According to Gawker it is. Here’s an interested snippet on the “rise” of “Celebukid Reporters and News-ertainment”

“Even after the rise of cable news and online news, network “news” broadcasts are still the biggest single unified source of news. Far more Americans get their “news” from a TV network “news” operation than from any other particular outlet. Network “news” is, therefore, still quite important.

There are a very limited number of jobs for network “news” journalists. Logic, then, would dictate that those jobs should go to the very best TV journalists in America. Instead, those jobs go to political celebrity children like Chelsea Clinton and Jenna Bush, media celebrity children like Luke Russert, and—perhaps most egregiously—to open political operatives like George Stephanopolous.

Nothing whatsoever can disqualify someone from being hired as a network “news” journalist, except perhaps ugliness.”
More here…

Entertainment website Fox News, is taking note of what a respectable, credible journalism website had to say about Jihad “not being a leading cause of death”….from FoxNews.com:

“A new online journalism course on Islam appears to downplay the threat posed by global jihad groups, suggesting reporters keep the death toll from Islamic terrorism in “context” by comparing that toll to the number of people killed every year by malaria, HIV/AIDS and other factors.

“Jihad is not a leading cause of death in the world,” the online course cautions studying journalists.

While that is technically true, researchers at the Culture and Media Institute who examined the online program took exception to that and numerous other claims made in the Poynter News University course.

Dan Gainor, vice president at the institute, said the course is sweeping these threats “under the rug,” while watering down the section on jihad with inappropriate comparisons.

“Infectious disease, we have government structures to prevent that, and that’s great … in radical Islam we have not even one organization but several organizations that are constantly seeking to kill Americans and others too,” he said. “It seems like journalists should not be involved in trying to downplay that.”

Read more from this hilarious entertainment site here…

Also, here’s a list of actual leading causes of death by the CDC here.

More bad news for Bill Sammon. From Media Matters:

“In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the “veracity of climate change data” and ordering the network’s journalists to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.”

On the December 8 edition of Happening Now, one of Fox News’ daytime straight news shows, Fox White House correspondent Wendell Goler delivered a live report from Copenhagen and was asked by host Jon Scott about “U.N. scientists issuing a new report today saying this decade is on track to be the warmest on record.”

Goler accurately reported that, indeed, 2000-2009 was “expected to turn out to be the warmest decade on record,” following a “trend that has scientists concerned because 2000-2009 [was] warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s.” Goler went on to explain that “ironically 2009 was a cooler than average year in the U.S. and Canada,” which, he said, was “politically troubling because Americans are among the most skeptical about global warming.”

When Scott brought up the “Climategate” emails, Goler explained that although people had raised questions about the CRU data, “the data also comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from NASA. And scientists say the data of course across all three sources is pretty consistent.”

Less than 15 minutes after a segment, Sammon sent the following email to the staffs of Special Report, Fox News Sunday, and FoxNews.com, as well as to other reporters, producers, and network executives, instructing them to “IMMEDIATELY” include objections of “critics” when reporting on climate data:

From: Sammon, Bill
To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 036 -FOX.WHU; 054 -FNSunday; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers; 069 -Politics; 005 -Washington
Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay; Smith, Sean
Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009
Subject: Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data…

…we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

Courtesy of Gawker’s Jim Newell:

“An August 2009 e-mail from Fox News’ Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, ordered reporters to drop the term “public option” for “government-run plan” during the health care reform debate. Could Fox News have a right-wing bias?

Sammon, a former Washington Times reporter, sent this memo to his newsroom, and got a reply from Fox’s senior vice preisdent for news, Michael Clemente.

From: Sammon, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 8:23 AM
To: 054 -FNSunday; 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 069 -Politics; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 036 -FOX.WHU; 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers
Subject: friendly reminder: let’s not slip back into calling it the “public option”

1) Please use the term “government-run health insurance” or, when brevity is a concern, “government option,” whenever possible.

2) When it is necessary to use the term “public option” (which is, after all, firmly ensconced in the nation’s lexicon), use the qualifier “so-called,” as in “the so-called public option.”

3) Here’s another way to phrase it: “The public option, which is the government-run plan.”

4) When newsmakers and sources use the term “public option” in our stories, there’s not a lot we can do about it, since quotes are of course sacrosanct.

Read the rest of the email at Media Matters.

