FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
The Glenn Beck Podcast, Episode 150. Ron DeSantis vs. Everyone: The Governor Who BROKE the Media. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. 57 minutes. Recorded August 13, 2022.
Corporate media hate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. These days, that’s a badge of honor. They love to accuse him of tyranny and authoritarianism, to scaremonger about how he wants to "destroy" democracy. But he’s unafraid to call out their lies and keep Florida on the front lines for freedom. When Disney tried to protest his Parental Rights in Education law, he stood his ground — and won. He did the same with CRT and woke prosecutors and has an exciting announcement about taking on ESG. Gov. DeSantis joins Glenn to break down his growing collection of wins, why he isn’t slowing down, and his advice for Republicans hoping to make a difference in their states.
"in what’s happening to society and the press,” said Risen. I agree.
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) April 30, 2014
"...to stay on that highway. As long as we accept this interstate highway of reporting, we are enabling and complicit..."
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) April 30, 2014
“[The Obama administration] want[s] to create an interstate highway for reporting in which there are police all along telling you..."
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) April 30, 2014
"We need to think about how to challenge the government in the way we’re supposed to challenge the government.” --Risen of NYT
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) April 30, 2014
NYT James Risen: "We have to stand up and begin to fight back…" against press restrictions.
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) April 30, 2014
NYT James Risen says Obama admin is trying to "narrow the playing field for reporters."
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) April 30, 2014
"Under Attack: Reporters and Their Sources," investigative journalists address Obama admin. press restrictions http://t.co/B5zFoS3ZLh
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) April 30, 2014
Attacks on the press are part of a fundamental change in society by a national security state. - James Risen #logan2014
— Keith Summa (@summanyc) April 26, 2014
Media Narrative & Optics as the most important thing in public policy, to the detriment of real facts. Equally true in South Florida now with proposed David Beckham/MLS Port of Miami soccer stadium as well as for Benghazi response in 2012 by stonewalling Obama White House, as Sharyl Attkisson can attest to
The attempt to successfully frame a media narrative with favorable optics, mentioned at the top in Chris Stirewalt's tweet and which is today's FOX News Firstnewsletter http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/01/white-house-correspondence-indeed/ is press management of the sort that we see everywhere and everyday, from here in South Florida to Stockholm, sometimes, in quite humorous or ham-handed ways if observant people are paying close attention.
And yet all too often, the news media fall for it hook-line-and-sinker and don't bring the sort of critical thinking to bear on the issue that they ought to, caught up as they are by the sight of the cute bear riding the bicycle in a circle in front of them, to ask questions that need to be asked.
In Miami, recently, questions like that included why should real soccer fans like me care about the prospective views from a proposed stadium at the Port of Miami more than they care about the actual comfort level and aesthetics they feel once inside of the stadium, and how easy it is to get to for the largest number of prospective fans to get to and from the stadium, with any hope, near public transit facilities that make that trip easy, which is good for everyone involved.
Local10 video: Public hearing held on MLS stadium in PortMiami
April 23, 2014 07:42:06 PM EDT
Updated April 23, 2014 07:49:36 PM EDT
The mayor of Miami Beach called a public hearing Wednesday because he feels that a stadium in PortMiami will affect the already congested commute for residents.
But early on, though not true in the Local10 news video above, the cute bear on the bicycle on that issue, David Beckham, was all that the early news stories in South Florida largely focused on, which is precisely what his ownership group wanted, even as a few highly-observant and popular South Florida bloggers and tweeters of distinction and serious news personalities like Bill Cooke at Random Pixels blog, film/TV director Billy Corben andLocal10's Senior Political Reporter Michael Putney were asking and writing about with a real purpose.
