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CNN anchor Jake Tapper said some elected officials and TV anchors are to blame for creating a “permission structure” that has opened the door for political violence, after news broke that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband was attacked in the couple’s home on Friday. “There are people in mainstream accepted society – elected officials, TV anchors, others – who have been creating a permission structure that is helping to open the door to this violence,” Tapper said on Friday night.

The pro-mass immigration, GOP megadonor, billionaire Koch brothers are opposing President Trump’s plan to executively end birthright citizenship, which rewards the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens. On Tuesday, President Trump announced that he is readying an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. The unilateral move would carry the country into the future on the issue, putting the nation more in line with similar Western countries. Currently, the U.S. and Canada are the only developed nations in the world that offer unrestricted birthright citizenship. The children of illegal aliens are commonly known as “anchor babies,” as they anchor...

Make no mistake, Fox News is still the ratings king. But the recent May numbers show that while all the cable channels had a decline in ratings (which is normal for May), Fox News was far from spared, with some of its lowest ratings in 12 years. While Fox dominates with the top 14 shows in overall viewers, the total day average for Fox News in the key advertising demographic of the 25- to 54-year-old category was 177,000 viewers, only the second time Fox has gone below a 200,000 average since 2001. Another key factor coming from May ratings is...

Phil Griffin, head of the MSNBC cable television channel, told Marisa Guthrie of the Hollywood Reporter that he accepts responsibility for recent embarrassments that led Alec Baldwin and Martin Bashir to leave the network and Melissa Harris-Perry to offer a tearful on-air apology. "These were judgment calls made by some of our people. We handled them. We were transparent. That is our philosophy: Be factual, and step up when you make a mistake,” Griffin asserted. “We took responsibility for them and took action. They were unfortunate,” but “I don't think it hurt us in any way.” While known as a...

A pair of local TV news anchors had a surprise for viewers at the end of their 6 p.m. newscast on Tuesday: They're quitting. Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio, anchors for ABC's WVII affiliate in Bangor, Maine, announced their joint resignations, citing a dispute with management over journalistic practices. "And finally tonight, this will be Tony and my final show together right here on ABC 7," Michaels told viewers. "The last six years have been an interesting and enjoyable time for us as we have been the longest-running news team in Bangor." "On behalf of Cindy and me, we have...

Citing a longstanding battle with upper management over journalistic practices at their Bangor TV stations, news co-anchors Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced their resignations at the end of Tuesday’s 6 p.m. newscast. Michaels and Consiglio, who have a combined 12½ years’ service at WVII (Channel 7) and sister station WFVX (Channel 22), shocked staff members and viewers with their joint resignations Tuesday evening. “I just wanted to know that I was doing the best job I could and was being honest and ethical as a journalist, and I thought there were times when I wasn’t able to do that,”...

With CBS chief executive wife Julie Chen safely ensconced in CBS's new daytime gabfest "The Talk," CBS News got the all-clear to announce, just in time for the holiday season, that it was giving other members of "The Early Show" on-air team the old heave ho-ho-ho. Gone, as of Jan. 3, will be anchors Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez and weatherman Dave Price. The network wants you to know, however, that they will continue to be employed on air by CBS News - just elsewhere.

As layoffs and early retirements alter Boston's television newsrooms, the traditional anchorman is becoming a minority and newscasts are getting female makeovers. Men have been leaving their anchor jobs because of budget cuts forced by the recession and changes in direction at the stations, and women are being elevated to more prominent roles. At WHDH-TV (Channel 7) the marquee anchor duo is Frances Rivera and Kim Khazei. At Univision Boston, an all-female team anchors and reports the news. At NECN, women anchor all weekend newscasts. Women have replaced male anchors on other stations' newscasts, as well.

