Fox News Channel

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares149 Views

    Richard Leibner, Agent for Top Broadcast Journalists, Dies at 85

    by

    His negotiations led to Dan Rather’s elevation from “60 Minutes” to anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and sent Diane Sawyer from “60 Minutes” to ABC.Richard Leibner, a powerful agent whose firm brokered contracts for many of the biggest names in television news, including Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Anderson Cooper, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer and Steve Kroft, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.His son Jonathan said the cause was kidney cancer.Mr. Leibner’s firm, N.S. Bienstock — named for one of its founders, Nathan Bienstock — represented hundreds of anchors, reporters, producers and others in network and local television news.The negotiation that grabbed the biggest headlines was for Mr. Rather, then one of the star correspondents of the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”Between late 1979 and early 1980, Mr. Leibner (pronounced LEEB-ner) parlayed interest in Mr. Rather as the evening anchor from all three network news divisions: ABC News, whose president, Roone Arledge, was trying to raise his third-place division’s profile; NBC News, where the evening anchor John Chancellor was hoping to change to a commentary role; and CBS News, where Walter Cronkite had been the evening anchor since 1962.“The Rather situation was tough and sensitive because CBS News knew something had to happen after Cronkite,” Mr. Leibner told Manhattan, inc. magazine in 1986. “Cronkite had told them, contrary to what anybody had ever inferred, that he wanted off. He was tired of it.”Mr. Leibner surprised Mr. Rather by telling him that he thought it was possible to get him as much as $6 million over five years. In the end, CBS agreed to pay him what has been variously reported as $2.2 million a year and $8 million over five years. He succeeded Mr. Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News” in early 1981.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Martin Scorsese to Headline a Religious Series for Fox Nation

      by

      The Oscar-winning director is the latest Hollywood name to sign up for the Fox News streaming platform, joining Kevin Costner, Rob Lowe and Dan Aykroyd.Martin Scorsese has agreed to spearhead a documentary series about Christian saints for Fox Nation, the subscription streaming service run by Fox News Media.“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” which begins airing in November, will be hosted, narrated and executive produced by Scorsese, the decorated director of classic films like “Taxi Driver” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Fox Nation is set to formally announce the series on Wednesday.Since its debut in 2018 as a companion service to Fox News, Fox Nation has expanded into entertainment and general-interest programming as it aspires to become a kind of Netflix for conservative audiences. The streaming network already boasts shows with Hollywood stars like Kevin Costner (“Yellowstone: One-Fifty”), Rob Lowe (“Liberty or Death: Boston Tea Party”) and Dan Aykroyd (“History of the World in Six Glasses”).The Scorsese series, created by Matti Leshem, dramatizes the stories of eight saints, including Joan of Arc, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Becket.“I’ve lived with the stories of the saints for most of my life, thinking about their words and actions, imagining the worlds they inhabited, the choices they faced, the examples they set,” Scorsese said in a statement. “These are stories of eight very different men and women, each of them living through vastly different periods of history and struggling to follow the way of love revealed to them and to us by Jesus’ words in the gospels.”Along with narrating re-enactments of the saints’ stories, Scorsese will also host on-camera discussions with experts. Four episodes will stream on Nov. 16, with the concluding quartet of episodes released in May 2025. The series is directed by Elizabeth Chomko and written by Kent Jones.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      A Biden Accuser Was Discredited. Right-Wing Media Is Undeterred.

