Click here to receive Mediabistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed via email.

Discovery Reports Higher First-Quarter Earnings (B&C)
Discovery Communications reported higher first-quarter earnings as international growth offset a decline in digital distribution revenue. First-quarter net income rose 4 percent to $231 million, or 63 cents a share, from $221 million, or 57 cents a share. The Wrap / The Box Discovery also said it expects Oprah Winfrey’s OWN to meet its previously stated goal of breaking even in cash flow in the second half of this year, Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav said. OWN viewership was up 3 percent in its key women 25-54 demographic in the first quarter, even though the first quarter of 2012 included OWN’s highest-rated broadcast, Winfrey’s interview with Whitney Houston’s daughter. THR The latest figure was impacted by a range of factors in addition to what the company called “the strong underlying operating performance in the current year’s quarter.” Among the items affecting the latest profit were a $92 million gain from the consolidation of results for Discovery Japan and $46 million of improved equity earnings, but also higher equity-based compensation expenses and a $59 million loss from “hedging activities primarily associated with the acquisition of the SBS Nordic operations.”

Read more

Not because we should or shouldn’t agree with it, but because we, as media professionals, ought to be fully informed on the issues we follow and report on. It’s unfair to our readers, listeners, and subjects when we distort the facts and spread misinformation, as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly , Megyn Kelly, and so many others in the media have recently done.

In honor of International Women’s Day, let’s find out what Sandra Fluke actually said in her testimony before we start calling her names, talking about her sex life, or demanding to see her perform in pornography. Let’s celebrate this holiday by listening to a woman and accurately reporting on what she has to say, instead of calling her a slut and a prostitute because we may not share her beliefs. Because truth and accuracy is our moral and professional duty as journalists, and we owe it to the public to get our facts straight.

A video and transcript of Fluke’s testimony is included after the jump:

Read more

It was a gamble when E! And Extra reporter Suzanne Sena departed LA for a gig with Fox News, and it was a gamble again when she abandonned that steady paycheck in 2008 to return to the west coast.

But per a fun Q&A with Jennifer Armstrong for New York magazine, within five months she was auditioning for the job of anchor on a new webcast, the Onion News Network. A session for which her fair and balanced training came in very handy:

“When I first auditioned, I read this “In My Sights” segment where [character] Brooke [Alvarez] took apart this poor woman with a handicapped son, and I was giving it my best Bill O’Reilly. I’d say she’s mostly a combination of Megyn Kelly and Bill.”

Read more

Last night while discussing the UC Davis protests, FOX news anchor Megyn Kelly told Bill O’Reilly that pepper spray is “a food product, essentially.” And by the early morning she’d become a trending topic on Twitter and a fun new meme. Gawker commenters are having a field day. A few of our favorites:

More fun “Megyn Essentials” are sure to come throughout the day. The Internet is just getting warmed up.

Right-wingers are upset that Newsweek didn’t airbrush Sarah Palin‘s picture on their cover.

We offer that airbrushing Palin and making below average look like a good choice isn’t Newsweek’s job – that’s the McCain campaign’s agenda.

After the jump there is a video of Megyn Kelly showing her outrage for Newsweek as an ‘elitist, liberal magazine’. When Newsweek is considered ‘elitist’ it really points to a larger theme of the right-wing’s desire to lower our standards of intelligence.

NASCAR the sport of kings!

Read more

Journalist and author Heather Mallick doesn’t have American values. Mainly because she’s Canadian. Being a foreigner from another country, she wrote an opinion piece about Republican Veep Nominee Sarah Palin. The full text of it is here. It’s kind of not really notable other than it’s penned by a foreigner that has paid more attention to our politics than we ever have to theirs. In fact the last time we as a nation cared about Canada is when we invaded them in 1812.

Anyway, Heather Mallick in her column called Palin supporters ‘White Trash’ just because they unequivocally support a barely first-term governor from a state so small it has more senators than congresspeople, whose 17-year-old daughter got knocked up by a kid named Levi that claims to be a ‘fucking redneck’ on his myspace page, whose one qualification is that she lives closer to another continent than the majority of Americans and that she has killed a moose or two. Just because they think that’s a ‘smart choice’ and she’s ready to be leader of the free world. White trash? As a bowling trophy…

In the clip above, FNC’s Megyn Kelly is outraged because Mallick also said Palin looks like a porn actress and well…maybe that’s a sore spot for Kelly. Kelly states that Canadians believe in free speech which (shocker here on Fox) isn’t actually true. Canadians don’t use the US Bill of Rights even though most of them are white and most of them speak English. They have laws against hate speech…which isn’t free speech.

The point is Kelly calls Mallick ‘the other side of the ticket’: Obama-Biden-foreign columnists. Uh huh.

We kind of think Heather Mallick has some balls to be that snarky in a country that tries to legislate politeness. In this country you only have to worry about hate mail, death threats, getting Bill Maher-ed, Valerie Plame-d and Ward Churchill-ed. Thank god for our freedom of speech.