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That didn't take long. Exactly five minutes before Obama's official text message went out this morning, Howard Fineman had an article up at Newsweek praising the process by which Obama picked his running mate. Fineman found much to like about how Obama handled things. He even turned lemons into lemonade, claiming Hillary really didn't want to be considered and that Obama "did her a favor" by not doing so. First, the praise: "The minute-by-minute story of how Obama handled the selection is interesting, and revealing of the way the Democratic nominee works. He insisted on the utmost secrecy; he paid...

Between now and Election Day, we're sure to see--and chronicle at NB--plenty of MSM sycophancy for Barack Obama. But between the thrills going up assorted media legs, evidence is emerging that some in the media are beginning to assess the Dem candidate in a clearer light. Take for example, Gabriel Sherman's piece at the New Republic which as its title—End of the Affair—suggests, has as its thesis that at least for some of its members, the MSM's puppy-love stage might be coming to an end. Today comes Howard Fineman's admission, hesitant as it might be, and mitigated by his suggestion...

Want to see how the mainstream media views Fox News? Look no further than Newsweek's Howard Fineman and the way he thinks the Bush administration uses the network. Fineman, who is Newsweek magazine's senior Washington correspondent and a regular on MSNBC, told an audience at the Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. on May 1 that if you want to know what the Bush administration has in store for Iran, keep your eye on Fox News. "Now about Iran," Fineman said. "I think there's no doubt they're [the Bush administration] looking to see what can be done there and...

The essence of Howard Fineman's Newsweek column about the demise of Mitt Romney's campaign is the glorification of authenticity, and Mitt's perceived lack of it. Ironic, then, that Fineman would resort to one of the oldest, and least authentic, journalistic dodges: suggest the worst about someone, then slyly slink away. To wit [emphasis added]: [M]aybe the campaign revealed what his closest friends never imagined him to be. They thought he was a decent classy guy. But maybe he really is a soulless throat-cutter who would do and say anything to win.

Here lieth the campaign of Mitt Romney, victim of the mistaken belief that the only way to succeed in national Republican politics was to turn yourself into something you are not. Or maybe the campaign revealed what his closest friends never imaged him to be. They thought he was a decent classy guy. But maybe he really is a soulless throat-cutter who would do and say anything to win. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he was a good fellow who didn't know enough about national politics and listened to people who gave him bad,...

The biggest news out of last night's GOP debate could be the hit taken by John McCain's reputation for straight talk. For whatever reason, McCain chose to deny the undeniable: that on more than one occasion he has admitted not understanding the economy as well as he should. When the debate ended it took MSNBC no time to document the record. And a bit later, in the post-debate coffee klatsch, Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman unloaded on the Arizona senator for his fudging. View video here.

When it comes to MSM outrage over pro-Republican TV ads, it's hard to top Chris Matthews. He pounded for days on the RNC ad about Harold Ford, Jr., accusing RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman of "cesspool" tactics and claiming the ad played to white fears of "losing white women to black guys."Matthews had a similar over-the-top reaction to an ad [see it here] running in NJ that uses a mobbed-up character to mock ethically-challenged Bob Menendez. Here's how Stephen Spruiell at National Review's Media Blog noted Matthews comments:"Well maybe because I've spent so much of my life in New Jersey... but...

view edit Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 9, 2006 - 20:40. The show bills itself as 'Hardball.' But in surrounding himself with regulars who are either certified liberals or renegade Republicans, doesn't Chris Matthews prove himself to be a softy, unwilling or unable to take the high heat from true-blue Republican flamethrowers? Let me say something that might surprise some NewsBusters readers and dismay others. I like Matthews. Not that conservatives are the arbiters of patriotism, but I do consider Chris someone who loves his country and, as misguided as he may be on various policy issues - has...

by Mark Finkelstein September 13, 2006 - 19:59 Chris Matthews is as frustrated as an able-bodied seaman after six months without shore leave. After 12 long years in the desert of the congressional minority, Matthews clearly senses this is the year for the Dems to snatch back the Speaker's gavel. His frustration is borne of the fear that the Dems will squander the opportunity out of timidity - an unwillingness to attack President Bush on the war in Iraq. Things boiled over on this evening's Hardball. With guests Howard Fineman of Newsweek and Chuck Todd of the Hotline as witnesses...

by Mark Finkelstein August 9, 2006 - 20:06 That didn't take long. Just yesterday, Ned Lamont was the netroot hero, the pride of MoveOn.org, the scourge of the GOP. Today, Dem nomination in hand, he began his run toward the center - with a little help from his MSM friends. On this evening's Hardball, Chris Matthews scoffed at the way that the RNC put Lamont's picture up on its website alongside Michael Moore, Mark Moulitsas of the Daily Kos, Howard Dean, and John Murtha. Well, let's see: Dean via his DFA organization openly campaigned for Lamont over Lieberman. Daily Kos...

by Mark Finkelstein August 4, 2006 - 09:07 Was Matt Lauer showing balance in criticizing Hillary Clinton along with Donald Rumsfeld this morning - or was his skepticism about Hillary simply voicing the view of the Murtha/Lamont wing of the Dem party? The focus was yesterday's Senate-hearing mano a mano between Hillary and Rumsfeld and her subsequent call for the president to accept the Defense Secretary's resignation. Interviewing all-purpose commentator Howard Fineman, Lauer seemed insistent that it was time for Rumsfeld to go. Lauer: "[Clinton] said the president should accept Rumsfeld's resignation. He lost credibility with Congress and the people....

