Eric Alterman

Writer Eric Alterman presents the relationship between President Trump and journalists as if it were a plot from a horror movie, and the audience knows what’s going to happen before the victim does. In Alterman’s view, the “racist, sexist, Islamophobic psychopath” Trump threatens the mainstream media, but reporters and editors are oblivious to the danger “not only to their livelihoods, but to…

The Twitter website has become the go-to place for people in the “mainstream media” who have said things they wish they hadn’t stated on television. They can then apologize in a format that far fewer individuals will notice. A perfect example of this principle took place on Tuesday, August 22, by Bret Stephens, a right-of-center columnist for the New York Times who was also hired by NBC News and…

The Nation’s Eric Alterman doesn’t mind that a few weeks ago, The New York Times added another conservative op-ed columnist. He just wishes it hadn’t been the “awful” Bret Stephens, who used to write for “the rubes who believe what they read in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal” but now is tasked with impressing the “smarter and more sophisticated” readership of the Times.

Bill Clinton was, in the words of one of his competitors for the 1992 Democratic nomination, “an unusually good liar,” but for Eric Alterman, a critical mass of mendacity in presidential politics didn’t develop until 2016. Alterman thinks it explains the mainstream media’s response to POTUS-elect Donald Trump. “Mainstream journalists are used to collaborating with politicians to tell the truth a…

On Friday, Barack Obama held what might be the last press conference of his presidency, and, if things ran to form, Nation columnist and What Liberal Media? author Alterman was impressed. As POTUS, Obama has been “the coolest guy in the room,” wrote Alterman in the magazine’s January 2-9 issue. “It didn’t matter what room. He was always able to keep his head while everyone around him was losing…

In their respective articles alleging that the mainstream media facilitated the election of Donald Trump, Brian Beutler of The New Republic and Eric Alterman of The Nation overlapped somewhat. For example, each claimed that the Hillary e-mail story was wildly overcovered, with Beutler citing it as the shining example of how the media “failed abysmally” regarding the “framing and contextualizing…

If there’s ever a Donald Trump-centric TV channel, it’s likely that not all of its big names would be from the populist right, hinted What Liberal Media? author Alterman in his column for The Nation's November 14 issue. Alterman claimed that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough “has made some of the most egregious pro-Trump arguments heard anywhere during this election cycle” and, regarding Bloomberg’s Mark…

On Wednesday, in response to news that violent people the press insists on describing as "protesters" in Charlotte were stopping traffic on Interstate 277, University of Tennessee law professor and Instapundit founding blogger Glenn Reynolds retweeted a related story with three words of advice: "Run them down." As a result, Twitter, which continues to allow the existence of and continued postings…

In 2003, Alterman contended that the “notion of liberal dominance” of the mainstream media was “ridiculous.” Apparently, however, Alterman believes that liberal media bias is an idea whose time has come, at least regarding the presidential campaign. In an essay for the June 20-27 issue of the magazine, he urged the MSM to help Hillary Clinton by “clearly and repeatedly” stating certain “simple…

The mainstream media give high marks to Megyn Kelly, but that’s because they’re grading on a curve, believes  Eric Alterman, who fumed recently about Vanity Fair’s February cover story on Kelly. Alterman contended that writer Evgenia Peretz’s portrayal of Kelly as “a brave truth-teller, a feminist hero and a bit of a liberal” is “complete nonsense. That any of these descriptions are even…

Republicans have the upper hand in Congress and in a clear majority of state governments. To Alterman, that state of affairs is a “mystery,” since GOPers typically hold “extreme” and “silly” views “that are not only beyond the boundaries of the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans, but also contrary to the laws of physics, economics, and, of course, common sense.” In the December 7 issue of…

According to columnist Eric Alterman, prominent journalists tend to realize that most Republicans are “ideological extremists” whose agenda, dictated by “the super-wealthy,” warps our politics. The problem, he added, is that the news stories those journalists write don’t reflect that realization. Instead, argued Alterman in a piece for the magazine’s May 18 issue, “even our best reporters feel…

Last week, NewsBusters brought you "Stumped," as April Ryan struggled to cite a single foreign policy success by her super-fave, President Obama. In the best Hollywood tradition, this morning we bring you a sequel--Stumped II: Syria! On today's Morning Joe, lugubrious lefty Eric Alterman of The Nation mag was stumped when Joe Scarborough asked him what the US should do about Syria. After humming…

The left-liberal magazine The Nation has just published its 150th-anniversary issue, which includes Alterman’s piece on the state of American conservatism. Alterman makes two main points. One is that conservatives are ideologues, whereas liberals are pragmatists. The other is that prominent righty pundits routinely spew nonsense not because they’re dumb, but because extremist plutocrats control…