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Premier New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman attacked the Fox News Channel on Thursday, comparing the top-rated cable news network to the pro-terrorist Al Jazeera broadcasting company. Using a recent speech by Vice President Dick Cheney to argue that the Bush administration is too narrow-minded in its handling of postwar Iraq, Friedman complained, "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein issue messages from their caves through Al Jazeera, and Mr. Cheney issues messages from his bunker through Fox." "Out of fairness, my newspaper feels obligated [to cover the Cheney speech]," the top Times columnist wrote. "But I wish we would have...

<p>October 2, 2003 -- FOX officials say they are thinking about spinning off two new channels from Fox News Channel - one for business and another for entertainment news.</p> <p>Fox Entertainment president Peter Chernin told analysts this week that discussions were underway about creating two new channels from the highly successful FNC, according to reports.</p>

Web posted Friday, September 26, 2003 Neuharth Panel Asks: 'Is Media Fair?' BY RANDY DOCKENDORF P&D Regional Editor VERMILLION -- Are the media fair and accurate? Well, fairness, like beauty, becomes pretty subjective, a panel of the nation's top journalists said Thursday night at the University of South Dakota. The event, titled "Is the Free Press A Fair Press?," concluded a two-day celebration of the $5 million renovation of the Al Neuharth Media Center on the USD campus. Neuharth was on hand for the event, which was broadcast live on South Dakota Public Television. Neuharth, a 1950 USD graduate, founded...

Bum start for CNN's 'Zahn' and 'Cooper'Best hopes for stemming slide against Fox News By Kevin Downey     CNN's hopes of reclaiming No. 1 from Fox News Channel were dealt a major setback this week with the disappointing premieres of “Anderson Cooper 360” and “Paula Zahn Now.”      The audience for “Cooper” on Monday was down 47 percent in the 7 p.m. time slot occupied last year by “Crossfire,” to 319,000 people, while “Zahn's” audience of 508,000 people was down 45 percent in the 8 p.m. time slot briefly occupied by the canceled “Connie Chung.” All figures are based...

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Fox News Channel was the only cable news service in August to grow in viewership from a year ago, gaining 20% in primetime and 29% across the entire day, according to Nielsen Media Research. By comparison, CNN fell by 9% in primetime and total day, while MSNBC lost 21% in primetime and 11% for the day. Headline News and CNBC also suffered losses greater than 20% compared with August 2002. It marked the 28th consecutive month that Fox led the news channel pack. For the month, Fox averaged 1.3 million viewers in primetime, compared with...

<p>August 29, 2003 -- THE rise of an ardent, pas sionate, angry and en gaged left is the most im portant political story of 2003.</p> <p>The hottest book of the new publishing season is Al Franken's "Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)." Joe Conason of the New York Observer has a fast-selling tome called "Big Lies." At the end of September comes "The Lies of George Bush" by David Corn of the Nation magazine, which will likely hit the bestseller list as well.</p>

Nearly two years after Greta Van Susteren defected from CNN to archrival Fox News, she has plenty to say about her former employer -- and not much good. "What happened to CNN is a disgrace," Van Susteren said in an interview to promote her new book, "My Turn at the Bully Pulpit." The problems at CNN, she said, started when parent company Time Warner merged with AOL and laid off employees. But she also criticized recent moves by Jim Walton, named president of Atlanta-based CNN early this year. Van Susteren thinks Walton made a mistake by downsizing boisterous debate show...

Fox Loses Bid to Stop Sale of Franken BookFri August 22, 2003 06:31 PM ETBy Gail Appleson NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday slammed Fox News' trademark infringement lawsuit against Al Franken and his publisher Penguin Group and refused to stop the sale of the liberal satirist's new book that pokes fun at the network and host Bill O'Reilly. Fox charged that Franken had violated its trademarked phrase "fair and balanced" by including it on the cover of his book entitled "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." Fox is owned by News Corp. and Penguin...

Five months after CNN canceled Connie Chung's 8 p.m. show, the network still is fiddling with the replacement -- and losing viewership. Chung's show often was criticized for its tabloid feel, and last winter newly named CNN President Jim Walton shelved it in favor of a hard-news show featuring one of the network's best-known anchors, Paula Zahn. Zahn has anchored the 8 p.m. hour most of the time since, although CNN officially will launch and rebadge the program Sept. 8, spokeswoman Christa Robinson said. Initial ratings suggest more than a catchy name may be needed. Viewers seem to have preferred...

