MONDAY: Frederik Pleitgen was back in Berlin. Melissa Long was in for Tony Harris; TJ Holmes was in for Rick Sanchez; Anderson Cooper hosted AC360 from Los Angeles and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
TUESDAY: Jim Acosta was back in DC; Gary Tuchman was back in NYC; Dr. Sanjay Gupta was in New York to do The Late Show with David Letterman; Nic Robertson was in Kabul; Ivan Watson was in Islamabad (above). Melissa was in for Tony; TJ was in for Heidi Collins.
WEDNESDAY: Stan Grant was in Kabul; Chris Lawrence was in Kabul with SecDef Gates; John King was in Los Angeles (above). Don Lemon was in for Tony.
THURSDAY: Reza Sayah was in Islamabad; Arwa Damon was in Vientiane, Laos (above); Phil Black was in Brisbane, Australia (below); Kara Finnstrom was in Santa Barbara; Joe Johns was in Chicago. Carol Costello was in for John Roberts; Don was in for Heidi.
FRIDAY: Susan Candiotti was in Middletown, Connecticut; Susan Roesgen was in Joliet, Illinois; Dr. Sanjay Gupta was in Chicago. Carol was in for John Roberts (below); Betty Nguyen was in for Heidi.
Nic Robertson obtained an incredible exclusive interview this week with a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban. If you haven't yet seen it, the piece ran Tuesday on AC360:
Throughout the day, Nic was interviewed by other anchors about the situation in Afghanistan. Here, John Roberts on American Morning:
Later, TJ Holmes on NewsRoom:
And last is Roland Martin (and panel) on No Bias, No Bull:
That same day, Paula Newton had a piece on American Morning about al Qaeda's latest recruitment drive, aimed to attract young American and Western European men to come to Somalia for terrorist training. Clips posted on the internet use modern music and graphics to make them more accessible to the current generation of TV watchers:
You may have heard reports about Samantha Orobator, the 20-year-old British woman who has been locked up in jail in Laos since the beginning of August on charges (no trial so far) of drug possession. She is five months pregnant. (Do the math.) Laos has said that if she is found guilty at trial she will not be executed while pregnant; now England has worked out a deal whereby she may be allowed to serve her sentence in a British jail. Arwa Damon reports from Laos on what's been happening:
So what is it like for a Westerner to be locked up in a country that did not write their laws based on the Magna Carta? Phil Black talks to a woman in Brisbane, Australia who spent 10 months in the same prison in Laos:
And that's a look at some of the international coverage so far this week. See you Saturday with WITW!
John Roberts will be in Colorado giving the University of Colorado commencement address that will take place May 7th
Soledad O’Brien
On Friday, Soledad O'Brien will compete in TrueChild's second annual TrueFlavors Celebrity Cook-off in New York. The TV News mom will be cooking in an Iron Chef-style competition and will be judged by Top Chef winners Harold Dieterle and Hung Huynh.
Anderson Cooper
Anderson Cooper to deliver Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will give introduction at May 17 event
Better Late Than Never
TJ Holmes
TJ Holmes tweeted while attending the NAACP dinner in Detroit on May 3.
Sanjay Gupta
Dr. Sanjay Gupta attended Times 100Most Influential People in the World
Gala at the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center on May 5, 2009 in New York City.
Christiane Amanpour
Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN attends the Feminist Majority Foundation's Fifth annual Global Women's Rights Gala at the Beverly Hills Hotel on April 29, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California
Follow Up
Brianne Keilar
Brianne was married this past weekend. Congratulations to Brianne and her new husband
Thanks to Cyn and Kristien. Until next week ~ Sapphire
Here's your rundown of last week's cable news ratings for the Adults 25 - 54 demographic:
At 8PM, FOX takes the top spot, followed by MSNBC, HLN, and then CNN. FOX, CNN, and MSNBC aired the President's press conference on Wednesday night. CNN took the top spot in the demographic during the press conference. FOX came in second and MSNBC followed in third.
Other than CNN taking the demo at 8PM on Wednesday, FOX retained their dominance of the top stop on all other nights during the prime time hours. During the 9PM hour, MSNBC had the second highest average, CNN the third highest, and HLN fourth.