@DougLife7@SamHam15 Haha fair enough. But it might also have to do with the fact that it could be a terrible location for a stadium...? — Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) April 30, 2014
This Week in South Florida Local10 video: "Local 10's Michael Putney talks with local leading members of the Beckham team and a Miami commissioner about why location they've set their sights on for the new major league soccer stadium and if it's a good one." March 30, 2014 01:31:19 PM EDT Updated March 30 2014 04:14:19 PM EDT http://www.local10.com/news/this-week-in-south-florida-march-30/25236456
Local10 video: War of Words over David Beckham's plans for soccer stadium. Port Miami is second largest economic generator in Miami-Dade County Published On: April 30, 2014 06:34:23 PM EDT Updated April 30 2014 06:42:45 PM EDT But as I've lamented so many times over the years on this blog over the past seven years, spouting common sense and asking pointed questions makes them (me) a distinct minority in this area of the country, unfortunately. The anger we now see among some in the U.S. press corps is, for some of us at least, a little too late and convenient, to say nothing of being too over-the-top, especially given how easily, via CW group think, they abandoned their natural (accurate) initial suspicions and replaced that by eagerly swallowing the Obama Administration's feeble excuses about a YouTube video that hardly anyone had ever seen or heard of prior to them offering it up as a reason for protests in Cairo.
The Beltway Media is mad at themselves, obviously, but since they can hardly blame themselves, they are now wildly pointing fingers at others.
After the horse is long gone out of the barn.
If you missed Sharyl Attkisson's very revealing interview with Glenn Beck on Wednesday morning regarding the very curious circumstances she's been in for the past 18 months, from her being "watched" and having her work computer hacked -by ???- plus the problems she had at CBS News with getting reports on Benghazi on-air, and her recent departure from there, see the context and video here:
The Blaze
Sharyl Attkisson on the One Thing People Should Be ‘Standing Up on Buildings and Screaming’ About
That we are only now learning via a Judicial Watch FOIA request that the author of the Obama White House talking points about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the death of four Americans, Ben Rhodes, would turn out to be the brother of the President of CBS News, is, of course, obviously a delicious wild card. A wild card that none of us who were always suspicious of the White House narrative and Susan Rice's self-serving comments regarding a YouTube video, could've ever guessed at months and months ago.
By the way, for what it's worth, the Fox NewsFirst newsletter I received this morning that mentions some of these issues and which prompted me to do this blog post, has consistently proven over the past eight months to be much-more accurate and fair -even prescient- than I'd have initially guessed when I first subscribed last year.
Since I know that nobody else will mention it to you, the biggest journalism scandal involving Rep. Andre Carson's ridiculous comments about Tea Party supporters at a Congressional Black Caucus Job Fair/Town Hall meeting last week in Miami, is that there was not a single representative of a South Florida news organization that was there who reported on it the day it happened.
Or the next day.
Or the day after that.
Or...
And neither did any other reporter or columnist or editor who wasn't actually there, but heard about it later.
Until Wednesday, nine days later, it was like it NEVER happened.
The Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Channel 4 (WFOR-TV) - a CBS O&O, Channel 6 (WTVJ-TV) -an NBC O&O, Channel 7 (WSVN-TV) -Fox affiliate, and Channel 10 (WPLG-TV) -ABC affiliate (Post-Newsweek) ALL ignored it or never knew about it.
Which is worse?
As I write this:
Channel 4 still has ZERO.
Channel 6 still has ZERO.
Channel 7 posted an AP story out of Indy at 10:45 p.m. Thursday
The Sun-Sentinel's first mention of the controversy was in a Broward Politics blog post Wednesday morning that focused on Rep.Allen West, who represents part of Broward.
It's not for nothing that I have joked here in the past that if Fidel Castro dies overnight, esp. a Friday night/Saturday morning, the Miami Herald will be completely scooped and be the last media organization in South Florida to report it.
Like they were on the Japanese tsunmai...
And the 2010 Polish air disaster in Belarus...
And the Moscow Metro bombings...
And...
Rather incredibly, nobody down here among South Florida's largely sleep-walking professional press corps seems the least bit chagrined that they got totally scooped on what has turned out to be a a national news story, nor do they seem to be the least bit interested in asking any questions of Rep. Frederica Wilson, whose FL-17 CD this all happened in, and who hosted the events last week that have echoed across the country this week, no thanks to the local press corps.
Apparently, there's no extant videotape or audio of Wilson's demeanor or comments during or after Carson's heateduncivil rhetoric.
Pity!
But then again, consider the lack of an appropriate follow-up story about Wilson's recent trip to Israel -along with dozens of her colleagues- that was paid for by AIPAC, as I mentioned here on the blog recently when it happened, a congressional gravy train which was first reported by the Washington Post, whom I cited.
