GOP Primary Show: Non-Stop News And Noise In The Age Of Twitter

Huff Post- Posted: 2/7/12  |  Updated: 2/7/12

Michael Calderone

Last week, Jon Ralston, a veteran Las Vegas Sun columnist, dared reporters to ignore Donald Trump’s unveiling of his presidential endorsement — with low expectations about how that might play out.

“I suggest media boycott of @RealDonaldTrump event in Vegas,” Ralston tweeted. “Anyone with me? That’s what I thought.”

Ralston knew, of course, that the nation’s political reporters — the same tribe who breathlessly covered Trump’s half-hearted flirtation last year with a presidential run, his “birther” sideshow and his thwarted plans to host and moderate a GOP debate — wouldn’t ignore the real estate huckster’s “major announcement.”

And, indeed, they didn’t, thereby sparking the latest mini-drama in the reality show otherwise known as the 2012 Republican presidential primaries.

While any campaign reporter you meet will say it’s ridiculous to give any more oxygen to Trump in this election cycle (and some of them will even go so far as to mock the primaries’ circus-like atmosphere on Twitter) many of them still raced to cover the Trump endorsement.

In their haste, several major news organizations — including the Associated Press, The New York Times, Politico and CBS News — erroneously reported that Trump planned to endorse former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Countless others, including The Huffington Post, repeated those reports. All had to backtrack when it became clear former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would get the Trumpster’s nod. Come showtime, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all had Romney live, standing at a podium featuring a Trump plaque, in a Trump hotel, accepting a Trump endorsement.

Reporters swarmed the Trump event for the same reason they have pursued and then coughed up almost every other bit of minutiae, no matter how irrelevant or meaningless, around the primaries. In a media landscape replete with Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs and myriad other digital, broadcast and print sources, nothing is too inconsequential to be made consequential.

Political junkies, political operatives and political reporters consume most of this dross, and in this accelerated, 24/7 news cycle, a day feels like a week, with the afternoon’s agreed-upon media narrative getting turned on its head by the evening’s debate. Candidates rise, fall, and rise again, all choreographed to the rat-a-tat background noise of endless minutia.

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Olbermann vs The Corporate Media

Olbermann’s MSNBC Exit Was Weeks in the Making

NY Times January 22, 2011, 2:48 pm

By BILL CARTER

On Thursday, NBC’s news division staged an elaborate presentation for advertisers, seeking to sell commercial time in NBC’s news programs over the next year. All the members of MSNBC’s prime-time lineup spoke at the lunch with one exception: Keith Olbermann, the network’s biggest star.

For the last several weeks, Mr. Olbermann and the network have been in negotiations to end his successful run on MSNBC, according to executives involved in the talks who requested anonymity because the talks were confidential. The deal was completed on Friday, and Mr. Olbermann made the announcement on his final “Countdown” hours later.

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And this from the Ass Press

Knowing that the corporate media has absolutely no compunctions, about spinning the truth, the connection concerning the merger of Comcast and NBC can’t be ignored, especially when their denial began before the fact. The local paper in this area, I’ll name it “The Statesman Journal”, consists mostly of articles from the Associated Press, which in my opinion puts it in the catagory of toilet paper. Anyways, it is pretty obvious that Olbermann’s story will never see the light of day in the corporate media.

Mad as hell…

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More Than A Dozen Lies In Coulter’s New Book

Group finds more than a dozen lies in Coulter’s latest book

Raw Story- John Byrne
Published: Monday January 5, 2009

The progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America delivered a scathing 6,000-word rebuke to conservative superstar Ann Coulter, accusing her of lying on more than a dozen occasions in her new book, Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America.

Coulter has of late appeared to be something of a mockery of herself. Her support among conservatives has waned, though her prolific publishing prowess continues.

Among the slew of apparent lies in Coulter’s book — which Media Matters labels as “falsehoods,” includes claims Coulter makes about Sen. John Kerry by the so-called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; and assertion that Fox News has “never been caught promoting a fraud;” and that President-elect Barack Obama was referring to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin when he said, “you know, you can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig.”

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Ann Coulter’s “Today” Show Appearance Canceled (UPDATED)

Huffington Post |  Danny Shea   |   January 5, 2009 05:06 PM

***UPDATE*** 8:55AM
Coulter appeared on CBS’s The Early Show where she told anchor Harry Smith that he was her favorite for having her on this morning after The Today Show had canceled her. Smith allowed Coulter to rant, but then pushed her on claims of right-wing victimization and urged her to “take a breath.” He also called her “goofy” and “sophomoric.”

***UPDATE*** 11:10PM Coulter was a guest on the Fox News show “Hannity and Colmes” tonight, where she harshly criticized NBC for canceling her planned appearance on the “Today” show. The controversial author accused the network of orchestrating a “set up to block me from other TV shows.”

VIDEO & MORE HERE

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Three Major Media Companies Announce Problems

New York Times, Tribune Company, NBC Announce Problems Monday

HuffPo|  Katharine Zaleski   |   December 8, 2008 05:46 PM

Three major media companies all revealed grim news Monday.

The Tribune Company announced it would be seeking bankruptcy protection:

Media conglomerate Tribune Co., smothered by $13 billion in debt and a drop-off in advertising, on Monday became the first major newspaper publisher to seek bankruptcy protection since the Internet sent the industry into a tailspin.

Most of the company’s debt comes from the complex transaction in which the company was taken private, with employee ownership, by real estate mogul Sam Zell last year. Although Tribune’s next major debt payment isn’t due until June, the company has been in danger of missing financial targets set by its lenders.

The New York Times Company said it would try to ease a cash problem by borrowing up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters.

The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.

The company has retained Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm, to act as its agent to secure financing, either in the form of a mortgage or a sale-leaseback arrangement, said James M. Follo, the Times Company’s chief financial officer.

NBC Universal Chief Jeff Zucker told investors that he was considering scaling back the network’s programming hours:

A terrible fall season at NBC is forcing the network to consider scaling back the number of hours it airs programming, Chief Executive Jeff Zucker told an investor conference Monday.

While NBC will continue to fund the creation of pilots, Zucker told analysts at a media investor conference sponsored by UBS that NBC is considering cutting the number of hours or perhaps even the number of nights it provides programming.

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