10PM places CNN in second place, MSNBC in third, and HLN trailing closely behind in fourth.
1 Four day average used for FOX, CNN, & MSNBC at 8PM: Wednesday Presidential Press Conference; CNN for 9PM and 10 PM: Wednesday 100 day report card.
^ Courtesy Nielsen Media Research; Demographics where noted; Live + Same Day (LS) Fast Track Nationals.
So Reza Aslan has a new (amazing) book out, and has been doing the rounds of TV talk shows. Saturday on The Situation Room, an interview he taped last Tuesday aired. (If you follow Reza on Twitter, you know he was psyched that he was going to be in DC and would finally get to meet Wolf Blitzer after years of speaking to him only via satellite. Well, "psych" was right -- Wolf was in NYC that day in preparation for the 100 Days coverage.) Anyway... another great interview:
Heidi Collins introduces a piece from Ivan Watson about an anti-Taliban protest in Islamabad:
Saturday, Fredricka Whitfield showed Ivan's piece again and then spoke with Peter Bergen about the most effective ways to fight the Taliban:
A couple of television reminders: Anderson Cooper in on The Tonight Show tonight; Tuesday Fareed Zakaria is on The Colbert Report, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta is on The Late Show with David Letterman.
State of the Union with John King started off with a prerecorded interview with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R) about the pending vacancy on the Supreme Court. King had his pocket version of the US Constitution in hand as they talked about the type of person that the President should appoint. Sen. Shelby was asked about the results of the "banking stress test" that are to be released this week. King also asked Sen. Leahy about congressional questions about torture. Sen. Leahy made an interesting argument for a joint commission to tackle the torture issues:
But if we don't have such a commission, then we will have the Intelligence Committee and we will have the Judiciary Committee and we will have the Armed Service Committee and others each do pieces of it, but that in some ways is like, you know, the committee of blindfolded people who are trying to describe an elephant, each having just part of the elephant.
Sen. Shelby, who used to be a Democrat, was asked about Sen. Specter's defection to the Democrats.
King interviewed Mitt Romney and Rep. Eric Cantor about the future of the Republican party. I thought it was interesting that Romney talked about the Republicans acting like Democrats with their spending during the past administration and that Rep. Cantor took the view that there was plenty of blame to go around. I suppose that is the difference between currently holding an elected office and that of someone in between elected positions. They also discussed Sen. Specter's exit from the party, immigration, health care, same sex marriage, and lessons learned from the first 100 days of the Obama administration.
And for the first live segment of the morning, Susan Molinari (R) and Joe Lockhart (D) discussed the direction of the Republican party and Gov. Palin's impact on the party.
John King got see inside the war room for the Swine flu virus: the HHS Secretary's Operation Center. They are tracking the progress of the outbreak. The war room provides a central location for the representatives from various health agencies/ organizations to communicate and share information.
Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources came in at 10 AM with Dana Milbank, Ryan Lizza and Amy Holmes to talk about Sen. Specter's conversion and the state of the Republican party. They also examined the coverage on Justice Souter's pending exit from the high court and the first 100 days.
The coverage of the swine flu outbreak was discussed by Dr. Tim Johnson, Elizabeth Cohen, and Mark Feldstein. Feldstein had an interesting outlook on the news coverage:
KURTZ: So, when I see all this wallowing, and I see on-screen headlines like "Outbreak of Fear," I wonder, is this overkill?
FELDSTEIN: Well, I think it is. And I don't think, with all due respect to Dr. Tim Johnson, that it's just the media transcribing like stenographers what officials say. The media have a vested interest, an economic vested interest, in promoting the fear. They don't want to get too carried away because they lose credibility, but...
KURTZ: An economic vested interest?
FELDSTEIN: An economic vested interest.
KURTZ: You're saying they are merchandising this tragedy?
FELDSTEIN: It's a commodity. When I was a correspondent at CNN, a top news executive here -- no longer here -- said, "Why do people watch us?" They watch out of fear, and we have to play to that. And if you look at cable news numbers, they're basically very steady until there's a crisis, and then it jumps.
Elizabeth Edwards' new book will include her reaction to her husband's affair. Kurtz spoke with Lisa Bloom.
