CALGARY — Corus Entertainment has confirmed another round of layoffs affecting its Global News television operations and talk radio stations, marking the latest workforce changes at the media company.
The company confirmed the cuts to Broadcast Dialogue on Wednesday, saying the latest changes affect positions at Global BC, Global National, News 640 in Toronto and other talk-radio operations.
In the spring of 1997, I was on the phone with Tucker Carlson when he asked me about Stephen Glass. Glass had written an explosive article in The New Republic. Called “Spring Breakdown,” it claimed that young men at the conservative conference CPAC were involved in drugs, drinking, and sexual assault.
Tucker and I had been discussing something totally different when he suddenly asked me about the Glass piece. I told him I had been at CPAC and not seen anything like what Glass described. I was a journalist for a magazine called Insight and certainly would have reported seeing something like that.
Amid the Federal Communications Commission’s probe into possibly stripping The View of their “bona fide news program” status and the FCC receiving pushback on the prospect of renewing the broadcast licenses of ABC affiliates, The New York Post was reporting that the day time TV giant was under great financial pressure and appeared to be buckling. So much so, that requests for raises from co-hosts were being denied and their wardrobe budget was being slashed.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Right?
The wisdom behind that saying is pretty obvious: if you get the story you want out first, even subsequent information that ought to change how we see things rarely fully penetrates to shape how you think about something once you have a set picture in your mind.
Lyrah and Madelynn did a good job on this topic in the latest edition of the Spectator P.M. podcast, but I did want to pass along a take on that very large, steaming turd of a “study” laid down by CNBC, which claimed that Tennessee and Texas are the two worst states in America to live.
The study itself is a big, fat nothing. It claims that Tennessee is the worst state in America to live, followed by Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, and Georgia to round out the bottom five.
Frederick Forsyth described in his novel The Dogs of War a unit of hard, efficient, and unscrupulous mercenaries operating in the African conflicts of the 1960s and 70s. They had at least a code: they fulfilled the contract, admitted what they were, and moved on. The media mercenaries of today are more dangerous. They do not move on. They stay inside, gnawing at the roots of their nations on the public payroll and with ideological conviction. And they believe themselves to be journalists.
Apparently, the bravest, most important man in America, fired CBS journalist Scott Pelley, sat down for an interview with New York Times podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that aired Sunday (and taped Friday). It was a tour de force in rancorous arrogance and legendary levels of main character syndrome as he denied believing his semi-public berating of 60 Minutes boss Nick Bilton and CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss would cause him to lose his job.
60 Minutes viewership rebounded after Bari Weiss began her tenure at CBS, despite Scott Pelley’s claim that the Free Press co-founder is “killing” the program, television viewership data show.
CBS News fired Pelley on Tuesday after the former 60 Minutes correspondent questioned the qualifications of newly hired executive producer Nick Bilton and the intentions of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
Gábor Holló, the CEO of leading news aggregator Hírkereső (the name, ironically, means “Newsfinder”) has recently admitted in an interview with liberal media outlet HVG that he interfered in the Hungarian parliamentary elections by censoring pro-Fidesz material and promoting a news outlet associated with the current prime minister.
Mandiner reports that in the interview, Holló said he used his control over news-ranking algorithms to influence the reach of Hungarian media outlets in line with his political preferences.
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss addressed the firing of Scott Pelley during a staff meeting Wednesday morning, telling employees that the network had no choice but to part ways with the veteran correspondent following his public confrontation with management.
“The foundation [of trust and mutual respect] was broken” Weiss said during the network’s daily 9 a.m. editorial call, according to a recording obtained by The Post.
Three major outlets experienced sudden swings in their audiences this year—changes that align almost perfectly with how often they were promoted on some of the biggest news aggregators. Newsweek’s traffic plunged in April after steady promotion the month prior. Qatari-backed Al Jazeera saw its readership explode in March. And leftist outlet The Minnesota Star Tribune rode a steep wave upward in January before bottoming out again the next month. The timing was too consistent to ignore.
Americans’ confidence in television news and newspapers rates below that of a host of other U.S. institutions, results of a new national survey reveal.
Nearly half (46%) of U.S. adults say they have almost no confidence in TV news, while only one in twenty (5%) have a “quite a lot,” according to a new poll by The Economist/YouGov conducted May 22-26.
Of a sudden, the media has swarmed now-former Democrat and California Congressman Eric Swalwell.
CBS News is the Titanic of broadcast news organizations. It’s a century old, spans the globe, airs something like a dozen programs, and employs more than 10,000 — the most powerful all cut from the same ideological mold.
Steering that hulk away from the iceberg is no easy feat, but it’s the assignment given to new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss by parent-company Paramount CEO David Ellison.
As Gerald Baker wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, the biggest threat to modern journalism is the journalists. He pointed out that bias and incompetent reporting are the major causes of media distrust these days. But while those factors are highly important, they aren’t the entirety of the news business’ failure.
