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Archives for October 2017

AXIOS’S MIKE ALLEN Wins the Facebook Booking War: Lands Sheryl Sandberg

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Mike Allen, Tammy Haddad and Daniel Lippman. Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

Mike Allen scored one of the most significant interviews of the cycle, announcing this morning Axios will host a series of exclusive interviews with notable influencers at Facebook.  Starting the series this Thursday, Allen will talk with COO Sheryl Sandberg.  You can watch the interview on Axios’ Facebook page or Axios.com.

Throughout the series, Axios editors and reporters will delve into important aspects and dimensions with the social media giant — including technology, politics, economics and privacy.  Axios notes it will strive to focus on the collision of these topics, and will control both the questions asked and the coverage itself.

Interviews will be on-the-record, and available on Axios’s Facebook page as a Facebook Live video, as well as on Axios’ website itself.  Facebook will also make the interviews reachable through their Hard Questions blog, which explores areas facing their global community.

U.S. Adults Spend Half Their Day Consuming Media

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Photo courtesy Pixabay.

A study released by eMarketer reveals that people in the U.S. currently spend more than half their day consuming media – 12 hours, one minute spent with major media every day.

In the study, “US Time Spent with Media,” eMarketer measured every minute of daily media consumption across platforms.  Simultaneous usage of two or more media devices – such as watching television while utilizing a smartphone – counted individually toward the total.  Thus, total media consumption time continued to grow, even as the number of minutes in a day remained the same.

“Multitasking via mobile is primarily responsible for the overall increase in time spent with media. Consumers are spending more of their time on mobile devices conducting attention-heavy activities like video viewing and mobile gaming, but also with less visual activities like audio listening that enable continuous media intake,” stated eMarketer in a release accompanying the study.

Television remains the most-used means of consuming media for U.S. adults, with 3 hours, 58 minutes of use each day.  And with the rise of mobile, even with multitasking, that figure is down seven minutes from 2016, and below their forecast for this year at 4 hours, 19 minutes.

‘Fox & Friends’ Expands Morning Broadcast to Five Hours

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Fox News building on 6th Avenue in NYC. Photo courtesy Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons.

The morning news program “Fox & Friends”, a favorite of President Donald Trump, will expand its broadcast to five hours each weekday, Fox News announced Wednesday.

“As FOX & Friends continues to mark its most-watched year in network history, we are thrilled to give our viewers more of the morning franchise they love,” revealed Fox News president of programming Suzanne Scott.

Adding an additional hour at 4AM EST, “Fox & Friends First” will be hosted by Heather Childers.  Beginning at 5AM EST, Jilian Mele and Rob Schmitt will take over.  Once 6AM hits and until the 9AM end of the program, Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade will co-host for the remainder of the morning.

According to data provided by AdWeek, Fox & Friends is on pace to have its best rated year in its 19 year history, delivering 1.5 million total viewers.

Also, with this morning lineup addition, Fox News now has more women anchoring and hosting programs than its cable news competition during weekdays.

Former President Obama Surprises Michelle with Anniversary Tribute

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Photo courtesy the White House.

During the middle of a question-and-answer session at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women in Philadelphia, former President Barack Obama surprised his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama, by dropping in with a recorded video message wishing her a happy 25th anniversary.

Appearing on the big screen on stage, President Obama first apologized for “crashing” the conference, then launched into a heartfelt tribute for the former First Lady.

“Hey honey,” the former president began, “listen, I know you are with all these important Pennsylvania women.  But I had to crash this party because today we have been married for 25 years.”

The audience responded to the surprise message with applause and laughter, and the former first lady blushed and smiled while on stage with tears in her eyes.

“Not only have you been an extraordinary partner, not only have you been a great friend, somebody who could always make me laugh, somebody who would always make sure that I was following what I thought was right, but you have also been an example to our daughters and to the entire country,” he continued.

