From:
Wjpbr@aol.com | Block address
Date:
Mon, 13 Nov 2000 18:30:37 EST
Subject:
ABC Fires Radio Host Matt Drudge
To:
undisclosed-recipients:;
Add Addresses
WJPBR Email News List WJPBR@AOL.COM
Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
ABC Fires Radio Host Matt Drudge
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 13, 2000; Page C01
When ABC hired cyber-gossip Matt Drudge to host a
syndicated radio show last
year, some top executives--led by ABC News President
David Westin--tried
their best to block the move.
Now the suits have gotten the last laugh. Although
Drudge's program has been
picked up in 135 markets, including nine of the top
10, ABC has just fired
him.
What makes the timing especially odd is that ABC radio
executives had been
courting Drudge to move from Sunday nights to five
days a week--until
corporate higher-ups overruled them.
"I see it as punishment for daring to report on ABC's
activities," Drudge
says. "The whole notion that this is a political
payback for my Web reporting
is an explosive accusation, but I'm willing to make
it."
ABC spokeswoman Julie Hoover says the decision was
made by Broadcast Group
President Bob Callahan, with no involvement by parent
company Disney. "Sunday
night talk shows are just not a good business," she
says. "We're just not
going to be in that business anymore. . . . It takes
up a lot of your time
but makes very little money."
Drudge says he never received a complaint about the
content of his Sunday
show, which is No. 1 in New York in its time slot (and
heard here on
WMAL-AM). Asked if Drudge's reputation was a factor in
the decision, Hoover
did not respond directly, saying that while ABC News
was opposed to Drudge,
"radio marches to its own drummer. They make the
decisions."
But it may be more complicated than that, given the
desire of radio
executives to keep Drudge. In fact, ABC's
owned-and-operated stations want
the controversial columnist to continue the show
without the network's
sponsorship. Still, the program was not a big
moneymaker, generating only
about $400,000 a year in revenue for ABC.
It's not hard to understand why Drudge would be
unpopular in ABC and Disney
executive suites. He called Don Ohlmeyer, executive
producer of ABC's "Monday
Night Football," a liar for allegedly misleading
reporters about whether he
had met with Rush Limbaugh as a possible color man for
the broadcast.
Responded Ohlmeyer: "This is a gossip columnist who
doesn't really care what
the facts are and he writes it and then everybody asks
questions about what
he writes and then they have a story."
Drudge also obtained the manuscript of a book for
Disney's Talk Miramax
imprint, saying it contained sexual information about
some investigators
involved in President Clinton's impeachment. Talk
Miramax soon canceled "The
Insane Clown Posse" but said Drudge's reports were not
the reason.
In his book "Drudge Manifesto," the author includes
Disney Chairman Michael
Eisner among "the latest incarnation of vampires" who
"have sucked the blood
from the fourth estate, leaving behind infotainment
formaldehyde."
Drudge's 18-month contract, signed in July 1999, was
delayed after ABC's
Westin argued that he was reckless. But Geoff Rich,
executive vice president
of ABC Radio, which operates independently of the news
division, countered
that Drudge's show "wouldn't be on the air if it
didn't have a great breadth
of support within ABC."
After giving up his television show in a dispute with
Fox News Channel,
Drudge is back to a one-man operation with no links to
major media companies.
"The air we breathe is free, the airwaves are not," he
says.
George's Second Act
Perhaps the biggest network star to emerge during the
2000 election is George
Stephanopoulos--who, as you may recall, was a Clinton
spinmeister during the
last election. ABC has clearly ticketed him for big
things, morphing
Stephanopoulos from a mere Sunday commentator to a
ubiquitous analyst and
campaign-trail reporter. Diane Sawyer, in fact, wants
him to serve as a guest
anchor.
Not everyone thinks this is a great thing.
"Stephanopoulos has been dismissed
by some as nothing more than a partisan apologist
disguised as a pristine and
objective--if telegenic and appealing--observer,"
writes Brill's Content,
which has made the former top Clinton aide its
December cover boy.