For the past week, Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly and his colleagues at Fox News have been bending over backwards to defend former National Public Radio news analyst and current Fox commentator Juan Wiliams, who was fired from his NPR gig for making disparaging remarks about Muslims. A journalist should not be fired for speaking his mind, according to O’Reilly. No, apparently a journalist who speaks his mind should have his e-mail inbox crammed with threatening, disparaging e-mails, according to O’Reilly.

Read more here…

Veteran journalist Juan Williams was fired from his job as senior news analyst for National Public Radio late Wednesday because of comments he made about Muslims and terrorism on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News Channel.

NPR said in a statement that Williams’s remarks – including that he gets “worried” and “nervous” when he sees people dressed in Muslim-style clothing on airplanes – “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”

Read more here…

That’s right. Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal, owns the following:
A 95% stake in Kingdom Holding Company; 91% ownership of Rotana Video & Audio Visual Company; 90% ownership of Lebanese Broadcasting Center ( LBCSAT ); 7% of News Corp (Fox News); about 6% of Citigroup; 17% of Al Nahar and 25% of Al Diyar, two daily newspapers published in Lebanon. Read more here and here…

As Yahoo shareholders cheer a possible sale of the company to private equity firms, perhaps with the aid of AOL, private equity players also have approached News Corp. as a potential strategic partner, according to sources.

News Corp.’s role would not be surprising. Thanks to its digital business, led by the struggling social network MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s conglomerate has been cited as a potential merger partner for Yahoo or even AOL and has been in early talks as Web players have looked to strengthen their position vis-a-vis the dominant Google.

Private equity firms have pitched News Corp. with suggestions that it could roll some or all of its digital business into Yahoo in return for a stake, one source said. Given that MySpace has lost user and advertising momentum since News Corp. acquired it in 2005, it is often seen as a candidate for a combination with another Web player.

However, observers expect that AOL, led by chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong, will be more actively interested in doing a deal.

Read more here…

Here’s the first paragraph of the Associated Press release of what actually transpired by a Federal Judge’s ruling on health care in Detroit, MI.

“(AP) A federal judge on Thursday upheld the authority of the federal government to require everyone to have health insurance, dealing a setback to groups seeking to block the new national health care plan. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in Michigan by a Christian legal group and four people who claimed lawmakers exceeded their power under the Constitution’s commerce clause, which authorizes Congress to regulate trade. But Judge George Caram Steeh in Detroit said the mandate to get insurance by 2014 and the financial penalty for skipping coverage are legal. He said Congress was trying to lower the overall cost of insurance by requiring participation.

This next snippet also appeared in the same release, which could be summed up as an essential part of it:

“As a result, the most costly individuals would be in the insurance system and the least costly would be outside it,” Steeh said. “In turn, this would aggravate current problems with cost-shifting and lead to even higher premiums.”

So the message of this release, is that the lawmakers are trying to prevent premiums to increase and that Congress was trying to lower the overall cost of participation. Pretty obvious right?

Here’s the Fox News “version” of the AP release, in their edited form, despite the fact it’s being displayed as being from the “Associated Press”:

“A federal judge in Detroit has rejected an attempt to stop some provisions of the new national health-care law. Judge George Caram Steeh says Congress did not exceed its authority by requiring people to have insurance by 2014. He also turned down a challenge Thursday to the financial penalty that comes with having no insurance. A Michigan-based Christian legal group and four people filed a lawsuit in March, claiming the law is unconstitutional. The judge says lawmakers intended to lower the overall cost of health insurance by requiring people to participate. Steeh says Congress didn’t run afoul of the Constitution’s commerce clause. A message seeking comment was left with the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor.”

Fox News intention of editing this release and distorting it in order to create “outrage” has succeeded. Here’s a glimpse of the audience response that didn’t quite recieve the “real” AP version of the story:

From Columbia Journalism Review

“Politico astutely pointed out the other day that Fox News now employs four of the leading Republican presidential candidates: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum.

It’s hardly news that Fox News is more propaganda outlet than news organization. But this ought to be a more troubling development than it seems to have been thus far. Here’s the broader media angle from Politico:

With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office.

The matter is of no small consequence, since it’s uncertain how other news organizations can cover the early stages of the presidential race when some of the main GOP contenders are contractually forbidden to appear on any TV network besides Fox.

C-SPAN Political Editor Steve Scully said that when C-SPAN tried to have Palin on for an interview, he was told he had to first get Fox’s permission — which the network, citing her contract, ultimately denied. Producers at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC all report similar experiences.”

Read more here,
and our own reporting on one of their reporters