I love watching the last 15 minutes of the Brit Hume show. Not only is Fred Barnes a wonderfully simple way of picking up the WH talking points, but the 2 GOP hacks vs 1 professional reporter modrated by a GOP hack dynamic is fascinating to watch.

The best moments are when Liason or Birnbaum mildly disagree with our insect overlords. The professional reporter will say something like "I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say all Democrats are in favor of pedophilia." Barnes will immediately launch into the reporter, only to be interrupted by Brit Hume acting as if he's trying to protect the reporter from Barnes, saying something like "Well, perhaps not all Democrats. But surely it's reasonable to say most Democrats are in favor of pedophilia." Then Barnes and Krauthammer launch back in, with the reporter furiously backpedalling to stay within the frame of reference of the home team.

It's great theater.

This post raises a heckuva lot of questions.

• PAY:
  

1. Do the employers/syndicators of these people have pay them "overtime" to be on the shows?
   
2. Do the shows pay? If it is up to the guest, wouldn't they just say yes to everything to make that easy money for flapping their jaws.
   
3. Is it an in-kind donation to give a plug the news organization?
   

• ETHICS:
  

1. Are there guidelines for how these talkers represent themselves on panels?
   
2. Should the hosts identify their employment and possible proclivities (I could foresee 20 minutes of disclaimers. Though this wouldn't necessarily be bad.)
   
3. Do they have to stay away from certain topics that they may not cover in their "real" job?
   
4. Does being a reporter for, say, the WSJ, make you ineligible to comment on the administration's Iraq policy?

• SPECIFICS: Let me pick on Chris Matthews just for the hell of it. (I know he can take it.) He does any and all of the following, sometimes on the same day:

1. News analysis on NBC News of important political events.
   
2. Runs a show on MSNBC that combines news, interviews, opinion, snide remarks by the host, and flat-out gossip mongering. Chris is the "impartial" regulator on these tasks. And of himself.
   
3. Runs a show on NBC News that is a reporter's notebook kind of deal that seemingly attempts to generate the most snark and gratuitous put-downs of various public officials. Especially Democrats.
   
4. Goes on Imus and makes fun of gays with the boys in the locker room.

Chris is juggling at lot of balls their, so to speak, and he seems to be in a vortex of this kind of hat-swapping. Does NBC have him under control, following all their rules (or not rules)?

My guess is maybe.  

Pairing professional journalists with right wing pundits has been a template for the corporate media for years.

Political opinions allowed on TV talk shows range from David Broder to Ann Coulter. There is no one on these talk shows representing opinions of people like me, a liberal democrat.

IMO, Meet the Press is the worst offender. FOX doesn't count because pretty much everybody knows by now that it is an arm of the RNC. Meet the Press is seen as a legitimate journalistic outlet.  Tim Russert routinely pairs 2 right wing partisan ideologues/GOP operatives with a journalist and calls it balance.

What I find shocking is that Democratic leaders don't complain. At least they don't complain publicly. They should be screaming from the rooftops.

This is an important issue because these shows frame acceptable political opinion in Washington. So when what is acceptable ranges from David Broder to Ann Counter the rest of us are marginalized as "fringe". We are not fringe. We are the majority. Unfortunately the corporate media has succeeded portraying us as fringe.

"Does NBC have him under control, following all their rules (or not rules)?"

Chris Matthews does not do or say anything that does not have the blessing of NBC and its parent company General Electric. If he launched the kind of personal attacks against a GOP president and his wife the way he has done with the Clintons the parent company GE would throw his ass on the street promptly.

I think that the "attack dogs" on the right represent not so much analysis and discussion as entertianment.  After all, their listeners are the same folks who go to NASCAR races because they like to see car crashes.  Rush's "Dittoheads" get the same enjoyment from right-wing commentary.  It is not supposed to be subtle or considered, it's supposed to be loud and violent.

oh puhleez, nobody except a rabid base respects such ridiculous pit bulls parodied on comedy shows. Coulter does not win votes for the GOP that they would already have. It's infotainment, just like professional wrestling. What do you need a liberal equivalent of a Coulter for? What will it do for you except alienate centrists and swings more? How people who are not already devotees of the same rant vote with their remote control regarding these bozo infotainers has nothing to do with how they vote in the booth. Several relatives often get to this in the phone call: "did you see what that witch Coulter said yesterday?" It means nothing. Their memes are always old ones and anyone interested has already heard them and decided, they are only watching for the punch and judy show.

These are different lines of work and it does a disservice to everyone to confuse them.

I see the Sunday shows, year after year, get worse in trying to pander to the mud wrestling audience. That's why they are doing this, breaking these boundaries all the time. The audience that you are thinking of is a sophisticated political audience that would appreciate this separation. They can't pay the bills with that audience, is the problem.

 The olden daze "Meet The Press" was run like a public service. (Same with the nightly news.) When I was a little kid and my Dad would turn it on and tell us to be quiet so he could listen, it was like torture. Drone, drone, drone of guys in suits, nobody even raising their voice, really boring for a little kid. Nowadays kids and adults have even less tolerance for serious drone/discussion, have to have some excitement or they'll have an ADD attack with the remote control.

The reason I am babbling on about this: you will get nowhere with your complaints until you somehow round up an audience of a decent size for the kind of show with attention to scholarly divisions of commentary and reportage that you are talking about.  Now what was that you wrote about a certain recent French film on your personal blog? Somehow it seems related. Reminder: Charlie Rose gets by on grants from corporate and foundation sponsors. I don't see any network shows without opinion mixed in with everything else for the foreseeable future, not when most people interested in politics being big fans of the new medium blogs, virtually none of which make any pretense of dividing opinion and news. You're all taking away the share of newspapers who rigidly divide op-ed and reporting sections by mixing op-ed and news. What do you expect them to do?