Category Archives: TV news

Rivals plan Fox News-style opinionated TV station in UK

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Groups pitching to perceived desire for alternative output as trust in BBC falls

Rival efforts are under way to launch a Fox News-style opinionated current affairs TV station in Britain to counter the BBC.

One group is promising a news channel “distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents” and has already been awarded a licence to broadcast by the media regulator, Ofcom, under the name “GB News”. Its founder has said the BBC is a “disgrace” that “is bad for Britain on so many levels” and “needs to be broken up”.

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Fox host blames ‘deep state’ for Bannon arrest – Bannon says that’s for ‘nut cases’

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Lou Dobbs claims ‘the deep state launched agents’ to arrest Trump’s ex-adviser, who pleaded not guilty to fraud charge

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has blamed the “deep state” conspiracy theory for the arrest of Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign manager who on Thursday pleaded not guilty to a charge of skimming donations from a fundraising campaign for a border wall with Mexico.

Bannon himself is a key propagator of the theory that unknown government operatives are working against the Trump administration – but has also said the idea is “for nut cases” and should not be taken seriously.

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BBC and Sky accused of ‘voyeurism’ in coverage of migrant boats

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Live footage of people crossing Channel to UK is like ‘grotesque reality TV’, says MP

Britain’s television news broadcasters have been criticised by opposition MPs and campaigners over their coverage of migrants crossing the Channel, with claims that some of their reports dehumanise those taking the risk to make the journey.

Footage of Sky News and BBC Breakfast teams approaching and filming small boats trying to navigate the busy waters of the Dover strait was widely condemned on social media. The Labour MP Zarah Sultana said: “We should ensure people don’t drown crossing the Channel, not film them as if it were some grotesque reality TV show.”

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RT loses challenge against claims of bias in novichok reporting

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Kremlin-backed channel fails to overturn Ofcom ruling that also related to Syria coverage

The Kremlin-backed news channel RT has lost a high court challenge to overturn a ruling by the UK media regulator that it broadcast biased programmes relating to the novichok poisoning in Salisbury and the war in Syria.

Ofcom fined RT £200,000 after determining that seven programmes, including two presented by the former MP George Galloway, were in breach of UK broadcasting rules relating to due impartiality regarding matters of political controversy.

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Donald Trump needs a media he despises to fight coronavirus | Emily Bell

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Containing the epidemic requires both reliable news coverage and truth from the president

It has taken until the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency for the existential risk this narcissistic authoritarian poses to be fully exposed. There have been other tests: the unconstitutional squeezing of immigration; the brief week or so when war with Iran felt inevitable; the imprisoning of children in cages along the United States’ southern border; not to mention the engagement with foreign governments in seeking personal gain. But it is the arrival of Covid-19, the infectious respiratory virus, that threatens a presidency reliant on a strategy of all narrative and no truth.

Trump has a core support base of people who are most vulnerable to Covid-19. Older people – particularly those who might resist taking the kind of interventionist measures being suggested – are very much at risk. Trump may have to halt his famous rallies in the middle of election season. More alien to him even than that, if containment of the virus is ever going to work he will have to build a good-faith alliance with the press to push out a unified and coherent message.

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Rachel Maddow on her critics: ‘Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on! Give me more!’

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The MSNBC host’s show has become a safety blanket for many US progressives. She discusses her demonisation by the right, tackling the president’s lies – and coming out at 17

Rachel Maddow, the US TV host, has a message for her critics: “Bring it. Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on. Give me more. Give me more. I love it!”

That is just as well, given the way she has polarised viewers in the past few years. Maddow, 46, has presented her primetime show on MSNBC, a 24-hour cable news channel, on weeknights since 2008. If most cable news and social media is fast food, she tries to rustle up a three-course meal: sensible, sober, sometimes painfully detailed and replete with oblique references to half-forgotten politicians of yesteryear. Since Donald Trump’s rise in 2016, however, The Rachel Maddow Show has become a nightly safety blanket for many progressives who identify with the “resistance”.

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Guardian spurs media outlets to consider stronger climate language

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Use of terms ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’ prompts reviews in other newsrooms

The Guardian’s decision to alter its style guide to better convey the environmental crises unfolding around the world has prompted some other media outlets to reconsider the terms they use in their own coverage.

After the Guardian announced it would now routinely use the words “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” instead of “climate change”, a memo was sent by the standards editor of CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, to staff acknowledging that a “recent shift in style at the British newspaper the Guardian has prompted requests to review the language we use in global warming coverage”.

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Fox News analyst says Mueller report proves Trump did obstruct justice

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Andrew Napolitano argued in an op-ed the president obstructed justice with ‘unlawful’ behavior related to the Russia inquiry

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano has argued that Donald Trump did obstruct justice, with “unlawful, defenseless and condemnable” behavior related to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In the opinion column Did President Trump obstruct justice?, the host of the Liberty File on Fox Nation argued that the Mueller report illustrates clear and intentional obstruction of justice, constituting legal grounds for impeachment.

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Democrats bar Fox News from 2020 debates over ‘inappropriate’ Trump ties

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DNC chairman says New Yorker exposé on Trump ties to Fox News cast doubt on network’s ability to hold ‘fair and neutral’ debates

The Democratic party’s governing body has announced it will not ask Fox News to host any of its televised primary debates during the 2020 US presidential race, citing a recent report detailing the conservative network’s close rapport with Donald Trump.

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said a New Yorker exposé on the depth of the Trump administration’s ties to Fox News cast doubt on the network’s capacity to hold a “fair and neutral” debate on the Democratic primaries. The decision was first reported by the Washington Post.

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