- Branded Twitter pages are here! But only, apparently, if you’re a progressive news outlet. Seriously, Al Jazeera? What’s next, RT/ Russia Today / Komrade Kommuniqué? Rhetorical question.

- Real headline: Barack Obama controls media more than presidential predecessors.

President Obama grants many more media interviews than his predecessors, but holds far fewer impromptu question-and-answer sessions, according to data compiled by a professor who studies presidential interactions with the press.

By doing so, Mr. Obama and his administration have more control over who asks questions and where they are answered …

… However, Mr. Obama has comparatively avoided Q.&A.s with scrums of reporters, according to Ms. Kumar, answering questions at 94 photo opportunities and other such sessions in his first three years. Mr. Bush had spoken at 307 such sessions after three years in office, and Mr. Clinton, 493.

Of course. Interviewers submit questions to the President and his team, who then choose what they want to answer. If the questions go unvetted, they don’t get asked. This is why he avoids those impromptu Q and As — and interesting how his predecessors welcomed them.

- Compare the above to this from Newsbusters: Obama’s Been Skipping the White House Press Corps for Network and Social Media Softballs.

- Interesting: NYT reporter asks for readers’s help in identifying bomb.

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- DHS is monitoring Drudge Report, social networks:

A “privacy compliance review” issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a “Social Networking/Media Capability” which involves regular monitoring of “publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards.”

The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to “collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.”

- Piers Morgan tells Andrew Breitbart that he’s “evil.” At least Breitbart’s sites have never hacked phones on his watch.

- “Someone had a good time at her double nickel birthday!”

- Gawker: “N word did not get writer fired.”

- Comedy gold: Kremlin’s smear attempt on blogger backfires.

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If Katie Couric is preparing to square off against Diane Sawyer over Sawyer’s anchor spot my money is on Sawyer.

Ambitious news presenter Katie Couric is said to be eyeing up Diane Sawyer’s hot seat on ABC World News.

The 54-year-old newswoman serves as a special correspondent for the network – but according to insiders is keen to fill in for anchor Sawyer, 65, when she is away.

However, this news has apparently not gone down well with veteran Diane – who wants her rival to stay well away from her chair.

A source told the National Enquirer: ‘[Couric's] time as anchor on CBS wasn’t very successful, but she’d like to show she can still do it,’ but added Sawyer would be ‘very unhappy if they use Katie as her substitute when she’s off.’

I bet; Sawyer doesn’t strike me as a Barbie font fan.

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- Katie Pavlich: Hi Katie Couric. Barbie wants her logo back.

- Yahoo chief sacked after a rough three years.

- Oh my. MSNBC expanding their “Lean Forward” campaign, adding dayside anchors for double the fail. Ads include Chuck Todd talking about using “access for the greater good.”

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NEW YORK (AP) – CBS says Scott Pelley will take over as its evening news anchor, starting on June 6.

The network on Tuesday announced the expected selection of Pelley, the veteran “60 Minutes” reporter, to replace Katie Couric on the “CBS Evening News.” Couric is pursuing a syndicated talk show, but hasn’t said where she will be working next. The date for her final CBS broadcast has not been set.

Pelley is a Texas native who has worked at CBS for two decades. He will inherit a broadcast that is in last place in the ratings behind NBC and ABC, and has been for some time.

CBS said Pelley will continue to do stories for “60 Minutes.”

On the heels of Katie Couric’s departure from CBS, an odd poll:

Following media reports that she plans to leave her post as anchor of the CBS Evening News in June, Katie Couric will exit with virtually the same favorable ratings she had when she started the job in 2006.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 47% have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of Couric, while 38% view her unfavorably. These findings include 18% who regard the anchor Very Favorably and the same number (18%) who see her Very Unfavorably.

Why would a news anchor have only a 47% approval rating? News anchors are supposed to be objective messengers of whatever truth is happening around them. They’re welcomed into Americans’ homes via a glowing screen night after night and their audience trusts the anchors to give them their news.

And that’s exactly it.

Look at this poll as a measurement of trust. An evening news anchor (a news journalist, period) should have a high favorability rating (excusing cosmetic variables like people’s appearance preferences, et al.) because it’s supposed to be devoid of editorializing, or, what some mistake as “personality” now days. Supposed to be.

