It's nothing new for aggrieved authors to write letters to the highly influential New York Times Book Review, protesting a negative review, or one rife with errors. Sometimes the protest relates to the unfair choice of reviewer. What's unusual about Mark Danner's letter to the Times concerning the Oct. 18...

Yes, Barack Obama ended up beating John McCain rather easily one year ago, but Stephen Colbert didn't stay in the race for the White House or Obama could have really been in trouble (for a minute or two, anyway). So on this anniversary day, allow me to recall Colbert's tentative...

Like everyone who covered extensively the CIA leak case, Judy Miller and the Scooter Libby trial, I am anxiously awaiting, with appropriate skepticism, the pending release of the first Hollywood treatment, which has the wonderful title, if you remember the scandal, Fair Game.

Casting seems swell: Naomi Watts as...

Last month, I posted here for the first time on the growing popularity of Web comedy and dramatic series, suggesting they were a growing threat, down the road a bit, to network TV series. This was inspired by noting that The New York Times had just featured for the...

The New York Times carried a rare Postscript in Saturday's paper in the space where Corrections and Editors Notes run, raising questions about whether it is, between the lines, charging the top Washington Post editor, Marcus Brauchli, with not telling the truth. Brauchli, in the same letter cited by the...

Tragic story or hoax? TV media and the press for hours today covered the saga of a 6-year-old boy who allegedly climbed into a homemade balloon aircraft in Colorado and floated away. Live TV showed the balloon coming down miles away and rescuers rushing there, expecting the worst. Instead, no...

Last night, I was pleased to see that the widely-hailed documentary on the Chandler family and the Los Angeles Times airing on PBS stations spent about five minutes on the American political campaign closest to my heart (and expertise). "Inventing L.A." even showed snippets of historic newsreels--the first use of...

Back when I was a youngster, "TV series" (then on only three networks) meant a full run of originals from September to June, often 39 in number. Now we get little more than half of that -- or act grateful when a series like Mad Men returns, once a year,...

I have no quarrel with TIME magazine devoting a cover to Glenn Beck -- so long as the accompanying story sticks to hard facts and harsh truths. The issue coming tomorrow, online today, sadly fails to do so in an apparent effort to woo the rightwing with a ludicrously...

In a widely-read posting here last weekend (nearly 3000 comments), I chronicled the controversy over a photograph shot in Afghanistan in mid-August by Associated Press staffer Julie Jacobson. From a distance, it captured the moments after a U.S. Marine, Lance Corp. Joshua Bernard, was mortally wounded by a grenade,...

Last November, David Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan and held for several months, before managing to escape with his interpreter. Media around the world, at the request of the Times, kept silent about the kidnapping, and later drew criticism for this from some quarters. It has just happened again --...

Going back to 2002, I have been writing about the shameful reluctance, even refusal, of U.S. media outlets to carry graphic images of the true cost of our wars, to Americans, in Iraq and Afghanistan -- fatally wounded U.S. soldiers and Marines.

Earlier today, the Associated Press --...

Talk about flip flops! It was exactly one year ago today that Peggy Noonan suffered her infamous "open-mic" disaster at MSNBC during coverage of the GOP convention, in which Noonan, chatting with Mike Murphy and Chuck Todd, referred to the "bullshit" narrative around Sarah Palin after she was picked as...

It was exactly one year ago this week that there was a true turning point in the 2008 race for the White House. And it had little to do with Barack Obama. One might even say that it boiled down to the media helping to elect him -- but not...

Today I managed to attend one of the town halls sponsored by a key critic of the Democrats' health care reform, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Well, I wasn't there in person, only in spirit -- thanks to a live web broadcast starting at noon via WSPA-TV. They covered...

Ailing from his fourth battle with cancer last autumn, famed columnist Robert Novak -- who died today at 78 -- was interviewed at length for one of the final times by The Washingtonian's Barbara Matusow. The magazine published on its web site the full Q & A, which concluded...

Creative artists of every variety have made incisive, satiric or powerful statements about nuclear threat. They have offered cautionary works that depict the horror of the bomb or its meaning in our society. What these artistic statements share, however, with rare exceptions, is an avoidance of the specific subject of...

Yesterday, I explored the decades-long suppression of film footage of the the full effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago this week. But that censorship and cover-up of the full impact, and ramifications, of the new weapons began within hours of the first use....

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for...

Like many other news organizations, the Associated Press today is reprinting excerpts from the online diary kept by George Sodini, who killed three women and then himself at a Pittsburgh area fitness center last night. The diary focuses on his severe problems with women (surely his biggest motivator in the...