In an interview with The Guardian, Rachel Maddow seems to insist that if Anderson Cooper is gay – like he’s been widely rumored to be – he has a responsibility to publicly disclose that. While Maddow doesn’t name Cooper specifically, as Business Insider points out, it’s obvious she is thinking of him in her comments to The Guardian:

Maddow is one of the very few gay news anchors in America – well, one of the very few openly gay news anchors. Does she feel frustration towards an equally well-known news presenter who is widely assumed to be gay but has never come out? For the first time, Maddow pauses: ‘I’m sure other people in the business have considered reasons why they’re doing what they’re doing, but I do think that if you’re gay you have a responsibility to come out,’ she says carefully.

While we can see Maddow’s point, we don’t agree with her. Just because Maddow enjoys being an icon in the gay community doesn’t mean Cooper has to follow the same path. If Cooper is gay and has no interest in talking about it, that’s his right. It’s his life, Maddow should stay out of it.

UPDATE:

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Despite growing evidence to the contrary, Malcolm Gladwell once again downplayed social media’s role in promoting activism, this time in an interview on CNN. He says that while Twitter and Facebook might have been used in Tunisia and Egypt, they didn’t have much impact because there have been revolutions before, without them:

I can’t look in the past at social revolutions and see examples of cases where people had a problem under – under dire circumstances of getting lots of people together to voice their concerns, right? I mean, in East Germany, a million people gathered in the streets of Berlin. They were – the percentage of people in East Berlin in East Germany who even had a telephone in 1989 was 13 percent, right?

This argument is a little odd. By Gladwell’s logic, tanks, radar, jet fighters, etc. have no significant impact on wars because there were wars before them. It’s ridiculous.

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Last night we told you about Fox reporting that journalists in Libya were being used as “human shields,” which lead to an airstrike being called off at the last minute. Later in the evening, on CNN’s The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer asked CNN correspondent Nic Robertson- who was one of the journalists Fox was referencing – about Fox’s claim. He unequivocally denied it, and even added that Fox News chose not to send anyone from their editorial team to the bombing site.

This has now devolved into a “he said” “she said” moment, because no one knows exactly what happened there aside from those present, but there doesn’t seem to be much motivation for Robertson to lie.

You’d think that maybe, in times of war – with human lives at stake – Fox News would tone down the rhetoric. But hey, the article that first started the rumor is probably getting a lot of page views, so to quote George Bush – a Fox News favorite – “Mission accomplished.”

Check out Robertson’s full statement after the jump.

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Earlier today we reported the good news that the four New York Times journalists who were captured in Libya were released into safety, complete with a photo of them taken in the haven of the Turkish embassy.

But the good news didn’t last long. At least 13 other journalists are still missing in Libya, including reporters from Agence France Presse and Al Jazeera. To make matters more severe, Fox News is reporting that Qaddafi‘s regime brought reporters from Reuters and CNN to his compound in Tripoli Sunday night “to effectively use them as human shields.”

After British forces fired two missiles at the compound, the Libyan Ministry of Information went to the hotel where most of the journalists were staying and asked them to come and see the damage, purportedly to show them that Qaddafi and his compound had been targeted, although no one was seriously harmed in the missile attack. Some of the journalists obliged.

However, Jennifer Griffin at Fox News reports that the real purpose behind the invitation was actually to use these journalists to prevent further attack on the compound. Indeed, British forces confirmed to Fox News that they were set to strike the compound again, but the mission was cut short when they learned of the presence of foreign journalists in the area.

CNN video on the attack after the jump. Read more

As we reported on Friday, CNN abruptly fired afternoon anchor Rick Sanchez.

During a 20-minute satellite radio interview on Thursday, Sanchez made derogatory comments about Jews, his former employers and The Daily Show host Jon Stewart.

One CNN insider tells FishbowlNY, “I don’t think anybody who heard that audio clip could have a positive reaction to it.” 

The insider believes anyone who listened to the interview knew that Sanchez was going to have to deal with the consequences.

Long before Friday, though, there was a report on politico.com that indicated many staffers were apparently not Sanchez supporters.

Prior to the start of John King’s new evening show in January 2010, the report states that 200 employees at the Washington bureau were asked if they respect Sanchez or Wolf Blitzer, host of The Situation Room, as a journalist. 

