Phil Donahue Changed My Life—and Millions of Others
Phil Donahue was a trailblazer in bringing social issues to a national audience as a daytime broadcast TV host, and then he was pretty much banished from TV by MSNBC.
Jeff Cohen on Media Missing the Costs of Militarism
“Today there’s an elephant in the room: a huge, yet ignored, issue that largely explains why Social Security is now on the chopping block…. That problem is U.S. militarism and perpetual war.”
Olbermann and the Cult of Objectivity
I agree with Keith Olbermann (11/15/10) about the dubious value of “objectivity” as a journalistic value; he makes a telling point about how journalistic icons like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow are most honored for the moments when they reached conclusions and asserted values. And I think he’s right that the U.S. media establishment’s […]
Political Donations Are OK for Executives, Who Don’t Influence News…on Some Other Planet
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s indefinite suspension for violating network policies regarding political donations lasted all of two work days. On his Wednesday show (11/10/10), Olbermann brought up the point that FAIR made in our alert–the difficulty of squaring such a policy with MSNBC parent General Electric‘s political giving and multi-million dollar lobbying. Olbermann was joined […]
Chris Matthews’ Role in MSNBC’s Donahue Firing
MSNBC personality Chris Matthews—who sometimes claims he was opposed to the Iraq War—worked behind the scenes to get anti-war colleague Phil Donahue fired.
MSNBC’s Anti-War Censorship: A Reminder
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, doing press for his new TV show on “conspiracy theories,” made got some attention from (among others) Eric Roper at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Roper alludes toa “curious comment Ventura made in the Los Angeles Times this weekend”– that MSNBC canceled his short-lived show when they found out that he opposed […]
MSNBC’s Double Standard on Free Speech
MSNBC‘s claim to be championing free speech by hiring hate-talk radio host Michael Savage is disingenuous in the extreme. Defending its decision to give a weekly program to a commentator who specializes in diatribes against various groups, the MSNBC cable network called hiring Savage—whose show will premiere on Saturday, March 8—”a legitimate attempt to expand […]
