New York Post, Saturday, November 14, 2020nypost.comA Milwaukee news anchor
is off the air for sharing a Fa-
cebook post in which he jok-
ingly lamented that “Jeop-
ardy!” host Alex Trebek had
died while Senate Republi-
can leader Mitch McConnell
kept on ticking.
Ted Perry, the main anchor
for WITI-TV’s 5 p.m. and 10
p.m. newscasts, was sus-
pended by the Fox-owned
and -operated station for
writing the comment on his
personal page following
Trebek’s death on Sunday at
age 80 due to pancreatic can-
cer, sources close to the mat-
ter told The Post on Friday.
“2020 takes Alex Trebek
but leaves Mitch McCon-
nell?” he wrote in the since-
deleted post, according to the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Just end already.”
Perry, 56, later shut down
his personal Facebook page
and Twitter account. He still
has a Facebook profile via the
Fox affiliate, but had not
posted there since Saturday.
A message seeking com-
ment from station reps as
well as Perry was not imme-
diately returned Friday.
Sources told The Post that
it was unclear when Perry
would be back on the air.
The post drew blowback
on Facebook and Twitter,
where conservatives said the
comment revealed the an-
chor’s bias, while others
called for him to be fired.
Perry took down the post
hours after sharing it and
apologized on Facebook, the
Journal Sentinel reported.
Joshua Rhett Miller
News
anchor
sinks to
vile low
J
ouRNALIST and historian
Jon Meacham was a big fan
of Joe Biden’s acceptance
speech last Saturday night.
This should probably be no sur-
prise — he helped write it.
The problem was that Meacham
praised the speech as a pundit on
MSNBC without telling anyone
that he was involved in its compo-
sition. They’ve since fired the his-
torian as a paid contributor, but
say he is welcome to appear on air
as an unpaid guest.
There’s no shortage in hubris in
Meacham’s deception, but it isn’tsurprising. For many on the left
there are just no rules so long as
one is opposing Donald Trump.
There is a serious and deep dan-
ger to demonizing political foes in
the way that so many have demon-
ized Trump. It gives journalists li-
cense not just to attack in unfair
ways, but in Meacham’s case to lie
about an obvious conflict of interest.
Just after the Meacham story
broke, three MSNBC commenta-
tors announced they were jump-
ing ship to take positions in
Biden’s transition team.
Considering how many “ana-
lysts” (read: Democratic adminis-
tration operatives in waiting)
MSNBC employed to help get
Biden over the line, the channel
was essentially a propaganda out-
let for his campaign.
Yet the Twitterati, too busy attack-ing Fox News, made hardly a peep.
But the coziness is, unfortunately,
not limited to MSNBC. We saw
plenty of examples on the cam-
paign trail this year, where many
journalists, so eager for Trump to
lose, did not seem remotely both-
ered by the silent candidacy.
This week, Politico’s Ryan Lizza,
who is also a CNN analyst, finally
complained about the lack of ac-
cess journalists receive from
Biden and his team. Honestly,
what did he expect? Did Lizza
think that suddenly once Biden
was elected that was going to
change?
Trump has a famously nasty re-
lationship with much of the news
media, but he also grants them ex-
traordinary access. As RealClear-
Politics White House correspond-
ent Philip Wegmann put it in atweet about Biden, “He doesn’t
call us names. In fact he doesn’t
even really talk to us.”
MSNBC’s decision to allow
Meacham to continue appearing
on air raises serious concerns
about just how diligent that net-
work and others will be in cover-
ing a Biden presidency. It was pa-
tently obvious to anyone paying
attention that Joe Biden was given
a pass by the media during the
election.
The media has been patting it-
self on the back for four years of
attacking Trump. “Democracy
Dies in Darkness” and all that
other blather. The election of Joe
Biden shows what a lie that is; the
watchdogs are sleeping. Do you
expect them to get tough now?Doing Biden’s bidding
fan club: MSNBC pundit Jon Meacham (left) didn’t mention his own writing role while gushing about Prez-elect Joe Biden’s acceptance speech.Getty ImagesAPDAVID
MARCUSEditorial / Page 22
MediA MAdness
CNN International an-
chor Christiane Aman-
pour is being criticized
after she compared Presi-
dent Trump’s four years in
office to Kristallnacht.
“This week 82 years ago,
Kristallnacht happened,”
Amanpour (left) said onair Thursday.
Kristallnacht, literally
the “Night of Crystal,”
was a series of violent
Nazi pogroms that her-
alded the Holocaust — its
name prompted by the
broken glass that littered
the streets from vandal-ized Jewish-owned busi-
nesses, synagogues and
homes.
“It was the Nazis’ warn-
ing shot across the bow of
our human civilization
that led to genocide
against a whole identity
and, in that tower of burn-ing books, it led to an at-
tack on fact, knowledge,
history and proof,” Aman-
pour said.
“After four years of a
modern-day assault on
those same values by Do-
nald Trump, the Biden-
Harris team pledges a re-turn to normal,” she said.
“Comparing Trump to
Hitler and Kristallnacht,
saying they ‘assault’ the
‘same values’ is obscene
and outrageous,” tweeted
media critic Steve Krak-
auer on Friday.
Laura ItalianoAmanpour’s ‘Trump-Kristallnacht’ shocker