President Donald Trump has added a special counsel to the White House staff as he continues to face scrutiny over allegations his campaign may have colluded with Russia during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Trump tapped Ty Cobb, partner in the investigations practice of D.C. law firm Hogan Lovells, to be special counsel, even as the president continues to dismiss the drumbeat of media revelations as "fake news" driven by Democrats looking to delegitimize his presidency. Cobb's firm also has a strong communications practice.

Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that resulted in impeachment proceedings, had some crisis management advice for Cobb in an op ed: "Tell it early, tell it all, tell it yourself."

Davis said Clinton agreed with that proactive strategy and that Cobb will need Trump to "authorize [Cobb] to call in all reporters, with all the relevant documents, dump them in the middle of a conference room, and tell them: Read them, ask me all your questions, and go write."

That sounds like a tall order for a current president who continues to attack negative stories as "fake news" that is a threat to the Republic.

Two top Republican senators have asked for all the surveillance warrants the FBI requested from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court as part of the Bureau's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including possible collusion with the campaign of Donald Trump.

In seeking the warrants, Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Crime and Terrorist Subcommittee chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have cited stories by the BBC, as well as CNN (which President Trump continues to brand as "fake news").

The two networks have reported that the Justice Department had asked the court for authority to monitor members of the Trump presidential campaign, but the court denied the request, advising the FBI to narrow its focus.

Grassley and Graham said, based on the reports, they want copies of both classified and non-classified requests.

Both Congress and the FBI are investigating Russia’s meddling in the presidential election and whether the Trump campaign colluded in that effort. The president has said any suggestion of that is fake news served up by media “enemies” in service of his Democratic opponents, who he says are trying to undermine his presidency.

Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.) cited the media "echo" chamber at the first day of a week-long committee hearing Thursday (March 30) on Russia's attempts to influence the presidential election.

"Russia continually sought to diminish and undermine our trust in the American media by blurring our faith in what is true and what is not," he said in his opening statement. "Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik successfully produced and peddled disinformation to American audiences in pursuit of Moscow’s preferred outcome," he said.

But Warner suggested Russia had help in this country as well.

"The Russians employed thousands of Internet trolls and botnets to push out disinformation and fake news at high volume, focusing this material onto your Twitter and Facebook feeds and flooding our social media with misinformation," he said. "[T]his fake news and disinformation was then hyped by the American media echo chamber and our own social media networks to reach – and potentially influence – millions of Americans."

And as to President Donald Trump's tweets about Russian influence investigations being 'fake news," Warner had a response, though he did not make it personal: "This is not innuendo or a false allegation. This is not fake news. This is what actually happened to us."

The Senate Intelligence Committee is taking the lead after a House Intelligence Committee inquiry into Russian interference was sidelined by the chairman of that committee, Rep. Devin Nunes.

"This investigation is NOT about whether you have a “D” or an “R” next to your name. It is NOT about re-litigating last fall’s election.  It is about clearly understanding and responding to a very real threat," said Warner.

Committee chair Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said the role of Russia in the 2016 elections was a "critical intelligence question." Most of the committee's investigation will not be in public, but said it was crucial to take the "rare step" of publicly discussing the investigation. He said there would be more open hearings. He said "malign actors are using old techniques and new platforms to undermine our democratic institutions."

The hearing was to essentially provide a baseline understanding of Russian disinformation campaigns and the role of cyber efforts, including social media and other online activities. He said the takeaway from the hearing was that we are all targets of active Russian efforts. "The public deserves to hear the truth about possible Russian involvement in our elections," he said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, and do it right,” said Warner.

Clinton Watts, who was testifying as a senior fellow at the George Washington Center for Cyber & Homeland Security, put what he said was a cyber imbalance between Russia and the U.s. this way: "[Russia] has the best hackers that are out there...We, on the other hand, worry a lot about who we are going to bring into the cyber field because they might have smoked weed one day or they can't pass a security clearance."

Asked by Burr what the takeaway for U.S. media outlets was from that Russian hacking supremacy in terms of disniformation, Watts said: "They [the media] have to improve their editorial processes, and they also have to take a step back from the 'I gotta get it out first' competitive environment."

He said part of the reason the Russian system of disinformation works is that with every outlet racing to get the story out first--in an age when stories can be turned around and posted in minutes--"they put themselves at risk to fall for these sorts of schemes.

He said until that improves, or until "they collectively have some sort of standard that the public or the media holds to itself, we're going to keep seeing them fall for these campaigns," and not just from Russia. "The playbook has been thrown out there, he said, and many other nations are going to pick it up.

Fox News Channel was the main source of news for 40% of the voters who put Donald Trump into the White House, while Hillary Clinton's supporters got their news from a number of outlets, with none of those getting more than 20%. Only 3% of Clinton supporters said Fox was their main source of news.

That's according to a new Pew Research Center survey, conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 12 among a representative sample of 4,183 adults.

The next most common main news source for voters who elected Trump was CNN, which the President-elect has attacked as fake news, though that network was cited by only 8%.

The full Trump voter breakdown was FNC, 40%; CNN, 8%; Facebook, 7%; NBC, 6%; Local TV, 5%; ABC, 3%; CBS, 3%; and local radio, 3%.

RELATED > Former Apprentice Contestant Sues Trump

CNN was the main source of news for Clinton voters, cited by 18% of respondents. MSNBC, Facebook, local television news, NPR, ABC, The New York Times and CBS were each cited by between 5% and 9% of those respondents as their main source.

The full Clinton voter breakdown was CNN, 18%; MSNBC, 9%; Facebook, 8%; local TV news, 8%; NPR, 7%; ABC, 6%; The New York Times, 5%; CBS, 5%; NBC, 4%; local newspapers, 4%; and FNC, 3%.

Across voters for both candidates, 19% said FNC was their main source, followed by CNN at 13% and Facebook at 9%, although Facebook does not produce its own news.

RELATED > Survey: Trump Should Dump Tweets

Prominent online sites that do produce news did not make much of a dent in the "main source" list.

Breitbart was named by only 1% of respondents as the main source of news, as was The Huffington Post. Buzzfeed was not named by a single member of the sample. Those sites were part of the larger news diet for some of those respondents.

The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, Pew said.

President-elect Donald Trump took aim at CNN late Monday (Nov. 28) and early Tuesday (Nov. 29) in a string of tweets claiming the news outlet was in the tank for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"@CNN is so embarrassed by their total (100%) support of Hillary Clinton, and yet her loss in a landslide, that they don't know what to do," Trump said Monday night via a tweet, his preferred form of commentary.

He followed Tuesday morning with "I thought that @CNN would get better after they failed so badly in their support of Hillary Clinton however, since election, they are worse!"

Trump's comments followed CNN reports disputing his claims that millions of illegal votes had been cast in the election. The cable news network had reported that his fraud claims were not only unsubstantiated but simply untrue and posited that Trump may have gotten the "millions" figure from conspiracy theorists.

Facing various recount efforts in swing states, led by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and subsequently supported by the Clinton camp, Trump had tweeted: "Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem!"

Candidate Trump had been a long and strong critic of journalists, insulting them and accusing major media outlets of being part of a conspiracy to defeat him. President-elect Trump has also continued his media attacks, last week saying in response to reports on his administration's potential conflicts of interest: "Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!

The voter fraud story, which has been reported by other media outlets including The Washington Post, has ramped up Trump's attacks. CNN has also launched a new ongoing segment focused on those potential conflicts of interest.

A CNN spokesperson had no comment on Trump's latest criticisms.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton outspent Republican rival Donald Trump on local cable advertising by 9-to-1 in four key battleground states, but lost in part because her targeted ad strategy was overcome by his ability to generate earned media, according to Viamedia, an independent cable ad management company.

