Reliable Sources

A seventeen year veteran of CNN claimed Sunday that Lou Dobbs' surprising exit from the network was because "his opinions are out of lockstep with the rest of the mainstream news media."Discussing the issue with Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Chris Plante, a former CNN correspondent and current talk radio host, said Dobbs, as "the last conservative voice on the channel," no longer fit…

The Republicans may have won huge victories in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday, but Time's Joe Klein still thinks the GOP is "an extremist shard of a party that is essentially a regional southern party in the country."I guess the 66 and 60 percent of independents who voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia and New Jersey respectively on Tuesday are also part of this…

Former Fox News contributor Jane Hall said Sunday that one of the reasons she left the cable network was because she was uncomfortable with host Glenn Beck who she believes "should be called out as somebody whose language is way over the top and scary."Fox watchers know Hall as one of the regular liberal panelists on Saturday's "Fox News Watch" as well a frequent guest on "The O'Reilly Factor"…

On Sunday, ESPN host and sportswriter Michael Wilbon said conservative talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh is "univerally reviled by African-Americans." As amazing as it may seem, this was at least the second time Wilbon made this statement on national television.Unfortunately, the person he said it to Sunday -- Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources" -- didn't bother challenging him about…

With each passing day, more and more media members are taking shots at the Obama administration's strategy of attacking Fox News.On Sunday, one of the best observations yet came from Marisa Guthrie of Broadcasting & Cable magazine: "[Obama] can talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but he can't talk to Chris Wallace."Such was stated on CNN's "Reliable Sources" after host Howard Kurtz played a video of…

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Fox officials agree that all this attention is helping ratings.Three days before Howard Kurtz talked with White House communications director Anita Dunn about the Obama administration's attacks on the Fox News Channel, a number of CNN contributors pointed out how this strategy is helping FNC's ratings while hurting Democrats. Such was discussed on Thursday's "Situation Room…

"I think what is fair to say about FOX and certainly the way we view it is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party...[When President Obama] goes on FOX, he understands that he is not going on -- it really is not a news network at this point. He's going to debate the opposition."So said White House communications director Anita Dunn on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" in what appeared to…

On Sunday, Howard Kurtz accidentally exposed how poorly the media report on issues of race, and how they not only use implications of prejudice to "[pump] steroids into an ordinary story," they also either ignore important events or badly misreport them due to their own biases.In the first segment on the most recent installment of CNN's "Reliable Sources," Kurtz and his panel discussed comments…

When Glenn Beck reports that a top-level White House advisor has endorsed communism, accused 'white polluters' of poisoning minority communities, called his political opponents a**holes, and believes an American president was complicit in the slaughter of innocent civilians, Beck must have a hidden agenda. When the mainstream media fails to report these facts, it's all an honest mistake.Or so one…

Howard Kurtz opened Sunday's "Reliable Sources" with a lovefest for the promotion of ABC's Diane Sawyer to replace Charles Gibson on "World News Tonight."Mysteriously, there was absolutely no discussion about how Sawyer's "Good Morning America" is constantly second in the ratings to NBC's "Today" show, nor was there mention of how Katie Couric regularly bested Sawyer in the morning but has been a…

Howard Kurtz on Sunday accused Fox News's Glenn Beck of attacking White House "green czar" Van Jones in response to the advertiser boycott implemented by Color of Change, an advocacy group founded by Jones. Such a conclusion seems to stem from all the time Beck spent on his program last week chronicling Jones's activities as well as his background. What Kurtz conveniently ignored in this…

No Republican senator or living president deserves the kind of media attention Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) has received since the announcement of his death on Tuesday.So stated Emily Rooney, a former executive producer for ABC's "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," and the current executive editor of WGBH's "Beat the Press."For those unfamiliar, she is also the daughter of CBS's Andy Rooney.…

As Americans flood to town hall meetings and Tea Parties to express their opposition to ObamaCare, media members find it somewhat hypocritical that these same people might have looked upon anti-Bush protests with contempt.This seeming contradiction was addressed on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday when host Howard Kurtz asked his guests, "[H]asn't Fox, in fact, flipped -- some Fox hosts, I should…

On CNN Sunday, Howard Kurtz asked his "Reliable Sources" guests if Fox News's Glenn Beck should be fired for calling President Obama a racist.As he pressed the issue, Kurtz must have forgotten how much attention his own network gave to Kanye West's claim in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that "George Bush does not care about black people."In fact, in the weeks following the destruction of New…