Well, that certainly didn't take long. Roughly a week into the presidency, Barack Obama and his team find themselves at odds with the White House press corps.

The dustups have been relatively modest, but they've been dramatized with the sort of flair reserved for media reporting. The...

Oy. So last night I read this story in the Times about how CBS's Early Show is retooling itself -- new anchor, new set, new theme music. I didn't expect much, because once you cut through the puffery from the show's new EP, Shelley Ross, it didn't sound like...

It's always struck me as odd that the New York Observer has editorials. They're completely meaningless, of course, but then again, so are lots of newspaper editorials. The problem with the Observer's in particular is that with their off-key earnestness they undercut the generally playful spirit that, aside from Joe...

The always excellent Jason DeParle has a wide-ranging piece in The New York Review about prisons today. DeParle writes, among other things, about how imprisonment increases and at the same time hides inequality, as well as about the astonishing increase in imprisonment rates in the US (now...

Twenty minutes into a preview of Lawrence Wright's new one-man show, My Trip to Al Qaeda, a projector bulb goes out. "So this is what the theater's like," he quips.

The New Yorker scribe has written for the stage and screen before, but this week marks his

I expect that a great many people reading this blog watched John Edwards's appearance on Meet the Press this morning with some interest. For the record, I like Edwards quite a bit, but I have to say that I continue to be seriously annoyed by the way...

Last week, I wrote a post on HuffPo's Eat the Press about a column written by Cathy Seipp for National Review, in which she called Al Franken a hypocrite. Here was her critical line: "Al Franken rails against audiences for not employing more minorities, and yet apparently...

Yesterday morning, Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice and Dan Collins of CBS News appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show, guest hosted by Beth Fertig, to discuss their just-released book, The Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11. About that...

It's not often that one's jaw actually drops while reading the newspaper, but I had that experience Sunday afternoon as I read a piece on The New York Times op-ed page by Richard Armitage and Kara Bue about how we must, as the title says, "Keep Pakistan...

Paul McLeary of CJR Daily takes some swipes at The New York Times' coverage of the Lieberman/Lamont race, arguing that "[o]ver the past week, we've seen a succession of pieces rehashing essentially the same themes concerning Lieberman's attempts to fend off challenger Ned Lamont, and with each new article,...

After a week in which we saw an across-the-board failing on the part of reporters at the nation's top newspapers to report accurately on Arlen Specter's NSA surveillance bill, the Washington Post has published a strong, must-read editorial that debunks the lies and...

"The environment has never been as difficult and poisonous as it is today" for journalists reporting on the government, according to The New York Times' James Risen.

At the Times' headquarters last night, Risen spoke on a panel entitled, "The Pentagon Papers and What...

The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is, everyone seems to agree, unquestionably good news. No one needs reminding of all that he has done, but suffice it to say that he had on his hands the blood of US troops as well as innocent civilians in Jordan and Iraq, and...

Imagine this: The press corps assigned to cover the nation's leader, upset with what it perceives to be policies designed to stifle critical coverage of the administration, walks out of one of his press conferences and leaves him to speak, practically alone, straight to the television cameras.

What's that, you...

Hello, Russert Watchers, I'll be your guest host this week. It's my first time doing this, so take it easy on me. If you think I missed something or got something wrong, by all means, go at it in the comments. Let's get started. You can read the transcript of...

In the past two months, my previously limited store of knowledge of the golf world has substantially increased. Were you aware, for instance, that when Tiger Woods plays in a televised tournament, "television ratings soar"? Or that when Michelle Wie plays, "television ratings and ticket sales go up an average...

Scott McClellan's announcement yesterday that he would be stepping down as press secretary came as no surprise. As recently as Monday he hinted that he might be on his way out when, after being asked by a reporter if he would be part of the much talked about White House...

On Sunday, Thomas Ricks reported in the Washington Post that the US military has been conducting a propaganda campaign to "magnify" the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The goal, Ricks reported, based on a review of military documents he had obtained on the...

Today the New York Times reports on testimony given to the House Judiciary Committee by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- testimony which has a familiar ring. Here's the key paragraph:

Gonzales suggested on Thursday for the first time that the president might have the legal authority to...

So, it appears we are engaged in the very debate that the Bush administration wants us to be -- over whether the media in Iraq, consciously or unconsciously, is failing to present the public with the full picture of what's going on there.

On Sunday, CBS's Lara Logan