David Zurawik

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, guest David Zurawik mocked "out of town reporters" who met with the White House about sequestration and simply repeated the administration's talking points back to their local channels, "like an Obama commercial." However, CNN displayed that same uncritical journalism over and over on the sequester. Obama administration officials freaked out about looming budget…

Nearly one month after the Newtown, Conn., shooting, the official police report on the crime scenes is nearing completion, and a police spokesman tells the Daily Beast's Diane Dimond that there will be some shocking, eye-opening conclusions that counter much of the media' faulty initial reporting.  One such piece of misinformation was the early, egregious rumor that the shooter's mother,…

David Zurawik, a TV writer for The Baltimore Sun, slammed "pretend journalist" Chelsea Clinton on The Daily Download for her work on NBC. "I continue to be fascinated by a network news division putting someone as outrageously unqualified as Clinton on a prime-time newsmagazine," he wrote. "I watched her again last week in a softer-than-soft piece on a weight loss program started by Pastor…

Suffice it to say the media coverage of the recent tragedy was an abject failure. Perhaps the most egregious example was how CNN initially reported that Ryan Lanza, brother of the real shooter Adam Lanza, was the culprit eliciting screenshots and information about his Facebook account that was disseminated on the Internet  – and on the airwaves.  David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun wrote on…

Now that former NBC News president Jeff Zucker is set to take over as president of CNN, the fate of the cable news network is an open question. In a Sunday discussion about the transition, CNN media critic Howard Kurtz and his guests passed over the network's left-of-center reporting, implying instead that CNN is somehow devoid of bias compared to its primary competitors, MSNBC and Fox News.…

As NewsBusters reported Friday, HBO's Bill Maher recently gave $1 million to pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action. On CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday, host Howard Kurtz correctly observed, "There’d be a bigger fuss if comedian Dennis Miller gave a million dollars to a pro-Romney or a Santorum Super PAC" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik on Sunday called NBC hiring Chelsea Clinton a "journalistically-bankrupt decision." Talking to CNN's Howard Kurtz about Clinton's debut, Zurawik said if she's been preparing for this all her life "it's been a largely wasted life" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Rachel Maddow wasn't the only MSNBC commentator last week that lied to viewers about the budget battle in Wisconsin. Having misrepresented the same nonsense as Maddow about the Badger State having a surplus instead of a deficit Friday, Ed Schultz was exposed by Politifact for dramatically exaggerating how much Gov. Scott Walker's repair plan would cost public…

Some on the left have been crying foul at CNN's decision to air live Rep. Michele Bachmann's response to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday night. None have been more vocal than MSNBC libtalker Rachel Maddow. One media critic had enough. On Thursday, the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik laid into Maddow's criticism, saying it derives from "the mentality of a lockstep party member…

Media critic David Zurawik and former MSNBC contributor David Shuster got into quite a heated debate Sunday over the surprise exit of Keith Olbermann. Appearing on CNN's "Reliable Sources," the pair also quarreled about the difference in journalistic standards at Fox News and MSNBC (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Baltimore Sun's media critic is still fuming about MSNBC's pathetic coverage on election night. In his piece published Saturday, David Zurawik called the cable news network a "liberal prep school" while claiming the behavior of folks like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Keith Olbermann was "so egregious" that the "entire realm of TV journalism was diminished in the…

There's a cable news channel out there operating with a single partisan voice, and doing its best to scare the pants off of viewers as the new Congress approaches. Listening to much of the media, you might think that network was Fox. But in fact Fox has a wealth of opinions on air, though most of its prime time hosts are consistently conservative. And while certainly a number of critics try…

The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik on Sunday made fools out of CBS White House Correspondent Chip Reid and former CNNer Frank Sesno.Ironically, this happened during a "Reliable Sources" segment on CNN dealing with today's "Poisonous Press."With host Howard Kurtz leading a discussion about how news outlets today are spending a great deal of time bashing each other, the conversation predictably led…

It's turned into something of a week for TV hosts, if not to bite, then at least to nibble hard on the hands that feed them . . . First, as noted here, on Friday Joe Scarborough passed along the comment of an unnamed conservative biggie who wondered "what the hell [Rand Paul] was doing on MSNBC?", where during an interview with Rachel Maddow he caused controversy with his comments on the Civil…