Dick Morris The Political Life Bias-mongers on rocks as viewers taste straight newsI am sure we were all surprised to learn in the Aug. 11 issue of The New York Times that people are " burned out on serious news." How else could the bastion of establishment journalism account for the falloff in network news viewership and, unnoted in the article, the newspaper's own decreasing circulation?Yet the evidence is all there. People don't care anymore. That must be why The Times' circulation has fallen 5 percent and 1.1 million fewer households are watching network television news compared to last...

Fox News will host Democratic debatesBillboard 08/08/2003Fox News Channel will host two live debates featuring the Democratic presidential candidates that will air in primetime, the network announced on Thursday.Working with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Fox said it has commitments from all nine candidates for its Sept. 9 debate in Baltimore. The second debate, scheduled for Oct. 26, so far is missing Sen. John Kerry, but Fox executives hope he will clear his schedule in order to participate.Fox is teaming with the CBC Political Education and Leadership Institute, whose chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), held center stage at a news...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) Fox News Channel has sued liberal humorist Al Franken and the Penguin Group to stop them from using the phrase ''fair and balanced'' in the title of his upcoming book.</p> <p>Filed Monday in Manhattan, the trademark infringement lawsuit seeks a court order forcing Penguin to rename the book, ''Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.'' It also asks for unspecified damages.</p>

August 11, 2003 Suffering News Burnout? The Rest of America Is, TooBy JIM RUTENBERG as the nation's television audience burned out on serious news? Kuni Takahashi/Boston Herald, via Reflex News; ReutersDespite a number of serious news events playing out this summer — like the war in Iraq, above, and the civil war in Liberia — television news programs have been drawing fewer viewers than last year. American soldiers are dying in Iraq almost daily, questions are continuing to swirl around the Bush administration's case for the March invasion and United States Marines are poised off the coast of Liberia....

A new poll found that less than half of Americans believe the New York Times, still considered the so-called "newspaper of record" by many establishment media organizations, is a reliable purveyor of truth. According to pollster Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports, just 46 percent of Americans feel the Times is "very reliable" or "somewhat reliable." At the same time, nearly three-fourths of Americans (72 percent) believe Fox News Channel to be a credible media source. (Click on the link above for the entire article)

washingtonpost.com THE RELIABLE SOURCE By Lloyd Grove Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page D03 Media Mix-It-Up At State Department It can't be said often enough: Don't mess with Andrea Mitchell.Last Monday afternoon, the State Department's public affairs shop e-mailed beat reporters that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had agreed to appear that very night on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News Channel show, "On the Record." Mitchell went ballistic."This is OUTRAGEOUS," NBC's foreign policy correspondent scorched the State Department flacks in an e-mail. "He [Armitage] can't answer telephone calls or REPEATED requests for backgrounders or an on-camera interview from the correspondent...

RPT-CNN Head Shrugs Off Fox News Ratings RivalryThu July 10, 2003 08:35 PM ET Jim Walton, president of the CNN News Group of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., speaks to television critics during his presentation at the Television Critics Association Summer press tour in Hollywood July 10, 2003 along with CNN news anchors Paula Zahn (L) and Soledad O'Brien. Walton discussed the cable news networks programming changes, which includes Zahn's new evening and O'Brien's new morning news programs.Photo by Fred Prouser/Reuters By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As CNN reshuffles its anchor lineup, the head of the network said on...

"We distort. You comply"Even in a down economy, there are some business models that still work -- selling T-shirts comparing Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly to Hitler, for example. - - - - - - - - - - - -By Katharine MieszkowskiJune 26, 2003  | Nothing boosts lefty T-shirt sales like an officious, bullying cease-and-desist letter from Fox News. Agitproperties.com in Austin, Texas, sells "Faux News Channel" T-shirts that mock the Fox logo with the slogan "We distort. You comply." The company is an equal-opportunity network mocker -- it also sells "Pentagon News Network" T-shirts parodying the CNN logo....

Brit Hume has the Voice. Perhaps you've heard it before. Deep and unwavering, at once assuring and assured, it instantly conveys authority. The Voice is one you might secretly long to hear from an airline pilot or surgeon. Hume is the chief Washington anchor for Fox News Channel, a calming presence for the cheeky ratings king of cable television news - a grown-up among fraternity boys.