Sept. 14, 2005 - If I am hearing Simon Rosenberg right (and he is worth listening to), a nasty civil war is brewing within the Democratic Party, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton—the party’s presumptive 2008 nominee—needs to avoid getting caught in the middle of it. “It’s not a fight between liberals and conservatives,” Rosenberg told me the other day. “It’s between our ‘governing class’ here and activists everywhere else.” In other words, it’s the Beltway versus the Blogosphere. What’s interesting is that Rosenberg is himself a Beltway creature, a preternaturally self-assured young insider with a cherubic face and a cold...

* There are a couple of issues which attend to this Newsweek thing. First, there is the First Amendment to the Constitution. For those of us who haven't actually read the First Amendment since 8th Grade Social Studies, here it is: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. * This is a pretty big bag of freedoms in one Amendment. Religion, speech,...

Six years after he became the only elected U.S. president ever to be impeached, Bill Clinton is now almost "beloved," says Newsweek's Howard Fineman. "Whatever desk he occupies, he will always be center stage," he gushed to MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday night. "That is the way [Clinton] is." Commenting on the ex-president's surgery this week, the Newsweek scribe added: "Everybody wishes him well. He's almost reached the beloved stage." Writing on Newsweek's web site two days later, Fineman still sounded like the president of the Bill Clinton fan club. "I imagine it’s tough, even for Clinton’s enemies, to hate...

Newsweek's Howard Fineman discussed "Vietnam and Decision 2004" with Katie Couric on "Today." Fineman blamed Kerry for the race's focus on Vietnam and said that if he was going to talk about Vietnam as much as he did at his convention, "he needed to talk about his anti-war record." Fineman suggested that questions about Bush's National Guard service would be less damaging to him because he didn't choose to make what he did during the Vietnam era the focus of his campaign. Fineman also chided Kerry for not doing anything in advance to defend his Senate record.

JON FRIEDMAN'S MEDIA WEB Newsweek aims to crack Bush 'riddle' Commentary: Plus, Slate's suitors, New Yorker's surprise By Jon Friedman, CBS.MarketWatch.comLast Update: 12:01 AM ET Aug. 27, 2004   NEW YORK (CBS.MW) - Forget, for a moment, about terrorism, Iraq and even the media's misguided obsession over whether President Bush's supporters can conspire to reduce John Kerry to a Purple Heart-winning weenie. At Newsweek, the editors have one overriding objective as they prepare to cover the upcoming Republican convention in New York and the balance of Bush's re-election campaign. They intend to "crack the riddle that is George Bush," said...

In an effort to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. The gathering could not properly be called a meeting or a luncheon. It was a trial. The journalists served as prosecuting attorneys, jury and judge. The crowd I joined in Franken’s living room was comprised of: Al Franken and his wife Franni; Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker; David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker; Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine; Howard...

I'm in a rental car with Al Franken, and we're driving across New Hampshire on the Sunday before the nation's first primary, heading to a John Edwards rally. The Democrats are in a kooky mood following the sudden collapse of Howard Dean in Iowa, and Franken -- comedian, celebrity, scourge -- is spending two days in the state not in any official capacity but as a sort of good-will representative from the party's satiric wing. He is not, as you might think from the outrageous trappings of his comedy, an extreme lefty but rather a devout party man, one who...

The Death of Journalistic Ethics There has been a subtle shift in opinion journalism in America in the past few years. Now, we have people working for newspapers and magazines who are devoted to getting certain polticians -- namely the left -- elected to office. While Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing talk show cadre are entertainers -- and describe themselves as such -- these people are embedded in the elite media and are not supposed to be political activists. In a stunning admission in Sunday's New York Times, the following people attended a meeting with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in...

Even administration insiders are starting to worry about how the war will affect the president’s re-election chances. In New Hampshire, the omens aren’t reassuring Nov. 3 issue — Hilary Cleveland of New London, N.H., goes way back with the Bush family. Her late husband, James Colgate (Jimmy) Cleveland, was a Republican in Congress, where his paddle-ball partner in the House gym was George H.W. Bush. Hilary served on the Andover board with Barbara Bush and was finance chair of Bush’s primary campaign in New Hampshire in 1980. She organized locally for George W. in 2000. But the other day, upset...

