Category: Media Beat column

On February 27, 1968, I sat in a small room on Capitol Hill. Around a long table, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was in session, taking testimony from an administration official. Most of all, I remember a man with a push-broom moustache and a voice like sandpaper, raspy and urgent. Wayne Morse did not resort…

Memorial Day weekend brings media rituals. Old Glory flutters on television and newsprint. Grave ceremonies and oratory pay homage to the fallen. Many officials and pundits speak of remembering the dead. But for all the talk of war and remembrance, no time is more infused with insidious forgetting than the last days of May. This…

The endless show that seems to fill America’s every waking moment — and many of its nightmares — could be called "Media Jeopardy!" Before proceeding, here’s a reminder of the rules: Listen to the answer and then try to come up with the question. Let’s get started. The first category is "Media Untouchables." * They’re…

The battle over the filibuster is now one of the country’s biggest political news stories. The Bush administration seems determined to change Senate rules so a simple majority of senators, instead of three-fifths, can cut off debate and force a vote on the president’s judicial nominees. Both sides claim to be arguing for procedural principles.…

Years from now, when historians look back at agenda-building for a missile attack on Iran, they should closely examine a story that took up the USA’s most coveted space for media spin — the upper right corner of the New York Times front page — on the first day of May 2005. Under the headline…