During an interview with Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast website, MSNBC president Phil Griffin strained at gnats when he stated that his network “has never had an ideology” but insisted that the dominant Fox News Channel does.
“An ideology is a single thought across all programs,” he said. “We’ve never had that.” However, Griffin asserted, MSNBC instead has “a progressive sensibility,” which he claimed is not the same as an ideology. “Obviously, I hire people who fit the sensibility” because “we do stay true to facts. You have to build your argument. That's why I call it a sensibility.”
Fox News Channel
By Randy Hall | January 30, 2014 | 10:09 PM EST
By Randy Hall | January 18, 2014 | 3:09 PM EST
Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes an interview during the 30-minute Politicking With Larry King program on Thursday night in which the long-time interviewer asked his guest, Dan Rather: “Do you ever think the thought that Fox News Channel is an actual part of the Republican Party?”
The veteran newsman paused for a moment before responding that the claim “goes too far” even though network founder Roger Ailes has used the channel to benefit the GOP. However, “is it a sole operative and propaganda machine for the party? I'd have to stop short of that.”
By Randy Hall | January 11, 2014 | 2:16 PM EST
During Wednesday night's edition of Piers Morgan Live on the Cable News Network, a panel of four media analysts joined their liberal host in agreement that The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News -- and Divided a Country, a new book written by New York Magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman, will not have much impact on readers' views of that cable network.
“People who are skeptical of Fox News are going to read this book and are going to be sure, once and for all, that Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party,” said media critic Brian Stetler of the New York Times. However, Amy Holmes -- a host on TheBlaze TV -- asserted that the book is filled with “pretty thin gruel.”
Gruesome Opportunist Piers Morgan Promotes New Gun Control Book Just Two Days After Navy Yard Shooting
By Randy Hall | September 20, 2013 | 12:57 PM EDT The announcement for Piers Morgan's new book, Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney, states that the liberal host of a Cable News Network weeknight program “is one of the most talked-about, controversial figures in the media today.”
Even though Morgan has been engaged in a years-long crusade to implement extreme gun-control laws, neither he nor his publisher, Simon & Schuster, apparently had any qualms about pushing the book on Wednesday, only two days after the Navy Yard shooting that left 13 people dead.
By Randy Hall | July 31, 2013 | 12:13 PM EDT
Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly began his Monday evening edition of The O'Reilly Factor by pointing out what anchors on two of his cable network rivals said about his statement that people in “the grievance industry” don't discuss complicated racial problems.
O'Reilly then went on to contrast the actions of Don Lemon -- an anchor on CNN-- who the Fox News host called “honest” and courageous for daring to state that the FNC host was not some sort of racist for daring to state that a number of young black men have destructive habits that are encouraged by entertainment media.
By Randy Hall | May 31, 2013 | 3:11 PM EDT
Five months into his tenure as president of the Cable News Network, Jeff Zucker gave a “progress report” on Wednesday by stating that rivals Fox News Channel and MSNBC “are covering politics” while CNN is reporting on “politics and much more.”
“News is how you define it,” Zucker said during a panel discussion in the “All Things Digital” conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, Calif., and “we define it broadly as news and information. Our competition now is two political channels that have actually left most of the actual news coverage to the side.”
By Randy Hall | May 4, 2013 | 6:12 AM EDT
What's the difference between someone with a “far-left” philosophy and a person who's a “liberal?” Bill O'Reilly received an interesting answer to that question while interviewing Democratic strategist James Carville during Thursday night's edition of “The O'Reilly Factor.”
Carville said that far-left people, including the protesters who clashed with police in Seattle on May 1, are criminals who are “breaking the law,” a standard he used when rejecting the conservative host's assertion that “the MSNBC people” are “starting to dominate the political conversation.”
By Randy Hall | March 5, 2013 | 3:15 PM EST
It didn't take long for liberal members of the press to spew venom at Ann Romney after she stated during an interview on last weekend's edition of “Fox News Sunday” that she's “happy to blame the media” as one of the reasons her husband, GOP former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney, lost the 2012 presidential election.
The fast and furious insults have ranged from a declaration by Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post that she “is suffering a serious case of sour grapes” and “needs to move on” to a sarcastic Tweet about her from David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix as “still blaming media” even though he “lost count of stories she and Mitt refused to participate in.”
By Randy Hall | February 15, 2013 | 3:49 PM EST
The liberal hosts on MSNBC just couldn't get enough of watching U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reach for a glass of water and take a sip during his rebuttal of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, airing the snippet a staggering 155 times during the Wednesday broadcast schedule, according to a tally by the Daily Caller.
Other cable news networks showed the footage far less often. CNN aired it 34 times, and Fox News Channel played it just 12 times -- all of which took place on “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity” while the hosts discussed the media's obsession with the Florida Republican's “watergate” incident.