Since the end of the Iraq war, CNN has seen a disastrous plunge in its ratings from where they were prior to the war, CNN cofounder Reese Schonfeld observed on his website Friday. Without citing sources, Schonfeld disclosed that from January 1 to February 15, CNN/Headline News combined averaged a 43.5-percent marketshare. Last week, he said, the combined total of the two news channels is 37.3 percent. On the other hand, he noted, Fox News now commands 51 percent of the share points, up 42 percent over its pre-war numbers. "This is a time for ... analysis," Schonfeld declared on...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN MAY 18, 2003 10:04:59 ET XXXXX FOX NEWS AILES GETS AULETTA-TREATMENT; NET MADE '$70 MILLION IN PROFIT' NEW YORKER's Ken Auletta debuts his essay on FOXNEWS chairman and C.E.O. Roger Ailes Monday in May 26 editions, hitting newsstands Monday. Details: "Cable is an edge business," Ailes explains. NBC's "Brian Williams has no edge, so he sits there and mumbles in his nice shirts and can't get through." MORE Of NBC's Chris Matthews, "If Chris Matthews worked for me, he'd be doing better....I wouldn't let him answer everybody's question for them. He asks the question. Then...

Geraldo's Nuptials By Lloyd Grove Washington Post Mazel tov to 59-year-old Fox News star Geraldo Rivera -- who will wed his 28-year-old girlfriend, television producer Erica Levy, at New York's historic Central Synagogue on Aug. 10, The Post's Christine Haughney reports. "You can't be my age and getting married and not be an optimist," Rivera, the son of a Jewish mother and Puerto Rican father, told us yesterday. He noted that he had been to the altar four times previously and had four children to show for it. "I don't know, maybe there will be one more with Erica," he...

Merck sued by Fox journalist over faulty vaccine5/14/2003 6:37:20 PM NEW YORK, May 14 (Reuters) - A Fox News journalist who contracted hepatitis A despite being inoculated before an assignment in Afghanistan sued Merck & Co. (MRK) , the maker of the vaccine, on Wednesday.Merck recalled batches of ineffective hepatitis A pre-filled syringes in December 2001. The journalist, Claude Novak, could be one of thousands of people who develop hepatitis A, which causes liver damage, after taking the faulty Merck vaccine. Unlike hepatitis B and C, the disease is rarely deadly. The suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court,...

Fox hunting We don't want biased news over hereLeaderThursday May 8, 2003The GuardianThe director general of the BBC, Greg Dyke, was not one of the moral minority who complained to the broadcasting regulator about the lack of impartiality by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel. But Mr Dyke's comments on "gung ho patriotism" and "narrow pro-American agendas" at the end of last month about the way the Iraqi conflict had been covered by US networks aptly sums up British objections to the raucous conservatism and unabashed jingoism of Fox, which can be received in Britain with a Sky satellite dish. Mr...

Ann Coulter is on Hannity and Colmes tonight with Susan Estrich to discuss Bush/democRATS/USS Abe Lincoln thing.

CNN, MSNBC Falling Faster Than Fox April 30, 2003By Andrew Grossman NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - All three major cable news services have reason to boast based on their April ratings, although judging by last week's results, some networks are falling to their usual numbers faster than others as the Iraqi war winds down. And the broadcast networks also had reason to smile as its evening news viewership turned up 7% last week compared to the previous week, according to Nielsen Media Research. The Big Three's lack of gains during the Iraqi war brought a new flood of speculation about...

<p>As U.S. military troops begin to return home from Iraq, President Bush's job approval rating slips and Americans turn their attention to the nation's economy, with a clear majority saying a candidate's position on the economy will matter most in deciding their vote in the next election.</p>

Contrary to the impression put about by foreigners, the American public can think for themselves There have been times, living in America of late, when it seemed I was back in the Communist Moscow I left a dozen years ago. Turn on the local all-news radio station, and between the war bulletins, there's Lockheed Martin running spots extolling its commitment to national security and American greatness.Switch to cable TV and reporters breathlessly relay the latest wisdom from the usual un-named "senior administration officials", keeping us on the straight and narrow.Everyone, it seems, is on-side and on-message. Just like it used...

  Sky's Chater in Baghdad ME AND SADDAM'S HEAVIES First light came with gunfire throughout the city.A fat, waxing American moon hung over Baghdad. The armoured wagons of the US Marine Corps surrounded our hotel, writes Sky's Baghdad correspondent, David Chater. The pools of burning oil had been extinguished...but fresh flames were being set by the looters.My last night in the Iraqi capital after three weeks of war.Paranoia punctuated the dawn drive westwards to Jordan.In the outskirts of the city, we passed a checkpoint still manned by the Iraqi militia.Then through the Coalition's surrounding chokeholds where all questions were...