After the video completed, Mrs. Obama turned to Shonda Rhimes also on stage and joked “I better get home.”

The Obamas were married on October 3, 1992 in Chicago.

New Poll: Public Confidence in News Media Rises, Trust in Trump Falls

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Photo courtesy Pixabay.

According to data released by Reuters / Ipos, the public is placing more trust in the news media, while also increasingly distrusting the administration of President Donald Trump.

The poll found that 48 percent of adults say they have either a “great deal” or “some confidence” in the press, an 11-point increase since November 2016.  Additionally, 45 percent say they have “hardly any” confidence in the press, measurably down six percent from a similar study in January.

“What you’re seeing now is a gradual recognition of the importance of the press,” said Martha Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University and director of the White House Transition Project.

Simultaneously, public confidence in President Trump has been declining across partisan lines since taking over the White House this year.  Forty-eight percent of adults say they have a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the Trump administration, down from 52 percent in January.  Republicans’ trust in the president has decreased six percent since January, and three percent among Democrats.

The Reuters / Ipsos opinion poll surveyed 14,328 adults from August 24 through September 5th.  This survey is the third so far this year on confidence in major public institutions.

Pew: News Media Focuses on Trump’s Character More than Policy

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Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

A new study released by Pew Research Center showed that nearly three-fourths of all stories on President Donald Trump during his first 100 days in office focused on his character and leadership skills instead of policy issues.

“Coverage was much more likely to be framed around Trump and the administration’s leadership and character than around policy,” Pew wrote.

Compared to past presidencies, policy-centered news accounted for 31 percent of all stories regarding Trump, with higher numbers during the starts of prior administrations Obama (50 percent), George W. Bush (65 percent) and Clinton (58 percent).  Stories were deemed “positive” if it had at least twice as many positive as negative statements, with the reverse true for negative stories.

“[T]he evaluations of Trump were far more negative and less positive than those of his predecessors,” the study notes.

The study pointed out five topics dominating coverage of the administration.  These topics ranged from the president’s political skills (17 percent of stories) to immigration (14 percent), presidential nominations and appointments (13 percent), Russia (13 percent) and health care (9 percent).

Articles and stories from right-leaning news outlets tended to be more sympathetic to the President, while left-leaning platforms leaned more negatively in their reporting perspective.  Left-leaning or neutral outlets also were more likely than right-leaning to “fact-check” or refute the President and administration, adding to their negative ratings in the study.

“Stories with a greater mix of voices were more likely to have an overall negative sense of the president’s actions or statements,” concluded Pew’s director of journalism research Amy Mitchell.

Additionally, Pew found that right-leaning news outlets “cite fewer source types – including fewer experts, issue groups and the administration.”  These news organizations “were roughly one-fourth as likely as outlets with a left-leaning audience to cite at least one outside expert in their stories (5% compared with 22%) and about one-third as likely to do so as outlets with a more mixed audience (16%).  Right-leaning media outlets also were half as likely as left-leaning or neutral groups to cite both Democratic and Republican politicians in the same story (7% versus 14%).

While some may read this study as evidence of media bias against the Trump administration, Mitchell warns against drawing any conclusion of the type from the study.  “It is speaking about, from the public’s perspective, what is the overall evaluation of the particular event that is being discussed in this news story related to Trump and the administration,” she said.

You may review the study by Pew Research Center by clicking here.

CBS Fires Staffer After Facebook Comments Following Las Vegas Massacre

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Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

CBS quickly terminated senior counsel of strategic transactions Hayley Geftman-Gold on Monday, after she posted on Facebook that she was not “sympathetic” to the victims of the Las Vegas mass shooting and blamed the tragedy on Republican politicians.

“This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS,” the network said in a released statement on Monday.  “Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS.  Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families.”

Geftman-Gold’s Facebook post quickly spread around social media, including references to her position at the network.  Both her name and “CBS Exec” rapidly became top trending topics on Twitter.