Republican candidates for state-wide and local races in presidential battleground markets tended to outspend their Democratic rivals, which represented a substantial number of distributors in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri, the company said.

Viamedia's political advertising revenue was up more than 50% from 2012, while many broadcast station owners have reported that their political ad sales were below forecasts, in part because Trump didn’t buy as much TV advertising as expected.

Nearly half -- 47% -- of all cable TV political ad spending came from issues advertisers such as PACs and other organizations.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Live video streaming traffic tied to Tuesday’s U.S. Presidential Election set a record for a single news event on Akamai's platform, the content delivery network company said.

Akamai said live video streaming traffic specific to the election peaked at 7.5 Tbps on its platform shortly before midnight ET on Tuesday.

By way of comparison, Akamai noted that Election Day traffic on Akamai in 2004 peaked at just 21 Gbps, and hit 1.1 Tbps during the 2009 Obama inauguration, and 1.3 Tbps for the Royal Wedding in 2011.

Of more recent note, first 2016 Presidential debate peaked at 4.4 Tbps in September, the company said.

Akamai also estimated a streaming audience size during last night’s election of 3.35 million, up from 1.8 million during the first 2016 Presidential debate on Sept. 26.

"Not only are more people watching online in general, they're watching at higher quality, which contributes to the increasingly higher peaks in traffic that we're observing,” Bill Wheaton, EVP and GM of media at Akamai, said in a statement, pointing out that 2016 has already been a record-setter for streaming thanks to the European soccer finals and the Summer Games in Rio.

It is entirely possible that Latinos, with their numbers around 57 million in the U.S., will decide the presidential election. A headline in Tuesday’s New York Times trumpeted, “The Hispanic Voter Surge Was a Myth in 2012. But Not This Time.” News networks -- and those who cater to a Hispanic audience in particular -- are paying intensely close attention to the Latino vote’s impact on Trump-Clinton 2016.

Jose Diaz-Balart (pictured), anchor at Telemundo News, suggests that what the English-language media sees as a recent phenomenon has been a real factor for much longer. Tenacious voter registration campaigns, alongside continued immigration gains, have elevated the Hispanic community to a full-on force in the U.S. electorate. A polarizing candidate such as GOP standard-bearer Donald Trump has given the Hispanic community, itself broad and diverse, a singular focus, say election watchers.

Read more at B&C:

With the presidential election less than one week away, conspiracy theorists had a field day with a two-day-and-counting blackout of Fox News Channel and CNN on DirecTV, lighting up social media with claims of a liberal bias to keep supporters of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the dark.

DirecTV subscribers haven’t been able to watch FNC or its liberal counterpart CNN for about two days, as intermittent outages have blocked the channel. DirecTV customers tuning in the channels have been greeted with a screen stating the satellite service was “experiencing temporary technical difficulties. Please stand by. We apologize of the inconvenience.”

UPDATE: Fox News, CNN Return to DirecTV, Satcaster Says

Those that tuned into CNN were notified the channel was unavailable, according to a report in the Washington Times.

RELATED:DOJ Sues AT&T-DirecTV Over Dodgers Non-Carriage Deal

Bewildered viewers voiced some of their opinions on social media and DTVUSAforum.com, with some claiming a conspiracy by liberal DirecTV employees to block FNC. No word on whether they felt more conservative DirecTV employees had a hand in blocking CNN.

In a statement, DirecTV parent AT&T said it is having technical difficulties involving eight HD channels and offered impacted customers a work-around to watch the networks.  

RELATED:Read more about the 2016 presidential campaign.

“We’re experiencing technical difficulties impacting 8 HD channels, including CNN HD and FOX News HD, for our satellite customers,” AT&T said in a statement. “These and most of the other channels are available in SD and via our streaming apps. Customers can learn how to unhide SD channels at http://soc.att.com/2f1HYN5. We apologize for the inconvenience. We’re working to address the issues and will update accordingly.”

With a week left in the seemingly interminable 2016 election, reporters and industry watchers on the front lines of the often tawdry battle suggest that Trump v. Clinton may alter the face of American politics, and the way it’s covered, for years to come.

While Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have been scrutinized from every conceivable angle, it remains paradoxically possible that the electorate still doesn’t know where they stand on key issues. Exactly who’s at fault for that — the candidates, the journalists who cover them or the public that watches the journalists cover them — is a matter of opinion.

Related: Clinton Maintains Lead in New NBC-Survey Monkey Poll

Bill Hemmer, co-anchor of Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, said one could make a case that neither candidate has yet been fully vetted.

“That may be the story Nov. 9,” Hemmer said. “I don’t think we know how either one of them would govern. Generally speaking, we do not know their policy positions.”

Read more about the 2016 presidential campaign.

Andrew Tyndall, editor of the news analysis-focused Tyndall Report, said 2008 ushered in the modern era of the personality-driven presidential campaign, with then-political wunderkind Barack Obama facing off against steely war hero John McCain. Tyndall believes that dynamic has dominated the 2016 bout.

“People say it’s a horse race,” Tyndall said. “But it’s Survivor, not Seabiscuit. It’s a reality TV race more than it’s a horse race.”

Related: CNN Cuts Ties With Brazile After Leak

With their sheer tonnage of air time, the cable news networks have focused both on the personalities and on the less sexy issues. Jake Tapper, chief Washington correspondent at CNN, spoke of seeing a “real hunger” among the public for meaty discussions.

“There’s an appreciation for non-partisan questions for both Democrats and Republicans,” Tapper said. “It’s real and it’s appreciated by a great deal by viewers.”

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

WASHINGTON — With Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign limping into the final stretch, kneecapped by multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and claims of conspiracy and election fraud, it is looking increasingly like Democrat Hillary Clinton’s administration will be the one putting the new stamp on communications policy.

Clinton championed network neutrality as secretary of state; strong network neutrality rules as a U.S. senator from New York; is on the record as supporting municipal broadband buildouts; and has talked the same talk as President Obama about the importance of universal broadband access.

MERGER HAWK?

Clinton could be tougher on mergers than the Obama Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department, which allowed the Comcast-NBCUniversal, DirecTV-AT&T and Charter Communications-Time Warner Cable (and Bright House Networks) mergers, though not without conditions that Republicans branded onerous.

In an October 2015 interview with Website qz.com, Clinton said she would beef up antitrust enforcement at DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission: “I will direct more resources to hire aggressive regulators who will conduct in-depth industry research to better understand the link between market consolidation and stagnating incomes. Ultimately, this will foster a change in corporate culture that restores competition to the marketplace.”

The first woman president would have a number of like candidates for the FCC chairmanship, though the honor of first woman to chair the commission has already been taken by Mignon Clyburn in the interim between Julius Genachowski and Tom Wheeler.

According to various sources, Susan Ness and Karen Kornbluh could be in the running for FCC chairman under Clinton. If the post does not go to a woman, Blair Levin — a former top FCC official and architect of the National Broadband Plan and its spectrum auction — is another name that has surfaced more than once over the years for that job.

It is not yet clear who would be working on the telecom transition team: Wheeler was a key figure on Obama’s team.

One Democratic source who spoke on background said Ed Meier, who worked on tech issues for the campaign and is on the team, could take a lead role. Levin could also lend a hand and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, would almost certainly have input.

On the FCC front, Ness is a former commissioner who has made no secret of her willingness to step into the breach, according to various industry sources. Kornbluh also has a resume that dovetails nicely with the job.

Kornbluh — Ambassador Kornbluh at that — is currently executive vice president for external affairs at Nielsen, but before that she was ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development under President Obama and served as his policy director when he was a senator. She also has a connection to the Clintons, having served in legislative affairs during Bill Clinton’s administration while at Treasury.