Nearly all in attendance raised their hands for Blitzer, while politico.com reported at the time that only a select few gave similar support for the Rick’s List host.

Stewart has his first comment to the Sanchez firing after the jump.
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Anchor Rick Sanchez was fired by CNN Friday evening, a day after making inflammatory comments about Jews and The Daily Show host Jon Stewart. Sanchez spoke with Sirius XM satellite radio host Pete Dominick (a former warm-up comic for Stewart’s show).

The terse statement from the cable network where Sanchez worked since 2004 read:

“Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.”

At one point in the interview, Sanchez told Dominick that Stewart is a “bigot” and added that he [Stewart] was bigoted against “everybody else who’s not like him. Look at his show, I mean, what does he surround himself with?”

Dominick, who works for CNN on John King U.S.A, pointed out that Stewart is Jewish and is therefore a minority.

“I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah,” Sanchez responded.

Sanchez’s 3-5 p.m. weekday show is being replaced by CNN Newsroom for the “foreseeable future,”  CNN said.

TVNewser has more on the story, including audio from the controversial interview.

TVNewser: CNN Radio cuts staff and reorganizes.

New York Times: A new study looks closely at government subsidies for journalism, why they are necessary, and why they are dropping.

Broadcasting & Cable: Comcast, NBC and General Electric have filed a merger application with the FCC, the first step to their deal being approved by the government commission.

E&P In Exile: The New York Times introduced a new commenting system on its Web site, which allows readers to recommend other comments and sort them the way they want.

AdAge: Some hard questions for print publishers to ask about the iPad.

FishbowlLA: Vice magazine has hooked up with CNN.com.

DailyBeast: Speaking of CNN, here is some praise for their recent coverage of Haiti and the Massachusetts Senate race.

New York Times: The New York Times aggregates some reactions to its own announcement of pay wall plans. And David Carr has his own take.

Reflections of a Newsosaur: Hearst Corp. may be the hardest hit by the recent MediaNews bankruptcy filing.

A profile of Roger Ailes in The New York Times yesterday highlighted the tension between the Fox News chief and his boss, Rupert Murdoch.

The profile includes a quote from inside the Murdoch family that speaks harshly about Ailes and his work at Fox News. Says Matthew Freud, great-grandson of Sigmund who is married to Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth:

“I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

Of course, this is not how Murdoch officially feels about his company’s Fox News division. He told the Times, “I’m proud of Fox News and what it is accomplishing, and I am grateful to Roger and his team for creating such a great asset for News Corporation.”

He also offered Ailes a contract that earned him $23 million, plus bonuses and additional income, more than Murdoch made himself last year, the Times reported. If Fox News really is as successful as the profile claims — said the article: “Fox News is believed to make more money than CNN, MSNBC and the evening newscasts of NBC, ABC and CBS combined” — then Ailes earned it. And that’s something he can take to the bank, no matter how Murdoch and his family really feel about him.

Read More: A Fox Chief at the Pinnacle of Media and Politics –New York Times

Previously: Ailes and Obama Called Truce?

Lets face it, New York media rankings are interesting to a small group of people: the power players involved, and their parents.

So it was surprising when MSNBC‘s Dan Abrams launched his much-talked about Mediaite.com — which pitted all of media’s hottest writers and pundits against each other in the Power Grid — and the site immediately overloaded with traffic. Maybe there is room on the Internet for the self-referential media scene that isn’t entirely taken over by Gawker. (By the way, does anyone else think it’s weird that Abrams, who still appears on MSNBC, has his site currently funded by CNN?)

Especially now that Abrams is expanding. On Mediaite today, Abrams announced the expected launch of three new sites: Styleite, Geekosystem, and SportsGrid. Though the editors of these upcoming sites “will be announced in the weeks to come,” Abrams said “many of the lead figures in these projects will come from within the existing Mediaite family.”

It will be interesting to see where this ecosystem of blogs put Abrams himself: is he hoping to become the next Nick Denton, or just looking for a way to utilize some of the best of Mediaite’s resources, mainly its love for geek culture in movies, books, and television? Not to mention that the market is much bigger for a new style Web site, helping it to generate its own advertising revenue more so than say, another New York media blog.

Read More: Mediaite and More! Three New Sites On The Way –Mediaite

Previously: Mediaite Launches To Server-Crashing Traffic