Misc Television

Though it certainly isn't a hard news item, a montage of identical story openings at roughly two dozen local TV stations assembled by Conan O'Brien's staff early last week shows us that their news readers will often parrot whatever their national news script services provide them. The primary and perhaps dominant purveyor of such scripts is more than likely APTN, the video division of the…

A search at Google News on "Anne Packham" (in quotes) returns nine items. That's an amazingly low number, considering Ms. Packham's aggressive attempts to gain visibility in her job as a lead Obamacare navigator in Florida, and the utterly ridiculous assertion she made earlier this week about the impact of credit scores on healthcare premiums — an assertion she has retracted without anything…

Earlier this evening at NewsBusters, Tim Graham noted that the Washington Post gave space, in an item entitled "Reagan Historians to Decry 'Ahistorical Caricature' as Racist in 'The Butler' Movie," to refute the false portrayal of the Gipper in that film. One more anecdote should be added in rebuttal to counter the "Reagan was a racist" lie. I'm referring to an event in 1982. Note that the…

Late this afternoon, an anchor at Oakland TV station KTVU unfortunately read four offensive and insensitive mock Asian-sounding names and identified them as the pilots of Asiana Flight 214, which crash landed at San Franscisco Airport last weekend. A third crash victim died today. While the station deserves plenty of blame for failing to catch the obviously phony names before airing them, at…

A longtime but recently inactive Hispanic leader in Dallas has been arrested and, according to the FBI, is the "Mesh Mask Bandit" responsible for robbing 19 banks since New Year’s Eve." Imagine if a recent Tea Party leader of the stature of Luis de la Garza (as named at his Wikipedia page; the linked story at CBS 11 in Dallas uses "delagarza" as his last name) were arrested in similar…

Odds are that the ultraliberal, Occupy movement-supporting crowd in Portland, Oregon, which includes its mayor in late 2011, who told the Los Angeles Times that "I support a lot of what the movement stands for, as a political leader" -- are already trying to figure out how to stop what they surely see as a dangerous idea which has sprung up about 10 miles to the south: fed-up citizens arming…

The indictment of Occupy Wall Street-connected Doctor Roberto Rivera on a number of charges, including "stashing large amounts of bomb-making materials at his home," apparently wasn't news anywhere until Friday afternoon at NorthJersey.com. The Associated Press's unbylined five-paragraph report (HT Legal Insurrection) appeared Saturday aftenoon. Kibret Markos's Friday report noted the doctor'…

What is it with state Democratic Party chairpersons these days? South Carolina Chairman Dick Harpootlian, whose term just recently ended, has hurled repeated tasteless insults at Palmetto State Governor Nikki Haley, who is of Indian heritage. His final parting shot: Haley needs to be sent "back to wherever the hell she came from." Louisiana's Democratic Party chairwoman joined in the "fun"…

The Comcast Corporation, sole owner of NBCUniversal now, recently made the decision to refuse advertising from gun stores and ammunition manufacturers. Operating in 39 states and the District of Columbia, it is by far the largest cable company in the country. What's more, it holds a regional monopoly on cable TV in a multitude of markets, meaning it's the only affordable televised commercial…

UPDATE: The post has been revised from its original presentation to reflect the fact that the Cincinnati Enquirer covered the story but chose not to identify the person involved, even though her name is a matter of public record. On Wednesday, local Cincinnati TV station WCPO did a report (HT John Fund at National Review via Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin's blog) on how "The Hamilton County…

What's the correlation between Fox News and Playboy TV? Well, on a relatively new online game show called Let's Ask America, web cam contestants were playfully asked which one would offend liberal parents more if they stumbled upon their teenage son watching one or the other. (video clip below; h/t email tipster John Heckman)

To paraphrase the estimable Yogi Berra - it’s like deja vu all over, and over, and over, and over again. The Jurassic Press media is enraptured with a certain story.

You may recall when CBS fired Charlie Sheen early last year from the popular Two and a Half Men series for a string of "felony offenses involving moral turpitude." In the weeks and months that preceded this decision, an increasingly erratic Sheen received an inordinate amount of media attention for his drug-induced rants. To this day however, Sheen's bad boy persona is received warmly by the…

While President Obama's record-breaking pace to raising a total of $1 billion earlier this month received significant media attention, there was little if any curiosity among the traditional press about how he was on track to achieve such an unprecedented milestone in presidential fundraising. The broadcast networks in particular have not bothered to mention the growing scandal that is being…