      by

      Revelations that Alexander Smirnov, an F.B.I. informant, was a serial fabulist were downplayed on air and online by those who continued to insist the president should be impeached.On Tuesday, a few hours after the credibility of a key source boosting Republican efforts to impeach President Biden collapsed in spectacular fashion, the Fox News host Jesse Watters offered his viewers a reassuring message.“It’s a smear job,” Mr. Watters said.He was referring to the Justice Department’s revelation that Alexander Smirnov, an F.B.I. informant who had accused Mr. Biden and his son Hunter of an elaborate bribery scheme involving Ukraine, was in fact a serial liar who could not be trusted. In a court filing, federal prosecutors said Mr. Smirnov had spread misinformation and was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials.”Because Mr. Smirnov’s claims were frequently cited by congressional Republicans in their now-stalled attempt to unseat Mr. Biden from office, Democrats argued that the impeachment effort had reached a logical conclusion. “He is lying, and it should be dropped and it’s just been an outrageous effort from the beginning,” the president said last week.But the conservative media world reacted with a different, and sharply defiant, narrative. In this worldview, news of Mr. Smirnov’s deceptions was merely part of a conspiracy to protect Mr. Biden at all costs.“They say he has ties to Russian intelligence; where did they get that from?” Mr. Watters told his prime-time audience, noting that Mr. Smirnov had previously been considered credible by the F.B.I. “They just gave the media and the Democrats permission to call the Ukraine bribes and the Biden impeachment ‘Russian disinformation’ for the rest of the year.”Miranda Devine, a columnist for The New York Post, dismissed Mr. Smirnov as a “straw man” and said the evidence against Mr. Biden remained “overwhelming.” Maria Bartiromo, on Fox Business, described the Justice Department’s filing as “an intimidation tactic” and accused the government of “taking this guy down.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      The Supreme Court Ballot Case Made for Must-Hear TV

      by

      The live arguments gave audiences a rare chance to experience a Trump court case as it happened.If you were to list the ingredients of riveting live television, you would probably not include still photos, empty TV studios and parsing the nuances between the nouns “office” and “officer.”Thursday’s Supreme Court arguments over Colorado’s attempt to remove former President Donald J. Trump from the ballot on the grounds of insurrection had all of those. But the proceedings, carried via live audio on cable news, also had two essentials of must-watch (or -hear) TV: High stakes and novelty.The stakes were clear, whether or not you could follow the dissection of the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. There are few things as important in a democracy as the decision of who gets to run in the next presidential election, not to mention the responsibility, and the consequences, for attempting to overturn the previous one.The broadcast was novel in more than one way. The Supreme Court only began livestreaming oral arguments in 2020, during the pandemic. Having such consequential arguments take over cable news for a full morning is a rarity.What’s more, much of the coming election will turn on court cases involving Mr. Trump, and American TV audiences are likely to be kept outside the door. Cameras were mostly barred from his civil trials in defamation and fraud cases; current federal rules prohibit them in his coming Georgia election-interference case. (The Georgia case is supposed to be livestreamed, but it may not take place before November, and Mr. Trump’s lawyers have argued that he should not be tried at all if he wins the election.)Thursday, in other words, was a rare chance for voters to experience a part of the Trump Legal Cinematic Universe for themselves, not through the analysis of pundits or the fulminations of the defendant. That alone made it a TV event.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift Makes Fox News Suddenly Hate Celebs in Politics

      by

      The news network that wants Taylor Swift to stick to singing has had no problem handing conservative celebrities the microphone.Taylor Swift, you may have noticed, is everywhere: packing arenas on the Eras tour; filling theaters with her concert film; popping onto your TV screen from a luxury suite at Kansas City Chiefs games, cheering on her boyfriend, Travis Kelce.And now she’s living rent-free in Fox News hosts’ heads.After reports that the Biden re-election campaign was angling for an endorsement from the superstar (who backed President Biden in 2020), commentators on the network strapped on their culture-war helmets. “Don’t get involved in politics!” Jeanine Pirro urged her. “We don’t want to see you there!” Another commentator, Charly Arnolt, pleaded, “Please don’t believe everything Taylor Swift says.” Sean Hannity addressed the issue in prime time: “Maybe she wants to think twice.”Fox’s anxiety attack follows months in which MAGA opinionators have spun baroque conspiracy theories about the power couple: that Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce’s romance was staged; that the N.F.L. was rigging the Super Bowl for the Chiefs; and that it was all an unholy plot to supercharge an eventual Biden endorsement. The Fox host Jesse Watters even flirted with the speculation, floating the idea that Swift’s success was a psyop masterminded by the Defense Department.In retrospect, “Paul is dead” lacked imagination.Of course, people are entitled to their opinions on celebrity political speech or the possible existence of a secret Pentagon diva lab. But if Fox News’s hosts truly believe that it’s irresponsible and dangerous to invite celebrities to weigh in on politics, they might want to turn their attention to … Fox News.Over the years, Fox has invited Gene Simmons, the bassist of Kiss, to talk about the handling of an Ebola outbreak. It had the fashion model Fabio on to blame crime in California on liberalism. It gave us Kid Rock on cancel culture. Last year, the actor Jim Caviezel declared Donald J. Trump “the new Moses” on “Fox & Friends.”And let’s not forget that Fox was instrumental in the entry into politics of a certain TV celebrity, whom you might know better as the candidate Mr. Biden will likely be running against.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      ‘Tucker on Twitter’ Is Equal Parts Fox News and Fox Mulder

