Journalism

President-elect Joe Biden’s return to “normalcy” will include restoring the daily press briefing — and at least two women are under consideration to lead the new post-Trump show, according to people familiar with the deliberations. Kate Bedingfield is seen as having the inside track to become either White House communications director or press secretary. Symone Sanders could be offered the role of incoming press secretary, or slot into another position before winding up “at the podium” down the line, Biden aides and other people in and around the transition say.

Newsmax may be focused on conservative audiences, but it has very liberal views of where its business can go in the future as an independent news operation. The top executive of the news outlet said the company intends to move forward on its own, and noted Newsmax has little desire to turn the network, which has seen its ratings pop since the presidential election, into a TV outlet focused largely on a forum for a post-White House Donald Trump.

Leaders from ABC News, Hearst and Tegna will explore how 2020’s onslaught of crucial stories has tested their agility and impacted the technology and workflows they use at TVNewsCheck’s virtual NewsTECHForum event in December. Register here.

Fox News was right, after all. This is a media story worth examining for what it says about the relationship between Fox News and the fan base that it shares with President Trump. At 11:20 p.m. on election night, Fox News’s Decision Desk jumped out ahead of the competition and placed Arizona — and its 11 electoral college votes — in the Biden-Harris column. The backlash from Trumpers was immediate and furious. They attacked again and again — protesting rhetorically, online and even in person in Arizona itself.

Al Roker is recovering at home after having prostate cancer surgery, he tweeted Thursday. “See you all soon,” said Roker, whose surgery took place at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Josie Robertson Surgery Center in New York.

Fox News Channel will try its hand at sports this weekend when it presents a one-hour special led by veteran sportscaster Jim Gray. During the program, Talking to GOATs with Jim Gray, the sports journalist and Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade will talk about Gray’s more than 40 years in sports and present some of his interviews with sports giants like Tom Brady (above), Mike Tyson and Julius Erving. Gray is a Fox News Channel contributor.

“Project Baltimore” at Sinclair’s Baltimore flagship Fox affiliate WBFF, is a team focusing only on education, a perennial problem in the city’s well-funded but badly underperforming public schools. The Project Baltimore group works in a separate building, isolated from the newsroom, free of daily news obligations.

The Ocoee Massacre of 1920 been described as the single bloodiest day in modern American political history, yet it’s also a story held back from most history books. Until now.

In times of social media, live streaming and Zoom, it felt good to remember that televised journalism can be really strong. The broadcast networks have attentive editors and journalists who won’t be used as tools of disinformation. This is something we should all celebrate.

The suit fails because Trump hasn’t shown actual malice on the part of an author who wrote that Trump’s campaign was soliciting Russia’s help in 2020.

TVNewsCheck’s annual news and technology conference, presented virtually this year, will feature sessions exploring pivoting the newsroom to crisis and remote production’s rapid evolution and will spotlight extraordinary work in news storytelling and social media engagement. Register here.

David Zurawik: Confusion over statements from the current administration “is why I have come to so value the medical doctors and public health experts like Dr. Vin Gupta on MSNBC and Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Leana Wen on CNN. I have watched hundreds of appearances by them on cable TV the last eight months and have found their analyses and advice consistently informed by science and always easy to understand.”

Fox News, CNN and MSNBC have for more than four years been caught up in the whirlwind of the Trump presidency, a period when tweets, not physical news events, could scuttle the lineup of an hourlong show at a moment’s notice. The frenzy has lifted the ratings and ad sales of all three networks, and the anchors who fill their schedules, to the point where more people tuned in to the cablers’ primetime coverage of the election aftermath than they did CBS, NBC and ABC. Yet there’s palpable concern the spotlight may fade with the departure of President Donald Trump and the arrival of President-elect Joe Biden.

The wire service has refused to accept limitations that organizers of the show have placed on images from the venue that it believes affects its ability to accurately report on the event. The restrictions prevent AP from providing coverage of the ceremony “to its standards,” according to an advisory it sent to members. The AP will not write about, take images of or shoot video of the show, which airs Wednesday evening on ABC.