NewsTrust - TV - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Simon responds to Bealefeld's criticism

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Sun - By Justin Fenton, David Simon - Jan. 18 (Comment) - "The Wire" creator David Simon responds to comments made recently by Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III that the HBO show was a "smear that will take decades to overcome":It is my understanding that Commissioner Bealefeld -- by finally choosing...

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Fey returns to SNL for launch of 'Sarah Palin Network'

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Saturday Night Live - Apr. 12 (Comedy News) - Saturday Night Live alum Tina Fey returned to host the program last night, which naturally resulted in the resurrection of her Sarah Palin impersonation.

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The Obama Top Ten List on Letterman

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Film clip - Sep. 22 (Entertainment) - Letterman top ten reasons President Obama agreed to appear on the David Letterman Show.

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‘Mad Men’ Crashes Woodstock’s Birthday

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Aug. 16 (Opinion) - While the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is getting much air time this summer, perhaps it is Don Draper’s America, the early ’60s country-at-a-pivot-point, that really resonates today.

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Pixilated Over Pixels

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Maureen Dowd - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - As an explosion of pixels hits our TV screens this weekend, with the digital and high-def revolution, my unscientific survey shows women are less excited about high-def than men.

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Glenn Beck - Common Sense Comedy Tour Is for Laughing at Liberals (and Hawking That Book) - NYTimes.com

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Mike Hale - Jun. 06 (Review) - Before starting his performance on Thursday night at the Midland Theater in Kansas City, Mo., which was simulcast to more than 440 movie houses around the country, Glenn Beck walked over to the camera,

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Cable Wars Are Killing Objectivity

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Carr - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - Apparently there is an ingredient in tea that causes hysteria when given to cable news anchors. How else to explain the coverage of the tax day tea parties on Wednesday, which was the day when we procrastinators finally mailed the check to the feds?

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High Noon on the Set: Cramer vs. Stewart

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Alessandra Stanley - Mar. 14 (Opinion) - The much-hyped showdown between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, the mercurial host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, felt like a Senate subcommittee hearing. Mr. Stewart treated his guest like a C.E.O. subpoenaed to testify before Congress: his point was not to hear Mr. Cramer out, but to act out a cathartic ritual of indignation and castigation. “Listen, you knew what the banks were doing, yet were touting it for months and months,” the Democratic senator from Comedy Central said. “The entire network was. For now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”

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Rich, Famous and Black, on CNBC and HBO

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Ginia Bellafante - Feb. 26 (Review) - One of the immediate repercussions of Barack Obama’s journey to the White House has been a frenzied eagerness by the news media to showcase the lives of prominent and well-to-do African-Americans. We have read about the vacation preferences of the Harvard-educated lawyers and bankers and real-estate developers in the president’s friend circle. We have seen the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” in their limos and gated worlds and arena-size kitchens. Next week BET will unveil its new reality series, “Harlem Heights,” which will follow eight, young, good-looking, ambitious African-Americans as they manage their professional and emotional lives in glamour spots north of 110th Street. Poverty rates among blacks remain proportionately higher than among whites, so presumably what it means to live in a postracial society is that everyone gets an equal-opportunity shot at “Hills” treatment.

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Tyler Perry: Hollywood's new commander in chief?

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Patrick Goldstein - Feb. 25 (Opinion) - Last night, I was asked to speak at an evening program at a local temple. Since the topic was "Jews in Hollywood," I brought along a true Hollywood Jew, Sony Pictures' Amy Pascal, who spoke quite eloquently and insightfully about her faith and how it's sometimes tested by her job. Being my usual contrarian self, at one point I suddenly veered off topic, asking Pascal why -- if America had managed to elect an African American president -- was Hollywood was still light years away from the day when there could be a black studio chief.

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Content and Its Discontents

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Virginia Heffernan - Dec. 08 (Opinion) - For years, we in traditional media have consoled ourselves about the increasing irrelevance of our work. First, we insist that content is king. If a story, image, film or report is compelling enough — a candid photo of Malia Obama, “Slumdog Millionaire,” the columns of Maureen Dowd — it will translate into pixels. It will flourish on any platform, dominate every sport. By this logic, creators, producers, artists and journalists should attend only to producing great work and leave the current changes in the distribution and display of information to nerds in suits.

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Beijing reality show

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Heather Havrilevsky - Aug. 07 (Opinion) - pulling off the traditional global pep rally that accompanies the Olympics could prove to be a little bit more difficult for NBC this time. That good old Olympic spirit, set against the backdrop of the deeply depressing realities of life in China, makes this summer's festivities feel about as uplifting and cheerful as an accidental shooting at a wedding reception. Suddenly, we're fielding a daily onslaught of reports about Internet censorship, worries about terrorism, disastrous flooding, police roundups of beggars and protesters, and journalists receiving death threats. Even the rare blue skies over Beijing feel like a reflection of the whole world, trying desperately to suspend its disbelief in unison.