      by

      The low-fi “Tucker on Twitter” finds the former prime-time host at the intersection of Fox News and Fox Mulder.Most of the time, it does not qualify as newsworthy to see a man in your social media feed staring into a camera, asking “What exactly happened on 9/11?” and demanding to know why the media isn’t digging for the truth about J.F.K.’s assassination. Usually, it’s just a sign that you should not have accepted so many friend requests from high school classmates you barely remember.But when that man was recently paid millions of dollars by Fox News to say much the same things on one of the most popular shows on cable TV, attention is paid. In Tuesday’s debut episode of “Tucker on Twitter,” the new home-brew show from Tucker Carlson, the ousted prime-time star’s brand of resentment, insinuation and dog-whistly mocking finally gets the guy-ranting-from-his-den visuals that suit it.There’s a touch of echo in the audio; there are wall hangings, wood paneling, a bit of woodsy green through a window. Carlson holds his own Teleprompter controller and wears a suit with a pocket square. The overall look is talk-show “Green Acres,” or Ron Swanson if he shaved and went to prep school.As a production, “Tucker on Twitter” looks less like a newscast than one of the improvised lockdown shows that late-night talk hosts recorded from home in the early Covid days of 2020. But in this case, Carlson’s quarantine is self-inflicted.Fox abruptly let him go in April, after the investigation in its now-settled litigation with the voting software company Dominion turned up a racist text message and misogynistic slurs from him, as well as statements disparaging Fox executives. It’s not clear whether streaming on Twitter violates Carlson’s contract with Fox, which lasts until early 2025.But commentators gotta commentate, and the time off in the woods has not mellowed Carlson. He gives the barest intro —“Hey, it’s Tucker Carlson!”— before giving a rundown of the dam explosion in Ukraine that would go down in the Kremlin like the smoothest vodka. “Any fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up,” he says, given that the dam, located in a region taken by Russia in an invasion, was “effectively Russian.”Carlson also called Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish president of Ukraine, “a persecutor of Christians” and described him as “shifty, dead-eyed” and “sweaty and ratlike.” For years, Carlson laundered far-right fringe rhetoric and bigotry on Fox, and there is no sign that, in the anything-goes regime of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the laundry is shutting down.Carlson’s rhetoric has not diminished, but his production has. In the 10-minute first episode, there are no guests, no produced segments, a handful of news-footage clips. It’s pure monologue, from the opening Ukraine comment to the offhand swipes at diversity and transgender women to a closing bit on a whistle-blower who contends that the U.S. government possesses material from extraterrestrial aircraft.It’s a Tucker Carlson show, in other words. A big question is whether Carlson can be what he once was without the Fox News platform and production resources.Fox has ideology, of course (which has cycled through different flavors of conservatism over the decades), but it also has an aesthetic. Its shows are produced to be glossy and urgent, to convey a sense of slick confidence. Fox News is designed to look like it is broadcasting from the top of the world; “Tucker on Twitter” looks not unlike something livestreamed after the apocalypse.Others — Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck — have failed to reclaim their peak influence after losing their Fox perches. Carlson could be different; Fox News has yet to recover in the prime-time ratings from his sudden departure.But Carlson, for all his anti-elite posturing, is wholly a creature of legacy TV, having hosted shows on Fox, CNN and MSNBC. He is a houseplant grown under corporate studio lights, even when they were installed in his rural Maine town for him to broadcast remotely to Fox.On the other hand, it’s possible that the pivot to low-fi Twitter is more of a match for the current incarnation of Carlson. Whether he is holding forth on Russia or immigrants or the Jan. 6 riot, he has one persistent meta-theme: The elites are controlling your information and telling you what you’re allowed to say. “Go ahead and talk about something that really matters and see what happens,” he says at one point, seeming to allude to his firing by Fox while casting himself as a free-speech martyr. “If you keep it up, they’ll make you be quiet. Trust us.”Within this rhetorical framework, it is not necessary to prove that aliens have been discovered on Earth or that Ukrainians blew up a Ukrainian dam. It is enough for Carlson to say They don’t want you to believe it, and the viewer can accept the idea for the sake of sticking it to them. They say you’re wrong, you’re crazy, you’re a racist. Well, what do they know?It is a premise made for social media, as many a red-pilled YouTuber and Facebook proselytizer has found. The premise of his appeal — that he is the one teller of truth, and you the one critical thinker, in a world of shepherds and sheep — dovetails with the idea of booting up your computer to seek out a man giving speeches from his den.It also dovetails with the interests of Twitter’s owner, Musk, who styles himself as a heterodox freethinker — whose heterodoxy happens to be expressed through reinstating right-wing trolls and hosting the Republican presidential campaign announcement of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor.But since 2017, Carlson has made himself likely the most influential broadcaster in conservative politics by posturing as an outsider on the inside. However well he can monetize a Twitter audience, it’s another matter to retain as much political-cultural power as an outsider on the outside. Nor do we know if this is a real transformation or just a stopgap until Carlson is contractually free to go back on TV.Until then, the truth is out there, and so is Tucker Carlson — whether or not they are necessarily in the same place. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Can CNN’s Hiring Spree Get People to Pay for Streaming News?