President will try to smother Democrat, steal key issues June 18 — For no justifiable reason—other than they could get away with it—officials of President Bush’s re-election campaign essentially barred reporters from his first big fund-raiser here the other night. I don’t know why the White House bothered being so secretive. Everyone knows what they were up to, which was to Hoover up as much cash as possible from every corporate suit in town. EACH PRESIDENTIAL cycle is denounced as a new, groundbreaking descent into the hell where money and power meet. This one will break through the basement. But...

  The Poor Democrats Newsweek Web Exclusive Before Bill Clinton confessed, Hillary blamed a "right-wing conspiracy" for all the sex talk about her husband, the president. Now the chatter is back and so is the conspiracy. Only this time the driving force isn't the "right wing" or the so-called mainstream media. It's the Clintons themselves.PITY THE POOR DEMOCRATS, especially the ones running for president. They want politics these days to focus on questions such as: where are the weapons of mass destruction George W. Bush told us about? Where are the child-care credits everyone is supposed to get? But...

<p>May 28 — George W. Bush embarks soon on his most extended European trip, and if you want to understand his 2004 election strategy (it’s really not that very hard to figure out), take a look at his itinerary: The first stop is Krakow, Poland. That’s Poland as in “Coalition of the Willing,” of course. But, more important for politics, it’s Krakow as in the hometown of Pope John Paul II.</p>

Evangelical Christians lining up to fight for Israel may be an unmovable obstacle to Bush’s ‘road map’ June 2 issue — It’s a landmark in the history of strange bedfellows: Tom DeLay says kaddish. It happened last February, the day the space shuttle Columbia fell apart. Among the dead astronauts was an Israeli, Ilan Ramon. In Florida, at the Boca Raton Resort, some big machers had gathered to hear a speech by House Republican leader DeLay, an evangelical Christian from Sugar Land, Texas. Mixing Churchill and the Bible, DeLay talked of a destiny shared by America and Israel. He asked...

It’s a landmark in the history of strange bedfellows: Tom DeLay says kaddish. It happened last February, the day the space shuttle Columbia fell apart. Among the dead astronauts was an Israeli, Ilan Ramon. In Florida, at the Boca Raton Resort, some big machers had gathered to hear a speech by House Republican leader DeLay, an evangelical Christian from Sugar Land, Texas. Mixing Churchill and the Bible, DeLay talked of a destiny shared by America and Israel. He asked for “divine assistance” in protecting both. In closing, to the astonishment of his audience, he recited—in Hebrew—the last lines of the...

<p>June 2 issue —  It’s a landmark in the history of strange bedfellows: Tom DeLay says kaddish. It happened last February, the day the space shuttle Columbia fell apart. Among the dead astronauts was an Israeli, Ilan Ramon. In Florida, at the Boca Raton Resort, some big machers had gathered to hear a speech by House Republican leader DeLay, an evangelical Christian from Sugar Land, Texas. Mixing Churchill and the Bible, DeLay talked of a destiny shared by America and Israel. He asked for “divine assistance” in protecting both. In closing, to the astonishment of his audience, he recited—in Hebrew—the last lines of the Jewish prayer for the dead. The crowd, many in tears, joined in. (DeLay had been coached by a Jewish former staffer.) “It was quite a moment,” said Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who was there.</p>

<p>The Democratic machine wants to anoint an early king. Can a high-tech insurgent hack his way in?</p> <p>May 19 issue — No one contacted Heather Allison to invite her to the campaign event at the Essex bar in Manhattan. She invited herself, and was there last week, pale ale in hand.</p>

The biggest risk is that the Big Inning strategy — a combination of sweeping aims (the democratization of the Arab world) and military might — won’t achieved the desired result, which is to rid the world of terrorism. “I wish I could say for sure that getting rid of Saddam will make us safer,” said the expert I just spoke with. “It could. It should. I can only say, I ‘hope.’”

In Keith Olberman's segment at 8pm he led with how the President was handling the war emotionally. He brought Howard Fineman on and they proceded to attack the President in a subtle, yet vicious way. It was relayed that he prayed many times a day, and was not comfortable in front of press confrences. Fineman opined that he had gotten better at reading speeches hi people had written, but, didn't like it much. I hated Olberman for hi Clinton Butt-boy hijinks, and Fineman gets his shots in where he can. You know, the war looks like it will be over...

HIS TEXT ISN’T news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.” The author is Oswald Chambers, and, under the circumstances, the historical echoes are loud. A Scotsman and itinerant Baptist preacher, Chambers died in November 1917 as he was bringing the Gospel to Australian and New Zealand soldiers massed in Egypt. By Christmas they had helped to wrest Palestine from the Turks, and captured Jerusalem for...