A Clinton administration would at least threaten some of the new money that has come into the political ad market since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed corporations and unions to fund more of those ads. Back in July, she released a video promising to put campaign finance reform at the top of her political agenda and proposed a constitutional amendment overturning the court’s Citizens United decision within the first 30 days of her administration. She also pledged to push for better disclosure of campaign funding.

BROADBAND POLICY

Clinton talked up broadband access and connection as secretary of state in a speech about global information access, which she likened to freedom of assembly. At least one public-interest group did not like the sound of her take on trying to shut down terrorist recruiting online.

She got a thumbs-down (actually a “frowny face”) in a 2016 voter guide from ’net activist group Free Press for this 2015 interview answer on fighting terrorism: “We have to deny them online space. And this is complicated. You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, etc. But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating.”

Free Press also points out that Clinton in 2015 wrote an op-ed piece in support of the FCC’s pre-emption of state laws limiting municipal broadband buildouts. But with a court reversing the FCC’s pre-emptions in Tennessee and North Carolina, and the Obama administration deciding not to appeal that decision, that effort would likely have to come through funding and championing municipal buildouts in states not trying to block them.

A total of seven networks, along with the Washington Post, will live-stream the final 2016 presidential debate Oct. 19 via YouTube, the Google-owned company announced.

C-SPAN, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, PBS, Univision and Telemundo are the networks that will carry their broadcast coverage live on YouTube, beginning at 9 p.m. ET.

Related:How to Stream a Debate, Gaffe-Free

The Oct. 9 presidential debate on YouTube drew 1.5 million peak concurrent viewers, with more than 2.5 million hours watched. Additionally,  as many as 10 million viewers watched live via illegal, pirated streams, according to VFT Solutions (read more here; subscription required).

Read more on broadcastingcable.com.

With Election Day drawing near (Nov. 1), the Video Advertising Bureau has released a report that shows undecided voters in the last days before going to the polls are influenced more by TV than by other media.

Televised debates and political TV shows were cited by 65% of respondents as their primary sources for political information about national races, according to a VAB survey of undecided voters.

More than 40% of undecided voters have gone online to research a candidate or issue after seeing a political ad on TV, the survey found. Only 21% said they had researched a candidate after viewing an ad on social media, and 17% said they had followed up after someone they knew “liked” a candidate on Facebook.

More than three quarters of respondents (79%) said TV was the medium where a political ad was most likely to get their attention, in both national and local races.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

While Nielsen ratings were down for Sunday's (Oct. 9) presidential debate from the first debate, live streaming made up for at least some of the slack, according to online analytics company Hitwise, a division of Connexity.

For example, it said, YouTube had a 40% increase in debate content views from the first debate, and Twitter reported a 30% increase in traffic to its live stream vs. the Sept. 26 debate.

Related: Pro Football Trumps Presidential Debate Coverage on Cable

At least 20,000 people in the U.S. searched for where and how to stream the debate, Hitwise said, with the majority skewing young, male, educated and Hispanic. Supporters of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton were 34% more likely to have searched for the stream than supporters of the GOP's Donald Trump.

Read more about the 2016 presidential campaign.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump drew the most U.S. social media interactions related to a TV show on Facebook and Twitter Sunday night (Oct. 9) during the second televised debate, according to Nielsen Social.

Related:Survey: Clinton Leads Trump Nationally by 11 Points

Trump was mentioned in Tweets 5.5 million times and Clinton only 2.1 million times, but there was arguably more to talk about on the Trump side given the recent revelations about a tape from an Access Hollywood pre-segment conversation between Trump and Billy Bush.

In all, there were a whopping 62 million social media interactions on Facebook and Twitter from 18.2 million people in the U.S. Each Tweeter interacted an average of seven times about the debate. Facebook saw 47.2 million interactions, 63% of which were by women or girls.

Related:Candidates' Compliments Were TiVo Top Debate Moments

Interactions are defined as social media posts related to a linear TV episode plus follow-up engagement with those posts.

Interestingly, the online activity id not peak early in the debate during talk about the tapes or Clinton's e-mails, but instead between 10 p.m. and 10: 14 p.m. when the candidates were talking about taxes and Syria.

Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 11 percentage points (46% to 35%) among likely voters in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal tracking poll, which found a solid majority (72%) saying Trump's recently revealed comments about women were either inappropriate, but typical of some men (31%) or completely unacceptable (41%).

With the third-party candidates removed, Clinton's lead in the polls grows to 14 points. That is the largest margin since NBC/WSJ began polling the pair last September.

The poll was taken Saturday and Sunday (Oct. 8 and 9), after The Washington Post reported on a tape of lewd comments Trump made about women to then Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, but before Sunday night's second presidential debate.

A majority (52%) of all respondents said the tape should be a campaign issue, while 42% said it shouldn't, according to the poll.

Looking at the races for control of Congress -- where Republicans hold the majority both the Senate and the House -- 49% of all respondents said they'd like to see Democrats in power again, compared with 42% who chose the GOP. That is up three percentage points from a month ago and the biggest Dem advantage since the October 2009 government shutdown, according to NBC/WSJ.

The poll was of 500 registered voters and has a margin of error of 4.6 percent for likely voters and 4.4% for all respondents.

NBC said it will also release a post-debate poll in the next few days.

Fox News was the most watched cable network for the Oct. 4 Vice Presidential Debate, although viewership was far lower than for last month's Presidential debate.

Fox News averaged 6.1 million total viewers to lead all cable networks providing live coverage of the Mike Pence-Tim Kaine debate, according to Nielsen. CNN was second with 4.1 million viewers and MSNBC was third with 3.1 million watchers.

SEE MORE: Veep Debate Audience Half That of Palin-Biden's.

CNN topped all cable news nets in key demos including adults 25-54 (1.6 million viewers) and adults 18-34 (561,000 viewers), according to Nielsen.

Overall, 35.6 million viewers watched the debate across eight broadcast and cable channels, according to Nielsen. Those numbers fell well short of the 84 million viewers that tuned into the Sept. 26 Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. 

Most Watched Shows On Cable For Oct. 4

Show                                                   Network                                 Total viewers

VP Debate                                          Fox News                                6.1 million

VP Debate Analysis                           Fox News                                5.2 million

MLB Wild Card (Balt/Tor)                   TBS                                         4.1 million

VP Debate                                          CNN                                        4.1 million

The Kelly File                                     Fox News                                3.2 million

VP Debate                                          MSNBC                                   3.1 million

The O’Reilly Factor                            Fox News                                3.0 million

Debate Night In America                   CNN                                        3.0 million

WWE SmackDown                           USA Network                           2.3 million

MSNBC Debate Analysis                  MSNBC                                   2.2 million

Source: Nielsen                     

The first presidential debate, which aired across multiple cable and broadcast networks Monday (Sept. 26), was a social media behemoth on Facebook and Twitter.

It drew the most uniques of any TV series or special on the night by a factor of almost 100, logging in at 23,974,000. The next highest uniques total was generated by another type of face-off, WWE's Monday Night RAW, with 255,000.

Uniques are “unique social media accounts that have authored original content [on those platforms] related to a linear TV episode or engaged with that content."

The total number of posts about the debate, and further interactions with those posts (dubbed "engagement"), was a whopping 83,016,000, some 200 times the same figure for RAW (426,000).

The baseball game on MLB network (the Mets vs. the Marlins) was third in uniques on the night, with 1,496,000.

A quartet of House ranking members--which means Democrats--has asked the FBI to look into whether ties between Trump campaign officials and Russia might have contributed to attacks on the DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as a way to affect the U.S. elections.

In a letter to FBI director James Comey this week, the legislators said that "serious questions have been raised about overt and covert actions by Trump campaign officials on behalf of Russian interests and that "it is critical for the American public to know whether those actions may have directly caused or indirectly motivated" the attacks.

