Al Sharpton makes $700,000 per year to host his daily talk radio show for Radio One, a national, urban radio syndicate.  Al Sharpton makes $700,000 per year so that his daily radio show can broadcast in only 28 markets (only 15 of which are in the top 50 largest markets in America).  Al Sharpton makes $700,000 per year to host his daily talk show that has been on for six years and yet still has only cleared 28 markets in the country.  Al Sharpton makes $700,000 per year to host his daily talk show that does not rank in Talkers Magazine’s Top 100 “Heavy Hitters” which not only measures ratings, but also goes out of its way to reflect the industry’s diversity and influence.

In short, Al Sharpton makes $700,000 per year to host his daily talk radio show even though it is neither popular, widely distributed, influential or relevant.  Al Sharpton makes $700,000 per year to host his daily talk radio show because Al Sharpton has brought something else to his employer that is far more important than ratings.  More on that later.

To understand the astounding salary that Sharpton receives to host what can only be described as a vanity show at this point, I contacted a veteran industry insider who wished to remain anonymous.  Their first response was “Al Sharpton has a talk radio show?”  I confirmed that he did and it’s been on the air for six years.  My contact said, “Who knew?”

Once past the initial shock that a radio syndicate actually turns over their microphone to the polarizing Al Sharpton (who many believe is anti-Semitic, a race-baiter and was proven to be a defaming liar in the Tawana Brawley case) my source confirmed that given the shows clearance and ratings the $700,000 salary is way beyond industry standards and makes no sense at all.  “He must be doing something else for them to justify that salary,” my source told me.

Yes, he must be.

As Wayne Barrett in the Daily Beast reports, it appears Sharpton provided Radio One a huge service by giving Comcast special “diversity protection” when the Comcast/NBC merger was under fire from the FCC.  As we reported here yesterday, Sharpton and his National Action Network assured the FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, (a political appointee put in place by Barack Obama after he rode to office thanks to Clyburn’s father’s support in the South Carolina Democratic primary) that the new Comcast/NBC corporate entity would bend over backwards to ensure “diversity”.  With the diversity protection firmly in place (thanks to $170,000 paid to Sharpton’s National Action network by Comcast over the past two years) the FCC voted for the merger thanks to Clyburn’s support.

One of the examples of Comcast’s commitment to “diversity” as noted in a memorandum signed by Sharpton and delivered to the FCC, was their huge ownership stake in TV One, a cable network aimed at the African-American community.  Comcast is part of TV One’s ownership team along with TV One’s single largest share-holder, Radio One, Sharpton’s radio syndicate.

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It looks like Al Sharpton will get the permanent hosting job from 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM on NBC News’ cable station MSNBC. This is a curious move for NBC News for a couple of reasons. First, and foremost, Al Sharpton is just plain awful as a host. He can’t read a tele-prompter, he can’t speak extemporaneously, and he is awful at interviewing guests. You don’t have to take my word for it, see for yourself:

But his lousy on-camera performance isn’t the only strange thing about NBC News’ move (they hired Cenk Uygur, after all). It’s also strange because putting the NBC News brand on the line by associating it with a polarizing figure like Sharpton is dangerous and potentially devastating to NBC News’ journalistic reputation. Sharpton is accused of being a race-hustler and an anti-Semite, and worse for NBC News he is a known liar with a major defamation conviction on his record.

Why would a news organization like NBC News risk further tarnishing their brand by honoring someone with this record by giving him the honor of hosting a show, especially considering he has vowed not to criticize President Obama as we enter a presidential election season? The answer appears to be found at the highest levels of Comcast/NBC.

The Comcast/NBC merger would not have occurred if not for the approval of the FCC. One FCC commissioner, Democrat Michael Copps, voted against the merger saying that it would “erode(s) diversity, localism and competition”. The “diversity and localism” issue is something that had been a key concern for newly appointed FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn when she took her position early in the Obama Administration. And she held out her approval until she was certain that it would not be an issue.