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This is funny and sad at the same time.

Katie Couric is out at CBS later this year and before she heads out the door, she slaps local CBS affiliates across the face and blames them for her poor ratings. Typical lib—it’s never their fault. Blame others and individual responsibility ends up on the cutting room floor.

In an interview with the New York Times, Couric also trashed Dan Rather by referring to the 13 years that CBS was in third place before she got there. Hmmmmm—yes Dan, she didn’t mention you by name, but that was your baby she was blasting. Time to find some more fake George W. Bush documents from the early 70’s and perhaps that will help bring those awful ratings up.

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Couric discusses her regrets:

Outgoing “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric says America wasn’t ready for the “overly ambitious” change she brought nearly five years ago as the first woman to helm a nightly network newscast.

“In retrospect I would have given people what they were used to, a traditional newscast,” Couric told The New York Times Magazine. “And then as they got to know me and got more comfortable, then I would’ve started toying with the format and trying new things.”

The feeling I get from some reporting on this is that CBS will remain in third place, regardless who is behind the anchor desk. Another oft-heard excuse is that Couric was shackled by the format, unable to showcase the personality she grew while ad-libbing over at “Today.” I disagree with both of these excuses. If CBS puts a solid journalist at the helm of a nightly newscast, someone less interested in trying to insert their personality by way of editorializing (Palin interview, anyone?), CBS will stand a chance at being competitive.

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Bernie Goldberg predicts what will happen to CBS anchor Katie Couri when her contract is up.

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Here at Big Journalism we’re pretty tough on the media when they behave badly, but we also try to offer kudos where they are deserved, even if that’s only with benefit of hindsight.

Yesterday I pointed out that three high profile network newspeople–Katie Couric of CBS, George Stephanopoulos of ABC, and Charlie Rose of PBS–had attended a party at the New York home of a convicted sex offender named Jeffrey Epstein. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, suffice it to say that Epstein isn’t your average offender. He’s a billionaire money manager who was accused of paying more than 40 teenage girls for sexual favors and, as I noted in yesterday’s post, transporting at least one teenager around the world as a party favor for his adult friends. Thanks to a plea deal offered by the FBI, he spent less than 18 months in jail.

As a father of two daughters, this is the kind of thing that gets me upset. It’s even more upsetting that reporters who should know better continue to treat him like a respectable member of high society. So yesterday I sent out tweets to the three news people who attended the party, asking them if they had any comment and/or explanation for their decision to socialize with a convicted sex offender. Late yesterday afternoon I received a message from Katie Couric in response. Because her response was made via a private channel, I believe she has an expectation of privacy. However I can characterize what she said as a sincere expression of regret. I still think Couric deserves criticism for attending the party, but she also deserves credit for not ducking the issue now that she has the benefit of hindsight.

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This seems a bit dramatic.

In hilarious 1994 footage of NBC’s Today Show, the now-famous American television journalist Katie Couric asks her fellow co-hosts how the internet works.

But it seems NBC did not see the funny side, as the employee responsible for making it public has been fired from his job at the television station, according to a Washington Post reporter.

The YouTube video shows Katie Couric, along with fellow anchors Bryant Gumbel and Elizabeth Vargas, talking about the ‘@’ sign and saying how ‘stupid’ it sounded to pronounce it as ‘at’.

[...]

But Washington Post journalist Rob Pegoraro revealed on Twitter that the employee has been fired.

He told followers: ‘The guy who posted the 1994 Today Show “What is internet?” clip on YouTube e-mailed to say he got canned for that. Ugh.’

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The silence from many progressives and the mainstream media is revolting.

Where is Media Matters? Daily Kos? Ed Schultz? Lawrence O’Donnell? Rachel Maddow? Chris Matthews? Katie Couric?

Where is John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver? Al Sharpton?

Where is the NAACP? Ben Jealous?

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Ah, good times. What websites define Couric’s worldview, one wonders?