They also cited, among other things, Donald Trump's suggestion that Russia should hack Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's e-mails, Trump has said he was only joking, and Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

They ended a laundry list of examples with the concession they did not know if any of them led directly or indirectly to any Russian hacks, but suggested in the interests of thoroughness that the U.S. should take "all possible steps" to prevent Russia from interfering with the election.

Sending the letter were Reps. Elijah Cummings (Md.), ranking member of the Government Reform Committee; John Conyers (Mich.), Elliot Engel (N.Y.), ranking member, Foreign Affairs Committee; and Bennie Thompson (Miss.), ranking member, Homeland Security Committee.

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his party have taken his attack on the media to a whole new level.

Last week, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which comprises Trump’s presidential campaign committee and the Republican National Committee, sent an email alert to supporters proclaiming, “We’re not just fighting against [Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton … We are running against the very dishonest and totally biased media!” and attempting to collect data to back up that opinion.

The email said Trump was looking for his own poll to offer up in media interviews to support his loud and repeated claims of media bias — the New York real estate developer/television personality-turned-politician has pulled credentials from outlets whose stories anger him.

The survey targeted cable news outlets — CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel — with individual questions, but not network news operations or local news outlets.

“It’s time to hold the media accountable for trying to rig this election against us,” the email said over Trump’s signature, asking supporters to take a “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.”

“All too often I’m asked about a ‘poll’ put out by a liberal organization that says the American people disagree with our common-sense reforms to fix our country,” the email said. “Well, with your help today, the next time I’m being interviewed, I will have my own poll that shows that the American people disagree with the dishonest media!”

Among the — in some cases leading — questions the Republicans want “yes” or “no” answers on include:

1. “Hillary Clinton still gets a free pass from the media as she continues to lie about sending classified information on her secret server.”

2. “The mainstream media needs to do more to expose the shady donations to the Clinton Foundation.”

3. “The RNC was right to drop CNBC as a partner after they failed to fairly moderate the October debate.”

4. “More time is spent covering fake ‘scandals’ involving Trump than real scandals involving Hillary and our national security.”

5. “The media purposely tries to divide Republicans against each other in order to help elect Democrats.”

The survey launch followed a barrage of antimedia Twitter posts from Trump after the embattled candidate took heat for comments about President Obama being co-founder of ISIS and about gun-rights activists maybe being able to do something to stop Clinton.

More than 50 million viewers combined tuned into the Democratic and Republican national conventions, according to Nielsen. 

Lat week's Democratic convention in Philadelphia averaged 26.2 million viewers over four days (July 27-30), compared to 24.6 million viewers for the Republican national convention in Cleveland a week prior (July 18-21) across multiple ad-supported networks, according to Nielsen.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s speech Thursday drew 29.5 million viewers across 10 ad-supported channels according to Nielsen, marking the most-viewed night of the four-day convention.

The audience, however, fell short of the 32.2 million viewers that tuned into Donald Trump’s July 28 Republican acceptance speech, according to Nielsen.

CNN delivered 6.17 million total viewers during 10 and 11:45 p.m. from the Democratic National Convention, including 2.16 million in the 25-54 age bracket.

That topped cable rivals MSNBC, at 4.92 million total and 1.41 million in the 25-54 demo, and Fox News at 2.39 million and 662,000, respectively.

NBC was tops among broadcasters at 4.15 million total viewers and 1.5 million adults 25-54.

The Philadelphia wingding featured speeches from President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and VP hopeful Tim Kaine, all singing the praises of Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Day two of the Democratic convention (Tuesday, July 26), with speakers including Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and former President Bill Clinton, continued to dominate the list of most-Tweeted TV shows according to Nielsen Social, but was down markedly from the first night, which featured Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders' much anticipated reconciliation speech.

Tuesday night's coverage on broadcast and cable nets drew a total of 1,657,000 Tweets from 389,000 unique authors, more than ten times its nearest competitor, WWE SmackDown on USA Networks with 133,000 from 33,000 uniques.

Rounding out the top five were The Bachelorette on ABC with 110,000/53,000; America's Got Talent on NBC at 46,000/20,000 and Scream on MTV with 33,000/6,000.

Day three's combination of President Barack Obama, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is likely to best that Day two number. Totals will be released later today (July 28).

 Last night’s Democratic National Convention coverage averaged 24.7 million viewers across seven networks, according to Nielsen.

The second night of the convention – which featured former President Bill Clinton’s speech -- fell short of the 25.9 million viewer across ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox Business Network, Fox News and MSNBC that tuned into the first night, and below the 25.1 million viewers that tuned into the second day of the 2012 Democratic convention, Nielsen said.

CNN was the most watched network of the night, averaging 5.9 million viewers, followed by NBC’s 5.2 million viewers and MSNBC’s 3.8 million watchers, said Nielsen.

The Democratic National Convention was the most-Tweeted TV show Monday night (July 25) with 3.3 million Tweets sent by 693,000 people, according to Nielsen Social. It obviously benefitted from being roadblocked on multiple networks.

That Tweet total was almost exactly double that of the Republicans' first day, which drew 1.645 million tweets from 449,000 people, still the most-Tweeted show by a mile on that night (July 18).

The Dems had an all-star lineup on their first day, including Michelle Obama and the much-anticipated reconciliation speech from Bernie Sanders, which might explain the particularly heavy Tweet load versus the GOP's less star-studded initial outing.

The Democratic convention's Twitter activity spiked at 10:31--when broadcast nets as well as cable were covering the proceedings--following the speech by First Lady Michelle Obama, when 30,400 Tweets were sent in a single minute.

Rounding out the top five Tweeted-about TV shows of the night were The Bachelorette at 270,000 Tweets by 112,000 people; WWE Monday Night Raw on USA with 266,000 by 47,000 people; Love & Hip Hop; Atlanta on VH1 with 111,000/33,000; and Are you the One? on MTV at 19,000/6,000.

Not surprisingly, the most-tweeted-about TV show Thursday night was the Republican National Convention coverage -- on various networks -- which drew 2,008,000 tweets from 470,000 unique authors, according to Nielsen Social's Daily Top Five.

Those tweets spiked at 10:48, during the acceptance speech of GOP nominee Donald Trump, when he promised to "fix the system," said Nielsen.

Rounding out the list were CBS's Big Brother at No. 2 with 52,000 tweets from 15,000 uniques; CBS' The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (Trump's speech was the lead-in and Jon Stewart made a special appearance, which drew its own tweetstorm later), with 23,000 tweets from 16,000 uniques; Comedy Central's At Midnight with Chris Hardwick with 11,000 from 4,000 uniques; and Fox's season finale of Bones with 10,000 and 3,000 uniques.

A portion of the Bones episode was reportedly pre-empted on the West Coast, so that number could have been affected by that, either prompting more tweets from unhappy fans or fewer, given there was less show to comment on on the West Coast.

Tweets about the shows are captured from three hours before through three hours after each initial broadcast. Unique authors are defined as having a unique Twitter account that sent "at least one tweet ascribed to a specific TV episode."

Related:Pew Plots Rise of Trump

Donald Trump's campaign website "mostly posts" stories from external news media, in contrast to Hillary Clinton's, which "almost entirely bypass[es] the news media," with campaign news sections that resemble digital news outlets, populated mostly by in-house-produced content, according to a just-released Pew Research study.

The same pattern held for social media posts from the candidates. Pew said that 78% of Trump's Facebook posts were links to outside news stories, while 80% of Clinton's posts were links to her campaign pages -- and their mostly self-generated stories and info. Twitter showed a similar pattern.

Trump's fondness for tweeting at the drop or a hat or rise of a poll number was borne out in the study. Trump’s tweets were retweeted almost 6,000 times on average, compared with some 1,500-plus for Clinton.

Trump has famously slammed the media, both in general and by insulting individual reporters along the campaign trail and following debates.

