buzz." coming up right now. on the buzz beater this sunday, president obama back on network television this morning continuing his media campaign on syria after reaching a deal with russia. days after making his case to six openly skeptical anchors. and members of congress are saying we'll concept wal because we don't think the administration has a strategy for day two, day three, day four. >> i have to say that's not the case. >> you talk about limited, targeted military action but the fact is you don't know what happens after you order a strike. >> actually we know what the capabilities are. >> and the press turns thumbs down on his east room speech. did the tv blitz fail? while bashar assad was delivering his spin on cbs.

and as vladimir putin was hitting the u.s. in "the new york times." zena brown flames out at the daily beast. what happened and can the website where i used to work survive? and "time" editor rick stengel joining the obama administration. what does that say about the mainstream media. is facebook bumming you out? new research says having lots of online friends can be downright depressing. plus jimmy kimmel fools the media, but why waste our time over twerking? i'm howard kurtz, and this is "media buzz." we want to hear from you. send me a tweet about the show and we'll read the best ones at the end of the program. president obama is again trying to seize the media offensive after getting pummeled by the press overseeria.

he taped an interview that aired earlier today on "this week." >> words like ad hoc, improvised, unsteady come to mind. this is probably the most undisciplined stretch of foreign policy in your presidency. what do you make of that? >> well, i think that folks here in washington like to grade on style. >> and when the president sat down with anchors from nbc, abc, cbs, fox and pbs, the questions signalled a widespread view that his strategy didn't quite seem to add up. >> are we back from the brink? is military strike on pause? >> absolutely, if in fact that happens. >> i mean are we talking a pinprick, a knockout blow, a punch in the gut? >> the u.s. does not do pinpricks. >> how do you persuade members of congress and the american people who are overwhelmingly in new polls out today not in favor

of this idea. >> i guess my question is how much responsibility do you think you bear for the opposition? >> the president's televised address from the east room also drawing decidedly mixed reviews. joining us now, lauren ashburn, fox news contributor and a former managing editor of "usa today." steve roberts, professor of public affairs at the george washington university. and david zuric. why, lauren ashburn, did the president feel the need to go on television again after this week-long media blitz. >> george, i think, had a very good interview with him. he asked the questions that needed to be asked. he asked is president putin playing you? which i think a lot of people want to know. he said is it a victory if assad is still in power? and how much time does he have to give up those weapons. for your first question, why does president obama want to go on tv. are you crazy? he wants to get out the message that i believe the u.s. is the one that, let's say, pushed

president putin to make this. >> the message seems to be a lot of the same talking points as we have heard all week. >> oh, i listened this morning to the interview and looked at the transcript, as i did to all of the other ones. abc diane sawyer early in the week. the president said we maintained a credible possibility of a military strike. scott pelley, he said to him if it doesn't continue to be a credible military threat from the u.s. chris wallace, credible threat of a military strike and today taking credit again. >> steve roberts, even in straight news accounts, it seems to me obama is getting bad press on syria, whether he's going to war, pulling back or pursuing diplomacy. even with russia, it doesn't seem things have changed very much. >> that's true. one more bit of evidence to strike down the theory that the press is liberal and are easy on democratic presidents. that's always been the stupid idea and it's even more stupid now given these facts. the truth is the biases that

animate any newsroom is that reporters are against whoever is in power in favor of a good story and they are appropriately being tough on the president. but the other reason is they're reflecting, i think, the uneasiness in the american public. 79% of the public told nbc that they thought the president was being unclear. two-thirds in every poll didn't agree with it. and i think the critics have been much louder than his supporters. and i think that is a key factor in the negative notion and even this morning, john mccain, lindsey graham, much more critical, much louder than his supporters. >> his supporters in the media have pairly been audible. as he talked to the whole gang at the networks, david, was there anybody who stood out as doing a particularly good or not good job? >> this isn't surprising and people will say i'm saying it because i'm on fox. but traditionally fox has been the toughest on the president. i said a month into the

