Outside Cable News

Via WKYT
Controversy Surrounds Manchester CNN Story
By Marie Luby

Controversy surrounds a CNN story about why some people in Clay County don’t vote. The story aired Monday night and we went to Manchester to find out why people are still talking about it.

Images of poverty in Clay County in a CNN story about voting made some in Manchester furious. Senator Robert Stivers thinks the network went out of its way to videotape a stereotype of Eastern Kentucky.

“There are a lot more things happening than a building that is dilapidated and is going to be torn down,” Stivers said.

Stivers showed us what he calls the true Manchester, with new community buildings like the children’s library and the justice center.

“They want to perpetuate an image of Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia that is not good for keeping our people here or drawing new people here,” Stivers said.

Stivers says CNN overlooked improvements like literacy programs and cracking down on drug abuse. Others say the spotlight on one of the nation’s poorest counties wasn’t unfair.

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” said Manchester Mayor Carmen Lewis.
(more…)

Via The Times-Picayune
The Cable Show (Day Four): ‘Happy Hour’ and more cable caring
By Dave Walker

My Tuesday at The Cable Show in reverse:

A hearty 5 p.m. toast at Pat O’Brien’s of the bright red house drink by the crew of “Happy Hour” concluded the Fox Business Network’s Cable Show outreach effort.

An offspring of the Fox News Channel, the new business network brought two of its shows to New Orleans for live broadcasts during the convention, an annual gathering of the cable-TV industry that returned to New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

“Money for Breakfast,” featuring guests both local (Drew Brees) and Cable Show-related, originated from Cafe du Monde on Monday morning.

“Happy Hour,” a freewheeling hour normally done live from barstools at the Bull and Bear steakhouse/saloon at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, did Tuesday show’s from Pat O’Brien’s sweltering patio. Charlie Johnson of local Dredging Supply Co., awarded the President’s “E” Certificate for Exports, was among the episode’s guests.

“You don’t see any show, any news program or business program that originates live from a bar and has the kind of guests that we have and is free to do the antics that we do and basically have fun and make business news accessible to people like my friends and family back in San Jose, Calif.,” said cohost Rebecca Gomez, a Fox News Channel veteran. “Business news is very intimidating to people.”
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Via CJR
Dazed and Confused (Watching MSNBC Again)
By Liz Cox Barrett

No, Contessa Brewer, this wasn’t as bad as the time back in January when you interviewed that insightful young man/book author who advised Hillary Clinton to”stop wearing the pants suits” because they “look real bad on her” and to “wear a skirt” and “cut her hair more softly, wear pastels” and that “the wrinkles aren’t the best idea for her” (all prompted by your “wondering if [Clinton’s] had any work done.”)

Not as bad as that.

And yes, the LA Times recently called upon “three court-certified graphologists” to tell us what the candidates’ handwriting tells us about them (which is, turns out, what conventional wisdom already told us).

But that doesn’t mean you had to spend several minutes just now with an astrologer talking about the birth times of the candidates and what the planets can tell us about Election 2008. And if you were going to do so, at least you could have pushed your guest to clarify (for the uninitiated) what in the universe she was talking about:

>Check out CJR for the rest.

via phillyBurbs
Fox News mockery
By Eric Gargiulo

Did you ever wonder what those national reporters are really thinking when they are asked the dumb question of the day from a local affiliate? Check out Fox News’ Rick Leventhal’s reaction after he is asked the dumb question of the day.

Note to Fox personalities: the red light means you are still being taped!

via New Richmond News
Appleton native Greta Van Susteren blasts Madison airport
Wheeler News Service

Here’s one reason conservatives call our state capital “The People’s Republic of Madison.”

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren wrote in her blog that the Dane County Regional Airport bans the so-called “fair and balanced channel” from its TV screens.

Van Susteren, an Appleton native, wrote that she was in Madison’s airport recently when an employee told her “We can’t watch Fox in this airport we are not allowed to, but we sneak it in an office – we can only have the other cables on the airport televisions, by direction of one of the members of the board of county supervisors.”

But that’s wrong, according to airport spokeswoman Sharyn Wisniewski. She says the policy is to show Fox rival CNN in its public seating areas, because it’s standard at most airports.

Wisniewski says TVs in restaurants, retail areas, offices, and concession areas can have any channel they choose including Fox News.

She also said no supervisor ever banned Fox from the airport.

Via Excite
The punditry disconnect continues on primary night
By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) - Television’s news networks brought all of their punditry and electronic firepower to the Democratic presidential primary coverage on Tuesday, but left viewers yearning for the simplest of things.

Say, a reporter with a microphone who could walk into a bar in rural Kentucky and ask some voters what was on their minds.

The night of political water-treading - commentators who had already declared the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton race over were declaring it again after the Kentucky and Oregon primaries - did little to repair the campaign’s punditry disconnect.

“It’s another one of those split-screen nights,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said shortly before the networks called Oregon for Obama.

Clinton’s victory in Kentucky was massive, a “severe drubbing” in Fox News Channel anchor Brit Hume’s estimation, and exit polls showed the clear problem Obama had in attracting the votes of working class, white Democrats.

“The overall message here has been no more race and yet he is losing,” said Fox commentator Juan Williams.
(more…)