<p>Perhaps the high point of cable-news channel MSNBC's war coverage came when a newspaper photo depicted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld working in front of a television tuned to the network. For an outlet whose small audience until recently seemed to comprise mainly the joke writers at "Saturday Night Live," who relished poking fun at the troubled channel, it was something of a validation.</p>

April 14, 2003 Nightly News Feels Pinch of 24-Hour NewsBy BILL CARTER ith the most televised war in history winding down, executives at TV news organizations are noticing one startling detail in how Americans are watching the coverage: viewers are increasingly tuning out the broadcast networks' evening newscasts. The ratings for the nightly newscasts of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings have surged in past crises. But early in the the war in Iraq, they did not. During previous periods of intense news interest, most recently in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, viewers have...

Rankings for Basic Cable NetworksBy The Associated Press Rankings for the top 15 programs on basic cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of March 31-April 6. Each ratings point represents 1,067,000 households. Day and start time (Eastern) are in parentheses. 1. "The Fox Report With Shepard Smith" (Tuesday, 7:29 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 4.4, 4.72 million homes. 2. "The O'Reilly Factor" (Thursday, 8 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 4.3, 4.59 million homes. 3. "The O'Reilly Factor" (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), Fox News Channel, 4.0, 4.30 million homes. 4. "The Fox Report With Shepard Smith" (Tuesday, 7:06 p.m.),...

By Acquiring DirecTV, Murdoch Gets Upper HandBy DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Rupert Murdoch's begging days are over. Six years ago, when Mr. Murdoch was starting the Fox News Channel, he was reduced to pleading with Time Warner Cable to carry it in New York, reportedly offering more than $100 million to the company and eventually enlisting Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki in a political battle to get Fox on the air. But with the agreement yesterday to acquire the satellite broadcaster DirecTV, Mr. Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, can transmit his own channels into homes across...

Foxa Americana Fox News looks like part of the propagandistic campaign of systematic disinformation by the Bush administration. By Rogel Alper America's Fox News network has been demonstrating since the start of the war in Iraq an amazing lesson in media hypocrisy. The anchors, reporters and commentators unceasingly emphasize that the war's goal is to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The frequency, consistence and passion with which they use that lame excuse, and the fact that nearly no other reasons are mentioned shows that this is the network's editorial policy. The American flag lies in...

Myers, right, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, lashed out at pundits Whose Flag Is Bigger? Amid questions of loyalty, TV news should recall that being on "our side" doesn't mean pandering By JAMES PONIEWOZIK Posted Sunday, April 6, 2003; 1:31 p.m. EST It's one thing to endanger the safety of American troops. But God help you if you hurt their feelings. Geraldo Rivera, reporting from Iraq for Fox News last week, drew a map in the sand, on camera, that gave away his unit's location. (In Afghanistan, Rivera had reported that he was at the site of a friendly fire...

How Fox is winning the war Take dollops of news by comely correspondents, and toss it atop a main dish of attitude led by charismatic, right-leaning hosts By Steve JohnsonTribune television criticPublished April 4, 2003They report. We deride.We deride Fox News Channel for saying "us" and "our" in talking about the American war effort, a strategy that conjures images of gung-ho anchor Shepard Smith, like Slim Pickens in "Dr. Strangelove," riding a Tomahawk straight into Baghdad.We deride Fox for playing ratings politics with the news, turning Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers' public call Tuesday for media to be "fair and...

When anti-American war protesters descended upon Fox News Channel's Manhattan headquarters yesterday, the No. 1 cable news network used its news zipper to fire back. In red neon letters that crawled across the building from the Avenue of the Americas to 48th Street, the peacenistas were taunted with barbs like: "War protester auditions here today. . . . Thanks for coming!," "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them" and "Attention protesters: The Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street." "I thought I'd have some fun with it,"...

THE WAR IN IRAQ When the Press Goes Patriotic Eric Alterman, author of "What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News," analyzes how well the press is covering the war in Iraq:Q: What do you think of the coverage so far? A: I think it's been predictable. The press' instincts are to demonstrate its patriotism. Q: Why would it feel it had to? A: One, it really is patriotic. September 11 changed a lot of people's attitudes, and sort of made the whole reporting of foreign affairs a less objective enterprise. Two, many people in the media are...