      by

      The network’s boss, Jeff Zucker, tries to make up for lost time by signing Chris Wallace, Audie Cornish and Eva Longoria.A couple of months ago, CNN’s forthcoming streaming channel was perceived as little more than a curiosity in the television news business: just another cable dinosaur trying to make the uneasy transition into the digital future.In fact, the plan to start CNN+, which is expected to go live by late March, amounted to a late arrival to the subscription-based streaming party, more than three years after Fox News launched Fox Nation.Then the hirings began.In December, Chris Wallace, Fox News’s most decorated news anchor, said he was leaving his network home of 18 years for CNN+. Next came Audie Cornish, the popular co-host of “All Things Considered” on NPR, who said in January that she was leaving public radio to host a weekly streaming show.Alison Roman, the Instagram star and author of a popular cooking newsletter, will get her own cooking show. Eva Longoria will head to Mexico for a culinary travelogue documentary series. Rex Chapman, the sports podcaster and former basketball player with more than a million Twitter followers, signed on, too.Audie Cornish, the popular co-host of “All Things Considered” on NPR, is leaving public radio to join CNN+.Brad Barket/Getty ImagesThe prominent names represent a tier of talent that had previously been hesitant to commit to a news channel’s streaming service, especially an untested one. Agents and producers have taken notice, as much for the big salaries on offer as for the prospect of a news-based streamer with a range of nonfiction programming, relying on more than the usual political talking heads.“We do want a service that has a wider aperture and is broader than just today’s bleak news,” CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, said in an interview.Recent Developments at Fox NewsFauci Comments: The Fox News host Jesse Watters used notably violent language in urging a gathering of conservatives to publicly confront Dr. Anthony Fauci.Jan. 6 Texts: Three prominent Fox News hosts — Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade — texted Mark Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot urging him to tell Donald Trump to try to stop it.Chris Wallace Departs: The anchor’s announcement that he was leaving Fox News for CNN came as right-wing hosts have increasingly set the channel’s agenda.Contributors Quit: Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit the network in protest over Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” special.He is gambling that CNN+ can entice new viewers — and bring back some old ones. CNN’s traditional broadcast viewership has dropped significantly from a year ago, thanks to a post-Trump slump and waning audience interest, and the network recently fired its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, amid an ethics scandal.Mr. Zucker is turning to a strategy honed during his days as the executive producer of NBC’s “Today” show in the 1990s, mixing hard news with a heavy dose of lifestyle coverage and tips on how to bake a pear cobbler. In marketing materials, CNN+ has urged viewers to “grab a coffee” while flipping on shows promoted as “never finicky” and “the silver lining beyond today’s toughest headlines.”It remains an open question if CNN+ can actually draw the interest — and monthly payments — of viewers already overwhelmed with streaming options. Heavyweight services like Netflix and Hulu have struggled to find success with shows that riff on current events. One Netflix executive conceded in 2019 that topical programming was “a challenge” when it came to on-demand, watch-at-your-own-pace streamers.The Instagram star Alison Roman will host a cooking show on CNN+.Michael Graydon & Nikole Herriott for The New York Times. Prop Stylist: Amy Elise Wilson.CNN and Fox News are the two major news networks betting that viewers will pay an extra monthly fee for their digital content.Fox News introduced Fox Nation, a subscription-only streaming service, in November 2018. Like CNN+, it features a mix of shows hosted by familiar hosts (“Tucker Carlson Presents” and Brian Kilmeade’s history program, “What Made America Great”) along with programming from outside the parent network, including a revival of the police show “Cops” and a new program hosted by Piers Morgan.Still, paid services like Fox Nation ($6 a month) and CNN+ (which has not revealed its pricing) carry a higher barrier of entry for TV news content, which is available free of charge elsewhere. Fox Nation has not disclosed its number of subscribers, making its success hard to gauge, though Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of the Fox Corporation, has