Since an exchange I had on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday is being batted around elsewhere on the Web, I suppose I should weigh in on it -- or, at least, try to get in on some of the traffic.

The headline is that Lauren Ashburn, managing editor for USA Today Live, and I said that MSNBC and the Fox News channel are bad for America. Here is the way my colleagues at newsbusters.org characterized it. Howard Kurtz hosted the discussion, with BBC America anchorman Matt Frei as another of the panelists.

Continue reading "Angry talk on MSNBC and Fox is bad for the nation" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (36)
Categories: CNN, Cable and Network News, Fox News, MSNBC
        

Where was MSNBC Sunday while its two rivals, CNN and the Fox News channel, were at Notre Dame for President Barack Obama's commencement address?

Notre Dame was Ground Zero for a day in America's culture wars, and you have to wonder how a organization that calls itself a news channel would miss it.

Worse, just as MSNBC showed canned specials last November as CNN and Fox covered the Mumbai massacre, so did MSNBC Sunday abrogate its news responsonsibility by showing the canned special, A Killer in the Family. The program featured an interview with Anne Bird, the half-sister of Scott Peterson, who was sentenced to death for killing his wife. The interview was at least two years old.

Continue reading "MSNBC missing in action on Obama at Notre Dame" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Cable and Network News, MSNBC
        

Does anyone on cable TV cover real breaking news like CNN?

Tuesday when Senator Arlen Specter dropped the bomb that he was switching to the Democratic side of the aisle, CNN was all over it. From Dana Bash (left) reporting the story on Capitol Hill to a team of reporters gathering instant reaction around Washington, while Ed Henry and Bill Schneider offered on-the-run political analysis, this is the way a major story should be covered.

A note to some of my colleagues: Let's stop blindly celebrating the ratings successes of the cymbal-clanging chimpanzees named Olbermann, Maddow, Hannity, Beck and O'Reilly on MSNBC and Fox, and pay some attention to the last real journalism being done on cable TV by the folks at CNN. They did some fast, sound and fine work again on a huge political story -- delivering the journalistic goods once again so that the sit-on-their-butt partisans on Fox and MSNBC will have something to actually talk about Tuesday night.

Continue reading "CNN shines in instant coverage of Arlen Specter story" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: CNN, Cable and Network News, Fox News, MSNBC, TV and Politics
        

For the first in the history of cable TV news, MSNBC has drawn a larger prime-time audience than CNN. And Fox continues to build the largest audience of all from 8 to 11 p.m. each night, the most lucrative part of the broadcast day.

That's the news from the March ratings period, and as much as I would like to be dispassionate about it, I just can't. That's because I know how dangerous a trend we have here with viewers flocking to fiercely-partisan, ideologically-driven opinion-based programs as they abandon productions that seek to provide down-the-middle coverage, verified information and analysis that explores all sides of issues.

In this time of national crisis, it is no small matter that viewers are choosing the bombast and posturing of Keith Olbermann on the left, and Bill O'Reilly on the right  just when sound information is needed more than ever.

Continue reading "MSNBC beats CNN in prime time - and Fox wins it all" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: CNN, Cable and Network News, Fox News, MSNBC, Ratings