The study was of the campaign websites of presidential candidates -- looking at design features, static content and original news items (news articles, press releases and videos) posted between May 1 and June 15.

With presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on the record with a detailed technology and communications policy agenda, the Consumer Technology Association called on the other presumptive nominees to follow suit.

CTA president Gary Shapiro said he likes what he saw in the Clinton agenda, saying, "I am encouraged not only with the range of the issues she covered but an implicit awareness that our national strategy and economy require encouraging innovation through smart government strategy and free market principles."

But he didn't like that he had not seen anything from either of the other two presumptive nominees, Republican Donald Trump or Libertarian Gary Johnson.

"Where do they differ from Secretary Clinton?" he asked in calling on them to unveil their tech platforms. "Where is there common ground? Do they have any plans at all on spectrum, investment, broadband, training and education, and competitiveness? If so, when will their plans be released?"

Conservative Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who is presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump's pick for vice president, is well known in communications circles as a big opponent of the FCC's fairness doctrine -- a sentiment he shares with the National Association of Broadcasters -- and a big proponent of a federal shield law, sharing that sentiment with network and local news outlets around the country.

Pence is familiar to broadcasters as the former syndicated radio talk show host who, while an Indiana congressman (2000-2012), teamed up with Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), currently the chair of the House Communications Subcommittee, to block what they saw as a potential return of the "fairness doctrine."

The doctrine, which the FCC scrapped as unconstitutional in 1987 and finally, officially took off the books in 2011, required broadcasters to air both sides of issues of public importance. Its demise helped spur the rise of conservative talk radio stars like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

But Pence is also familiar in media circles for his support for journalists, which would put him somewhat at odds with the top of the ticket.

Trump has made a habit of hammering journalists and news outlets for unfavorable stories. He has signaled he might like to see libel laws opened up so he could more easily sue media outlets, pulled The Washington Post's convention coverage credentials over a headline and story he didn't like, and has called journalists dishonest, sleazy and much more.

Unlike Trump, Pence has been effusive in his praise of journalists and the need to tell truth to the powerful.

“As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press," he said in a 2009 speech celebrating World Freedom Day. "A free press ensures the flow of information to the public, and let me say, during a time when the role of government in our lives and in our enterprises seems to grow every day – both at home and abroad – ensuring the vitality of a free and independent press is more important than ever."

Pence also spearheaded a House bill, opposed by the Obama Administration, that would have established a federal shield law, the Free Flow of Information Act, which would have granted a qualified privilege to reporters to prevent them from being compelled to testify or to give up confidential sources to federal investigators.

The then-congressman also co-sponsored the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act to expand the State Department's examination of international press freedom in its annual human rights report.

In the wake of Hillary Clinton's tough week in the media, when FBI director James Comey's announcement of no criminal charges over the presumptive Democratic nominee's handling of email while Secretary of State was accompanied by some harsh criticisms, Republican nominee Donald Trump has gained support in the key battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

That is according to a new Quinnipiac University swing state poll, which found that Clinton has lost all of an eight-point lead in Florida since a June 21 survey, with Trump now leading in the state 42% to 39%. Trump is also leading in Pennsylvania and is tied with Clinton in Ohio, where Trump is hoping for an endorsement from Gov. John Kasich, which could boost that number.

Given the margin of error, those states are all essentially dead heats at the moment.  

"While there is no definite link between Clinton's drop in Florida and the U.S. Justice Department decision not to prosecute her for her handling of emails, she has lost ground to Trump on questions which measure moral standards and honesty," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

Nationally, Clinton's lead has shrunk to 3 percentage points -- 42% to 39% -- and she fell below 50% for the first time in a year, according to a new McClatchy/Marist poll.

Related: Trump, Clinton in Dead Heat in Swing States.

Frank Smyth, senior adviser for journalist security, is warning journalists that the upcoming political conventions in Cleveland (Republican) and Philadelphia (Democratic) "carry the risk of civil unrest."

That came in a blog post on the CPJ web site.

He says "many" journalists and news outlets are investing in "civil unrest" awareness training. He says his own firm has already held a two-day class for "major" news outlets in Cleveland, Washington and New York in advance of the conventions.

He points out the Cleveland has spent federal grant money on riot gear including helmets, shields, batons and full-body armor and that Philadelphia is going to be spending on similar gear.

Smyth advised journalists to (1) practice situational awareness; (2) work in teams; (3) know entry and exit routes; (4) identify themselves as needed; (5) maintain neutrality; (6) not respond to provocation; and (7) obey police orders.

He also has some body armor/protective gear advice. To check out a more fleshed-out version of those and more tips, go here.

Cable news networks and broadcast news operations were covering the FBI's announcement that it was recommending to the Justice Department that no indictment was appropriate in the investigation of the handling of Hillary Clinton's e-mails as Secretary of State and that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges in such a situation.

Broadcast network news operations broke into regular programming Tuesday to air FBI director James Comey's announcement that the law enforcement agency is recommending that no charges be brought against the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Comey said the FBI's investigation concluded there were careless procedures at State and emphasized he was not suggesting such conduct should be free of consequences, simply that they should not include a criminal indictment. But he also said even though the information in the emails may not have been marked "classified," Clinton and others should have known the emails were.

Comey described Clinton as "extremely careless" with the security of that email information.

While he said the FBI found no evidence that Clinton's servers had been hacked, he finessed that immediately, saying that given the skill of such hackers, they likely would leave no evidence if they had hacked Clinton's private servers.

TV pundits were viewing the announcement as a double-edged sword for the candidate. They led with the recomendation against indictment, but CNN's Wolf Blitzer, for example, called Comey's characterization of Clinton's handling of the info "damning" and a "severe slap."  Additionally, Clinton reportedly met with FBI investigators over the weekend, so the speed with which Comey made the recommendation surprised some commentators.

Clinton's likely GOP presidential rival, Donald Trump, tweeted following the Comey announcement: "The system is rigged. General Petraeus got in trouble for far less. Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment," followed by "FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem."

One Republican strategist--commening for CNN--said rather than focusing on a "rigged system," Trump should hammer Clinton over how she had characterized her handling of the e-mails versus how Comey characterized it.

Clinton reportedly had a meeting over the weekend with FBI investigators, so the speed with which Comey made the recommendation surprised some commentators.

Fox News reports that Republican Federal Election Commission (FEC) commissioner Lee Goodman has confirmed that FEC Democrats voted last month to cite Fox News Channel for helping Republicans at the first GOP presidential debate Aug. 6, 2015 but were blocked by the Republicans on the FEC.

Fox News initially planned to hold one debate with the top 10 candidates but changed the eligibility rules and added a second, undercard, with seven more candidates.

One of the candidates, Marke Everson, who did not make either debate, filed a complaint with the FEC, saying that by changing the rules to expand the debate, Fox News, which sponsored the debate, was making an illegal corporate contribution to the candidates in the debate in violation of federal election laws.

The Republicans voted against any action, but Goodman, along with the two other Republican commissioners, called the Democrats' support of a sanction "astonishing," according to their statement on the decision.  "All press organizations should be concerned when the government asserts regulatory authority to punish and censor news coverage."

Fox had told the FEC in response to the complaint that it "did not structure the debate to "promote or advance" one candidate over another."

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has released her full technology  policy agenda, which includes fighting for Title II -- and applying it to interconnection -- in court if need be and tapping into a $25 billion Infrastructure Bank to provide money to localities to foster access to high-speed Internet at "affordable prices."

Among her other planks are defending net neutrality abroad, creating a Chief Innovation Adviser position, closing the "digital divide," pushing 5G wireless deployment, reallocating and repurposing government spectrum, and promoting a multistakeholder model of Internet governance.

