Marvin Kalb

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller was challenged Monday night on the paper’s commitment to objectivity, especially concerning opinionizing in front-page articles, in an appearance televised on C-Span, before an audience at George Washington University. About 26 minutes into the wide-ranging journalism discussion, moderator Marvin Kalb challenged Keller.

Kalb: “On the Times you have news and then you’ve got opinion. Now there should be a wall between the two. Your ombudsman Arthur Brisbane says, and I quote, ‘the news pages are laced with analytical and opinion pieces that work against the premise that the news is just the news, unquote. Many conservatives as you well know, criticize the Times as being a liberal, left-wing newspaper, and that those views get into the news part of your newspaper. Why do you allow this to happen?”

Executive Editor Bill Keller and Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet were interviewed at the National Press Club Monday night by Marvin Kalb for “New York Times Behind the Scenes,” which aired on C-Span. As reported Monday night by Keach Hagey of Politico, when Kalb asked what Keller thought of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who has launched a New York edition of the Wall Street Journal, Keller impishly replied “Who?” before saying he thought Murdoch’s greatest impact in the United States comes through Fox News.

After hesitantly giving Murdoch credit for investing in journalism, albeit tabloid-style journalism, Keller criticized Murdoch’s “most lasting effect in this country,” Fox News, even bringing up the attempted murder of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords:

On Tuesday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O’Reilly showed clips from the Kalb Report show in which moderator Marvin Kalb, a veteran of both CBS and NBC News, interviewed O’Reilly. During the interview, which was recorded on September 27, O’Reilly managed to embarrass Kalb as the liberal host seemed to criticize President Bush for ordering American troops into war after the President himself "avoided military service," but he seemed to forget that Bill Clinton, who ordered a war against Serbia, dodged the draft and avoided military service altogether while Bush did at least serve in the National Guard. Kalb posed the question: "Do you believe that a President who avoided military service himself should be sending young men and women to fight in what are called ‘wars of choice’?"

After O’Reilly flippantly asked Kalb if he was talking about Bill Clinton and pointed out that Bush served in the National Guard, Kalb claimed that "Bill Clinton did not start a war such as the Iraq War." After mentioning that Clinton ordered war against Serbia, O’Reilly charged that Kalb was asking "another left-wing question," and took a jab at the moderator: "You wanted to hit Bush, and then I hit you with Clinton, and you were going, ‘Uh-oh, I forgot about him.’ Come on."

Long-time CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour still harbors some resentment toward the American media for the Iraq war.

In September 2003, Amanpour spoke out publicly and said CNN was intimidated by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship." Over four years later, Amanpour is still disappointed with the media leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

[Click Here for Audio]

"I said it before and I'll say it again," Amanpour said. "I believe that we failed as a profession to do our duty which is simply to ask the hard questions, to stay on it, to fact check and to cross-check and to not take one version of the story hook, line and sinker."

When you have the following meeting of the minds in a public forum - NBC News White House Correspondent David Gregory, former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather, New York Times White House correspondent David Sanger, and former White House bureau chief and correspondent for United Press International Helen Thomas - there's a near certainty something outrageous will be said.

And that was the case on November 26 at The National Press Club when this roundtable discussion occurred for the taping of "The Kalb Report," a public affairs program broadcasted on various television stations throughout the country.

[Click here for audio]

Gregory Considers White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett a ‘Minister of Propaganda'

Katie Couric "really sounds like... a light-headed Hillary [Clinton] and it sounds like she's trying to claw back into the good graces of MoveOn.org and maybe she's trying to rub the belly of the Buddha, Frank Rich, and everybody who attacked her for being some sort of Bush tool when she went to Iraq."

That's how MRC director of media analysis and NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham described Katie Couric's recent conversation with Marvin Kalb in which the CBS anchor laid out her liberal opinions of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

We knew that'd get you hooked. You can view the entire segment on the September 26 "Your World w/Neil Cavuto by checking out the Video (3:57): Real (2.91 MB) and Windows (2.43 MB), plus MP3 (1.80 MB).

Randall Hoven at American Thinker has a catalog of over 60 instances of journalistic malfeasance and takes to task journalist Marvin Kalb's famous lament from 1998 that the Internet would usher in an era of damage to the media's ability to put forward "reliable, substantiated information." Below are 10 of the 62 Hoven cites:

Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier. Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some are more serious.
I leave it to you to judge whether the internet damaged "journalism's ability to do its job professionally", as Marvin Kalb accuses, or if the internet has in fact helped expose an already damaged "profession".