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Ask a journalist to name an example of the power of his profession. Odds are he will bring up Woodward and Bernstein's takedown of President Nixon, or Walter Cronkite's role in turning public opinion against the Vietnam War, or maybe Edward R. Murrow's exposes about Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare. Just one problem: all of these iconic moments in journalistic history are myths. So writes…

In his weekly “The Final Word” column for USA Today, “Out of the closet...well, almost,” features reporter Craig Wilson recalled in Wednesday’s newspaper: “I once knew a gay youth who was bullied. Me.” He soon, however, pivoted to “when I came out to my parents, they were not surprised.” But, “the real trouble came when I told my mother I had become a Democrat.”

 Appearing as a guest on Tuesday’s Last Word on MSNBC, Mark McKinnon - former media advisor to the Bush and McCain presidential campaigns who writes a column for the Daily Beast- blamed Sarah Palin for the Republican Party’s failure to recapture control of the Senate, charging that "she put up some candidates that really weren’t qualified." He continued: "They lost. We lost. The Republicans…

In a Thursday Washington Post column exploring how 2010 is the best year for conservatives since 1980, George Will insisted that "NPR's self-immolation" over the Juan Williams firing made it clear the starting point for deficit reduction is "public" broadcasting subsidies. The column ended with these lines: The 2010 elections made "card check" as dead as government subsidies for broadcast…

Keith Olbermann's return to MSNBC Tuesday night was "graced" by radical filmmaker Michael Moore, who expressed his belief that Obama is so far a hopeless capitalist tool and that NBC is a pro-Bush network by letting the former president have so much air time to sell his memoir (even as Matt Lauer tossed hardballs.) Naturally, Moore wasn't asked by Olbermann to consider the hours of free air…

 Appearing as a guest on Monday’s Last Word, MSNBC contributor and Princeton University Associate Professor Melissa Harris-Perry claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama have pushed a "sort of center right" agenda as she defended Pelosi’s decision to stay on to lead House Democrats despite her party’s defeat. As she missed the point that most moderate Democrats hold…

  Since Republicans won control of the House of Representatives last week, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has recited at the end of his Countdown show a new sign-off each night he has hosted noting the number of days since the GOP victory and mocking Speaker-designate John Boehner by sarcastically asking, "Where are the jobs?" At the end of Wednesday’s Countdown, he ended the show: "That's November…

With all the hype about Keith Olbermann's brief suspension and his triumphant return to MSNBC Tuesday, one would have expected his ratings to explode as first-time viewers tuned in to see what all the fuss was about. When the dust settled, the "Countdown" host's total viewers rose 35 percent from last Thursday's show before the controversy began, but most embarrassingly, Rachel Maddow…

CNN, a network known for its regular liberal bias, touted its supposed objectivity versus its competitors in a new ad which premiered on Tuesday evening. The ad graphically associated Fox News with the Republican elephant and MSNBC with the Democratic donkey, and claimed, "If you want to keep them all honest, without playing favorites, the choice is clear: CNN, the worldwide leader in news…

Is Chris Matthews taking lessons from Ed Schultz on keeping it classy? In August and September, Schultz got off a series of fat jokes aimed at NJ Gov. Chris Christie.  After Schultz eventually stooped to calling Christie a "fat slob," he was reportedly reprimanded by MSNBC president Phil Griffin. On this evening's Hardball, Matthews got off a fat joke of his own at Christie's expense…

Come to think of it, Schultz has a point. This type of thing spells trouble for Democrats. On his radio show yesterday, Schultz was talking with a caller about unemployment when he said something that demonstrated how liberals hold mixed feelings when people make the transition from dependency on government to gainful employment --

Earlier today Fox Business Channel announced that it's hiring former CNN talker Lou Dobbs to host a new program on its schedule. Once again Fox has demonstrated that it is alone among cable networks in being willing to routinely offer conservative opinion. Dobbs left CNN last year after CNN president Jonathan Klein gave him an ultimatum: "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor…

 After 40 years of delivering snarky movie reviews for NBC's Today show, Gene Shalit is calling it quits, with his final broadcast this Thursday and the long-serving movie critic didn't reserve his barbs for bad acting and direction, conservatives and their causes were occasionally targeted as well. From bad mouthing hunters -- saying they exhibited "mankind's stupidity" in his review of the…

Kicking off the panel discussion segment of last night's "Special Report," Fox News anchor Bret Baier aired a clip of Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad (N.D.) and Evan Bayh (Ind.) warning about the need to reform entitlement spending in order to preserve America's long-term financial solvency. Baier then contrasted the frankness of the admission from the "two moderate Democrats" with the scary…