TV Newser hears that CNN is looking to bring back Crossfire, the long-running political debate show which was canceled in 2005.
“It isn’t entirely clear what time the program would air, though we hear it would likely be a 30-minute format. During its original run from 1982-2005, Crossfire aired in both the afternoons and primetime, in addition to weekend editions. Aside from a brief 60-minute experiment, was always 30 minutes. CNN declined to comment.”
Speaking in Ohio, legendary journalist Bob Woodward “told an unflattering, but amusing story about sitting next to former Vice President Al Gore at a dinner, saying being with him was taxing,” the Youngstown Vindicator reports.
He added: ‘To be really honest, it’s unpleasant.”
The reporter said Gore “pressed him on why the journalist didn’t go after Bush, who beat Gore in the 2000 presidential election, over the war in Iraq.”
“We own talk radio, and Fox News for the most part.”
— Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show, on the influence of conservatives.
A recent report says a member of Elon Musk's DOGE task force may have taken sensitive Social Security data to his private-sector job. Troubling — but data brokers already collect and sell your social security number, birth date, home address and more to anyone willing to pay.
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Worst case: scammers obtain your data through broker breaches, leading to identity theft and financial fraud.
You can’t stop data brokers — but you can make them delete your information.
Incogni does the work for you — contacting brokers and demanding removal of your personal data, including from hard-to-clean People Search sites.
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Roger Ailes admits to Howard Kurtz that he recruited Zev Chafets to write a new biography, Roger Ailes: Off Camera that will compete with Gabriel Sherman’s more critical biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room, expected soon.
Said Ailes: “I picked Zev. He’s an actual author, a good journalist. He’s mature and thoughtful and not out to hurt people. I’m not saying anything about the other guy.”
Some exciting news to announce this morning:
Wonk Wire, the public policy companion site to Political Wire, is now part of Roll Call. I’ll continue to highlight the day’s most important policy stories and analysis, but thousands of new and knowledgeable readers will join the conversation.
If that’s your thing, please drop by and say hello.
Roll Call is also launching other blogs today from Stu Rothenberg, Morton Kondracke, David Hawkings and David Drucker.
“The public gets its information from the media, and the media is a shell of what it was before.”
— New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, quoted by the New York Times.
Out this month: Roger Ailes: Off Camera by Zev Chafets.
Vanity Fair has an excerpt in which Ailes is quoted saying he has “a soft spot for Joe Biden. I like him. But he’s dumb as an ashtray.”
Jon Stewart announced that he would direct his first movie — called Rosewater, from a screenplay that he wrote — and take a 12 week leave from The Daily Show, the New York Times reports.
The movie is an adaptation of the 2011 book Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival, by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy.
Fox News took research and graphics directly from a National Republican Campaign Committee press release without disclosing their origin in order to attack President Obama’s “sequester priorities,” Media Matters reports.
“Watching Woodward last two days is like imagining my idol Mike Schmidt facing live pitching again. Perfection gained once is rarely repeated.”
— Former Obama adviser David Plouffe, quoted by ABC News.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) tangled with Fox News host Sean Hannity in an extremely contentious interview which started with the Democratic lawmaker saying, “I mean, you know, quite frankly, you are the worst excuse for a journalist I’ve ever seen.”
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson sued a Wall Street Journal reporter for libel over an article from December in which the Republican mega-donor was described as “foul-mouthed,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Is this journalism or oppo research? There’s not really any reporting
involved in this.”
— Romney strategist Stu Stevens, quoted by the Washington Post, on Mother Jones winning a George Polk Award for uncovering the “47% video.”
Former President Jimmy Carter told Piers Morgan he enjoyed watching Argo but said the movie about rescuing six American hostages from Iran was not entirely accurate.
Said Carter: “Well, let me say first of all, it’s a great drama. And I hope it gets the Academy Award for best film because I think it deserves it. The other thing that I would say was that 90 percent of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian. And the movie gives almost full credit to the American CIA. And with that exception, the movie is very good.”
He gave the most credit to Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor “who orchestrated the entire process.”
Lexington watched all 13 episodes of the new House of Cards and says it is “at heart a palace intrigue, unfolding within the Beltway bubble. Politicians are raised up by decisions taken in the White House or the high-ceilinged rooms of congressional leaders. They are cast down by plots and ill-judged broadcast interviews. Whenever actual voters threaten trouble, they are soothed by the elite with improbable ease…”
“In the real world, federal funding is a fast-dwindling resource, and populist pandering a bigger drag on problem-solving than any individual villainy. Richard III is altogether the wrong model for a modern political tragedy: better to try Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and the Roman mob. For it is not the dagger in the back that haunts today’s ruling classes, but the pitchfork in the front, brandished by voters. By skirting that truth, House of Cards, for all its dramatic tension and clever dialogue, amounts to a kind of Washingtonian escapism.”
Several readers tell me the original U.K. House of Cards Trilogy is better.
After dumping Gallup after the election, USA Today announced a new collaboration with the Pew Research Center to survey public opinion on the biggest issues facing the nation.
The new USA Today/Pew Research Center Poll will debut later this week.
The Washington Post reports that David Axelrod, one of the chief architects of President Obama’s two presidential campaigns, is joining NBC News and MSNBC as a senior political analyst.
Fox News has hired former Republican presidential candidate and Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain as a contributor, TV Newser reports.
Cain will provide political and business analysis and commentary.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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