Jennings Told: "Nobody Likes You"; Rivera
Complained He Was "Marginalized" at NBC; Doonesbury Had Bush
Thanking the Terrorists
1) A man in Dallas curtly chided Peter Jennings:
"Nobody likes you." That rebuke aired on ABC’s World News
Tonight about 24 hours after Jennings, moderating a TV panel program on
the local ABC affiliate, was hit with complaints about his September 11
remarks about President Bush.
2) Geraldo Rivera left NBC for Fox News because he felt
"marginalized" at NBC News where, he told Newsday’s Verne Gay,
"I never even talked to Tom Brokaw or Brian Williams." On
September 11 Rivera was stuck in Los Angeles, but NBC refused to put him
on the air on either NBC or MSNBC.
3) Sunday’s Doonesbury had President Bush saying
"thanks evildoers" for allowing him to succeed with "the
missile defense program and corporate tax cuts and subsidies for the power
industry and oil drilling in Alaska" because those policies are
"all justified by the war against terrorism."
4) Tonight on CBS’s JAG: "A U.S. Navy spy plane
collides with a Chinese fighter jet and the crew members are taken hostage
after they are forced to make an emergency landing."
Correction: The November 19 CyberAlert
item on Saturday Night Live’s parody of a Pentagon briefing with
reporters posing stupid questions to Donald Rumsfeld mistakenly referred
to Rumsfeld as the "Secretary of State." Obviously, as the
Pentagon briefer, he’s the Secretary of Defense.
1
A
bad weekend for Peter Jennings in Dallas. As he showed on Monday’s World
News Tonight, a man who considered media coverage to be
"unpatriotic" curtly chided Jennings: "Nobody likes
you." That rebuke aired about 24 hours after Jennings, moderating a
TV panel program on the local ABC affiliate, had the tables turned on him
as he was hit with complaints about his September 11 on-air remarks.
WFAA-TV showcased a letter in which a viewer
charged: "With the most horrific attack upon the United States since
Pearl Harbor unfolding before our very eyes, Mr. Jennings sees fit to bash
the Bush administration."
Jennings anchored the November 19 World News
Tonight from Dallas as part of a series of stops around the country to
look at the post-September 11 mood. For the last story of the program
Jennings relayed the opinions he gathered over the weekend during
Sunday’s tailgate party before the Dallas Cowboys football game. He
didn’t fare as well as President Bush and Jennings deserves credit for
being willing to highlight displeasure with the media and himself. He
observed:
"The
President’s approval rating is high in his home state."
Man:
"George Bush, so far, has done an unbelievable job."
Jennings:
"Many of us in the media don’t get the same high marks."
Jennings to a
second man: "Can you tell me how the mood is in Dallas these
days."
The second
man: "Nobody likes you."
Jennings
summarized his beef: "This man told us our reporting in these days is
unpatriotic and cannot help the nation get back to business."
Later in the same
day as the man castigated him, Jennings moderated a WFAA-TV special about
media coverage of terrorism. He soon faced questions about how he treated
President Bush in the hours after the terrorist attacks.
Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews (http://www.poynter.org/medianews)
on Monday highlighted a November 19 Dallas Morning News story about the
November 18 panel show. An excerpt from the story by reporter Ed Bark:
ABC anchor Peter Jennings and four local journalists put their news
judgments on the line Sunday evening in a live telecast that gave
consumers a chance to question the barrage of coverage sent their way
since Sept. 11.
Titled Covering Terrorism: Critiquing the Media, the one-hour program
was produced by ABC affiliate WFAA-TV (Channel 8) and originated from that
station's Dallas studios.
Mr. Jennings mostly moderated give-and-take among 12 questioners and a
panel made up of Channel 8 anchor John McCaa; Robert W. Mong Jr.,
president and editor of The Dallas Morning News; KERA-TV (Channel 13) news
director Yolette Garcia; and WBAP-AM (820) talk-show host Mark Davis.
