A CNBC spokesperson told TVNewser that they “do not comment on who we consider or who we talk to for a role at CNBC.” Both are highly regarded financial journalists and have appeared on the network in the past.

With Charlie Gasparino gone to Fox Business Network, it appears CNBC is seeking new seasoned business reporters to bring on board. The Wall Street Journal is a logical starting point as Nik Deogun, the former WSJ Deputy Managing Editor, started as CNBC’s managing editor just last month.

Kelly’s husband, Kyle Pope, is the editor of the NY Observer.

CNBC confirms that the network has recently signed a handful of new contributors including Former White House Communications Chief Anita Dunn, Jim Nussle, Deutsche economist Joe Lavorgna, and Hitha Prabhakar, who used to appear on Fox Business Network.

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MSNBC is projected to take in $365 million in revenue this year, roughly the same amount as last year, when the presidential election bolstered its bottom line. Three years ago, before making a left turn, it had revenue of about $270 million a year.

Gary Carr the executive director of national broadcast for the media buying agency TargetCast, said the opinions matter less than the ratings they earn. With cable’s prime-time opinion shows, “you’re reaching a lot of people,” he said.

As for the criticism of Pres. Obama, Anita Dunn, the outing White House communications director, calls Maddow, and her lead-in Keith Olbermann, “progressive but not partisan.” Maddow tells Stelter that apart from that off-the-record meeting with the president last month, “she has heard little from the White House.”

MSNBC president Phil Griffin says, “We heard a whole lot more from the Bush White House.”

• Check out the whole story here for more on Maddow’s mission and why she doesn’t think she has a “constituency” like some other cable news hosts.

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On Bloomberg’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” this weekend, outgoing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. It was revealed earlier this week that Dunn, who led the verbal attacks on Fox News last month, would be leaving the administration. The show airs tonight at 6:30pmET.

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> More: Sources tell TVNewser the interview is not confirmed as of yet. Drudge is reporting it would take place during the China portion of the trip, which is Sunday to Wednesday of next week.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It was Dunn who escalated the White House’s verbal assaults on Fox News last month saying on CNN, “The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”

Chris Cillizza reports Dunn’s deputy, Dan Pfeiffer, will take over and that Dunn will remain on as a White House consultant for communications and strategy.

From CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Oct. 11, 2009:

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Referring to comments made by White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, George Will says that Fox News might be “opinion journalism,” but that also “describes The New York Times, and certainly MSNBC.”

Laura Ingraham pointed out that when “esteemed journalist” Charlie Gibson had no clue about the ACORN scandal, there was “a collective gasp across the United States.”

“Charlie has had an amazing career,” said Stephanopoulos. “Let’s set aside that moment.” Much more in the clip:

Meanwhile, CNN’s “Reliable Sources” discussed the issue as well. Huffington Post national editor Nico Pitney, declaring, “By and large, the network is a 24-hour campaign against the Obama administration.” Pitney, like John Podesta on the “This Week” panel, used the talking point about Fox News SVP Bill Shine saying that Fox news is “the voice of the opposition.”

“Reliable Sources” clip after the jump…

continued…

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David Bauder of the AP reports:

Fox said network executives have been told that no one from the administration would appear on a Fox show as a guest through the end of the year. Dunn denied there was a White House ban on Fox appearances. “We haven’t said that to them,” she said.

NYTimes’ David Carr has his breakdown of the feud:

Ah, but pretending has traditionally been a valuable part of the presidential playbook. Smiling and wearing beige even under the most withering news media assault is not only good manners, but also has generally been good politics. While there is undoubtedly a visceral thrill in finally setting out after your antagonists, the history of administrations that have successfully taken on the media and won is shorter than this sentence.

John D. McKinnon at the WSJ has the latest Fox statement:

Michael Clemente, Fox News’s senior vice president of news, said in a statement that “Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues.”

Atlantic Wire’s Benjamin Carlson has summaries of other reactions from the weekend.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

NY Times’ Brian Stelter describes a back and forth about State Department coverage and writes:

Fox News commentators like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly have attacked the Obama administration for its aggressive posture toward the cable news network. On radio yesterday, Mr. Beck even compared the White House decision to shun his network to the seeds of the Holocaust. But it is notable that the White House is making hay of the network’s news coverage, not just its opinion programs.

TIME’s James Poniewozik outlines the various outcomes the White House could be seeking with this tactic, but points out:

Of course, it’s possible that the Administration is simply making the case because it believes that it’s right and Fox News is wrong. But politically, you would think that the White House seeks to gain something from a fight, since Fox News probably is.

The Orlando Sentinel’s Hal Boedeker writes:

Maybe the White House should get out of the press-critiquing business. It’s never been a wise move for any White House. The complaints come off as whining. The White House certainly should stop condescending to Fox News, which is a slap against that channel’s fans. The smarter move would be for Obama to engage. Why doesn’t he put his smooth, unflappable style to the test on Fox News?