She was swayed by a “diversity memorandum of agreement” signed by Sharpton and developed with help from his National Action Network. Clyburn, daughter of South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, said the diversity memorandum “will serve to keep the new entity (Comcast/NBC) honest in promoting diversity.”

As The Daily Beast reports:

Sharpton has a long and well-documented history of leveraging his civil-rights profile for his own benefit. Grabbing a prime-time anchor spot in exchange for cheerleading for a controversial merger would be the capper on that career. It’s gone remarkably unnoticed that Sharpton was the first major black leader to endorse the Comcast merger, which met fierce resistance.

It’s not like Sharpton was an early champion for the mega-media-merger out of the kindness of his heart. His political organization National Action Network (NAN) has received $190,000 since 2009, when the merger was first announced.

Also, Sharpton and NAN ferociously fought on behalf of James Clyburn in his struggle to retain a leadership position in the House when the Democrats were consigned to the minority earlier this year. The Democratic leadership created a position called “Assistant Minority Leader” so that he could retain the #3 position, something that does not usually exist for the minority party in the House. Subsequently, Comcast has donated over $10,000 to Rep. Clyburn’s political committees further assisting the father of the key FCC vote in favor of the merger, Mignon Clyburn.

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When NBC News and Cenk Uygur “mutually agreed” to part ways last week, Uygur took to his internet news program to explain his departure. He boasted that his YouTube show had “up to a million views per day.” This suggests that the world was hungry for Uygur’s special brand of progressive political commentary.

We here at Breitbart.tv have taken a look inside the numbers and the fact is that political commentary is not what online viewers of “The Young Turks” keep clicking for. In fact, they aren’t looking for “news” either. The “up to a million views per day” are coming from folks interested in the same thing most online consumers are looking for: scantily clad women and sensationalistic viral stories.

Here is a very brief and hilarious overview of the top 50 highest rated shows presented by Uygur. These aren’t cherry-picked, these are the shows that got Uygur those ratings at YouTube that he is bragging about. Millions of people have indeed clicked on The Young Turks over the years, and these are the most popular shows according to YouTube statistics.

After viewing them you’ll be asking yourself how NBC News ever hired him in the first place.

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Continuing our series illustrating how MSNBC relies on Media Matters (the left-wing, partisan, non-profit organization whose dubious tax-exempt status is currently under fire) as their research department, we are pleased to present the Weinergate edition.

When the Weinergate story finally made its way to the main stream media, Andrew Breitbart was interviewed about it on CNN. Media Matters issued an immediate reprimand to CNN for daring to have Breitbart on the air. That same evening Chris Hayes presented an entire segment on MSNBC focusing solely on Breitbart, not Weiner, and used the exact arguments employed in the Media Matters article.

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Continuing our series illustrating how MSNBC relies on Media Matters (the Soros-funded non-profit organization whose dubious tax-exempt status is currently under fire) as their research department, we are pleased to present the Ed Schultz “Psycho Talk” edition.

The Ed Show on MSNBC has a segment called “Psycho Talk” where Schultz shows clip of Republican politicians and media figures saying things that he finds objectionable. Here are three examples in the past few weeks that show how Schultz is taking the story, the talking points and in one case even source video directly from Media Matters.

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Continuing our series illustrating how MSNBC relies on Media Matters (the Soros-funded non-profit organization whose dubious tax-exempt status is currently under fire) as their research department, we are pleased to present the Martin Bashir edition.

Watch how Mr. Bashir relies on actual, suggested questions supplied by the sad clowns at Media Matters in reaction to his colleague Dylan Ratigan’s interview of Andrew Breitbart that took place the day before. Media Matters scolded Ratigan for not confronting Breitbart and offered examples of questions he SHOULD have asked.

Mr. Bashir got the message:

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This is the first in a daily series illustrating how MSNBC relies on Media Matters (the Soros-funded non-profit organization whose dubious tax-exempt status is currently under fire) as their research department.