administration, when his administration first came into power the press was fawning. it was shameful how the press rolled over. fox was the only one and they were retaliated against. i think chris wallace did the best interview. now, in fairness, everybody was tough on him, appropriately tough, i think. but wallace really did the best. you know the clip you showed where he said assad says there could be repercussions. you don't really know what's going to happen if he do it. that was his first question, because chris wallace saw brett baier interview him and saw obama try to stall and not give him any answers. at one point wallace said, please, mr. president, we don't have much time here. at the end he asked a big long question that obama tried to mock and say i'll try to give you a shorter answer. but he recounted all the --

>> the president gave some long answers this morning. let's play a little bit of charlie rose sitting down with assad because he actually kind of scooped obama because that interview aired on cbs and pbs before the president got out of the gate with the network anchors. >> are you suggesting that if in fact there's a strike, there would be repercussions against the united states from your friends in other countries, like iran or hezbollah or others? >> as i said, it may take different forms, direct and indirect. direct when people want to retaliate or governments. >> an interview worth doing? >> of course it's an interview worth doing. you want to hear from the news makers. but that doesn't mean there are some people out there this doesn't find this reprehensible that we are giving an hour of air time just as dan rather did in 2003 with saddam hussein. >> did it make you uneasy? >> it made me cringe. i don't want to hear from this fellow because i think that it

gave him the opportunity to lie. now, that said, i'm a journalist and i would have done that interview. i would have done it in a heartbeat as i'm sure the two of you would have. >> absolutely. this whole notion that somehow either assad or putin or anybody else should be barred because they make us cringe, that is a profoundly anti-democratic, anti-american concept. the whole idea is we should know what they have to say, debate their ideas, correct them and criticize them, but give them the time. >> steve, i'm sorry, go ahead. >> no. i said this whole notion that somehow we bar from our a waves and our public discourse people who we find reprehensible, i mean that's stupid. >> a lot of people believe that. >> well, i think they're wrong. >> assad is a thug and a murderer so i can understand the emotional reaction. >> he may well be. but if you listen to that, you learn something also about how the world sees us and our own prejudices. at one point, in all praise to

charlie for getting that interview and he's a great interviewer, i would never say that, but at one point he said to him with thunder, "the new york times" this morning says you have -- on the front page, i'm quoting, you have the largest stockpile of weapons and assad said would that be the same "new york times" on its front page who said saddam hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction? and it showed us. at one point he said of our administration, he said, you know, our administration isn't a social media administration like yours where we do everything. there was a lot to learn from that interview, there really was. so all praise to charlie rose and cbs on that. >> and you also got to see this person who is called a dictator up close and personal. you know, as we say, eyebrows and chin. and see is he lying? what do you think about what he's saying? >> he was very robotic and very hard to watch when he talked about chemical weapons. >> but also clever, impressing on the single biggest weakness

of the obama campaign, which is vast unhappiness in america with what happens next. >> right. >> being involved in the middle east. >> let me come back to sort of the competing spins because there was a pretty good story in "the new york times" which talked about the way obama supporters and opponents are dealing with his conduct on syria. it gave the white house view. in this view, says "the new york times," obama is a nimble leader more concerned about getting the answer right than satisfying a political class, all too eager to second guess even move. obama today says i'm being graded on style points rather than results. yet when i pick up the papers today and watch television, i don't see people saying, well, obama did the right thing, he pulled back. he didn't have support and got to a diplomatic agreement. of course we don't know what's going to happen with this agreement but why is the president getting so little credit for an outcome which seems to be more in line with what the country wants, which is no military action. >> but what the president also wants is clarity and he's not been able to give them that.

i think a lot of his own supporters have been muted in their support of him. even his best friends. because they have not been able to stand by the president and say he has made a clear and compelling case. >> where are his friends in the media? apparently abandoning him on syria. >> as is the public. 48% of voters consider his foreign policy weak. you have probably 10% of democrats who agree with what he's doing. and even fewer opinion writers who are giving him a pass, including those that lean democratic. >> he's getting no nice words now because they behaved so erratically for two weeks. look at the expert on syria. secretary of state kerry brought in and held up to congress as their guide post. >> i've got to go to break. but we look at every hour and the public may be more interested where we end up on

this. america pauses to remember the 9/11 attacks but how much is enough 12 years later. that's next on "media buzz."

september 11th was a solemn day of remembrance this year as it has been every year since 2001, but how much media coverage should be devoted to the anniversary? everyone covered these ceremonies, some networks more than others. msnbc reran some of the attacks of 2001 which i found hard to watch. what's your take? >> this is a really tough call on how you do this, because -- but last year there was the argument about "the new york times" not having it on page one for the first time on the 11th anniversary. i think it gets complicated because sacrifice like this is not distributed equally through the society. so people who have suffered immediate loss of family or

someone they love have one relationship to it and the country has another. i thought of the motorcycle -- >> two million bikes. >> right. in washington not getting a permit. and it set, well, it would snarl traffic and we're moving forward, we have to deal with today's traffic, not 12 years ago. >> i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i have a hard time with what you're saying, david, because i think just like pearl harbor day is remembered on radio and on television every day, you'll hear a mention of it and that was 1941, right? >> i don't think anybody didn't remember it. >> now it's only 12 years later. but the criticism is that we should cover it, we shouldn't see the planes going in. i find it hard that people don't want this kind of coverage. the "today" show, for example, last year got into trouble because they were in a kris jenner interview and they did something else. but this year they did a

fabulous job. >> the larger point here is you can cover the ceremonies, but you also have to cover the meaning. the real importance here is the continued echo, the continued trauma, the continued impact this event has on our national life, on our policies. we live in the shadow of 9/11 and it's not just covering the bands or the memories or the roses, it's covering the meaning and the continuing impact on our life that's incorporate. >> and some media, particularly conservative ones made note of the first anniversary of the benghazi attacks, which also occurred on september 11th. fair enough or given too much prominence given the magnitude of what happened 2001. >> i think that's political. i think that's partisan. 9/11, let's keep it what it is. i agree with steve that we absolutely have to understand the meaning of this event. when you bring in benghazi, you're muddling that message. >> why is it necessarily partisan because americans died

september 11th, 2011, as well. >> but you're diluting the message of 9/11 as it now stands. let's be honest, we don't know what happened at benghazi. >> and any, any plausible connection between 9/11 and benghazi is totally out of any sense of rationality. to try to say they're even in the same frame makes no sense. >> steve, david, thanks for stopping by this sunday morning. lauren, we'll see you later. and in our press picks -- there is fair criticism to be given of cnn's revised "crossfire." but an attack by the daily caller website is both sexist and utterly vicious. writer patrick howly slamming a

loathsome creature like stephanie cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul. a charmless, dead-eyed tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an met shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of awareness. i didn't like reading that on the air. up next, "the new york times" gets denounced for giving vladimir putin a platform to hammer the u.s. we'll debate that next on the "media buzz."

"the new york times" op-ed page got a new contributor this week. vladimir putin took several shots at the u.s. relying on

brute force in the middle east, claimed it was the syrian rebels, not the assad regime that had used chemical weapons, was this fit in print? joining us now dana milbank and jim pinkerton. dana, critics are horrified that cred putin gets to criticize the u.s. >> how dare he. i assume the criticism of "the new york times" but i think any newspaper would print it and anybody would take that interview. >> why? >> because it's newsworthy. it's not that he just went off to talk about how terrific he looks with his shirt off riding a horse, he had something that was relevant to our debate here in america. i think he probably did his own cause more disservice by unifying americans against his position and he completely distorted his logic by coming out and suggesting that the rebels were the ones that used

the chemical weapons and concluding let's take the weapons away from the syrian regime. >> should they have published that piece? >> as you were saying in the previous segment about the interview with assad, you go for it. however, i don't think it would have hurt to have said to president obama, would you like an op-ed alongside his? of course that would beg the question whether or not the administration was capable of creating an op-ed that they would stick to for long enough to have it printed. the fact that they haven't responded -- you think that secretary kerry and the president would want to do the same thing. >> or what about the "times" running its own editorial rebuttal or taking on putin over such a ludicrous claim about chemical weapons. but at the same time, andy rosenfeld said he defended the publication it was well win, well argued. he didn't agree with a lot of it but it certainly made news everywhere. it was propaganda but it was

newsworthy propaganda. >> yeah, it was good propaganda but i do think the administration missed an opportunity to respond to that. i'm not sure side by side. but somewhere, just think, mr. president, your rival, president putin, says america is not exceptional. what do you say to that? there is nothing but good press there. why didn't he do it? i don't know. >> meanwhile "the new york post" says putin twists knife and outfoxed obama. the "post" did capture the gist of what peggy was writing. >> was it an example of what we celebrate in this country, which is free speech, even for a russian leader? >> yes, it was that. as oliver wendell holmes said it's not free speech for the speech you like, it's free speech for the speech you hate. >> another issue for the two of you is another personnel for the obama administration. rick stengel will be undersecretary of state for diplomacy and public affairs.

he can join jay carney, now white house press secretary. doesn't this make the mainstream media look bad? >> well, i think it does but i don't blame rick for this. he's just following in a great tradition of sort of a revolving door between politics and journalism. so it kind of makes me queasy, the whole thing. i wish people would pick one or the other. but some of the most legendary figures in this business from the sainted tim russert to sainted mr. pinkerton have done this so this is how the business works. >> did he disarm you with that? >> i would just say this. according to elsbeth reeve, this is the 21st journalist who has gone to work for the obama administration. i have to say, dana, you're right, given your performance on "hardball" earlier this week there's zero chance the administration ask you to join them. >> i have not had the phone

ringing off the hook. >> i guess you were critical? >> i have occasionally been. >> no federal job for you. but there is a long tradition of some people going from journalism into politics or public service as they would prefer to put it. clearly there has been a lot more of it in the obama administration. i think rick stengel was a pretty good editor during his seven years at the helm. but i was interviewing him once and said can't you find a good conservative columnist to go up against joe kline and he said he was still looking. so i wonder if it does -- whether it's something -- does it raise gez about what they did when they were on the msn side of the line. >> if you're going to make a switch, as some people do, but when you make a switch and then come back, i think it tarts to raise questions, particularly when you come back to the news business. can you keep up your integrity? it's different if you're an opinion person as opposed to a journalist, but i just don't see -- >> like tony snow who became

george w. bush's -- and hosting a show at fox. >> my colleague michael gerson was a journalist, is bush's chief speechwriter and is back wroigt a column. i think he needs a certain disclaimer when he's writing about president bush. i wish it didn't occur but it owe curses. >> it's not as if these weekly newsmagazines like "newsweek" are flourishing anymore so the chance to leave "time" magazine may bow a smart move. >> but the larger pattern, jim, does it suggest to you, you know, plain ole bias or are journalists able to do their job when they're part of the media and then say, okay, this is a career change and now i'm going to be part of the political administration? >> i would say that stengel was an honest liberal beforehand and i imagine he'll continue that working for secretary kerry. >> an honest liberal. but does being an honest liberal affect his stewardship of "time"

magazine in your view? >> i don't know him well enough to have an assessment. look, he wrote a book about nelson mandela. i think it's probably a meet of the minds. which of course is the critique conservatives make all along. there is no difference between the obama administration and the mainstream media on many, many issues. >> we wish him well in his new job and we wish you guys well. dana milbank, jim pinkerton. send me a tweet about our show @howardkurtz and we'll bring the bet mess annuals at the end of the program. anthony weiner got beat but not before a train wreck of an interview on msnbc. we'll have the lowlights.

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with howard kurtz. in our press picks, here's the top shotfest. anthony weiner, awe i may have heard, lost badly this week in

new york's mayoral primary. television programs kept putting him on, even though he was in single digits, while all but ignoring the candidates like bill de blasio who won the primary. when lawrence o'donnell put weiner in the chair, things got very personal. >> what is wrong with you? >> i don't understand the question. what is wrong with me that i care so much about the issues that i might for every day? that i have my entire career? >> anthony, i think there is something wrong with you. >> you just said that. >> and i'm looking at your life. >> chillax, buddy. just dial it down a second. >> i mean it from a psychiatric level. >> dude, dude, i don't really need your psychiatric questions. >> you are being -- you are being driven by some kind of demons in some strange directions. >> do you want to ask me a question or do you want to have me on to harangue with a split

screen. >> we've got about 20 seconds left. >> let me turn that around. what is wrong with you, lawrence, and with us for taking such delight in turning weiner into a punching bag. yes, the guy obviously has problems and anyone running for public office is fair game. but inviting him on had very little to do with the mayor's race but had everything to do with confrontation. weiner flipped the bird to an nbc reporter as he left. after the break, tina brown heading out the door at "the daily beast" and could anyone else have saved "newsweek." we'll ask two former editors at we'll ask two former editors at the magazine. any last requests mr. baldwin? do you mind grabbing my phone and opening the capital one purchase eraser? i need to redeem some venture miles before my demise. okay. it's easy to erase any recent travel expense i want. just pick that flight right there. mmm hmmm. give it a few taps, and...it's taken care of. this is pretty easy, and i see it works on hotels too.

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home. personal. safety. dignity. family. independence. confidence. it's the american dream isn't it? home. we need your help... building for americas bravest. tina brown was a celebrated former editor of "vanity fair" and "the new yorker" and talk magazine when she was hired to launch the daily beast website which then bought "newsweek" where i worked more than two years. the print magazine has since been shut down and sold and this week brown says she is leaving the money-losing beast. i spoke with two journalists who have a connection to "newsweek." joining us now here in washington, john solomon who worked for tina brown and in new york, mark whitaker, a former editor of "newsweek" who's working on a biography of bill cos cosby. let's start by giving tina brown her due. smart, charm, works hard and

good at generating buzz. >> absolutely. that's her wheelhouse. i think even in the era we find ourselves in now, she still has a great ability to create buzz. the question is can she create money in this environment. that was always the big thing for her. >> it would be hard given what happened with "newsweek," did she damage the "newsweek" brand, a brand you worked very hard to build up when you were the editor? >> well, to give her credit, she inherited a magazine that on the one hand had a lot of fixed costs that were very hard to get out of at a time when the revenues really were damaged. and also where a lot of the people who, you know, i had attracted to the magazine, other editors who were sort of the marquee brands of the magazine had already left. so it was a heavy lift to begin with. but the marriage with the daily beast was always a little awkward. one of the things it did to n k "newsweek" that in order to not compete they denuted the website

of "newsweek." this day and age it's very hard to compete if you don't have all of your platforms aligned. >> right. john solomon, we both left under contentious circumstances. we wanted to leave, tina wanted us to leave, let's just put that on the table. but "the new york times" reporting her tendencies, what it called her tendencies toward chaotic management and indecision, she spent a lot of money. how much of a factor do you think that was in the difficulty that say "newsweek" and the daily beast have had? >> i think you have to look at her tenure in the same context we look at the entire news media struggle. we were all in the 1990s and certainly as you and i talked many times, tina knew how to put out a great magazine in the 1990s. then you have this new era, business models are changing, readership models are changing and she's trying to take a damaged brand as we said with "newsweek," merge it with this modern sort of website and make business work and journalism work. some of her ideas conveyed and did very well and some didn't.