And The Nation’s John Nichols thinks the strategy is flawed in political and historical contexts:

Whether the grumbling is about Republicans on Fox or bloggers in pajamas, there’s a word for what the president and his aides are doing. That word is “whining.” And nothing — no attack by Glenn Beck, no blogger busting about Guantanamo — does more damage to Obama’s credibility or authority than the sense that a popular president is becoming the whiner-in-chief.

Previously:
•Bill O’Reilly: “Ms. Dunn is Seeing the World through the Prism of the other Media, like NBC News and CNN”
•Glenn Beck: ‘They’re More Worried about the War on Fox Than the Actual War in Afghanistan’
•Fox News Covers… Itself
•TVNewser poll
•Dunn on FNC: ‘Let’s Not Pretend They’re a News Network’

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“Anita. Call me. Call me at anytime. We want to have a dialogue.”

And all this is ratings gold for Beck. Last night was his third-highest rated show since he joined FNC earlier this year.

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Much of Rosen’s story, which appeared during “Live Desk,” will not be new to TVNewser readers who’ve been following the battle, but it does present the FOX side to the Fox News audience, which at that time of day exceeds 1 million viewers. Here it is:

> TVNewser Poll: Will The White House’s New Attacks on Fox News work?

(h/t Johnny Dollar)

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“Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” said Dunn. “Let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

Dunn added, “What I think is fair to say about Fox, and certainly the way we view it, is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party.”

PRNewser reports Dunn gave host Howie Kurtz some “homework”: “Did you see coverage of that [the Sen. John Ensign scandal] on Fox News? I’m not talking Glenn Beck, Sean, the Factor, I’m talking Fox News.” “I will have to check on that,” Kurtz responded.

Dunn first described the new strategy in an interview with Time magazine’s Michael Scherer last week. But Scherer noticed something as he watched the interview this morning.

The ironic part came later, during the commercial break. All morning, CNN has been intermittently running a promo for Anderson Cooper 360, a show that has long billed itself as a classic straight news program with an investigative front man who digs “beyond the headlines” with “many points of view, so you can make up your own mind.” The new promo, by contrast, consists of a woman’s voice, pitching Cooper’s show as, essentially, a liberal alternative to Fox News: “I’m a lifelong Democrat,” she says, “and that’s why I watch Anderson Cooper.”

> Update to the Scherer post, from a TVNewser reader: “Turns out that the woman saying ‘I’m a lifelong Democrat’ comes at the same time a man says ‘I’m a lifelong Republican.’ The on-screen graphics try to bring home the point, sort of melding the words that the man and the woman are saying. The point of the ad is that AC 360 is there for both sides because it’s a fair program. Unfortunately, the woman’s voice seems more powerful…”

> More, a statement from Fox News SVP Michael Clemente: “An increasing number of viewers are relying on FOX News for both news and opinion. And the average news consumer can certainly distinguish between the A-section of the newspaper and the editorial page, which is what our programming represents. So, with all due respect to anyone who might still be confused about the difference between news reporting and vibrant opinion, my suggestion would be to talk about the stories and the facts, rather than attack the messenger…which over time, has never worked.”

> Update refuting Dunn’s point about FNC’s news coverage of the Sen. Ensign affair: Johnny Dollar sent us links to six stories from FoxNews.com that show the network’s news programs covered the story from the beginning. They are here, here, here, here, here and here. Two are from “FOX Report”, two are from “Special Report” and two are from “FOX News Sunday”. He said it took about 10 minutes of searching.

> Related: The NYTimes’ Brian Stelter writes about the White House-Fox News “volley: “One Fox executive said that the jabs by the White House could solidify the network’s audience base and recalled that [FNC Chairman Roger] Ailes had remarked internally: “Don’t pick a fight with people who like to fight.”

> More from the Baltimore Sun‘s David Zurawik: “This campaign by the Obama administration is dangerous to press freedom, and it should concern everyone in the press, not just Fox. You have to wonder who else is on this administration’s enemies list.”

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Here’s the guest list for the 10amET hour of State of the Union with John King, also known as ‘Reliable Sources.’ The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik, TheWrap.com’s Sharon Waxman, and Steve Friedman, former VP of Morning Broadcasts at CBS News. They’ll talk about the coverage of Friday’s announcement of Pres. Obama receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Also on the show, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn.

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The general in this war is Anita Dunn, 51, a veteran campaign strategist who arrived at the White House in May. …she has become a devoted consumer of conservative-media reports and a fierce critic of Fox News, leading the Administration’s effort to block officials, including Obama, from appearing on the network. “It’s opinion journalism masquerading as news,” Dunn says. “They are boosting their audience. But that doesn’t mean we are going to sit back.” Fox News’s head of news, Michael Clemente, counters that the White House criticism unfairly conflates the network’s reporters and its pundits, like Glenn Beck, whom he likens to “the op-ed page of a newspaper.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs uses a baseball analogy describing how the White House plays offense: “The only way to get somebody to stop crowding the plate is to throw a fastball at them. They move.”

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