Rachel Maddow

Are the Fox News Channel and MSNBC bad for America?Such was implied on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday when host Howard Kurtz invited the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, "USA Today Live's" Lauren Ashburn, and the BBC's Matt Frei on his program to discuss the "increasingly partisan nature of cable news." By the end of the conversation, Ashburn said "[T]he bottom line is this is not good for…

Clarity can come from unexpected places -- even that unlikeliest of sources, MSNBC.Such has been the case with a pair of recent guests on "The Rachel Maddow Show" who made a series of surprising statements -- albeit only in the context of MSNBC. Example one -- Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, appearing on Maddow's show May 12 and criticizing Dick Cheney's assertion that…

Kent Jones, a former Air America Radio humorist and writer for "The Daily Show," has his moments when he appears each weeknight on "The Rachel Maddow Show." But based on Jones' whopper of a claim about the movie "Casablanca," film criticism is not his forte.Here's what Jones said May 5 on Maddow's MSNBC show in describing recent articles by Stephen M. Walt and Daniel W. Drezner on the best films…

Newsweek investigative reporter and MSNBC contributor Michael Isikoff is willing to give credit where due to the Bush administration, provided it comes with a caveat.Isikoff appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC cable show last Thursday to discuss al Qaeda sleeper agent Ali al-Marri pleading guilty in federal court to terrorism charges.While conceding this could be interpreted as Bush being "…

It's not often I hear three jaw-dropping claims in the course of a single day.On "The Rachel Maddow Show," this can happen in a matter of minutes, especially when author Ron Suskind is the guest.Suskind appeared on Maddow's MSNBC program on April 22 and wasted little time making dubious assertions stemming from the Senate Armed Services report that questioned the legality of al Qaeda…

Apparently viewers are getting tired of the cutsey, smugness that is Rachel Maddow, and not just a few of them either. Ratings for the already low rated Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC have shown a steep decline recently, falling from a high of 1.9 million viewers to "slightly over 1.1 million." Naturally, MSNBC President Phil Grifin is putting on the brave face calling Maddow a "rock star" and that…

How is it that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow toiled for years as a student before before earning a doctorate in political science at Oxford -- yet managed to avoid studying the American Civil War?  How else to explain Maddow's commentary last Thursday in response to tea party protests nationwide against dubious tax policy and runaway government spending?Here's what Maddow said in previewing an upcoming…

Talk about a divorced from reality headline! Check out this McClatchy Newspapers headline: "Liberal TV Host Rachel Maddow Works for Civility." The article itself, dateline Los Angeles by Rick Bentley, follows the lead of its fawning headline:MSNBC boasts Maddow has become the network's first program to beat CNN talker Larry King in more than a dozen years.Maddow had been hosting her own show for…

This journalism "thingy," a word used with cloying frequency by MSNBC political analyst Rachel Maddow, is proving problematic for the former Air America Radio host.On her cable show Tuesday night, Maddow informed viewers of "breaking news" that a terrorist suspect imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay had somehow called the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network on a cell phone.Here's how Maddow described it…

MSNBC prides itself as being the place for politics, the seemingly clever marketing slogan could be used to describe the network as the place where hosts try to use dirty humor about important political events. David Shuster, filling in for MSNBC loose-cannon Keith Olbermann on his April 13 broadcast, and his writers probably thought they were pretty clever when they pieced an item denigrating…

With the Tax Day tea party rallies just three days away, outside of the Fox News Channel, the coverage has been lacking. And, it was something that even Washington Post media columnist and host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" Howard Kurtz acknowledged on his April 12 program. "The folks at Fox News have found something to be for in this age of Obama," Kurtz said. "They are firmly in favor of tea…

It's hard to find an upside to the continuous drumbeat of bad economic news. But on April 7, MSNBC host and Obama cheerleader Rachel Maddow felt compelled to try. "There is a silver lining here, maybe," Maddow said. "As horrible as the jobs numbers are and as pessimistic as executives across the country appear to be - Americans broadly speaking are actually sort of increasingly optimistic these…