touted the service to investors.NBC, ABC and CBS are pursuing a different strategy: free streaming news platforms supported by paid advertising. Their digital options predominantly focus on news, not lifestyle programming, and the networks have only recently taken more aggressive steps to expand the programming on offer.On Monday, CBS rebranded its platform as the CBS News Streaming Network and announced new shows inspired by the network’s history, including a program hosted by the anchor Norah O’Donnell with “a 2022 take on the classic Edward R. Murrow interview series.”The Choice From MSNBC, a channel on NBC’s Peacock streaming app, debuted in 2020. Its hosts include Mehdi Hasan, Zerlina Maxwell and, starting later this year, Symone D. Sanders, a former adviser to President Biden. (NBC News also has separate digital offerings for hard news and lifestyle coverage.)Eva Longoria is developing a culinary travelogue documentary series for CNN’s streaming service.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesFor news executives, finding a winning formula in the streaming game is now an urgent priority.Streaming has supplanted cable as the main home delivery system for entertainment, often on the strength of addictive series like “Squid Game.” For a while, though, old-fashioned cable news clung on, with CNN, MSNBC and Fox News attracting record audiences in recent years. In case of emergency — a pandemic, civil unrest, a presidential election, a Capitol riot — viewers still tuned in en masse.After former President Donald J. Trump left office, news ratings nose-dived and cable subscriptions continued to plummet — an estimated four million households dropped their paid TV subscriptions last year, according to the research firm MoffettNathanson.Fox Nation and CNN+ both rely on a business model dependent on paid subscriptions, hence the efforts by both to generate a wide variety of programming.“A subscriber every month only has to find one thing that they want,” Mr. Zucker said in the interview. “We don’t need the subscriber to be interested in everything we’re offering, but they need to be interested in something.”Mr. Zucker said CNN+ was aiming at three buckets of potential subscribers. He is seeking to entice loyal CNN viewers into paying for streaming programs featuring hosts familiar from the cable channel: Anderson Cooper will have two, including one on parenting; Fareed Zakaria is helming a show examining historical events; and Jake Tapper will host “Jake Tapper’s Book Club,” in which he interviews authors.The other would-be subscribers, Mr. Zucker said, are news and documentary fans who want more nonfiction television, as well as younger people who don’t pay for cable.CNN, though, is not ignoring the needs of its flagship cable network, which ranked third last year behind Fox News and MSNBC in total audience.Mr. Zucker recently reached out to representatives for Gayle King, the star CBS News anchor, about the prospect of her taking over the weekday 9 p.m. hour on CNN, said two people with knowledge of the approach. CNN has not named a permanent anchor for the prime-time slot since Mr. Cuomo was fired in December after revelations that he assisted with the efforts of his brother, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, to fend off sexual harassment allegations.CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, is gambling that the network can entice new viewers and bring back some old ones with its streaming platform.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesCNN+ is also expected to include the breaking news and political coverage that CNN viewers are accustomed to — a feature that could pose difficulties for the network down the road. CNN commands a high price from cable distributors, who may cry foul if CNN+ includes too much news programming that potentially competes with the cable offering. For instance, Wolf Blitzer, the host of “The Situation Room” on CNN at 6 p.m., will also appear on CNN+ to anchor a “traditional evening news show with a sleek, modern twist.”CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, which is on the verge of a megamerger with Discovery Inc., appears willing to take the risk. The company is placing a significant financial bet on CNN+, budgeting for 500 additional employees, including producers, reporters, engineers and programmers, said Andrew Morse, CNN’s chief digital officer. The company is also renting an additional floor of its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan to accommodate the hires.“What we’re building at CNN+ is not a side hustle,” Mr. Morse said. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Journalists Rebel at NewsNation, a Newcomer in Cable News

