Mediaite’s Top Winners and Losers of the Week
With less than two weeks before the presidential election, the stakes are high for the media. Our newsletter, Live From the Green Room, regularly documents the triumphs and failures of the reporters, the pundits, the anchors, the hosts, the contributors, and even the politicians making waves at the intersection of politics and media.
Each day we present a Winner and a Loser for our newsletter. In this post, we run down the best — and worst — of the week.
This week, the peaks were high, but the nadirs were painfully low. CNN’s Brian Stelter, for instance, kicked off this week as Winner — thanks to a solid panel discussion on his show Reliable Sources regarding shamed reporter Steve Scully. He found himself in the Loser column by Thursday, though, after driving a nasty exchange with veteran journalist Susan Ferrechio regarding newsroom ethics.
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There was also a sex scandal (I guess?) for the ages. Jeffrey Toobin was suspended from The New Yorker after reportedly treating his colleagues at the esteemed magazine to what has been tastelessly referred to as a “cocktober surprise.” Toobin was named our Tuesday loser for the infamous Zoom incident.
Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor, lawyer to President Donald Trump, and now famed victim of Borat 2, was named Loser for his turn in the barrel of embarrassing incidents with a sexual bent.
But the newsletter is not all shame. NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker pulled off a rare feat this week: she was twice named Winner. That was thanks to not only an impressive weathering of attacks from President Donald Trump and his allies in an effort to work the refs at the final presidential debate. It was also thanks to her incredible job moderating that event on Thursday night, proving her critics wrong and earning almost universal praise in the process.
Read Friday’s Winner and Loser in full below, and subscribe to Live From the Green Room here.
MEDIA WINNER:
Kristen Welker
If you have a little déjà vu about today’s newsletter, that’s because we are taking the rare step of naming NBC News White House Correspondent Kristen Welker our Media Winner two days in a row.
Welker earned the honor yesterday for keeping her cool as she was subjected to a relentless smear campaign by President Donald Trump and his allies in conservative media. As we noted then, Thursday’s debate was likely to “put Welker to the real test” — and she passed with flying colors.
Moderating the final debate between the president and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden required an intense amount of focus and a backbone of steel, and Welker exhibited both.
Welker kept the debate ticking along, pressing the candidates for more information with tough follow-up questions and forcing topic changes to cover all the issues on her list.
Praise poured in for Welker from pundits and journalists on the right and left, who highlighted her “thoughtful” questions and her “crisp and fresh” tone. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said that Trump owed Welker an apology and the country owed her congratulations.
Trump isn’t one for apologies but both candidates did laud her performance. “I respect very much the way you are handling this,” said Trump to her during the debate. Speaking to reporters shortly after the debate, Biden added his own compliments for Welker’s management of a “much more rational debate than the first one.”
The moderator of that first debate, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, complimented Welker for a “good, substantive debate” and added that he was “jealous.”
America is facing serious challenges right now and the voters deserve to hear serious answers from the candidates. Welker did a stellar job helping make that happen.
MEDIA LOSER:
Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum battled with his fellow CNN commentator Van Jones after the Thursday’s debate, and, well, the former Senator and presidential candidate got schooled.
Santorum defended Trump’s performance, saying that he had “completely skewered” Biden, but Jones was unconvinced, calling out Trump’s “shocking lack of humanity” in his response to children at the border separated from their parents, saying, “No apology. I mean, a human being just would’ve said, ‘Hey, I can’t sleep at night just thinking about those kids. I’m doing everything I can for those kids.’ For him to get up there and lie and say that they’re being treated well was horrific, it was inhuman.”
“We’re not keeping kids in cages anymore,” Santorum said.
“Where are their parents?” Jones asked.
Santorum credited the president for asking “who built the cages,” but Jones shot back, “And who used them in horrific, barbaric ways?”
We’re not keeping kids in cages anymore isn’t a great argument, especially mere days after news reporters confirmed that 545 children remain in American custody by federal officials who admit they are unable to locate their parents.
It was a bad moment at the debate when Trump defended the separation policy by arguing that the facilities where they are being held are “so clean,” and it wasn’t much better when Santorum tried to defend it on CNN later.
“Parents, their kids were ripped from their arms and separated,” said a clearly incensed Biden when this topic was discussed at the debate. “Now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone, nowhere to go, nowhere to go. It’s criminal! It’s criminal!”
Santorum’s efforts to spin the president’s answer here wasn’t criminal, but it wasn’t a winner either.