<p>NEW YORK — Twelve of NBC's top executives can't take their eyes off the flat-screen monitors at each seat in the elegant boardroom on the 52nd floor of the network's headquarters in Rockefeller Center.</p> <p>NBC staff work in the Situation Room in New York.</p>

SOURCES: FOX NEWS WINS WAR NIGHT; TOPS CNN IN RATINGS UPSET FOX NEWS TOOK THE CROWN WEDS NIGHT IN VIEWERSHIP, MAXING WITH AN 8.0 RATING... MORE... CNN MAX 6.9; MSNBC 4.3 DURING 10 PM ET HOUR, SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... /// FROM 8 TO 11 PM ET: FOX AVG 6.3 [5.1 MILLION VIEWERS] TO CNN'S 5.3 [4.5 MILLION] TO MSNBC'S 3.3 [2.6 MILLION]...

Did anybody see Bill O'Reilly talking with the former Ambassador to Croatia? He was ON FIRE, I tell ya! He said he would rather see Americans buy war bonds to help rebuild Iraq than take French money or help. He said it would be "blood money". He said France stabbed Secretary Powell in the back. He said he had no respect for any Americans who travelled to France (I assume he means travelling for pleasure).

UpdateDue to copyright restrictions, we are suspending our CNN, Fox, and Bloomberg streams.We apologize for the inconvenience.

Darryl Worley live on Hannity and Colmes tonight.

O'Reilly just announced that GWB has asked the networks for TV Time next week and his implication was it was THE announcement

March 5, 2003ON TV / BRIAN LOWRY On cable news, it's all shoutmanshipFox News Channel's not-so-subtle marketing slogan, "We report. You decide," has helped frame the cable news tussle in political terms -- the assumption being that the channel's "fair and balanced" claim is code for fire-breathing conservatives, while left-wingers gravitate to that bastion of the liberally biased media, CNN. But maybe, just maybe, politics has little to do with it. Maybe Fox News' secret ingredient isn't so much ideology as attitude -- a network whose shouting heads and razzmatazz perfectly suit a media culture where news must be rouged...

Talk show demise keeps heat on MSNBCMon Mar 3, 2:20 AM ET By Scott Collins and Andrew Grossman LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- NBC News president Neal Shapiro traveled to Washington on Wednesday with some bad news for veteran TV newsman Sam Donaldson. For weeks, published reports indicated that No. 3 cable-news channel MSNBC, which Shapiro oversees, was about to sign a deal with Donaldson for a primetime talk show. ABC News, Donaldson's employer of 35 years, had even given him its public blessing to pursue the gig. Shapiro, who worked with Donaldson on ABC's "PrimeTime Live" from 1989-93,...

NEW YORK -- On the eve of a possible U.S.-led war on Iraq, MSNBC is re-branding itself yet again, this time to reemphasize its hard-news lineage. So viewers tuning to MSNBC this week -- and lately there haven't been enough of those to satisfy the channel's bosses -- will notice immediate changes. MSNBC anchors have been told to stop using the "America's News Channel" slogan, which was introduced in April and was meant to convey that the network had a broad range of opinions, and instead refer to the channel as "NBC News on Cable 24 hours a day. [...]...

FOX & Friend's Brian Kilmeade spent last week with U.S. troops on various bases in Kuwait.  We asked Brian to tell us about his experience there: What a week it was for Fox & Friends in Kuwait. Producers Paulina Krycinski, Sebastian Hill and myself had just four days to make this trip happen, and thanks to the work of our Kuwaiti Bureau, Matt Singerman (Morning Czar), and most of all the U.S. Army, we pulled it off! As you can imagine, it turned out to be six days I personally will never forget. In this short time period I feel like...

Fox News from Paris has been reporting all day that the French are claiming they are "Anti-Bush" not "Anti-American" with their protest against the war against Saddam.

An anniversary no one at CNN is ready to celebrate Sunday January 26, 2003 By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer NEW YORK (AP) This week marks an anniversary the people at CNN would prefer is observed quietly very quietly. It was one year ago that Fox News Channel first beat CNN in the ratings, toppling the network that invented cable news and had enjoyed a monopoly for most of its existence. The pecking order not only hasn't changed since then, Fox's lead is wider. This month's unexpected resignation of CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson and the exit of six correspondents has...