Blog Posts by Michael Calderone

beckadl

Glenn Beck has railed many times against George Soros, a Hungarian-American financier and liberal philanthropist whom the conservative host dubs the "progressive puppet master."

But Beck ramped up his criticism this week on Fox News and his radio show, making comments about how Soros survived in Nazi-occupied Hungary that have provoked denunciations from Jewish organizations.

murdochlunchMedia Matters has a lot to say about Fox News every day. And soon, the liberal watchdog can bring its gripes with the cable network straight to the source.

David Brock, the chief executive of Media Matters, won an online charity auction today that gives him — and five guests — a "friendly lunch" with Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox parent News Corp.

"I look forward to this opportunity to have a friendly lunch with Rupert Murdoch, along with five of my invited guests," Brock said in a statement. "I will soon contact Mr. Murdoch's office to determine a mutually convenient time and place in New York."

Media Matters just won the auction Thursday afternoon; the two sides haven't yet hashed out a time and place.

newsweekbeast

Tina Brown was expected to be Newsweek's next editor. Then she wasn't. Now she might be yet again.

The New York Post reports that partnership talks between the iconic print magazine and the Brown-helmed news and commentary site have resumed "after a three-week cooling off period."

CNN executives often play up their network's down-the-middle approach to covering politics, even as Nielsen numbers show viewers increasingly tuning into partisan shows on the right-leaning Fox News, the cable ratings leader, and the left-leaning MSNBC.

That said, CNN doesn't typically claim that Fox News and MSNBC are in the tank for Republicans and Democrats, respectively. But newish network president Ken Jautz seems to be getting more aggressive in targeting CNN's cable news rivals.

Just as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann hit the air Tuesday night to discuss his recent suspension for making donations to Democratic candidates, CNN rolled out a new advertisement suggesting Fox News and MSNBC advocated for political parties while CNN refuses to play favorites.

CNN offered a similar critique in a promo last week but stopped short of identifying Fox News and MSNBC by name.

o'reillyWashington Post columnist Dana Milbank fired back Wednesday at Bill O'Reilly after the Fox News host criticized Milbank three nights last week and joked about whether Sharia law would permit decapitating the writer.

Milbank said that "O'Reilly has every right to quarrel with my opinion or question my accuracy." But the writer questioned why O'Reilly would "resort to intimidation and violent imagery."

"O'Reilly's on-air fantasizing about violent ends for me was precipitated by a column I wrote describing Fox News's election-night coverage as a victory party for the Republicans," Milbank wrote.  "This didn't strike me as a terribly controversial point, but it evidently offended O'Reilly. "

It's not simply that O'Reilly simply disagreed with columnist's point of view (which he surely did). O'Reilly said Milbank lied in writing that "Fox brought in a nominal Democrat, pollster Doug Schoen," who described election night as "a complete repudiation of the Democratic Party." O'Reilly contended that Milbank was being dishonest by not mentioning that Fox News had Democrats like Bob Beckel and Juan Williams on the air, too.

Milbank acknowledged in Wednesday's column that Fox News did bring in other Democratic voices -- albeit ones critical of their own party.

olbyoreillyTucker Carlson boasted in July that his site, the Daily Caller, had bought the domain name for liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. Carlson, a conservative journalist and pundit, even said he would start using the email address keith@keitholbermann.com as a gag.

So it was interesting to see that Olbermann allegedly sent some angry emails to the Philadelphia Daily News' Stu Bykofsky using the email address keith@keitholbermann.com.

Phawker.com, which published the exchange, claimed it was "guaranteed 100% for real."And Bykofsky later confirmed to media industry watcher Jim Romenesko that he was writing to keith@keitholbermann.com, which he believed to be Olbermann.

Although emails were indeed sent back and forth, it wasn't Olbermann on the other end.

An MSNBC spokesman confirmed the emails are fake, and Olbermann responded in a statement to The Upshot: "Mr. Bykofsky has been, I would suggest, hoist on his own petard."

In the email exchange, "Olbermann" rails against MSNBC President Phil Griffin, who recently suspended and subsequently reinstated the host over a violation of network rules against giving to political candidates.

panettaCIA Director Leon Panetta issued an agency-wide memo Monday calling attention to "a damaging spate of media leaks on a wide range of national security issues" over the past months.

The agency head singled out WikiLeaks — which published hundreds of thousands of classified Iraq and Afghanistan war documents since July — as "one egregious example."

Panetta said that "in some cases, CIA sources and methods have been compromised, harming our mission and endangering lives." For that reason, he explained, "such leaks cannot be tolerated" and the "Office of Security is directed to fully investigate these matters."

"Unauthorized disclosures of classified information also will be referred to the Department of Justice," Panetta continued. "Our government is taking a hard line, as demonstrated by the prosecutions of a former National Security Agency official, a Federal Bureau of Investigation linguist, and a State Department contractor."

So does Panetta's memo indicate that the CIA will specifically target WikiLeaks? Reporters drew different conclusions.

olbyscreenThe Keith Olbermann suspension saga should come to a close Tuesday night. But don't expect the outspoken liberal to apologize to the network when he returns to host "Countdown."

Olbermann, suspended Friday for making three donations to Democratic candidates, a violation of the network policy, revealed some new details about his suspension in a Monday night statement to viewers.

He began by thanking his backers for their "extraordinary and ground-rattling support."  Olbermann also apologized to his audience "for having precipitated such anxiety and unnecessary drama."

Still, Olbermann doesn't seem to think what he did was wrong, regardless of whether it broke the network's rules.

"You should know that I mistakenly violated an inconsistently applied rule—which I previously knew nothing about—that pertains to the process by which such political contributions are approved by NBC," Olbermann wrote.