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJournalists Rebel at NewsNation, a Newcomer in Cable NewsTwo top editors at the channel’s new prime-time newscast resigned amid staff complaints of a right-wing tilt and concern over the involvement of the former Fox News chief Bill Shine.A one-on-one interview last September with President Trump, conducted outside the White House by a “NewsNation” anchor, Joe Donlon.Credit…NewsNationMarch 7, 2021Updated 6:53 p.m. ETLast summer, a staff of more than 150 people started putting together “NewsNation,” a three-hour prime-time cable news show that was billed as a throwback to the just-the-facts news programs of TV’s golden age. Unlike the prime-time shows on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC filled with partisan monologues and fiery discussions, “NewsNation” would serve up unbiased news reports in a straightforward manner.The show made its debut in September on WGN America, a Chicago cable channel available in roughly 75 million households across the country. Its development was overseen by Sean Compton, a top executive at Nexstar Media Group, which owns WGN America. He laid out the show’s mission in a January 2020 statement: “We consistently hear from viewers who are seeking straight-ahead, unbiased news reporting that is grounded in fact, not opinion,” Mr. Compton said. “‘News Nation’ will deliver exactly that.”Eager journalists from across the country signed on, some of them moving with their families from far away. But now, six months after its debut, “NewsNation” has abysmal ratings and disaffected staff members who say it has not lived up to Mr. Compton’s billing. In recent weeks, the news director and managing editor have resigned. Six people at the network, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions, said “NewsNation” has increasingly become a venue for right-wing views.A Nexstar spokesman had no comment on the resignations and said that NewsNation had “a commitment to deliver unbiased news to our viewers.”The creation of “NewsNation” was just phase one in a larger Nexstar plan to transform WGN America into an all-news channel. To mark the shift, WGN America changed its named to NewsNation on March 1.The unrest at the channel’s flagship newscast started in earnest last month, when an industry publication reported that Bill Shine, a former Fox News co-president and Trump administration official, had been working since June as a “NewsNation” consultant. Until the article appeared, the staff did not know about his involvement, the six people said.Several staff members said the secrecy around the hiring of Mr. Shine caused many people at “NewsNation” to question whether Mr. Compton had been sincere in his pledge to deliver “straight-ahead” coverage, or if he had planned all along to create what one person at the show called “a mini Fox News.” Mr. Compton declined to comment.Code Name: ‘Project Neutral’Nexstar, a public company, became the nation’s largest local TV operator in 2018, when it bought Tribune Media, the television arm of the Tribune Company, for $4.1 billion. Nexstar also gained an executive in the deal: Mr. Compton, the former head of Tribune Media’s programming department who is now the president of Nexstar’s networks division.Mr. Compton, 47, had his first success in radio, having spent 18 years as a high-level executive at Clear Channel Radio and Premiere Radio Networks. In that job, he helped transform Sean Hannity from an Atlanta radio personality into a national star. In 2004, Mr. Compton signed Donald J. Trump to a deal that gave him a commentator role on radio shows across the country.On Sept. 1, the day of the “NewsNation” premiere, Mr. Trump tweeted: “Good luck to Sean Compton, a winner at everything he does.” That night, the show drew an audience of 130,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. Since then the ratings have steadily dropped. Episodes in the week of Feb. 8 had an average audience of 58,000, and fell to 37,000 on March 1.The show had the in-house code name “Project Neutral” during its planning phase. To lead the