Yet not a single South Florida-based news organization, of the less-than-a handfu who even mentioned the trip, felt the need to mention that salient fact, in their mentions of the trip tells you plenty about how dreadful serious news coverage in South Florida in the year 2011 is.
Just a coincidence that three anti-Glenn Beck news stories/columns appear in same week?
Of course, since so few American TV/print reporters, editors or producers actually read and speak passable Arabic, or are the least bit knowledgeable about the Mid-East, they can't very well write about Libya intelligently, now can they. Which is why beyond the actual news value of what happened to and with him last week, there were so many stories and columns in the American press about Charlie Sheen, because you don't have to know anything to write or talk about him... Everybody's an expert.
Before you read the following three stories/columns, here's something to keep in mind, since facts actually matter.
The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News Channel is drawing 300,000 more total viewers than ALL cable news competitors in the time period COMBINED. Just saying...
If I was the news director at a local TV station in a major market in the United States and my eyeball numbers were more than the total of ALL the other local TV stations COMBINED, plus, I was also leading in the 25-54 demo to boot, and my adversaries were saying that I was in a slump, I'd take that kind of losing streak and laugh all the way to the bank. And so would my family! CNN would take that kind of losing streak right now at 5 p.m. Eastern in a heartbeat. And so would MSNBC and CNBC.
But they can only dream of a such an upside-down news world now, since at 5 p.m., they're merely ants at the picnic, not the guest of honor. They're barely noticeable unless one of them crawls on your arm or leg -and completely harmless and useless- so you just flick them away with your finger and they go buh-bye. Just saying...
Apropos of these stories, coming soon, I may soon have a blog post here on some real actor/celebrities who actually HAVE lost their hold on film audiences at the box-office, but you rarely if ever see the sort of joyful negative stories on them in the American press like the stories below on because... well, they really, really don't like Glenn Beck -or his audience. Just ask them, they'll tell you.
Hmm-m... note to self: Their film grosses fizzling and reviews not-so-positive, have Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Anniston, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt lost their juice?
New York Times The Media Equation The Fading Power of Beck’s Alarms By David Carr March 6, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/media/07carr.html
---- None of these pieces have mentioned the most obvious and most likely reason for the lower numbers.
Beck's TV show, which I watch everyday, usually, the 2 a.m. repeat, has been pre-empted more often than usual due to what was going on in Egypt, often for pointless -often nine-hour old- coverage of Tahrir Square in Cairo when NOTHING was happening. Reminder: Just because you point a TV news camera at something doesn't mean it's news.
Because of those pre-emptions on the repeat show at 2 a.m., before RED EYE, I actually saw some Fox News weekend panel program I'd never seen before, which itself was a few days old and was clearly intended to run-out-the clock until 3 a.m. came around.
Additionally, there have been many more repeats since January than at about any time since Beck joined Fox News Channel.
Seems like I even recall him being sick and having surgery, though I can't recall the exact details.
Sometimes, there's no conspiracy, it's just that there's either no program to see, or the one that airs is one you've already seen twice before -I don't need to see it a third time.
I love pizza, but sometimes when I was out with friends in the D.C. area, after a movie or ballgame or whatever, sometimes when asked what I was in the mood for, I'd choose Vietnamese, unless I knew that we were near a great pizza place.If it isn't what you want the way you like it, TV, like pizza, isn't the same. Similarly, with all the news about Tunesia, Egypt and Libya on Beck's show, why would loyal viewers who really don't care about foreign policy compared to domestic or economic issues watch something they really don't have any interest in, something that isn't their cup of tea? I love well-played basketball, esp. top-tier college basketball, not surprisingly, considering I only went to college at a school like IU where basketball is much more than tradition but a culture.
Still, I haven't watched the NBA All-Star Game since about 1990, and haven't watched more than 20 minutes of the NBA this entire season. It's not interesting to me since nothing matters until May.
Or, maybe those fans see a repeat or a pre-emption and finally get around to watching one of those prime-time shows they've been continually taping for weeks and STILL NOT started watching yet, so they think, today is the day I start watching 'em, otherwise I'm deleting them all. Just saying... sometimes, lower ratings are not so mysterious.
And when you STILL have MANY more viewers than all your time-slot competitors combined, it's really absurd to talk about a SLUMP.
When the Yankees of the 1920's amd '30's actually lost a game or two in the World Series instead of sweeping their opponent in four games, were they in a slump, too?