Mr. Jennings came under sharp scrutiny himself, however, after Channel
8 surprised him by bridging a commercial break with videotape of the ABC
anchor wondering about President Bush's whereabouts on the day of the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The excerpt, played "unbeknownst to me," Mr. Jennings said,
was followed by in-studio questioning from Craig Stambaugh of Arlington,
who had criticized the anchor in a letter to The News that also was
excerpted on Sunday's program.
"With the most horrific attack upon the United States since Pearl
Harbor unfolding before our very eyes, Mr. Jennings sees fit to bash the
Bush administration," Mr. Stambaugh had written in part to The News.
Mr. Jennings agreed that a "number of people took objection"
to his remarks, in which he asked on the air, "Where is the president
of the United States?...I know we don't know where he is, but pretty soon
the country needs to know where he is."
His comments were "in no way intended to question his [Mr. Bush's]
actions," Mr. Jennings said, but rather to express "how
important it was for all of us in the country to see the president."
Most of the panelists sided with him, although WBAP's Mr. Davis said
the timing of the anchor's remarks was questionable. He said Mr. Jennings
seemed to be implying that President Bush was foundering
in the early hours of a crisis situation....
END of Excerpt
To read the story in full, go to:
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/STORY.ea437538a6.b0.af.0.a4.d967f.html
Did anyone in the metro-Dallas/Ft. Worth area
happen to tape this WFAA-TV program?
2
Geraldo
Rivera, who took a cut in pay from $5 million to $2 million to join Fox
News from CNBC as of Monday, had been awarded appearances on Today and NBC
prime time specials in response to an earlier overture from Fox News CEO
Roger Ailes, but Rivera still felt "marginalized" at NBC News
where, he told Newsday’s Verne Gay, "I never even talked to Tom
Brokaw or Brian Williams." On September 11 Rivera was stuck in Los
Angeles, but NBC refused to put him on the air on either NBC or MSNBC.
An excerpt from another newspaper story
highlighted by Romenesko’s MediaNews, a piece by Verne Gay in the
November 19 Newsday about why Rivera decided to leave CNBC for FNC:
....It is midtown Manhattan and four days before Rivera signs off for
the last time from his CNBC talk show, "Rivera Live." Yet
walking just two city blocks to a restaurant on 49th Street, every
businessman, tourist and messenger seems to know about his radical career
adjustment, from millionaire talk show host to war correspondent for the
Fox News Channel.
"Way to go, Geraldo!" "Go get 'em, Geraldo!"
"Bring back his head, Geraldo!" The latter may be a reference to
an offhand comment Rivera made to a reporter a few weeks ago -- something
about cutting off Osama bin Laden's head, bronzing it, and then bringing
it back stateside as an unusual trophy of war.
He shrugs and laughs. "A typical Geraldoism." Yet with
Rivera's fans, confusion is, and always was, understandable. Is Geraldo
going to cover the war or fight it? Is this the last chapter of one of the
most colorful careers in TV news or the halfway point? (He seems to
suggest both.) And is he really walking away from all that money -- from
an estimated $5 million a year to $2 million -- out of principle and an
unquenchable desire to cover the most important story of his and everybody
else's life, as he insists?...
His "instinct [and] desire," he says, are to not adapt.
"It may be the worst folly of my career. On the other hand, maybe I
can do a great job and bring more eyeballs to an important story that have
already drifted off to 'Friends' or 'Survivor.' ... Why stay [at CNBC] in
Fort Lee?"
On CNBC, he adds, "I wasted a lot of time, just like a lot of
other Americans worrying about things that maybe weren't so
important." Roger Ailes, the Fox News chief and former head of CNBC
who brought Rivera to that network in 1994, says "I truly believe
when he saw those towers hit, it made him feel...that he had to go back to
reporting. This is a sincere move on his part."
But there's a story behind this story. Several years ago, Ailes made a
play for Rivera, which forced NBC News management (which controls CNBC's
prime time schedule) to dramatically boost Rivera's salary and give him a
much broader role at the news division, including the production of prime
time specials and contributor to the "Today" show.
