Six months to go before the presidential election and MSNBC and CNN late last week and over the weekend spent chunks of time focusing on a fuzzy tape recording said to be from 25 years ago in which a voice, described by the Washington Post as that of Donald Trump supposedly pretending to be his publicist, observed Grumpy Editor.
The "revelation" spilled over to Fox News Sunday when Chris Wallace brought it up at the program's opening. It continued to be active on other news channels, too.
Hey, media forget that many corporate executives put on a PR hat to tout company happenings.
Interestingly, the journalist for People magazine who did the interview said in a TV interview aired Saturday that it was not Trump's voice.
With eyes on the Nov. 8 election, the Washington Post has assembled a team of 20 journalists to dig into Trump doings over the years in an attempt to uncover other "gems" like the "pretend PR person."
Writers of the Washington Post story described the voice on the tape as "instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian. The man on the phone vigorously defending Donald Trump says he’s a media spokesman named John Miller, but then he says, 'I’m sort of new here,' and 'I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes' and even 'I’m going to do this a little, part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.'”
Trump on Friday denied he used to pose as his own public relations representative to handle reporters and place stories, shooting down the Washington Post piece. "It doesn’t sound like my voice at all,” Trump said in a TV interview.
Meanwhile, a shocking headline over a revealing story in Army Times --- Army shrinks to smallest level since before World War II --- did not grab attention of print and broadcast editors.
IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE...
Something that would never happen on TV a decade ago: soccer coverage boots NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The hour-long Sunday morning public affairs program that first aired on Nov. 6, 1947 --- making it the longest-running program in U.S. television history --- was pre-empted yesterday for English Premier League soccer…More on media's pre-election breathless behavior: TV folks were excited for several days prior to Trump's 45-minute meeting Thursday with House speaker Paul Ryan. MSNBC even ran a countdown clock leading up to the meeting and at one point Fox News, CNN and MSNBC were live showing the large gathering of reporters, cameramen and producers outside the building as part of wall-to-wall coverage...Word creeped out that McClatchy Co., which operates 29 daily newspapers in 14 states, will replace 120 to 150 information technology U.S. workers, shifting the talent to an India-based IT services provider...Google said it will ban ads from payday lenders, calling the industry "deceptive" and "harmful"...American Banker reported hackers believed to be working from China accessed computer systems of top officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to a top House lawmaker investigating the incident...While financial writers cited Macy's worst quarterly sales since the recession, they failed to note another announcement on the same day --- a Macy's dividend increase to 37.75 cents a share from 36 cents...Despite a hefty precipitation boost in recent months, California Gov. Jerry Brown said the Golden State needs to maintain a permanent readiness against what he termed the likelihood of more droughts fueled by --- climate change. For example, that means banning the hosing of sidewalks and driveways. Meanwhile, some cool weather news in this era of global warming: La Nina, a weather pattern marked by a cooling of the Pacific Ocean’s surface, could begin as soon as summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Then there was a cold front that moved across the northeast over the weekend resulting in temperatures 15 to 25 degrees below average. Yes, the climate is always changing.
A play on words in a Drudge Report headline --- referring to Hillary Clinton and West Virginia -- brought a laugh to Grumpy Editor:
NOW MINERS GIVE HER THE COAL SHOULDER
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