C-SPAN to air Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' Rally LIVE on Saturday morning on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Beck will be joined by Sarah Palin, Jo Dee Messina, Alveda King (niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.) and many more in a non-political event paying tribute to America's service personnel and other citizens who embody the spirit of our nation's founding principles. Net proceeds raised by the event will benefit the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a nonprofit charitable organization that provides scholarship grants and educational and family counseling to the children of special operations personnel who lose their lives and immediate financial assistance to severely wounded special operations personnel and their families.
Washington Post Beck rally will be a measure of 'tea party' strength Beck's decision to speak on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech leads to criticism by social activists and civil rights leaders. By Amy Gardner Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 26, 2010
When Fox News and talk radio host Glenn Beck comes to Washington this weekend to headline a rally intended to "restore honor" to America, he will test the strength - and potentially expose the weaknesses - of a conservative grass-roots movement that remains an unpredictable force in the country's politics.
Beck, who is both admired and assailed for his faith-based patriotism and his brash criticism of President Obama, plans in part to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. as an American hero.
He will speak on the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, from the spot where King delivered it Read the rest of the article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/25/AR2010082507203.html
I am by no means the first person to say this, but however large or small the attendance at a three-hour rally in sweltering Washington at the end of August is, will neither prove nor disproves how fundamentally strong the Tea Party is in its various incarnations in all 50 states. Very strong in some regions of the U.S. for reasons both geographic and cultural, while only so-so in other places where strong party politics are a foreign concept because political independence was already prized long before there was a Tea Party Movement -like Maine. That's why we have elections, instead of political rallies at football stadiums.
And yet the MSM just can't accept this explanation. They keep wanting this event on Saturday to stand for something else, something many of them clearly don't personally like -as if that wasn't noticeable at all in all of the media coverage.
It's a rally for people with some common goals and desires to come together and get enthused about the hard work that lays ahead. That's it. I especially encourage my friends overseas to watch for yourself and see how the U.S. media's depiction of this has, again, been much less than truthful.To see the live stream of the rally on Saturday, go to http://newsforamericans.blogspot.com/2010/08/glenn-beck-restoring-honor-rally-stream.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMGpBCllHWs
Since I've never mentioned it here before, I listen every day to Glenn Beck's daily morning nationally-syndicated radio show and religiously watch or tape his weekday 5 p.m TV show on Fox News Channel -or the encore broadcast at 2 a.m.- just about every day, having given NPR the boot in the morning quite some time ago as I've previously commented here, since if Diane Rehm has a guest or topic I'm interested in, I know that I can always go to the website and listen to it again over the weekend. http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/44014/
But just like Rush Limbaugh's nationally-syndicated afternoon radio show, if you don't listen to Beck's show when it's on, you completely lose the immediacy of what's on his mind and his listeners across the country. To imagine, as some do, that these two men don't really have a great influence on what the MSM deigns to discuss on other TV chat programs or what will appear in elite newspapers or news magazines, is to harbor a delusion of America that's simply at odds with reality. Nobody 'accidentally' listens to the show every day. Speaking of numbers and their portent, it's a good thing for Katie Couric that eyeballs alone don't tell the tale of someone's fundamental fitness the way the WaPo seems to want to judge this weekend's rally, or else she'd be out on her butt after CBS Evening News just received it's lowest weekly ratings EVER. http://spectator.org/blog/2010/08/25/katie-couric-and-rush-ratings
If her name wasn't Katie Couric, she's already have been shown the door, like Campbell Brown at CNN. Not that you would know any of that if you depended on the Miami Herald to make sense of the current media world, as her stewardship there atCBS is never mentioned.
If there's a major newspaper in the country that's more unsophisticated and behind-the-ball than the Herald in its coverage of media in its various guises, considering the people who live here, I don't what paper that could be. It's truly abysmal with a capital "A."
See also: Brian Williams: Katie Couric 'Always Welcome' at NBC http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/generalities/brian_williams_katie_couric_always_welcome_at_nbc_171045.asp
See details on Saturday's rally at: http://www.glennbeck.com/828/
See the Washington Post's online chat with Brendan Steinhauser, Director, Federal and State Campaigns, FreedomWorks, from yesterday at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/08/26/DI2010082603846.html
