Free Republic

And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC's "Today" show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric's small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never...

"Obama, Biden to Visit Supreme Court,' Today, says CBS News" http://investigatingobama.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-biden-to-visit-supreme-court-says.html In part: "At the invitation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden will pay a protocol visit to the Supreme Court of the United States tomorrow afternoon." "The visit is a private event. There will be no photo or press availabilities." A 'protocol' visit? It's happened twice before...and that's protocol? Perhaps some (Constitutional) discussions will be had. hmmmmm

The women of “The View” are seething over the show’s main guest Monday — conservative pundit Ann Coulter. “Why are you such a b----?” is the question co-host Joy Behar wants to ask Coulter, she said at an event for the New York Times Arts & Leisure Weekend.Co-host/comedian Whoopi Goldberg took a low blow at Coulter — literally.“Are you blond on the top and on the bottom?” Goldberg sarcastically said of the question she’d pose to Coulter.Coulter is on the ABC talk-show to promote her controversial new book “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America,” whose second chapter focuses...

Lara Logan was named chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News in June, and now this - the journalist just gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Logan and her husband, Joseph Burkett, welcomed Joseph Washington Burkett V to their family on December 29. The birth of their child is a pleasant chapter in a romance marked by scandal. Though both Logan and Burkett were separated from their respective spouses when they met, the relationship that began in Iraq in 2007 caused a flurry of tabloid commentary. The front page of the New York Post featured a story calling Logan...

It’s painful when a friend loses his job—even if that friend is someone you’ve never met. For talk-radio fans in the thirty-eight states that receive the powerful signal of Boston’s CBS Radio affiliate WBZ-AM, the two most important hours of the weekend were on Saturday night between 7:00pm and 9:00pm Eastern. For most of this decade, that timeslot was occupied by an outstanding host named Pat Desmarais. Desmarais, who had appeared on radio stations in New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts prior to his tenure at WBZ, was an intellectually vibrant host, a man unafraid to defend positions generally considered...

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation. Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer. When reached for comment today, Gupta did not deny the account but declined to comment. The offer followed a two-hour Chicago meeting...

"After an outcry from the White House and conservative bloggers who claimed that the report had been based on falsified documents, CBS retracted the story, saying that the documents' authenticity could not be verified. Rather, who had been with CBS for decades and was one of the most familiar faces in American journalism, was fired by the network the day after the 2004 election."

After two years of relentlessly bad ratings news, Katie Couric finally has something she can smile about. . . That makes four straight weeks where her audience was bigger than at the same point last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. The improvement could be a result of the positive feedback Couric received for her interview of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the presidential campaign. Palin fumbled on a question about what publications she read regularly, and the interview was a launching point for one of Tina Fey's "Saturday Night Live" spoofs.

The media industry will find 2009 to be a very difficult economic year, according Diane Mermigas, editor-at-large at MediaPost. Some television and newspaper properties "will shut down." Broadcaster CBS is "most likely to collapse or convert into a general entertainment cable network."

Unrecognized by Americans majorities - domestic and international threats will change our country forever (blame the media) - Part Two - Islam By Vincent Gioia The people in any country are only able to protect themselves and assure their freedom if they are aware of what is going on that affects them. Knowledge of current events was difficult to obtain two hundred years ago when the United States was created but nonetheless early Americans realized the importance of keeping everyone informed so they built into the Constitution a safeguard for freedom of expression which is acknowledged in the First Amendment...

This could go down as the most egregiously misleading graphic in morning show history. Have a look at the screengrab. Reporting on census data being released today, the Early Show on CBS displayed a graphic, under the headline "Economic Crisis," reporting that in the first part of this decade--the early Bush years: * Household income dropped 79% * The poverty rate increased 70% * Unemployment was up 71% What?? If those number were true, they would reflect a depression that would have made the 1930s look like life on easy street. View video.

SAG Strike Could Spell Disaster for TV (Cable Networks DeathWatch™) Nov 25, 2008 -By Nellie Andreeva, THR.com LOS ANGELES Already engaged in deep soul searching following a dismal fall TV season and flatlining ad market, broadcast networks are facing another blow: a potential Screen Actors Guild strike early next year. SAG's decision during the weekend to seek a strike authorization from its membership following the breakdown of its negotiations with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers has shifted the once-remote possibility of a SAG walkout much closer to reality. While its effect would not be as far-reaching as...

Someone really has it in for Sumner Redstone, the 85-year-old media tycoon who is restructuring his debt-plagued empire. An extraordinary piece appears on TheFirstPost.co.uk and is picked up elsewhere. “His demons have come home to roost. He lives alone in his mansion, famously miserly, shaving naked in the hot tub and obsessively feeding his tropical fish, his only constant companions since the collapse this year of his five-year marriage . . .” All very Citizen Kane. And yet . Redstone is not universally loved, and is, indeed, known for his interest in tropical fish and credited with starting a fashion...

They don't have political rallies to bring them together anymore, but it's no secret that a lot of people out there don't much like Barack Obama. The president-elect, according to his more fervent campaign-season detractors, has a raft of unforgivable faults: He's a socialist, a Muslim, an actual love-child of Malcolm X. His birth certificate was missing, his book had been ghost-written by William Ayers, and his wife, "Mrs. Grievance," as a National Review cover dubber her, was perennially on the cusp of getting caught ranting against the white man. The only thing keeping the Illinois senator's infamy from going...

Yesterday the fourth law suit, challenging Obama's citizenship and Natural Born status reached the Supreme Court: 1. Philip J Berg, PA An answer from Barack Obama is due by Dec.1 2. Leo C. Donofrio, NJ The case is scheduled for conference by all 9 judges on Dec 5 3.Chris Strunck, NY filed with SCOTUS last week 4. Cort Wrotnowski, CT (second case)filed yesterday. many more to come... As explained earlier, Hawaii allows one to obtain a Certification of Hawaiian Live Birth based on a statement of one relative only. It means,that while Obama was born in Kenya, his grandma or...

In 2006, Thailand announced it was blocking access to YouTube for anyone with a Thai I.P address, and then identified 20 offensive videos for Google to remove as a condition of unblocking the site. ‘If your whole game is to increase market share,’ says Lawrence Lessig, speaking of Google, ‘it’s hard to . . . gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or in ways that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.’ In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity...

http://www.cbs.com/late_late_show/video/video.php?cid=583362809&pid=M33Jraf2f2QfyZPEGNrxTIz8BwIa8hw_&play=true

In an effort to stave off the dismantling of his media empire, Sumner M. Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS, recently proposed to sell his family’s 1,500-screen theater chain in an effort to restructure his large debt load. The proposal was made in a plan submitted to his bankers, according to two people briefed on the negotiations who spoke on condition they not be identified. But the proposed sale may not be enough to placate bankers, not least because no one can seem to agree on what the movie theaters are worth. Here is what just about everyone,...

Will Shari and Sumner Redstone Split? (Cable Networks DeathWatch™) By Ronald Grover BW Exclusives Redstone's 80% stake gives him clout in any deal Shari offers Sean Gallup/Getty Images Shari may seek an equity infusion from private investors Phelan M. Ebenhack/National Amusements/AP Photo Story Tools As family feuds go, few have been more intractable than the one that has simmered between media mogul Sumner M. Redstone and his daughter, Shari. For two years the pair has battled over the direction of National Amusements, the family company that owns a national chain of movie theaters and controls the media giants CBS (CBS)...

NewsBusters.org - Media Research CenterOn Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith discussed the ‘Potomac Primaries’ with Democratic Strategist Dee Dee Myers and Republican CBS Political Analyst Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush Administration Communications Director, who said of John McCain’s conservative critics: "The more that we see kind of the crazies like Ann Coulter out attacking John McCain, the better Republicans feel about their chances in the general election." This attack upon conservatives critical of McCain, who include Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, and others, was prompted by Harry Smith asking about Mike Huckabee’s continued support in...