Journalism

CNN, MSNBC and Fox News are in talks to coordinate pool coverage to reduce the number of journalists in potentially infectious areas.

Becket Adams: “The only thing worse than a viral pandemic is the person who would weaponize it for political gain. The Washington Post published a report this week claiming conservative media may be responsible for the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. Are we really still doing this — even after members of the not-conservative press, healthcare officials, and elected representatives cheered and even participated in the massive rallies to protest the wrongful death of George Floyd?

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a news director, a newscast producer and a multimedia account executive. All three openings are at WWSB in Sarasota, Fla.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a meteorologist at a Nexstar station in New York state, and an opening for a chief meteorologist/anchor at a Standard Media station in Nebraska.

TVNewsCheck will present Reporting on Protest: Lessons from the Front Lines, featuring three veteran reporters, an attorney from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a remote workflow expert. The Media Financial Management Association continues its summer-long series of virtual sessions this week, while Ross Video continues its series of weekly webinars. Matrox will present a half-day on How to Control Workstations from a Distance, and MediaKind will discuss Getting Your Disruption On — Uncovering Media Opportunities. Rohde & Schwarz will look at EMC Filter Design. Details and links to registration pages are on TVNewsCheck’s Virtual Events Directory.

KNBC’s Beverly White: “I’ve been covering Black Lives Matter protests in Los Angeles long before George Floyd’s killing. The people I see there are angry, dismayed, bewildered and compassionate. And now, they are more multiracial and multigenerational than ever.” Above, White covering a recent Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles.

Margaret Sullivan: “Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight — yes, data-driven evidence — behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread. Dangerously duped.”

It’s a conundrum for news leaders: Finding time to keep up with the critical industry trends, while juggling the always-on demands of covering the news of the day. That was true even before 2020 brought us a global pandemic and a long overdue reckoning on race. But there really are a few reports each year that point to where the news industry is going, not where it’s been. The annual Reuters Digital News Report, which surveyed 80,000 news consumers globally across 40 countries, is one. Here are some top takeaways.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: “The success of local television news in some markets comes even as the broadcast industry in general faces monumental challenges that existed apart from COVID-19, largely due to competition from unregulated high-tech companies openly competing for the same local advertising dollars.  And, these successes come despite the obstruction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which overturned well-reasoned efforts by the FCC to modernize outdated media ownership rules last fall.”

CNN National Correspondent Sara Sidner has led the network’s coverage from Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, and from Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown in 2014, and investigates hate in America.

The current host of the weekend AM Joy is expected to host a 7 p.m. daily news and opinion program, people familiar with the matter say, filling the vacancy created at the cable news channel when Chris Matthews resigned abruptly in March.

Les Crystal, who was president of NBC News in the late 1970s before serving for more than two decades as the executive producer of PBS’s NewsHour, died on Wednesday. He was 85.

Publisher complaints about Google have grown more pointed as the Justice Department investigates the search giant for possible anticompetitive practices. The News Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 news organizations in the U.S., last week published a white paper that provides more concrete examples of how Google allegedly interferes with the digital operations of publishers.

President Trump again took aim at Fox News on Tuesday, saying he’s “not happy” with the network while arguing it “wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.” “I’m not happy with Fox at all,” Trump told Christian Broadcast Network’s David Brody. “My base hates what Fox News is doing,” he said before adding that “Fox News wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.”