As the program shifted back to John King, we got to see a Full Ginsberg as King talked to Dr. Richard Besser, Sec. Janet Napolitano, and Sec. Kathleen Sebelius. Since this was the fifth interview of the morning for the group, King took questions from Facebook and from callers. King asked a pocket book question to Sec. Sebelius:
KING: I want to get to our viewer questions in just a moment. But you bring up that point. If you're feeling sick, don't go to school, please don't go to work. Just take a few days.
SEBELIUS: Call your doctor first.
KING: Call you doctor. Call you doctor.
We were looking at the research, and looking into this. And eight out of 10 people in the food services industry who make $7.25 an hour or less, eight out of 10 do not get paid sick leave.
SEBELIUS: That's right.
KING: Is that a concern to you, that if I work and I don't want to name any names, I work at a fast food outlet, I work in a kitchen, and I'm feeling maybe a little flu-ish, but you know what, I've got to feed my family, I've got to pay my rent.
SEBELIUS: Well, the president, I think, made a great point in his address on Saturday. He made the point the day before to the cabinet who he assembled to deal with this, we really need a partnership with employers and we need employers to, not only take this responsibly and seriously, but not punish people for taking the right health protocol.
We don't want people to lose their jobs. We don't want people to feel that, you know, they're going to be penalized if they take some personal responsibility. So, this is an effort where we need to join together.
The diner segment this week had King in New Hampshire.
The discussion of the US Supreme Court vacancy was discussed by a panel that included Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, Jeffrey Toobin, David Gergen, and Maria Echaveste.
One interesting quote from Prof. Ogletree:
Well, I'll tell you what he won't do. Barack Obama won't sleep at a Holiday Inn and have an epiphany and just say, I have got the right choice.
Bill Bennett spoke to King via phone about the life of Jack Kemp.
King talked with Fareed Zakaria about Pakistan and Afghanistan. King pointed out that the President has been seen with Zakaria's book in his hand.
The Last Word segment returned this week with Rep. Joe Sestak (D). Rep. Sestak last appeared on the program just a few weeks ago on March 15, 2009 when he also got the Last Word. Sen. Specter changed parties to avoid a Republican primary that he probably couldn't win, but the Senator may be facing a challenge in the Democratic primary from Rep. Sestak (if the Congressman decides to run).
Of course, there was a behind the scenes clip posted to CNN.com:
SUNDAY: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Karl Penhaul, and Ted Rowlands were all in Mexico City to cover the swine flu epidemic. Mary Matalin joined husband James Carville as a CNN contributor, and they appeared together from NOLA. Reggie was in for TJ.
MONDAY: Phil Black reported on the swine flu cases in Auckland, New Zealand. Alina Cho was in for Kiran Chetry; TJ was in for Kyra Phillips.
TUESDAY: Kyra hosted from DC (above); Wolf Blitzer hosted from New York (below).
WEDNESDAY: Special programming to mark President Obama's 100 days in office had Wolf, John King, and Candy Crowley all in New York. Lou Dobbs Tonight and No Bias, No Bull were pre-empted; AC360 aired at 11pmET and Larry King Live at midnight.
THURSDAY: Wolf was still in New York. Sanjay was on live from Mexico City in the morning (above) but back in Atlanta by afternoon (below, and doesn't he look exhausted?).
FRIDAY: Jim Acosta was in Havana for May Day celebrations. Anderson Cooper was not on the New York studio for AC360 (he spoke at a college in Connecticut earlier in the evening); he also hosted and took part in (via pre-recording) a special on Time magazine's '100 Most Influential People' at 11pmET. Wolf was back in DC; TJ was in for Kyra; Joy Behar in for Larry King.
A couple of clips for you. First, Jon Stewart used a clip of Rick Sanchez this week, and it was hilarious -- so much so that I was going to risk the wrath of Viacom to share it here! But then they showed it on American Morning, and I tossed the first clip and went with that one. Then Rick showed it on his hour of NewsRoom and added in some great 'blackmail' footage of Jon, so I tossed the one I'd prepped and went with that one! This is great stuff:
Second, during the "Report Card" special, John King showed some Very Special Footage recorded during a recent vacation -- say hello to Anderson Pooper and Woof Blitzer:
