Liberal Talk Radio

Meet the Press is a money-maker: Mr. Russert had led “Meet the Press,” the oldest continuous program on television, since 1991. Under Mr. Russert, “Meet the Press” had become a source of prestige for NBC as the premier place for newsmakers and political candidates to make their case to the nation. It also provided financial [...]

There’s a great exchange between Chris Matthews and The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza towards the end of this clip: Lizza has the audacity to suggest that it’s the journalist’s job not only to “report” on the “controversy,” regarding Obama’s pastor, but to actually inform viewers that these guys are actually different people. Lizza says, “If [...]

I recommend reading James Fallows and Josh Marshall on the ridiculousness of the ABC Democratic Debate tuesday night. Of course, the debate was watched by some 10 million people, the most of any debate thusfar. No doubt ABC will offer this statistic as “proof” that the questions were valid, conveniently ignoring the fact that people [...]

This week’s Sunday NYT Magazine profile on Chris Matthews is fascinating. Though I think Matthews is a bit of a buffoon, I still find his show interesting and I tune in to watch whenever I can. But he’s clearly operating in the politics of another era. Consider: Matthews is as pure a political being as [...]

[Fear not, no real spoilers to follow...] In an interview with Salon, The Wire creator David Simon defends himself against the complaint that the fifth season of the show doesn’t address the role of the internet in the decline of newspapers: If you’re saying that there needed to be scenes of the Internet interacting with [...]

This is a couple weeks old, but still interesting: CNN, which had been sucking wind behind the blabbers of Fox News before the election, is suddenly bubbling along on huge numbers, buoyed by debates, primaries and all the dots being connected in between. Almost 3.3 million people tuned in to CNN’s prime-time election coverage last [...]

Bill, I really don’t need you to tell me that the leading Democratic candidates for president are hesitant to discuss the relative benefits of the troop surge in Iraq. I seem to have read somewhere that the surge is working. That’s good! It’s important to take care of stuff in Iraq! But you know what? [...]

Man, if only we had some TV writers around to explore the delicious irony here: According to Nielsen’s figures, YouTube’s audience was up 18% in the two months after the strike started and Crackle doubled its audience from 1.2 million users to 2.4 million users A BBC report quoted Nielsen analyst Alex Burmaster “that is [...]

. . . and it’s surprisingly weak. Does he always write like this? I want more David Brooks, less Fox News Sunday! Besides, Peggy Noonan made his same points last week, only better. First, Kristol today: I was watching the debate at the home of a savvy, moderately conservative New Hampshire Republican. It was at [...]

Jack Shafer says quit yer bellyachin’ about Bill Kristol’s new gig as a NYT columnist: If being wrong about the war should disqualify Kristol from the Times op-ed page, then Times op-ed veteran and war-supporter Thomas L. Friedman, who was still calling the invasion “one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad” [...]