newsroom, Mr. Compton hired Jennifer Lyons and Sandy Pudar, two well-regarded veterans of the Chicago station WGN-TV.An early warning sign for many people at the show came Sept. 22, when it broadcast a one-on-one interview with President Trump, an interview conducted just outside the White House by a “NewsNation” anchor, Joe Donlon. Mr. Compton had helped arrange the interview, as “NewsNation” noted on its website, and he accompanied the anchor to the White House.Four “NewsNation” staff members said that, in their view, Mr. Donlon had not sufficiently challenged Mr. Trump’s false claims. And some of the anchor’s questions — he asked the president to describe his biggest accomplishment and what he enjoyed about his rallies — struck them as soft, they said. Steve Johnson, The Chicago Tribune’s TV critic, agreed, slamming Mr. Donlon’s performance in a review that called the segment “a 15-minute prime-time opportunity for the president to repeat campaign talking points without having to answer on matters of fact or logic.”Ms. Pudar, the news director, resigned abruptly on Feb. 2. The next day, FTV Live, a cable industry website, broke the news of Mr. Shine’s involvement in “NewsNation,” further inflaming the staff, according to six people at the show.Mr. Shine is a onetime lieutenant to Roger E. Ailes, the network’s late chairman, who was ousted in 2016 after facing accusations of sexual harassment. Mr. Shine himself was pushed out of Fox News in 2017, after he was accused in lawsuits of enabling Mr. Ailes’s behavior. The next year he joined the Trump administration as its communications head. He did not respond to requests for comment.On Feb. 5, Mr. Compton led a meeting of key “NewsNation” staff members, about 40 people in all, according to the six people. He offered his view of the show during the meeting, saying it offered “friendly, vanilla news,” an approach, he added, that was “not working,” according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. Asked about Mr. Shine, Mr. Compton said he was “just a consultant” and urged the staff to keep an open mind about him.Staff members were also critical of a Feb. 3 appearance by Bo Dietl, a former New York Police Department detective and conservative pundit. Mr. Dietl appeared on “NewsNation” to comment on the fatal shooting of two F.B.I. agents in Florida. After a discussion of the case, Mr. Donlon, the anchor, asked Mr. Dietl why the murder rate had risen in some American cities. “It’s very simple,” Mr. Dietl said. “It’s the political liberal Democratic values that are being forced upon us.”The tumult at “NewsNation” continued into March, when Richard Maginn, the managing editor, resigned.Broadcasting a Debunked ClaimIn a call with investors last month, Nexstar’s chief executive, Perry A. Sook, praised “NewsNation.” “Our focus, as you know, is on being down-the-middle, unbiased, presenting both sides of an issue, balanced coverage, and I think we’ve accomplished that,” he said, citing a study conducted by Ad Fontes Media, a media watchdog organization, that in January rated “NewsNation” as neutral.On March 1, the day that WGN America officially became NewsNation, there were changes in the prime-time lineup: “NewsNation” was cut from three hours to two and renamed “NewsNationPrime”; and Mr. Donlon was made the host of a new show, “The Donlon Report,” which allowed him to comment on the news.Last Tuesday, election fraud was the subject of a “Donlon Report” segment. The guest was Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who made regular appearances on behalf of Mr. Trump to trumpet his debunked claims of a rigged vote. “President Trump is absolutely correct that the election results are in doubt,” she said on the show. Ms. Ellis continued in that vein, with the host interrupting her or disputing her claims only occasionally.Toward the end, referring to Mr. Trump, Mr. Donlon asked, “Wouldn’t it help if he came out and conceded?”“That’s not what he should be doing,” Ms. Ellis replied. “What he should be doing is exactly what he did.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More