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Huckabee opts for Leno on caucus eve

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Yahoo! News - By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer - Jan. 01 (Entertainment) - SERGEANT BLUFF, Iowa - On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee will trade jokes with Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show." While his rivals will be making a final appeal to the state's voters, Huckabee will be flying to Los Angeles to tape the show with Leno, who returns to the air Wednesday without striking writers.

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Is fake news now the standard?

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:08:40 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Jonah Goldberg - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - 'Pat Philbin, the man who staged a fake FEMA news conference on the California wildfires last week, has lost his promotion because of the event, which begs the question: What does it actually take to get fired from FEMA?" That was the lead story on the latest installment of Weekend Update, the faux news broadcast on "Saturday Night Live." Something bothered me about this, and not just Amy Poehler's misuse of the phrase "beg the question." Nor was it the idea that FEMA's staged news conference was scandalous simply because reporters, listening by phone, weren't able to ask questions while FEMA bureaucrats lobbed "fake" questions. There's no such thing as fake questions, after all, only fake answers. Was FEMA's fabrication any more fraudulent than, say, press releases written like real news stories? Yes, FEMA's fakery was foolish. But -- and here's what really bugs me -- what isn't in the TV news business these days?

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The Emmys censored Sally Field!

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:30:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Tom O'Neil - Sep. 17 (Opinion) - Producers of Sunday's Emmy telecast bleeped best drama actress winner Sally Field in the midst of a controversial acceptance speech attacking U.S. involvement in Iraq. "If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any god -" she said when the sound went dead and the camera suddenly turned away from the stage so viewers would be distracted. Chopped off were the words "god-damned wars in the first place." (The phrase was not censored in the Canadian telecast.)

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Amanpour's `God's Warriors' Airs on CNN

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:05:49 -0700

Associated Press - By David Bauder - Aug. 20 (Review) - Christiane Amanpour's work on the documentary series ''God's Warriors'' took her directly to intersections of extreme religious and secular thinking. She watched, fascinated, as demonstrators in San Francisco accused teenagers in the fundamentalist Christian group BattleCry of intolerance in a clash of two cultures that will probably never understand each other. Understanding is what Amanpour is trying to promote in ''God's Warriors,'' which takes up six prime-time hours on CNN this week. The series on religious fundamentalism among Christians, Muslims and Jews airs in three parts, 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday through Thursday. Many people know only stereotypes of these true believers, even the ones in their own country, she said. Yet it's vital to be familiar with their thinking given the growing importance of these movements in the war on terrorism, the never-ending conflicts surrounding Israel and conservative politics in the United States. ''I'm not interested in drumming up false fears, or falsely allaying fears,'' CNN's chief international correspondent told The Associated Press by phone from France, where she added last-minute touches to the series. ''I just want people to know what's going on.'' Amanpour traveled extensively over eight months to work on the series. The trips to Amanpour's native Iran are most fascinating. She explored the ancient roots of the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, and talked with one of the country's most accomplished female politicians about how Muslim women are treated.

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Apple TV: Why It Matters

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:13:13 -0800

PC Magazine - By Tim Bajarin - Feb. 23 (Opinion) - Now Apple is extending its digital lifestyle concept to the TV, with Apple TV. I find this move by Apple very interesting and potentially important to the market because of the impact it may have on consumer trends. Of course, Apple is not the first to try to extend Mac/PC content to the living room; in fact, it's five years late. Microsoft's Windows Media Center has been doing this since 2002 with mixed results, and various other media adapters have come to market since then and gotten only minimal consumer acceptance.

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Spike's Storm

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:52:14 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Sonny Bunch - Aug. 21 (Opinion) - Spike Lee's new documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, When the Levees Broke, is an interesting piece of work. The film is alternately moving, depressing, and annoying. It is also long. Exceptionally long. Clocking in at just over four hours, and broken into four one hour acts (the first two air tonight, the last two tomorrow night), it is an emotionally overwhelming presentation of an American city beset by a tragedy from which it may never recover. As in Lee's first documentary, 4 Little Girls, the director eschews the use of a narrator; allowing his subjects' stories to tie the piece together instead. Another holdover from 4 Little Girls is the composer, Terence Blanchard, whose music is both touching and haunting.

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Bush, Congress tell working folk to go to hell

Wed, 24 May 2006 12:51:49 -0700

CNN - By Lou Dobbs - May. 24 (Opinion) - NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush says that the installation of the new Iraqi government was a "watershed event," but at the same time warns Americans of the challenges and loss as we continue to prosecute the war against Iraqi insurgents. Sen. Harry Reid declares that legislation that would render English the national language is racist. Thirty-seven Democrats vote for full amnesty for all illegal aliens in this country, even though nobody really knows whether the number is 11 million, 12 million or 20 million. The Senate Republican leadership demands that a "comprehensive immigration reform" plan must be passed before this Memorial Day weekend. And the president signs into law a tax cut that raises taxes on the educational funds of teenagers saving for college. Never before in our country's history have both the president and Congress been so out of touch with most Americans. Never before have so few of our elected officials and corporate leaders been less willing to commit to the national interest. And never before has our nation's largest constituent group -- some 200 million middle-class Americans -- been without representation in our nation's capital.

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