Paul Begala, the Gore adviser and MSNBC pundit, yelled
at his former White
House colleague after the first debate: "Goddammit,
George, how dare you call
Al Gore arrogant?" Stephanopoulos explained that he
hadn't quite said that,
and Begala now says: "If I could leap to those
conclusions and get so angry,
then how will people feel who don't know him or,
worse, have a predisposition
against him?"
Some Bush campaign officials have grumbled about
Stephanopoulos, but most
political operatives say he's been fair.
Stephanopoulos recognizes the
dilemma.
"The fact that it is such a straitjacket is
liberating," he told the
magazine. "I just accept that a certain group is going
to feel that I am
biased no matter what the situation. . . . Is there
something about working
in government that disqualifies someone permanently
from the craft of
journalism? . . . If viewers saw me as a flack I would
not survive."
News Under Pressure
Local television stations, it seems, are coming under
growing pressure from
advertisers.
In fact, a third of news directors surveyed by the
Project for Excellence in
Journalism say they've been pressured to kill negative
stories--or do
positive ones--about sponsors. The findings, from 25
news directors, are
reported in Columbia Journalism Review.
One such executive reported his station wanting to do
a story on complaints
about a local car dealer. "We were told not to do this
story [even] before we
shot anything," this person said. Another reported
"strong internal pressure
to drop negative stories or do positive ones" on
"consumer, investigative and
medical" topics.
Two news directors said they were encouraged to do
pieces on
"station-sponsored" or "company events." And
two-thirds of stations now run
"sponsored" news segments.
The project's broader findings are pessimistic. The
amount of enterprise
reporting is "withering to almost nothing." Political
coverage demonstrated
"almost no imagination [or] initiative." Nearly a
quarter of all reports
consist of out-of-town feeds. Investigative pieces are
just 0.9 percent of
all stories. And the poor have all but disappeared
(they figured in just
seven of 8,095 stories examined this year, compared
with 336 about
entertainers.)
Overall, says the project, quality sells--but just 10
percent of stations
have earned grades of A during the study's three
years. Among the quality
stations, 60 percent were going up in ratings and 20
percent holding their
own. Among the lousiest stations, 60 percent also had
rising
ratings--apparently, more than just journalistic
quality is involved--but 40
percent are clearly failing.
Lights Out
CNBC aired a smart Election Night special, anchored by
PBS's Louis Rukeyser,
that focused on the election's impact on the economy.
But some staffers are
appalled that the network signed off at 1 a.m., with
the election hanging in
the balance. A taped National Geographic program
followed.
Explained CNBC spokeswoman Alison Rudnick: "Basically
it was clear to us at 1
a.m. that there was not going to be a resolution in
sight. From the get-go,
our main mission was to cover these elections from a
financial perspective,
and we felt we did a great job at it. Our sister
networks, MSNBC and NBC,
were still covering it."
Bias and Blunder
Some newspapers do strange things during elections.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, under orders from
publisher Richard Mellon
Scaife, pulled all pictures of Al Gore on the Sunday
before the election,
rewrote an Associated Press dispatch to play down any
mention of the vice
president and bumped the story of a local Gore rally
inside the paper. Scaife
is a conservative philanthropist who helped finance
the American Spectator's
investigations of President Clinton.
The rival Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which reported the
move, said the
Tribune-Review's managing editor protested but that
Scaife overruled him.
In Maine, meanwhile, it turns out that the Portland
Press Herald learned back
in July of George W. Bush's 1976 conviction for
driving under the
influence--and chose not to report it. The paper said
the reporter and his
assignment editor decided the arrest--which finally
broke four days before
the election--was too old to be "germane." Editor
Jeannine Guttman was quoted
as saying that no senior editors were told of the
arrest and that "clearly we
should have reported the story."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
*COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S.
C. Section 107,
any copyrighted work in this message is distributed
under fair use
without profit or payment to those who have expressed
a prior interest
in receiving the included information for nonprofit
research and educational
purposes only.[Ref.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]
Want to be on our lists? Write at WJPBR@AOL.COM for a
menu of our lists!