"Hillary believes that the government has an obligation to protect the open internet," the campaign said. [She] strongly supports the FCC decision under the Obama Administration to adopt strong network-neutrality rules that deemed Internet service providers to be common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. These rules now ban broadband discrimination, prohibit pay-for-play favoritism and establish oversight of “interconnection” relationships between providers. Hillary would defend these rules in court and continue to enforce them. She also maintains her opposition to policies that unnecessarily restrict the free flow of data online – such as the high-profile fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)."

In the platform, the Clinton campaign points out that the candidate made network neutrality a foreign policy imperative as Secretary of State..

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, representing many companies that also pushed for net-neutrality rules and broadband buildouts, applauded the candidate's tech platform.

“The ability to grow the economy in the future will depend on a good foundation for the digital economy," said CCIA president Ed Black. "This is the platform of a candidate who can be trusted to grow the economy. [W]hat distinguishes Clinton is her articulation of a platform to provide better trained workers, Internet access, and policies both here and with our trading partners to deliver economic growth.” 

CCIA had suggested a tech policy platform in a letter to the presidential candidates.

Linda Moore, president of TechNet, comprising senior technology execs, praised Clinton for outlining her agenda and echoed CCIA's shout-out.

“Hillary Clinton is the first of the presidential candidates to lay out a technology and innovation agenda," Moore said. "In doing so, Hillary proves that she gets it — that our nation's ability to grow our economy and drive job creation is dependent on our ability to stay ahead of the curve in innovation."

TechNet was also a signatory to that tech policy platform letter.

WASHINGTON -- ABC's John Parkinson, chair of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association, Wednesday called on presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump to restore immediately the press credentials his campaign pulled from The Washington Post over a headline and story the candidate took issue with.

Parkinson was speaking at RTCA's annual congressional correspondents dinner here, or as keynote speaker Ohio Governor John Kasich called it after three of the night's four awards went to ABC newsers: "The ABC Awards show."

"Talk about fair and balanced," Kasich quipped.

Taking home the Joan Barone Award for D.C.-based national affairs, public policy coverage was ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl. ABC News’s senior operations producer Peter Doherty was given the Jerry Thompson Memorial award for efforts "above and beyond" in service of the public's right to know, and ABC's retiring Dennis Dunlavey, who has directed D.C. coverage, received the Career Achievement Award.

Rounding out the awards, and the only non-ABC winner, was BBC International correspondent Ian Pannell, who got the David Bloom Award for excellence in enterprise reporting.

Kasich joked about the credential issue.

"I've picked up the angst here about press credentials," he said. "You mention that word, and everybody gets upset. In my campaign, we paid people to take press credentials so somebody would show up every once in a while."

The presidential campaign was a constant subtext of the RTCA event -- the group has officially asked the Trump campaign to restore the Post's credentials -- from the applause for Parkinson's call for immediate action, to Kasich's reference, to Dunlavey's acceptance speech.

Pointing out that he was already "mostly" retired, Dunlavey said he would have to rely on the journalists in the audience, as Americans are doing, to "make sense of this peculiar election campaign, and to make sense of it all."

"It is going to be a long campaign, and we are counting on you not to grow weary of separating facts from fiction, not to become immune to outrage," Dunlavey said. "It is going to be a long five-and-half months. Don't get tired of holding people accountable who feel they don't need to be held accountable... When does objectivity require a little less equivalence and a little more truth?"

Citing the musical Hamilton, he ended his remarks with "History has its eyes on you."

A majority of millennial supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will vote for his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, if he pulls out of the race, according to a poll conducted by MTV.

MTV says that 57% of the millennials who say they prefer Sanders say they will vote for former Secretary of State Clinton, 22% said they would write someone in, 18% won’t vote and just 3% said they’d vote for Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

The poll is part of MTV’s Elect This Campaign that looks at election year issues important to young voters.

For more of this story, please visit broadcastingcable.com.

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OK, I've got to weigh in once again on the one-man political circus that is Donald Trump.

His petty personal attacks, most recently aimed at journalists with the temerity to ask tough questions, have gotten very old.

He called one reporter a “sleaze” after the journalist pressed the candidate on just how much money he raised for veterans with an event he quickly put together after refusing to participate in a Fox News Channel debate. But Trump has found multiple media targets to insult and signaled White House press conferences would be equally bare-knuckle bouts of personal attacks if he were being quizzed by “lying” reporters.

Trump is an equal opportunity offender, which is why many in his own party are so troubled by his candidacy.

His defenders, meanwhile, find new ways of positioning his thin-skinned petulance and "You are, but what am I?" rebuttal technique as a refreshing anti-Washington tone.

But the shrugging “That’s Trump” defense of his often embarrassing and mean-spirited bluster doesn’t wash either. I don't know what is in his heart, but what comes out of his mouth reminds me why I have such problems with his candidacy, as well as those who appear willing to follow him down such and ugly path.

There are ways to point out the flaws in the current system without trashing people right and left, but the GOP candidate has yet to discover them.

This election has gone beyond politics to a referendum on what kind of people we want to be, not just who we want to be led by.

While I am on the subject of potential and actual future presidents and press attacks, the president-elect of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duteret, reportedly said recently, "Just because you're a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you're a son of a bitch."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, SOBs and otherwise, was not amused and strongly condemned the statement.

"President-Elect Rodrigo Duterte's shocking remarks apparently excusing extrajudicial killings threaten to make the Philippines into a killing field for journalists," said Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative, following various reports on the statement. "We strongly urge him to retract his comments and to signal that he intends to protect, not target, the press."

So do I and, come to think of it, I would relay that last bit of advice to candidate Trump as well. It would be nice to think that someone who wants to be President would have the First Amendment's back.

WASHINGTON — In an interview for the technology website CNET, National Cable & Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell said he has issues with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's style of campaign, though he signaled that applies to the divisive tone of politics in general, one that is discouraging good people from running for high office.

In the interview, Powell was asked about the race given that he comes from a prominent Republican family whose pater familias, Colin Powell, has himself been urged to run for president in the past.

Powell, a Republican who was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission by President Clinton and served as chairman under President George W. Bush, said was not making it personal to the New York-based businessman. But he said that given how he was raised to believe in civility and fighting with ideas, he said he has “a lot of difficulty with how [Trump] has styled his candidacy.”

“I have a deep belief that your client is the American people, not yourself or a party or anything else,” Powell told CNET. “I believe in a society that will only thrive through inclusion, not division. And I think leadership is about trying to connect the better nature of people and not profit from the worst nature in people.”

Powell said he did not know why his father doesn't run, other than at the moment the system is not encouraging people like him.

“We should be worried as a country that a Colin Powell or [former defense secretary] Bob Gates or a lot of other people I admire don’t want anything to do with this. If you have a system that elects the most powerful person in the world that people are being repelled by, something is wrong.”

“I won’t just make that comment [profiting from the worst in people] about Mr. Trump,” Powell said. “The political system is letting us all down. Somebody once told me that the way most people vote for president is they want the person who exhibits the qualities that they wish they fully were. You should want them to be better.”

Presumptive GOP Nominee Donald Trump trails Democrat Hillary Clinton by only three points nationally, 48% to 45%, according to a new NBC News/Survey Monkey online poll, compared to a 5 point lead only a week ago.

Trump leads with independents 44% to 36%.

Related:Mark Cuban: I'd Vote for Hillary

Clinton leads Trump with black voters, Hispanics, women and those with a college degree. Trump wins with white voters, men, and those with a high school degree or less, according to the poll.

Related:INTX 2016: Cable Icons Take Aim at Trump

Very conservative Republican registered voters say they favor Trump to lead the party over House Speaker Paul Ryan 63% to 34%.

The survey was an online weekly election tracking poll May 9-15 of 14,100 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points for the entire survey and 2.3 points for the Republicans registered voters.