The one-paragraph story appeared on page 1 D in USA Today and the headline was "Gallup Survey: Trust in media is growing." But it should have said: "Trust in media is 20 points behind 1976 levels." That's what the survey showed. Isn't it interesting how the media will publicize President Bush's falling approval ratings but will not emphasize their own? The "growing" trust in the media consisted of confidence in the media rising from 44 percent last year to 50 percent in the latest survey. But it was 54 percent in 2003, 68 percent in 1972, and 72 percent in...

http://www.rightwinged.com/2006/01/cronkite_yaps_why_is_this_news.html Just wanting to share a photoshop I put up at my blog with ya'll... Something I was inspired to after the latest Cronkite rant.If you choose to display it here or elsewhere, please save your own copy or use this one (so I don't kill my bandwidth).... Enjoy! http://tinypic.com/kce0ix.jpg Rather: ...and if a fro..... if a camel had side pockets he'd carry an RPGCronkite: Dan, your stupid one liners make even less sense after you've Al Qaedized 'em up.Rather: Hey buddy, you don't tell me how to make an ass out of myself, and I won't tell you how...

JERUSALEM - Ancient wooden anchors preserved by natural salt for more than 2,000 years have been discovered on the receding shores of the Dead Sea, Israel TV reported Monday. Archaeologist David Mevorach told the TV station that one anchor dated back 2,500 years — the oldest ever found. Another anchor was 2,000 years old, he said. They were built from acacia wood for Roman ships, he said. The Dead Sea, with no outlet, has a high concentration of salt. "The salt and the lack of oxygen in the water preserved them in a special way, including the ropes that were...

Executives at ABC and CBS News can be relieved this week that, unlike with Hurricane Katrina, their Rita coverage didn't appear seriously affected by voids at the chief anchor position left by the late Peter Jennings and Dan Rather. It's been more than five months since both men last anchored the evening news. ABC is conducting its search for a successor very privately. CBS has struggled, although it gave itself the bigger challenge. NBC's ratings spiked high in the wake of Katrina and the very visible work of its anchorman, Brian Williams. Even though its anchor decision hasn't been made,...

America's three original network news shows face the same momentous choice at nearly the same time: Pass the torch to a new anchor who, each hopes, has the gravitas to hold viewers and win new ones, or break with a star-driven tradition developed back in television's Pleistocene era and try something different. This moment of transition - brought on by the departures of Dan Rather at CBS and Tom Brokaw at NBC, and now Peter Jennings's decision to curtail appearances on ABC's news broadcasts - brings into stark relief some of the ongoing challenges for the networks. Even with established...

It's the End of an Era. A momentous change. Tonight, on NBC, one tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes will replace another tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes. Even Tom Brokaw is a little surprised that he has been succeeded by someone who looks like the love child he and Peter Jennings never had. "I honestly thought, eight or nine years ago, that when we left," Mr. Brokaw said, referring to himself, Peter and Dan Rather, "that it would be the end of white male anchor time." Nah. Those guys are hard to kill...

NEW YORK -- CBS is considering multiple newscasters to replace Dan Rather in the anchor's chair when he steps down in March. Viacom co-prexy-co-chief operating officer Leslie Moonves said an anchor partnership is being considered as part of a broad rethinking of the "CBS Evening News" franchise, and that no candidates have been ruled out.

This morning, NBC and ABC each promoted radical left-wing film-maker Michael Moore's "rock star reception" in Boston and his gimmicky trip to President Bush's hometown of Crawford, Texas, to show his anti-Bush movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. ABC's Jake Tapper did call Moore "liberal" and "polarizing," but NBC's Carl Quintanilla wouldn't go beyond "fiery." On Good Morning America, MRC's Jessica Anderson noted, ABC's Charles Gibson promoted Moore: "We do start this half-hour, Diane, with someone who is here at the convention getting an enormous amount of attention and he's not a politician, he's not a delegate, he's Michael Moore, who so injected...

NEWS ANCHORS? AWAY!-- Let's 'Unembed' Embedded Media Bias by Lin Anderson The best idea to come out of the Iraq campaign thus far -- I mean, aside from bombing the Information Ministry there -- is the "embedding" of reporters with combat units in the field. Whether the combat units themselves consider this a dandy notion is, however, an open question. Journalists can be a real trial in the best of times, as my ex-wife will tell you long into the night. Embedding reporters may, at the very least, finally put the lie to one of those quotes that everyone is...