NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday actually interviewed disgraced New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner.
This led Daily Beast columnist Michelle Cottle to smartly observe on Fox News’s Media Buzz, “While as a Congressman he wasn't that great, and as a mayoral candidate he’s down in the polls, his penis is still a national celebrity” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Numerous commentators have noted that Wednesday's celebration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington seemed like a Democratic campaign rally.
Adding to the criticism was Fox News's Howard Kurtz writing Thursday, "[A]t times it seemed to be a production of MSNBC":
Now that he's mostly settled in at the Fox News Channel, we're wondering if former CNNer and Washington Postie Howard Kurtz is ready to take the gloves off. His Monday column dealt in part with Friday's clash between President Barack Obama and conservative icon Rush Limbaugh.
By attacking the radio talk show host as a reason Republicans supposedly tell the president privately they support his desire to fund ObamaCare but can't do so publicly, Obama "elevated Limbaugh to his level," Kurtz said. It also was an extremely unpersuasive argument, Kurtz noted.
It appears Jeff Zucker wasn't interested in creating a more fair and balanced Reliable Sources now that former host Howard Kurtz has left CNN for Fox News.
Quite the contrary, TVNewser reported Friday that the first host of the program will be the perilously liberal Daily Beast contributor John Avlon.
Readers are advised to prepare themselves for a rare dose of sanity and reality on television.
On CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday, journalism professor Steve Roberts actually said, "What's missing often in TV newsrooms: there are plenty of gays, there are very few people of faith and very few evangelical Christians who in their own beliefs would be against gay marriage. And this has always bothered me" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Before taking a series of cheap shots at Howard Kurtz, the former Daily Beast Washington bureau chief and CNN "Reliable Sources" host who has moved to Fox News to host its "Fox News Watch" program, Salon political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald characterized Kurtz's new employer as "a stable for journalists who have fallen on hard times."
In related news, the New York Yankees and the Miami Heat, respectively, have become basement-dwelling final refuges for baseball and basketball players whose skills have seriously eroded. (/sarcasm).
Veteran media reporter Howard Kurtz is joining the Fox News Channel on Monday, July 1, to serve as the anchor for a new version of the “Fox News Watch” Saturday program that has looked at media issues.
“I’m excited to be bringing my independent brand of media criticism to Fox News,” Kurtz stated in an article in the New York Times. “The chance to create a revamped program and establish a strong online presence was too good to pass up. I hope to add a new dimension to Fox’s coverage and have some fun while diving into the passionate debates about the press and politics.”
As NewsBusters has been reporting, it's been a hoot this week watching the same liberal media members that were apoplectic in 2005 when George W. Bush's domestic surveillance program was revealed contort themselves into almost impossible positions defending Barack Obama's far more intrusive scheme seven and a half years later.
Glenn Greenwald, the liberal author who first broke the news of this program, spoke to Howard Kurtz on CNN's Reliable Sources about this blatant hypocrisy (video follows with CNN.com transcript and commentary):
As NewsBusters has been reporting, liberal media members have been absolutely apoplectic over the thought of the Koch brothers buying the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
CNN's Howard Kurtz gave a somewhat more reasoned view of such an eventuality on Reliable Sources Sunday saying, "Let's remember that more liberal businessmen such as Warren Buffett have been snapping up newspapers without compromising their journalistic mission" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Politico’s Dylan Byers reported “The Daily Beast is dropping Howard Kurtz, the veteran media critic who made headlines this week for his erroneous report about NBA star Jason Collins.” Kurtz erred in suggesting Collins hadn’t been forthcoming about his fiancee, even though he discussed her on both ABC and in the Sports Illustrated cover story that made “history.” Kurtz’s story was retracted on Thursday.
On top of Kurtz losing his $300,000-a-year Beast gig (which started in October of 2010), TV Newser reported “A source at CNN tells TVNewser that Kurtz’s current deal with the cable channel will likely be his last.” The New York Times had a source claiming it wasn't just a Collins thing:
As part of the Fox News Channel's coverage of the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas on Thursday, Dana Perino, co-host of the channel's “The Five” weekday program and a White House press secretary for the 43rd president, interviewed her former boss “not to break any news here” but for viewers to meet and get to know him “as I do.”
That seven-minute discussion immediately drew fire from Howard Kurtz of CNN and the liberal Daily Beast website. He asked on the Tweeter social site whether the softball interview might have made a “mockery” of Fox's coverage of the event.