Words have meaning, but the Beltway press is in the process of stripping "populism" of its descriptive value as pundits and reporters continue to misuse the word in connection with the right-wing movement that obsessively opposes President Obama. Far from being a populist surge, the movement, led by talkers like...

Ugh, what a gruesome week it was for news consumers as the "serious" press showered time and attention on two GOP-friendly stories that defined "trivial pursuits": a book release and a bow. Sadly, this is what the Beltway press corps now voluntarily -- eagerly -- reduces itself to: chasing pointless,...

Did you know that Sean Hannity is "an academic"? That Obama administration officials love Fox News' White House reporters? That CNN refuses to have Republicans on its program? That Barack Obama made a "racist comment" last summer? That Glenn Beck is "purely Libertarian"? Or that there's no bias -- none...

Want a perfect example of how the Beltway press distracts itself with trivia at the expense of substance and news that most Americans actually care about? Look no further than the self-induced trance over the perennially unpopular Sarah Pallin and her book release. ABC's The Note breathlessly announces it's the...

We're entering a sort of Fox News Era where media outlets -- where alleged news organizations -- essentially co-sponsor political campaigns. We've moved well beyond the time when Fox News, for instance, leaned right and gave conservative candidates more air-time and tossed them lots of softball questions. We're now watching...

Fact: The breathless claim that Fox News' ratings recently spiked thanks to the White House's public critique is bogus hype -- hype that Fox News and the Beltway press have relentlessly pushed.

It's just not true.

No matter how many times reporters and pundits made the claim, a...

For generations in this country, there has been a sort of a gentleman's agreement in terms of what constituted professional behavior among journalists. And there has been a sense of shame when members crossed those lines into unprofessional behavior. Bosses chastened those employees, people were fired, and ethics panels were...

Limbaugh last week learned the overdue lesson that there are real-world consequences for trafficking in hate speech. That there are free-market penalties, including the fact that the NFL decided for itself that it can't, and won't, be connected with Limbaugh.

It's the same lesson Glenn Beck learned this year...

Fox News has changed the rules. Now the press needs to change the way it covers Fox News.

Rupert Murdoch's cable cabal is now, first and foremost, a political entity. Fox News has transformed itself into the opposition party to the Obama White House, which, of course, is unprecedented...

Talk about great timing!

Just after The New York Times announced it would appoint somebody to monitor the partisan opinion media more closely, and right after editors were chastened for reacting too slowly to buzzworthy news scoops launched by the conservative media, the right-wing press went bonkers last week.

The conservative movement has become a mindless mob, and the right-wing media, more and more often, are sending their overeager foot soldiers out on seek-and-destroy missions involving private citizens. They're even targeting innocent schoolchildren, like the group of second-graders in New Jersey that became a right-wing (mob) object of disgust...

You think the Obama White House hit a nerve over the weekend when it purposefully left Fox News Sunday off the president's generous list of Sunday talk-show appearances?

The subsequent whining and childish name-calling from Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace became incessant and, of course, revealed more about the bitter...

Blame it on a tweet.

It turns out that's what kicked off the right-wing blogosphere's comically inept misinformation campaign last weekend to try to swell the size of Saturday's anti-Obama protest in the nation's capital, to jack the crowd size up to the wildly inflated -- and erroneous --...

It's from an online report about the Obama school "controversy," and it's written by Dan Harris. In his piece, Harris notes that conservatives preemptively blasted Obama's stay-in-school speech even though conservatives had no idea what was going to be in the speech. Harris notes that the speech itself "turned...

Have so many blue-chip advertisers ever fled a program as quickly as the who's who of corporate America that's sprinted away from Glenn Beck in recent weeks? I certainly cannot recall ever seeing a mass exodus of this scale.

If any television program had lost just three or four of...

Suddenly this summer, as right-wing mini-mobs turn health care forums into free-for-alls, as unhinged political rage flows in the streets, and as the Nazi and Hitler rhetoric flies, anger is in. Suddenly anger is good. It's authentic. It's newsworthy. Reading and watching the mini-mob news coverage, the media message seems...

Here we go again.

During August's summer daze, right-wing mini-mobs (egged on by corporate interests) have run wild at town hall meetings, propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an effort to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet the mini-mob members have been treated as deeply important newsmakers by...

Despite the fact that Limbaugh has not apologized for his comments and is continuing to compare the Obama White House and the Democratic Party with Nazis, many in the media don't consider it newsworthy and haven't condemned it. And more important, journalists don't show any signs of believing that the...

The New Yorker could not have picked a worse time to publish a puff piece about Savage. Arriving on newsstands the same week we learned that 58 percent of Republicans either don't believe or don't know whether Barack Obama was born in America (a rancid conspiracy theory that Savage has...

Have you noticed Limbaugh's deafening silence about the birthers since July 20th? Have you noticed how the birther movement was in the news virtually every day last week, how the mainstream press was debunking it and calling out the right-wing nonsense, how NBC's Nightly News referred to Limbaugh in its...