Trump Really Needs to Read the Graber Textbook....

Late Night host are dealing with the Democrats for their very "unfunny" & repetitive material, always anti-Trump! Should we get Equal Time?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017

More and more people are suggesting that Republicans (and me) should be given Equal Time on T.V. when you look at the one-sided coverage?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017

Brent D. Griffiths at Politico:

Trump appears to be referencing the FCC's equal time rule, which applies to broadcast TV and radio stations, not cable TV. More importantly, the provisions only apply to a legally qualified candidate for public office, so it's unclear how this would apply to the president, who is not up for re-election until 2020.

The president also seemed to be inferring that the equal time provision would apply to commentaries, like Jimmy Kimmel's monologues on health care. It is unclear how this would fall under equal time, since the rule is usually invoked when a candidate appears on the program or is granted some other form of free air time.

Bell

Dan Wood writes at The Christian Science Monitor:

It started as a local story about small-city graft but quickly grew to become a national symbol of greed and failed government.

Nine months ago, the 40,000 residents of the city of Bell, Calif., – where 1 in 6 lives below the poverty line – became incensed with the discovery that several city officials were making six- and seven-figure salaries after creating secret boards and giving themselves outrageous raises.

Now, the light shined on the city of Bell by journalists, public officials, and the courts will reap large lessons from coast to coast, several political analysts say. As eight current and former officials await trial for fraud, Bell voters – one-fourth of the city’s population – will select five new city council members Tuesday from among 17 candidates in a recall election.

...

"The city of Bell is typical in that voters don’t pay much attention to their state and local legislative bodies, and the media are too stretched to look at each of the governmental jurisdictions within their territories,” says Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies. “Governmental officials in the smaller jurisdictions rely on this lack of attentiveness and interest. There are a lot of Bells throughout the county; we just don’t know about them.”

It's a Media-opoly!

This cartoon appeared in the original March broadcast of the SNL episode, but was cut from the summer rerun. SNL producer Lorne Michaels told the New York Daily News he "didn't think it worked comedically." In an interview, Harry Shearer said "The truth is that Lorne wanted to continue working at 30 Rock."

Patch.com

James Rainey writes at the Los Angeles Times:

When we last checked in on Patch.com, the fastest-growing news outfit in America was staffing up and making the most robust media foray into suburbia in years.

Patch this week opened its 600th hyper-local website, in the Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead. The sites, which provide basic news coverage and ask readers to bolster reportage on their towns, have opened in 105 California communities, with more launching every day.

The remarkable thing about Patch, besides its explosive growth in recent weeks (it had 565 sites just one week ago), is how it's no longer luring just rookies but, more recently, a cadre of seasoned news veterans. Many of the journalists are returning to the sort of work they did when they started in journalism decades ago.

Over Their Heads

Addressing that topic relevant to this week's discussion, Jonathan Martin of The Politico writes:

At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media. ... The around-the-filter strategy began under Nixon, notes Martha Joynt Kumar, a Towson University political science professor and expert on presidential communications. “Nixon created the Office of Communications, and they would send out copies of the president’s speeches directly to various groups,” Kumar said, referring to what is now the media affairs office. The idea then, as now, was to reach certain groups directly and without the interpretation of an at times cynical Washington press corps

The Ed Schultz interview is at:
http://www.bigeddieradio.com/uploads/resources/45/ed-interviews-president-obama.mp3

Mad Max and the Shrinking MSM

At the LA Times, James Rainey reinforces a major theme of the course. (If the "Mad Max" reference is obscure, click here.)

Political consultants aren't exactly rubbing their hands together and snickering. But as the hired guns look over a landscape of closing newspapers and laid-off investigative reporters, they sense an opening that leaves them both excited and queasy.One operative told me this week about planting attacks on opponents in partisan blogs, knowing the stories could bleed into mainstream news outlets, without leaving any incriminating fingerprints. Another described how he got green reporters to write stories (no campaign cash wasted!) on ads that the candidate had no intention of ever paying to put on TV. "They don't know any better," the consultant chuckled. "So we can get away with that one again."The political pros I interviewed talked about stories missed and questions not asked. But they were not entirely gleeful. These are consultants who care about more than just winning. (Hard to believe, but it's true.)They know better than anyone what happens when the gatekeepers go missing. "Imagine driving along [Interstate] 5. There used to be a couple highway patrolmen to keep people in line. Now they're gone and everyone knows it," said Chris Lehane, a veteran Democratic consultant. "It can devolve into a Mad Max situation pretty quickly."

Obama's mark in history

NYT article, Making Obama's Marks, provides further background on Obama's logo including the intent of the design:


The White House guidelines for each logo were very clear. “It was explicitly stated that the ARRA logo not look ‘governmental,’ ” Juras said. “We were asked to create a ‘visible sign of progress’ in a contemporary way while referencing energy, education and health care.


“The sooner it becomes a historical artifact, the better.”

Sarah Palin vs. the Media

Sarah Palin has battled the media since the early days of her vice presidential candidacy. There's something about attacking the "elite media" and the "liberal media" that seems to set very well with small town conservative voters - and Palin used that to her advantage.

Palin and her supporters have continued to slam the media for being unfair to her, even after the end of her campaign. Palin recently claimed Katie Couric and Tina Fey "exploited" her during the campaign. But has the media really been biased against her?

For starters, we can instantaneously dismiss the notion that conservative media outlets - including Fox News, New York Post, Washington Times, National Review and Weekly Standard - have been anything but kind to her. It's also safe to conclude that liberal outlets as the Daily Kos, The Nation and some of the evening commentators on MSNBC haven't been her biggest fans.

But was Katie Couric being unfair when she asked Palin - a journalism major - what newspapers she reads (and Palin couldn't come up with any)? Or whether she could come up with a Supreme Court Case besides Roe v. Wade (she couldn't)? Was Charlie Gibson too mean in asking a vice presidential candidate a question about the Bush Doctrine - the biggest foreign policy shift the US has taken in well over half a century (and she didn't know what it was)?

Even Mike Huckabee said Couric was "extraordinarily gentle" with Palin.

It is true that Palin was often attacked by the media, but it seems that this transpired as it became very clear to a majority of Americans that she was out of her depth and unqualified for the vice presidency. Prominent conservatives and Republicans such as Kathleen Parker and David Frum echoed these sentiments well before November 4.

So my question for the class is: was the mainstream media (forget the ideologues on the fringes) inherently biased against Sarah Palin from the start, or were they simply doing their job and reflecting the sentiments of the country she was running to represent?