Shark Tank co-star, AXS TV chairman and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said he was quick to rebuff explorations that he run as an independent candidate for president, but he said if the election were held today, he would probably be casting his vote for Hillary Clinton.

In an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, Cuban said of Clinton: better the devil you know.

He said at least he knew what her policies were, while Trump lists issues on his website but does not say how he will address them. Execution, Cuban said, is the key to success in business and elsewhere, noting it is easy to talk about it, not so easy to do get it done.

Cuban said he had gotten an e-mail through an associate about possibly running, but that there was no chance, "none," that he would run. He said it was too late to get on ballots, for one thing. He called it a quick no and characterized the suggestion as "ridiculous."

But he suggested a Trump presidency was no laughing matter, and that isolationist economic policies could lead to a huge market "correction." Burnett asked for numbers, and Cuban said 20% or more was possible, particularly given high-frequency trading.

Burnett played a clip from Shark Tank in which billionaire Cuban was berating a contestant and asked Cuban if he thought he had been reached out to because he was kind of like Trump himself.

"At least I have a billion dollars," Cuban said, a reference to those, including himself, who are not convinced Trump is worth what he says he is. Cuban conceded that being an outspoken billionaire probably figured into the approach about running. Also, like Trump, he said he can get access to media "anytime, anywhere, anyhow," and he knows how to take advantage of it, which is what Trump has done so successfully.

Asked how smart Trump is, Cuban said probably not as smart as Trump thinks he is. Cuban said he had been excited when Trump got into the race, but the candidate has not appeared to learn along the way. Where he has come from, Cuban said he would have thought he would be more knowledgeable about issues like jobs and immigration, but that that was not the case.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of both the House Communications Subcommittee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, says he is supporting Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for President.

Walden said he still had issues with Trump, but he had more with Hillary Clinton.

“The American people know the damage done by this administration here at home and around the world," Walden said in a statement. "The last thing I want is to give the same Obama/Clinton/Sanders philosophy another four years in charge. While I may disagree with the rhetoric Mr. Trump uses and some policy positions, he is the better option than Hillary Clinton in the White House. That’s why all along I’ve said I intend to support the GOP nominee.”

Trump was among Republicans who met with Trump this week to try and mend fences and unify the party.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, earlier this week said he would support Trump as well.

With Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump heading toward what could be their eventual nomination as presidential candidates, the nation’s roughly 27.3 million Hispanic voters could very well be the deciding factor in who succeeds President Obama.

That’s what led HITN-TV and Azteca to both launch separate educational initiatives designed to aid Hispanics in understanding how the complicated U.S. electoral system works.

HITN officially launched Tu Momento 2016 on April 26. The programming initiative is centered on voter research that suggests Hispanics under-index as voter participants. According to the network, it is estimated that fewer than 50% of eligible Hispanics will vote in 2016. 

HITN divided its Tu Momento 2016 programming into segments that cover the primaries and caucuses; the electoral process; delegates and superdelegates; and the voter registration process and Election Day. The first of the three installments aired April 25, with the second installment airing April 30. A third installment airs May 15.

Additionally, HITN has made vignettes based on the three episodes and is making them available to educational institutions and organizations that can benefit from their use. The short videos can be accessed from a special microsite created for the 2016 election, tumomento2016.org.

“The 2016 election is an opportunity for Hispanics to demonstrate their strength as a community by influencing the outcome of the presidential contest,” HITN president and CEO Mike Nieves said in a statement. “Spanish-language media has a responsibility to deliver content to its audience so more Hispanics can participate in this important election. HITN understands this responsibility and is committed to helping Hispanics better understand on how the electoral process works.”

Azteca also understands the importance of voter education among U.S. Hispanics.

On April 25, the Mexican media giant’s U.S. arm launched a voter education and awareness drive in conjunction with the media advocacy group Voto Latino. A microsite — http://www.aztecaamerica.com/votolatino — includes a wide variety of news stories dealing with such subjects as the importance of voting, and why the Latino vote is so decisive.

Facebook and Twitter feeds tied to @AztecaUS can also be found on the microsite.

The efforts by HITN and Azteca follow extensive efforts by Telemundo to hold voter-registration drives across the country as part of its #YODECIDO initiative, and Univision’s Ya es Hora … Liberta tu voz voter-registration drive. The latter effort resulted in the successful registration of some 19,000 Latino voters at more than 100 voter drives hosted by Univision affiliates and O&Os nationwide.

Univision in March joined forces with Democracy Works for the TurboVote Challenge, aimed at increasing voter turnout to 80% by the year 2020. It’s a part of its “Univision Contigo Vote for Your America campaign, launched by Univision in February with the intent of providing “unique, nonpartisan and culturally-relevant resources to Hispanic citizens with a goal of mobilizing the 27 million eligible Hispanic voters in the 2016 general election.” 

Since the launch of Univision Contigo Vote for Your America, 92 nonpartisan local community events have attracted nearly 41,000 attendees. Univision also has hosted 12 phone banks for calls on citizenship and voting answered by local community organizations.

Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren will host a Town Hall with GOP candidate Donald Trump April 3 from Milwaukee.

The Wisconsin primary is April 5, with 42 delegates at stake, and Trump is trailing Sen. Ted. Cruz in the state in the latest polls.

Both Van Susteren, host and moderator of On the Record, and audience members will question Trump. Van Susteren is a native of Wisconsin and, FNC said, is among the longest-serving anchors in cable news.

As coverage of the cantankerous and unpredictable 2016 political election season draws big TV ratings for traditional cable-news networks, upstart channels targeting young millennials with political-themed content are campaigning online to reach one of the largest voting blocks in U.S. history.

Networks like Fusion, Revolt TV, Pivot and Fuse are looking to secure the votes of a politically engaged group of 18-to-34-year-olds looking for content that speaks to issues important to them — topics that aren’t always addressed by the cable news channels.

From online voter registration campaigns to millennial-focused reports from the major political party conventions to social-media initiatives on key issues such as immigration, police brutality and LGBT rights, network executives said it’s critical to provide content to millennials when and where they want it.

“We have seen from our audience that they are an active, socially relevant group, and they care about issues that can affect not only them but society at large, from Black Lives Matter to [the drinking-water crisis in] Flint to immigration issues and LGBT issues — this audience is vocal and they care about these issues,” Revolt TV CEO Keith Clinkscales said. “We wanted to make sure that we were uniquely positioned to impact the political conversation, and give the young people who consume our media an opportunity to amplify their voices.”

CROSSING PLATFORMS

To accomplish that, networks are taking a multiplatform approach to disseminating political news to an audience that watches less TV and spends more time online, executives said.

Millennials aged 18-34 may watch less live TV than any other demographic group, but they’re the most likely to use a connected-TV device such as Apple TV or Roku, according to a new Nielsen Total Audience Report for fourth-quarter 2015.

That age group also spent more than 11 hours per week using smartphones to access the Web and apps during fourth-quarter 2015, up from eight hours during the same period in 2014, according to Nielsen.

Millennials have followed the 2016 presidential campaign closely because the candidates have been so active on social media, David Quinn, senior brand lead for digital marketing firm Beamly, said.

“All the candidates are active on Twitter and using video on YouTube and have remained active in the political conversation with millennials,” Quinn said.

That leaves an opening for millennial-targeted networks to provide political content to an already engaged audience.

For Fuse, that means teaming with Hispanic-targeted, non-profit political organization Voto Latino to create a multiplatform initiative dubbed “Crash the Parties,” Fuse Media CEO Michael Schwimmer said. Millennial Latinos can vie for a chance to become Fuse reporters at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.

Would-be reporters can submit a video to Fuse.tv for network viewers to vote on. Two winners will be chosen to represent the network at the conventions, providing frequent video updates both online and on he linear channel.