In this inaugural video, we illustrate how David Shuster used talking points supplied by Media Matters for his infamous interview with Andrew Breitbart in 2010. And to make the relationship even more obvious, immediately following his exchange with Breitbart, Shuster brought on Media Matters’ Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert to provide his analysis and perspective.

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Tax-exempt (and therefore federally subsidized) Media Matters for America pretends to provide education and fact-checking services to justify their charitable status.  But it looks like the fact-checkers need to use some Soros funds to fact-check themselves.

In a pitiful attempt to attack Andrew Breitbart, Oliver Willis’s misleading headline screams:  Big Dodge: Breitbart Again Ducks Responsibility For His Own Website

Only problem:  It’s a complete fabrication.

As I detailed earlier today, Univision’s Jorge Ramos attempted to sandbag Breitbart by challenging him on a 159-word post written at Big Peace four months ago by Jason Bradley.  Never mind that it is unprofessional and obnoxious for a news anchor to expect a publisher to immediately recall the details of a post when his sites have posted over 55,000 articles or videos in the past four years, the idea that Breitbart “ducked responsibility” for the post is an outright lie.  And worse, it’s a lie subsidized by your tax dollars.

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Jorge Ramos is the most famous and respected Spanish-Language television journalist.  He is often invited to participate in the political roundtable on ABC’s “This Week” program and last election cycle he was given the honor of moderating debates between the Presidential field.  When candidates Obama and McCain made their last appeals for the Latino vote, it was Jorge Ramos who had the honor of interviewing them on Univision.

There is no denying that Mr. Ramos is the most influential television journalist in the Latino-American community and this Sunday he interviewed Andrew Breitbart for Univision’s version of “Meet the Press”, “Al Punto”.  The following exchange was not only an example of typical “gotcha” journalism but unfortunately for Mr. Ramos, it also shows that he or his staff might be getting their talking points from the sad clowns at Media Matters for America.

RAMOS: In one of your websites, in “Big Peace,” there was an article written by Jason Bradley titled “Terror Babies: A Growing National Security Threat.” Do you share Mr. Bradley’s point of view?

BREITBART: I didn’t even read that article but I can tell you this, I created the Huffington Post in the United States of America which is a left of center blog. I created my blogs which are mostly right of center and I believe in open debate in our society. That’s why I believe so strongly in the first amendment, so I don’t know the specifics of that article, had I known going into this interview, I would’ve read it and we could have talked about the specifics.

RAMOS: Well the specifics is that Mr. Bradley’s view is that children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are terror babies.

BREITBART: I’ve never read that, I’ve never heard that and I’d have to see the context of that to give you an opinion. I would never call people that are born in this country who are from Mexico terror babies.

There have been 3,607 posts at Big Peace,  3,659 posts at Big Journalism, 8,039 posts at Big Hollywood, 7,329 posts at Big Government and 35,422 posts at Breitbart.tv.  For Ramos to ask Breitbart about one post from March of this year, that didn’t exactly make headlines from coast-to-coast is unfair on its face.  But then for Ramos to characterize the post as saying “children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are terror babies” is the kind of mis-representation that could only have been made if his staff only read the Media Matters lies about the post instead of the post itself.  Ramos not only slandered the post and its author with that statement, he also misinformed his audience about an article that most of them probably did not read.

Breitbart’s answer to Ramos’ fabricated mis-characterization of the post was “I would never call people that are born in this country who are from Mexico terror babies” and of course, neither did Mr. Bradley or anybody else in the Big Peace post in question.

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During a film montage tribute to late director Sidney Lumet, the obscenity “f**king” was broadcast on MSNBC. There have been no repercussions. This is in stark contrast to the immediate and indefinite suspension of MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin today after he said President Obama was “kind of a dick” at yesterday’s press conference at the White House.