Industry observers long suspected that NBC News' bosses were ambivalent
about their newly empowered star and, in fact, he would get no role on
"Nightly News" (as he'd hoped) while the prime time specials
disappeared.
Rivera admits that he felt "marginalized" at NBC News, and
says, "I never even talked to Tom Brokaw or Brian Williams. Katie
Couric was as sweet as can be and Matt Lauer was wonderful [but] when a
person moves into a neighborhood, you'd think someone would send over a
bottle of wine. I'm still waiting for mine."
The long-troubled relationship began to fall apart on Sept. 11.
Rivera was in Los Angeles and unable to fly home. Instead of killing
time, he went to the NBC News bureau to see what he could do. Nothing, he
was told, and -- oh, by the way -- a Brokaw special would take over his 9
p.m. CNBC slot. Rivera fumed.
When he got back to New York, Rivera asked to report stories on the
crisis and to anchor his show from Jerusalem. "‘No, no,
no,’" he claims he was told. "'We have people in Jerusalem and
Islamabad. We really need you to do your show. That's your job.'"
Rivera, who loudly reminded his bosses that he had covered wars in
Afghanistan in years past, then exploded, telling them "I will not be
marginalized on this story."
His next words, he recalls, were: "I quit."
Rivera says his resignation could have led to a lawsuit, "but they
didn't want to have a war with me and I didn't want to have a war with
them. I had the [contractual] out." (An NBC News spokeswoman declined
to comment.)...
END of Excerpt
To read the story in its entirety, go to:
http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-p2top22470302nov19.story?coll=ny%2Dfeatures%2Dprint
3
Another
anti-Bush, cheap shot Doonesbury cartoon strip from Mr. Jane Pauley, Gary
Trudeau. As first highlighted by the DrudgeReport.com, the Sunday
Doonesbury strip had President Bush saying "thanks evildoers"
for allowing him to succeed with "the missile defense program and
corporate tax cuts and subsidies for the power industry and oil drilling
in Alaska" because those policies are "all justified by the war
against terrorism."
In the November 18 Sunday strip, which showed
no faces or characters, just bubbles above the White House, a man,
presumably Karl Rove, said: "Sir, you’ve been so busy this fall, we
didn’t have a chance to brief you on this..."
Next frame:
"But it turned out that the missile defense program and corporate tax
cuts and subsidies for the power industry and oil drilling in
Alaska..."
Next frame:
"...In fact, most of the items on our political agenda..."
Next frame:
"...Are ALL justified by the war on terrorism!"
Next frame,
President Bush: "Wow...What a coincidence..."
Next and last
frame. In one bubble: "Thanks, evildoers." In a second bubble:
"They’re such jerks -- if they only knew..."
James Taranto’s "Best of the Web"
column on http://www.OpinionJournal.com
on Monday reminded me that back in early September "Trudeau fell for
the obvious ‘Lovenstein Institute’ presidential IQ hoax."
To view the November 18 strip as distributed
by Universal Press Syndicate, go to:
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index20011118.htm
For the earlier one about how Bush supposedly
possessed the lowest-ever presidential IQ, go to:
http://www.doonesbury.ucomics.com/strip/dailydose/index20010902.htm
4
Ripped
from the headlines of this past Spring, tonight CBB will present the first
of a two-part JAG tied to the Chinese incident back in April.
As described in the Washington Post’s TV
Week: "A U.S. Navy spy plane collides with a Chinese fighter jet and
the crew members are taken hostage after they are forced to make an
emergency landing."
JAG, about a team of Navy lawyers, airs at 8pm
EST/PST, 7pm CST/MST on CBS.
This is the last CyberAlert until after
Thanksgiving, though on Wednesday I may distribute the text of the last
Notable Quotables, so have a safe and happy holiday. I’ll be flying for
the first time since the 11th, and doing so between two airports which
were both used by the terrorists.