>> did the turnover hurt and the tensions with editors who left hurt? >> there was a sense of constant change. in this environment we're used to 24/7 news but not always used to 24/7 directions. >> given the set of obstacles you laid out, mark whitaker, i think it's probably fair to say that it might have been impossible for anyone to save "newsweek." tina brown certainly generated a lot of attention for the magazine, but then she did things like put that famous wild-eyed picture of michele bachmann on the cover and there was one of princess diana, how she would look today if she had lived. do you think those kinds of covers, some people called them stunts, undermined what the magazine was trying to do? >> first of all, i don't think it necessarily comported with what people expected from "newsweek" which was i think in-depth reporting on the news and not just a sort of sensationalism. but look, i think tina was at her best i think in an era where you could create sort of buzz

from on high. and i think that one of the things that i think she's discovered, she discovered at "newsweek" but also at the daily beast is in this day and age, it's much harder to do that. first of all, you're competing with social media, you're competing with a lot of bottom-up buzz. and i think in these days, i think any media brand in order to survive and thrive has to first pick an audience. i mean first decide what is -- who are you targeting? and to build your strategy around that. and although there were a lot of sort of clever ideas, i think at "newsweek" and the daily peebea there was never a clear sense of what audience she was going after. >> perhaps your biggest scoop, john solomon, was the interview you got with the hotel maid who accused dominique strauss-kahn of assault. >> i think you saw the best and sometimes the troubling side of tina in that story. when they realized that we had gotten the maid to do an

interview, we didn't have an edition, we were in summer recess and tina whipped up a special edition and i admired that and it was great. behind the scenes there was all this meddling going on. i was having conversations with a lawyer and she was having separate conversations that i was blindsided by. and then maybe we could put the maid up in a nice hotel for a month and that pay for play attitude for journalism, which was a bother to me. i went to tina and said, hey, tina, i don't want anything about this interview to be anything but pure journalism. but you saw the ambition. and the appreciation that it was a scoop and put it on the cover and create a magazine. former obama aides were hired as

commentators or the daily beast website. does that hurt a brand of independence or is there a place any more for a magazine that tries to be straight down the middle? >> well, again, i think that i'd like to hope and to think that there is, but i don't think that that in and of itself i think is enough of a reason for being. i think that there are people who want to hear both sides or at least a more independent voice, but i think, again, you have to identify specifically who they are. are they from, you know, the sort of elites from the two coasts, the highly educated audience, highly female audience, an international audience, so, you know, again, i think we live in an era where i think you really have to kind of understand who you're targeting, who you're marketing towards and that this kind of -- the idea that an editor can just sort of create something interesting in a vacuum and that that's

necessarily going to make a brand thrive, i think those days are past. >> as far as the future of the daily beast, there's a memo to the staff i can't make promises about the future. while tina is moving on to create a company where she's going to do live conferences still has a lot of talented writers and reporters, even though many people have left. can it sur vovive without her? >> one of the things i appreciated about tina is she tried not to make the daily beast completely independent on her personality. i think that it will live on for a period of time as long as it can find a revenue stream and cost structure that works. >> unfortunately, it is losing money now. >> it is. from what i understand on the published reports. but they have a big audience. there's tens of millions of people a month and that should be sustainable at the right cost structure. >> john, mark, thanks very much for joining us. and i hope the beast roars on.

next in our digital download, facebook may not be good for your mental health. and will twitter's ipo be good for your pocketbook?

download. everyone wants more facebook friends? >> volunteers who spent more time on the social network reported feeling more dissatisfied with their lives than those who are only occasionally. and they felt that moment by moment. >> i don't think facebook causes loneliness. i think lonely people use facebook to get a connection

with people. >> of course they flock to have a connection with people but then they wind up feeling like they are missing out on something. there is an acronym called fomo. feeling of missing out. you see they are looking glamorous and holding new babies. >> it's like a dating site. everyone makes their pictures look good. >> have you seen the story about the 12-year-old who was bullied and committed suicide? it easterabl' terrible. it can be a very negative place.

