Reliable Sources

NewsBusters reported on the media's early valentine for outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and CNN's media critic Howard Kurtz focused on their "romance" on Sunday's Reliable Sources. "[T]hings were so lovey-dovey, it almost sounded like a therapy session," Kurtz described Clinton's 60 Minutes interview.  He added the media "are almost portraying her [Clinton's] exit as walking on…

TVNewser's Gail Shister had some harsh words for MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Sunday. Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, the TV critic said, "Joe Scarborough talks when he inhales. I've never seen anybody this side of Chris Matthews who interrupts as much as he does" (video follows with CNN transcript and commentary):

The GOP-bashing tag team of Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann was once again welcome on CNN on Sunday. Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz did challenge the duo's leftist indictment of the media, but Ornstein and Mann had plenty of time to insist the press has "embarrassingly failed" to hold Republicans accountable. When Kurtz posed "Most people think the press does lean to the left," AEI's…

At The Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz compares the gun debate to civil rights and the gay marriage issue. This despite his wanting the media to be "fair to all sides" on the issue. After suggesting a "media agenda" on the gun issue, Kurtz notes "There was certainly a media agenda during the battle for civil rights in the late 1950s and 1960s. Television helped shine a spotlight on Alabama Gov.…

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 Wednesday, late night comedians make fun of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney more than twice as much as they do Barack Obama. CNN's Howard Kurtz defended this on Sunday's Reliable Sources saying, "Obama is just not that easy to ridicule... Whereas jokes about a rich guy with a 1950s lingo -- well, gosh, golly, gee whiz, isn't that hard to make people laugh…

For a political perspective that claims to love peace and tolerance, left-wing Democrats sure seem to be a rather angry lot. We saw it last week during the explosion over a black actress endorsing Mitt Romney for president. History repeated itself just a few days later when outraged Democrats lashed out at journalist and author Buzz Bissinger for doing the same thing. Things were a bit…

In an irony of ironies, a CNN roundtable on media bias featured a liberal figure of the institutional media, Chrystia Freeland, claiming that Paul Ryan has gotten "pretty fabulous treatment" at the hands of the media. Her statement came on Sunday's Reliable Sources. "I think he's had pretty fabulous treatment in the press and maybe actually a lack of scrutiny of what he's actually saying,"…

The media have "nostalgia" for Bill Clinton and a "tedious marriage" with President Obama, according to panel members on Sunday's Reliable Sources. Is media bias any more evident when reporters admit the media had a past love affair with the current Democratic president and pine for the days of his Democratic forerunner? CNN's Howard Kurtz mused that "the extraordinary media reaction to Bill…

On Sunday's CNN Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz spoke of President Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: Bob Cusack, Obama gave a pretty good speech overall. The media acted like it was terrible. And it seems to me that perhaps we have set a standard for him that (if) he doesn't he doesn't hit the stratosphere, he has somehow failed. The media acted…

Howard Kurtz considers himself to be a "media analyst." So what's the deal with his highly-opinionated hit-piece published at the Daily Beast Tuesday with the highly-inflammatory title "Is Paul Ryan a Ticking Time Bomb as Mitt Romney’s Running Mate?"

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN host Howard Kurtz lashed out at CNN’s own host Fareed Zakaria for committing plagiarism in a gun control article for Time magazine. Kurtz gave credit to us: “A conservative watchdog site Newsbusters, acting on a tip from the NRA, broke the story that Fareed's column was not entirely his own work.” Kurtz put the two passages side by side on the screen to…

CNN's Howard Kurtz on Sunday asked liberal talk radio host Stephanie Miller a question that most right-thinking Americans pray the answer is "Yes." "You are a liberal in a conservative media...dominated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham," said the Reliable Sources host. "Won't people like you and Ed Schultz and some of the few liberal national voices on talk radio…

Those tolerant liberals! It’s not news that in the arts and the soft sciences academia is intractably left-wing. It is noteworthy to see the bias categorized and quantified. The journal Perspectives on Psychological Science has published an article by researchers Yoel Inbar and Joel Lammers, psychology professors at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. It’s based on their study showing the…