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It was close, but we’re confident that this report on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” is the most egregious example of the media’s attacks on Andrew Breitbart for reporting the Anthony Weiner story.

For an editor of a magazine and for television journalists, Mr. Hayes and the producers at the O’Donnell show display a disturbing lack of curiosity toward what the actual story was in this entire saga.

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Strangely, in this report from the Associated Press, the names of the suspects are not revealed. We repeat, their names are Mohammad Mamdouh and Ahmed Serhani. Strange that AP did not mention this in the report.

Here is the entire report from the AP:

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Take a look at this news report from Mobile, Alabama’s WALA on the illegal-immigration bill making its way through the Alabama state house:

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Here is how the AP describes the video below: “Mobs set two churches on fire in western Cairo on Sunday as clashes broke out between Muslims and Christians, killing up to 12 people and injuring more than 200.”

“Clashes between Muslims and Christians” makes it sound like a scene from “West Side Story” with two sides causing equal amounts of trouble. But there were no Mosques burned in the clashes, only Christian Churches. (more…)

On Tuesday evening the New York Observer posted an interview with Andrew Breitbart written by Kat Stoeffel.  In it she invented a new and preposterous claim about the Shirley Sherrod story:

According to Mr. Breitbart, fellow Tea Partier Glenn Beck first joined him in editing and eviscerating Ms. Sherrod’s 2010 N.A.A.C.P. speech on the radio, before publishing the unedited version on his Web site, discrediting Mr. Breitbart on television and calling for his apology.

This is a complete and total fabrication on multiple levels.  First, and most important, is the fact that the Shirley Sherrod video was not “edited” in any way by anyone at all.  An excerpt was shown at Big Government and Breitbart.tv but the excerpt was a continuous clip with no edits made to it at all.  I know, I’m the one who posted it.

Which brings us to the second and most ridiculous claim made by the New York Observer:  that Glenn Beck had anything at all to do with the “editing” or presentation of the Shirley Sherrod clip.  This is, of course, a complete and total fabrication.  And, on Wednesday April 20th, two days ago, the author of the post Kat Stoeffel acknowledged that it was wrong and needed to be corrected.

As of now, the correction still has not been made.  Which can only lead us to believe that the editors and publishers of the New York Observer want to lie to their readers and want them to think that Glenn Beck edited the video of Shirley Sherrod with Andrew Breitbart.

Here is the letter I sent to Ms. Stoeffel within hours of the post going up:

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This morning on Talk Radio Network’s nationally syndicated, “America’s Morning News,” George Will told co-hosts John McCaslin and Amy Holmes that he is happy to see Glenn Beck leave the Fox News Network.

Will said that Beck’s “drift into more extreme and bizarre positions was threatening the Fox brand.” And that the “the health and happiness of Fox is served by his departure.”

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Hubris defined.

The president of tax-exempt, Soros-funded Media Matters for America didn’t take this opportunity to reprimand Mr. Matthews for his recent demand that President Obama produce his birth certificate. Also not mentioned was the fact that Mr. Matthews was named by Media Matters as the “Misinformer of the Year” in 2005.

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Well, that didn’t take long.

The useful idiots and Talking Points Memo have started echoing NPR’s false defense that their recently released e-mails show that they rejected the gift offered by the pretend Muslim Brotherhood front group in Project Veritas’ undercover sting operation.  With the screaming headline, “NPR Emails Show CEO Refusing Donation from Phony O’Keefe Group” TPM is attempting to preach to its choir of loyal readers that NPR did nothing wrong as an organization in their handling of the donation scenario.

Of course, readers of Big Journalism know that the e-mails released by NPR show nothing of the sort.  In fact, they show that NPR CEO Vivian Schiller and the Development staff were corresponding Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) to try to obtain critical information from them so that they could receive the gift of $5 million.   As John Nolte pointed out earlier today, not one of the e-mails released today shows anyone from NPR communicating a rejection to MEAC.

TPM’s headline is totally false.  (more…)