The network (then called Sí TV) ran a similar campaign with Voto Latino in 2008. “With the social media tools that are available in 2016 that were not available in 2008, it’s going to be even easier and more effective in getting out the word and getting people engaged in the process,” Schwimmer said.

Revolt’s “Revolt 2 Vote” initiative will include a weekly digital series on the revolt.tv website, featuring interviews with political leaders and insights from millennial thought leaders and influencers, Clinkscales said.

The music channel’s primarily digital political content will be headed by millennial journalist Amrit Singh as well as a “kitchen cabinet” of young political voices who will discuss the campaign on Revolt.tv and social-media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

“The main thing is we have digital coverage because that’s where millennials are aggregating political content, and then we’ll do some linear programming as well,” he said.

As some 93 million millennials will be of voting age going into this year’s election, Clinkscales said it’s imperative to provide them information to make informed decisions.

“More than 30 million young people stayed home in 2012,” he said. “[Turnout] was very low — one of the lowest numbers on record. The frustration that young people have with the American political system is an opportunity to make sure we provide them with the engagement they need.”

The emerging networks are also hoping to reach millennial viewers in a way the bigger, more mainstream news networks haven’t so far. While both Fox News Channel and CNN ranked among the top 10 most-watched cable networks among total viewers during the first quarter 2016 among total viewers, neither is among the top 15 networks within the 18-49 demo, according to Nielsen.

“Millennials are not turning on the TV and watching the cable news networks,” Quinn said. “The shows that are speaking to the group are from external video Web shows.”

“They have their hands full,” Clinkscales said. “We have the luxury of going after one of America’s largest generations ever — 93 million strong and 40% from communities of color. This is the time to understand what’s going on with this 18-to-34-year-old audience.”

GOING TO THE MOVIES

Pivot will take a different tack to inform millennials about the political process, relying on politically-themed movies throughout the summer to keep politics on the minds of its younger viewers, Pivot general manager Kent Rees said.

The network will feature such films as All the President’s Men, Wag the Dog and The Fog of War.

“We’re more contextualizing the political process through these films that we’ve identified,” Rees said. “Millennials crave context and they crave it in all different directions, and having them sit down and watch a fi lm that comments on the process in general as well as documentaries like Caucus that touch on how the process works.”

The network will feature around the #justvote public-awareness campaign, which encourages young people to register and vote. Rees said there often isn’t a lot of information in the marketplace as to how to vote, so the eff ort will explain the process to help get millennials to the voting booth.

“Their involvement is clear, and it’s a great way to galvanize them,” Rees said. “It’s the largest generation in American history, and they’ve only just begun to understand their power and the opportunities to affect change in the country at large.”

In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo Wednesday (March 16), the GOP's dominant front-runner says he thinks there will be riots if he comes into the convention in Cleveland with close to the number of delegates needed and does not get the nomination for president.

Donald Trump made the talk-show rounds by phone this morning -- speaking with MSNBC, NBC and Fox News -- after winning Republican primaries in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina and possibly also Missouri. 

Following big wins in Tuesday's primary that pushed Trump closer to the delegate total he needs but did not provide a knockout blow given Gov. John Kasich's win in Ohio, Cuomo asked Trump what would happen if he came to the convention short of the requisite number of delegates.

Trump said that if he were, say, 20 votes or 100 votes short, and did not get the nomination: "I think you'd have riots. ... I am representing many millions of people... If you disenfranchise those people and say, 'I'm sorry, you're a hundred votes short,' even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you've never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really believe that," according to a CNN transcript.

Trump said he wouldn't lead those riots, "but I think bad things would happen."

Trump has been criticized for the violence at his rallies and his inflammatory rhetoric. But the candidate said in the interview that has been overblown.

"[S]ometimes we'll have somebody stand up and start screaming and then the press fix it up like it's a big deal, but to be honest with you, we have had tremendous harmony, and there's love in those rooms," he said.

Trump told Fox News this morning that plans to skip the upcoming GOP debate scheduled for Monday on Fox News -- he said he is slated to give a speech at the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC conference instead. "Nobody told me about debates. As you saw I thought the last debate on CNN was the last debate," he told Fox & Friends, Politico reported. Trump's presence has helped pump up ratings for the GOP debates.

Trump told MSNBC that he had been receiving calls from prominent Republicans he wouldn't identify but whom he said had been on talks shows previously speaking out against Trump. "They want to get together," he told Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough.

A pair of legislators have asked the Department of Homeland Security for info on how they are protecting Donald Trump and other candidates at campaign events given that there have been "more than a dozen incidents of violence, arrests, and forcible removals over the past year.

They did not specifically cite the violence at Trump rallies, but since that story has dominated the news cycle in the past week or so, they did not need to.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee, wrote Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to ask what the department has done to "maintain situational awareness and response capabilities" (translation: monitoring and potentially responding to) that violence, which has sometimes occurred "in proximity to" the candidates themselves.

Again, without citing the recent incidents at Trump rallies--the letter was dated March 11, before the Chicago Trump rally was cancelled for fear of violence--they said that campaign rallies have "become havens for charged rhetoric, which has incited violence, particularly at "certain events" where the potential for violent activity is heightened.

They want a bunch of questions answered, including how the department monitors such events, what it does with that information and who it shares the information with.

WASHINGTON — Free Press Action Fund released a 2016 Internet Voter Guide Monday (March 14) providing its take on the candidates views on the issues the net neutrality fan says are most important to Internet voters.

Nobody got particularly high marks on the issue of encryption, with free press saying no candidate has backed "strong, pro-consumer" measures.

"Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio have all challenged Apple’s right to protect the security of its users, and both Democratic candidates vaguely advocated for both parties to work together for a solution," Free Press said. For its part, the group has backed protests of the FBI's legal effort to get Apple to help it access info on the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.

The guide also out, for example, that Hillary Clinton in 2015 wrote a piece in support of the FCC's preemption of state laws limiting municipal broadband buildouts, while Ted Cruz wrote the FCC claiming it was a threat to states rights

Other takeaways:

• "While more than 34 million Americans lack truly high-speed Internet at home, Donald Trump and Cruz have been silent on the issue and Gov. John Kasich has suggested that consumers are to blame for high broadband prices. In the Republican field, only Rubio has backed legislation to expand affordable Wi-Fi deployment and further use of unlicensed spectrum for Internet access.

• "Though three-quarters of Americans have either no broadband or no choice of Internet service providers, Cruz and Rubio oppose community broadband networks, which give local businesses and residents alternative options for high-speed Internet access. Neither Trump nor Kasich have articulated positions on the issue.

• "Cruz was one of only four Republicans to sponsor the USA Freedom Act, which curbs some of the government’s mass surveillance powers, and Kasich agreed that it was a “step forward.” When Secretary Hillary Clinton was in the Senate, she cast votes that enabled NSA mass surveillance but has since called on the NSA to be more transparent. Sen. Bernie Sanders has opposed the Patriot Act and stated that he would 'absolutely' end sweeping NSA surveillance. Trump and Rubio are both in favor of government spying on Americans.

• "Cruz, Rubio and Trump all oppose the Net Neutrality protections that millions of Americans fought for: All three Republican contenders have come out against the FCC’s open Internet rules. Both Democratic candidates have advocated for enforcing strong Net Neutrality rules."

Fox News Channel’s Democratic Town Hall event last night (March 7) featuring presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders drew 2.6 million viewers, the network reported Tuesday.

The one-hour event, which marked Clinton’s first appearance on FNC in two years, also drew 473,000 viewers in the key adult 25-54 demo during the 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. time block, according to network officials.

The Detroit-based special, hosted by Bret Baier, preceeded today’s presidential primary election in Michigan. Hawaii, Idaho and Mississippi are also holding primaries today.