizing the media for hyping the story. Several mainstream media outlets, in their frenzied response, declared that the months of conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health had been “vindicated” because Clinton revealed that she had been diagnosed on September 9 with pneumonia.

Noticeably, Fox News was the only cable news network not to cover the Post’s reporting on Trump’s foundation at all. MSNBC and CNN each gave the story less than half an hour.

The media’s reporting on the two stories highlights a consistent problem of news outlets failing to adequately cover investigative reports relating to Donald Trump. Broadcast news networks previously chose to dedicatethree times more coverage to a flawed AP report about the Clinton Foundation than to an illegal political donation Donald Trump once made to the Florida attorney general through his foundation. Network news morning shows also previously failed to cover an investigative report that revealed Trump’s former campaign manager possibly received illegal payments from a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party.

Methodology:

Media Matters searched SnapStream for coverage of Hillary Clinton’s health on September 12, 2016, on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC using the terms: “(clinton) (health or pneumonia or overheat* or medical or physician or condition).” Media Matters searched SnapStream for coverage of the Donald J. Trump Foundation on September 12, 2016, on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC using the terms: “(Trump AND (Foundation OR Charity))”

Photo: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump takes the stage at a campaign rally in Asheville, North Carolina, U.S., September 12, 2016.  REUTERS/Mike Segar

Cable News (Except Fox) Increasingly Using On-Air Graphics To Combat Trump’s Lies

Cable News (Except Fox) Increasingly Using On-Air Graphics To Combat Trump’s Lies

Published with permission from Media Matters of America

Media outlets have increasingly turned to chryons (or on-air graphics) to combat Donald Trump’s lies in real time. This media tactic has become an important tool given their inability to pushback on lies that are consistently repeated by the Trump campaign.

On the April 4 edition of MSNBC Live, MSNBC aired live footage from a Donald Trump rally where he claimed to have watched a videotape of the United States handing $400 million in “ransom money” to Iran. MSNBC debunked Trump’s claim using a chyron that read, “Trump Says He Watched (Nonexistent) Video Of Iran Receiving Cash.”

Later in the speech, when Trump again claimed to have seen “the video,” MSNBC used the same chyron to refute the false narrative. MSNBC later cut away from the speech and anchor Kate Snow invited NBC foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin further debunk the narrative.

Previously, CNN earned considerable praise from the media after using its chyrons to fact check the Trump campaign’s lies.

CNN’s and MSNBC’s decision to use on-air graphics to combat misinformation follows extensive criticismreceived by cable news for poorly pushing back against lies from Donald Trump and his campaign.

According to Poynter, these types of fact checks have become increasingly important in a “post-fact world.”

American television has been accused of not stepping up its game to combat misinformation in this election cycle.

In many ways, the failure has been one of formats rather than content. When TV hosts have tried to correct the record they have sometimes done so by replaying long clips of the claim with no clear indication of its falsehood. In other occasions, they have not done enough homework to shut down a lie when the candidate hits back — even if they were entirely correct.

Photo: U.S. Republican presidential candidate and businessman Donald Trump speaks to the media regarding money he listed as being donated to veterans groups at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, U.S., May 31, 2016.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson