While a rather ordinary day for campaign coverage, yesterday was a good one in which to examine the New York Times. Once one got over the whopper of a front page headline typo in some editions—“When Foreigners by (should be “buy”) the Factory”—there was an arresting lead story that shouted: “Top Clinton Aide Leaving His [...]

I imagine there are a lot of television viewers who feel as I do – weary of the mindless nitpicking that masquerades as political analysis. Set against the hard reality of a nation in deep trouble. it’s impossible to justify the endless attention to trivia. Sure, people in public liife can now and then say [...]

Take a piece of news just arrived on the Associated Press wire and combine it with a television pundit of large ego and you have a combustible piece of journalism. So it was on the evening of March 20 on MSNBC. That night, in prime time, Keth Olbermann was so aroused by a report that [...]

If I may interrupt the campaign for a moment to bring up a mega-issue that is barely discussed but will confront the next several presidents–the aging of America and its consequences. Older people, according to most polls, are the most diligent voters. And according to a September Pew Research study, people 50 years and older [...]

Conventional political wisdom keeps saying that people have lost interest in the Iraq war, that it’s no longer an issue. It’s the economy again, stupid. Well I know at least eight American families who would disagree. They are grieving for eight soldiers killed March 10 in separate incidents in the non-Iraq war. Another four were [...]

I.F. Stone’s 100th birthday comes at what feels like a real low point in terms of the iconoclastic, independent journalism with which Stone is so unmistakably identified. So it’s particularly appropriate that the observations of Stone’s birthday aren’t just fond looks back at the rebel journalist’s storied career; they have a strong focus on strengthening [...]

If race is not an issue in this presidential contest (and I believe it is and will be), then how come virtually every mainstream black columnist has been effusively and unabashedly supporting Sen. Barack Obama, and highly critical of and even caustic towards Sen. Hillary Clinton? Columnists have every right to their views, even if [...]

I fired William F. Buckley, Jr. He did not take it well. When I canceled his column in the Des Moines Tribune in the 1970s he made an unpleasant fuss and misrepresented why we parted company. Buckley and I had had a running back-and-forth about an issue of journalism ethics. I told him he had [...]

Since the economy is the number one issue on everybody’s mind, I thought I’d take a look at an hour-long program called “Your Money” that CNN runs on Saturdays and repeats on Sundays. I was wondering how helpful the program might be to viewers plagued by mundane financial troubles like the threat of mortgage foreclosures, [...]

The New York Times has taken a lot of guff for its Feb. 21 story about Senator John McCain and a female lobbyist, Vicki Iseman; even the paper’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, chided it: “…if a paper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair…it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to [...]