Any time someone commits an act of violence that grabs headlines, journalists scramble desperately for a scapegoat, some person or social force to crusade against and extend the story’s expiration date (and thus ratings).  While it appears that Jared Lee Loughner’s motivation for shooting Gabrielle Giffords was nonpartisan (aka mental illness), there have already been reports from CBS, CNN, and the Associated Press attempting to pin Loughner’s motivations to Sarah Palin’s gun-target map, Giffords’ opponent Jesse Kelly using an M16 at a campaign event, and a general atmosphere of fear and animosity created solely by Republicans in Arizona.

As long as they’re bringing this subject up, I believe it’s a good time to discuss what the media could do if they really wanted to prevent future violence.  The answer is not to force conservative speakers to be “more careful” with their rhetoric.  In fact, I believe that the greater responsibility to prevent violence lies on the shoulders of journalists themselves; the media must stop suppressing conservative voices and increasing the ire of the nation.

This is not what makes us angry.

Only a literalistic idiot could find Palin’s “target” map something that would inspire violence, and only a partisan idiot could think that Loughner, a fan of flag-burning, would be a big enough Palin fan to have ever seen that map.  I find it extremely unlikely that someone can be inspired to violence through the words of a political leader unless it’s a direct order, which neither Palin nor Beck nor Rush have come anywhere close to saying.  The people who claim that these three use “coded language” to incite violence are as paranoid as Loughner; only crazy people see calls to violence in innocuous speech, such as John Lennon’s shooter claiming The Catcher in the Rye as his inspiration.

Indeed, when these conservative media personalities talk about removing politicians through the power of one’s vote, that is actually a deterrent to violence.  For Palin fans, her political speech gives them joy and hope, a cathartic reminder that someone out there is speaking for them.  Her defining political contribution has been giving hope to all the flyover country-dwellers deemed subhuman and unworthy by the elites in the media — hope that their votes mattered and that they could change things through their speech and political involvement. (more…)

KATIE COURIC:  We’ve never been used this way before.  The White House called the other day and gave me a list of 2012 election night analysts acceptable to them.  I don’t like it.

BRIAN WILLIAMS:  Remember when it was collaborative?   Now, they don’t even trust us to spin anything correctly.   Zucker took away my Managing Editor title and assigned it to Chris Matthews.  And he reports to Gibbs.

DIANE SAWYER:  Wasn’t so long ago they rolled over in the morning and kissed us and said they still respected us.  Now, well.  I hate to say it, but the right is right: Obama’s an egocentric narcissist who doesn’t know he’s in over his head.

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Perhaps just as minorities and women are fair game for the Left, provided they are Republicans or Conservatives, it appears that Juan Williams leaving NPR and joining Fox News in an expanded role now makes him fair game as well.

Combined with another comment from a recent gathering at which ratings-failed NBC icons roasted outgoing failed CEO Jeff Zucker, one has to wonder if the only reason they may not appreciate Juan Williams’ honest remarks as regards the impact of radical Islam’s terrorism on the thinking of average American’s is because, unlike Mr. and Mrs. Mainstreet America, said ratings failures are usually tucked safely away on private jets.

“Juan Williams was supposed to be here, but he had a little trouble with a cab. It wasn’t that a cab wouldn’t stop for a black guy. But when a cab did stop, Juan would look in, see the driver and get really nervous.”

Brian Williams, for his part, mocked the sheer length of Couric’s routine and joked that Zucker was now going to have to reacquaint himself with commercial airlines, taxis and subways.

It’s just been announced that not a single person watched a network evening news show in the 17th largest U.S. city, Fort Worth, Texas, in 2009-2010.  Not one. Plus, about ten thousand visitors who happened to be in hotels there didn’t watch the ABC, CBS or NBC evening news.  They all tuned out.

That’s roughly equivalent to the 739,000 people who have stopped watching Brian, Katie and Diane in the last year according to TVNEWSER, as compared to earlier statistics.

The ratings are in the for just-completed 2009-2010 network evening news season. And when compared to 2008-2009 season “NBC Nightly News” ABC’s “World News” and the “CBS Evening News” have lost a combined 739,000 Total Viewers and a combined 338,000 A25-54 viewers.

CBS’s “Perky” Katie Couric alone lost 343,000 viewers. (more…)