>> it only makeous feel as if you are missing out on something or there is something that you are being hurt by. >> twitter, like facebook, launching or announcing an ipo this week. the details are confidential. it's a huge force in journalism but can this company make money? >> it's a seven-year-old company and they have to figure out a way to get more than promoted tweets as a source of advertising revenue. the revenue could be 583 million. they need to show advertisers and everybody else. >> it could but then it would lose a lot of people. >> it doesn't want to spoil the experience.

>> seems to me like there is is a lot of media hype. why? because so many journalists are on. >> i don't think that's just it. i think that a lot of people enjoy that interaction you get with people without having to ask them to be your friend. you can follow anyone on twitter and see what they have to say. the real question here with twitter, i believe, is it a viable business? and can it as facebook did this week, actually trade above its ipo stock price? >> and the jury is very much out. that $9 billion valuation is more than most media companies just for a service that is built on a seemingly simple seat of 140 character messages. >> which we both use quite often. please, tweet to us whether or not you liked our segment about

twitter and tweets. >> i expect positive and negative. >> buzz worthy is next. a big real estate deal that wasn't. and a viral video about twerking that hoodwinked the media.

>> now for your best tweets this past hour, charlie rose did a

great job interviewing assad, and it was great he put it right on the air. o'donnell is a lot like msnbc today, the only way they get noticed is acting like britney spears. that's a little harsh. >> it was an irresistible item about technology and real estate. yahoo! chief and her husband have a $45 million mansion. said to be the most expensive home purchase in the city's history. except that it never happened. mayer tweeted that she didn't buy the house and said don't believe everything you read on the internet. the huff post attributed the information to radar online.

all too typical of how this stuff bounces around the web. >> you probably know by now that jimmy kimmel fooled the world by staging a phoney video featuring twerking and boy did media outlet's fall on their butts. >> it now has 8 million. the girl in this video was trying to make a sexy twerk video for her boyfriend. >> now the internet is on fire. >> a side effect of a fad known as twerking. >> apparently it is getting dangerous. >> this ended in near disaster. >> you might catch on fire. >> oh my god. >> after all of the reports, the viral video drew 9 million views, the abc comedian revealed

the hoax. >> any conspiracy theorists on the internet who thought the video was fake, you are right. >> it was a gag. what was the point? what was the difference between what kimmel did and what the balloon boy did. it is still lying to the media. the point is we're wasting too much time on twerking and kimmel just added that. i like jimmy kimmel, but this was a waste of his comedic talent. let's continue the conversation on twitter on facebook and on our home page. we're back here next sunday >> good morning it is monday september 16th. five people confirmed dead more than 1,000 unaccounted for after

colorado is pummelled with more than 15 feet of rain. we are live with the latest on the rescue and recovery. >> another benghazi bombshell. a shocking report the state department's review of the attack was flawed and even worse top officials were let off the hook. >> red flags for our nation's bridges. a disturbing report. why thousands are so old and risky and rundown making those a safety res can for you. what you need to know before you hit the roads this morning. "fox & friends first" starts now. ♪ >> hope you had some good dreams last night. we appreciate you beginning your week with us. thank you so much for watching

"fox & friends first" on this monday morning. i am heather childers. we do appreciate that. we are going to start you off with a really good week. >> let's get right to the fox alert we were telling you about. a major heiress cue set to happen today as officials hope for clear skies. more than 1700 stranded residents have been rescued from the flooding. it left five people dead and ravaged as many as 19,000 homes. we have more on the story. >> good morning heather and ainsley. it keeps on coming more wet weather across parts of colorado adding already to the soaked landscape. a lot of roads have been destroyed many completely washed out others are on foot others paddling their way around. >> woke up this morning to make sure and there was a guy kayaking right outside our