Journalism

Nearly two-thirds of Biden stories during his first two months in office were on his policy agenda and ideology, and 35% about his character and leadership style, the Pew Research Center found. For Donald Trump, three-quarters of the early stories were about his character and leadership, Pew said.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s call to harass people with masks exemplifies the danger inherent to the political variety show, a cross-bred new TV product that has moved from entertainment to action catalyst, our contributor argues.

During the past year, the job of seeking and reporting the truth became increasingly dangerous. Journalists were threatened, assaulted and arrested at an alarming rate while on the job. We faced unprecedented levels of verbal and physical violence at the hands of civilians, police and the leaders we are meant to hold accountable. Every year, RTDNA releases data from a survey of broadcast newsrooms from across the country. This year, for the first time in our history, the report compiled by the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University included a section on media safety. Our research team wanted to understand how repeated, targeted acts of violence have impacted newsrooms across the country. The responses were alarming.

The bipartisan series will let lawmakers interact with their local communities through candid conversations about the issues of the day including the vaccine rollout, COVID relief and stimulus, infrastructure and foreign policy. The first, from Washington, airs commercial-free on April 29.

Brek Bolton, weekend meteorologist at KSTU, Scripps’ Fox affiliate in Salt Lake City, has been providing a sign language forecast on Facebook for the past five years.

President Joe Biden spent only a weekend as the “Hamburglar” in the conservative media world, but the incident illustrates the speed at which a false and damaging story can spread.

With a channel said to be not financially viable, the company will focus on producing streaming video content. David Rhodes will leave his consultant role at News UK, but keep advising the parent company.

Fox News filed another response to Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit, contending that its on-air personalities were protected by the First Amendment as they amplified President Donald Trump’s unfounded allegations of massive election fraud following the 2020 presidential election. “Smartmatic strains to make this lawsuit seem like a garden-variety defamation suit rather than a glaring threat to core First Amendment freedoms,” the company’s legal team, led by Paul Clement of Kirkland & Ellis, said in a brief filed in New York Supreme Court. The legal team also is representing Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News.

Julie Townsend,  head of communications for ABC News since the fall of 2014, will leave the Disney unit as it prepares to welcome a new president. Townsend, a VP who has supervised outreach on behalf of flagship news programs ranging from Good Morning America to World News Tonight, will leave May 14 “to lead global consumer communications at an iconic American company” that she said in a memo to staffers would be revealed at a later date.

John Eggerton has retired as senior content producer, Washington, for Broadcasting+Cable, Multichannel News and NextTV.com but will remain a contributing editor, the Future-owned publications said Monday.

Since taking over as chief of NBCUniversal News Group last year, Cesar Conde has made it clear he wants the division to place a bigger bet on streaming. He has begun to put his stamp on the organization — which includes MSNBC, CNBC and NBC News — as he manages the news division during one of the busiest and most unpredictable periods for news in years. In addition to the streaming push, Conde has emphasized fiscal discipline, centralizing oversight of the news networks and cutting executive positions that each channel has had up to now, people familiar with the personnel changes say.

New episodes of Dale Play will be posted weekdays at 4 p.m. and will be available only on Roku, Apple TV, TelemundoLasVegas.com and the station’s app.

Tom Llamas has been named senior national correspondent for NBC News and will anchor a primetime newscast for NBC News Now, the network’s streaming service. Llamas’ move to NBC News from ABC News had been expected. He signed off as the weekend anchor of ABC News’s World News Tonight in January, amid reports that he would be headed to NBC News, with a deal being reached only recently.