Free Republic

Your must-read of the morning: Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin’s barbecue of a fawning documentary about Helen Thomas. Here’s a taste: Multiple choice quiz: Helen Thomas has been covering the White House for 48 years. Which of the following stories did she break? A. President Kennedy’s plans to invade the Bay of Pigs. B. President Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia. C. The Pentagon Papers. D. The Watergate scandal. E. None of the above, or anything else, either. The answer, of course, is E, though you might not guess it from the fawning HBO documentary Thank You, Mr. President: Helen...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Could "green" become a new watchword in TV programming? While the media companies have long been touting everything they're doing behind the scenes to become more environment-friendly, the message increasingly is seeping into their programming. On Wednesday, Discovery Communications launches the first 24/7 eco-friendly network, Planet Green, which will take over the space occupied by Discovery Home Channel. That follows NBC Universal's second companywide "Green Week" in April -- featuring 100 hours of green-themed content airing across 42 NBC Universal brands and 28 Web sites -- with two more already planned for November and April....

The head of the Democratic Party said Wednesday that the best way to get presidential candidates to talk frankly about issues is to lock out the media. During the Mortgage Bankers Association conference, a banker expressed frustration with candidates who only talk in sound bites and wondered how that could be changed. Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate, offered a simple solution. "I suggest you have candidates in to meetings like this and bar the press," Dean said. The Democratic National Committee chairman criticized media coverage, arguing that networks such as CBS used to put content first and didn't mind...

On Thursday morning, I turned on my satellite TV to surf 24-hour news programs, as I worked on the computer on various projects. To my horror, Fox News had gone to continuous coverage of the train wreck known as the Anna Nicole Smith body custody trial. As a lawyer, I watched a few minutes of it. It was horrible, but fascinatingly, it kept getting worse and worse as it went along. It was like reading a truly dreadful book or watching a dreadful movie that you know is rotten. But you keep reading or watching to see if it can...

Leonardo DiCaprio is helping to develop a reality TV series focusing on the environment. "E-topia" will chronicle the eco-friendly reconstruction of an American town as it is transformed into a "'green' utopia of tomorrow." The project, being shopped to broadcast networks, will document the monthslong endeavor in a town yet to be determined as teams of construction workers and laborers unaccustomed to the demands of a "green" lifestyle work with passionate eco-idealists, planners and architects. Executive producers Craig Piligian (CBS' "Survivor") and Tom Mazza (NBC's "Treasure Hunters") brought the idea to DiCaprio, a high-profile environmental advocate, who signed on as...

Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., is the latest politician to be found editing his Wikipedia entry, extending a year-long trend that has snagged the likes of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.....

American Gun BY ROGER EBERT / April 7, 2006 "American Gun" tells three stories that are small, even quiet. The stories are not strident but sad, and one of them is open-ended. They are about people who find that guns in the hands of others have made their own lives almost impossible to live. The first story involves a mother named Janet, played by Marcia Gay Harden, whose son shot and killed other students at his Oregon high school three years ago, and then was shot dead. She carries on with her remaining son, David (Chris Marquette), who attends a...

Anyone watch "Boston Legal" last night? This (2/14/06) episode delved into liberal politics on several fronts (Catholic church/contraception, fear of abortion's sure demise due to a right-leaning court environment, "right-to-die" [it was a cat!], discrimination practiced by evil private organizations, who surely not only had a nefarious right-wing agenda, but manipulate the law to insure that they stay free of "mainstream" [read:liberal] thoughts on things like discrimination). The central theme centered on a young girl who was violently and brutally raped, and who was denied anti-contraception medication at the Catholic hospital she was brought to (unconscious) after the event. They...

NEW YORK (AP) NBC's Brian Williams says the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina for journalists may be the end of an unusual four-year period of deference to people in power. There were so many angry, even incredulous, questions put to Bush administration officials about the response to Katrina that the Salon Web site compiled a "Reporters Gone Wild" video clip. Tim Russert, Anderson Cooper, Ted Koppel, and Shepard Smith were among the stars. The mute button seemingly in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been turned off. "By dint of the fact that our country was hit we've...

<p>She didn't twist my arm, but Mom convinced me to see Michael Moore's new movie.</p> <p>I'd told her there was no way I'd spend my hard-earned money on his propaganda!</p> <p>Mom – a dyed-in-the-wool FDR Democrat – knows my politics. When she learned I'd not seen the movie, she had a cause: get me to attend with her and a crowd of her Democrat club buddies. In fact, her local theatre booked the movie because Mom touted it to them.</p>

CNN's ticket out of Lucas land ... The day after CNN's Connie Chung did a live show from "Star Wars" auteur George Lucas' famed Skywalker Ranch, CNN was asked not to attend a "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" press junket on the property. The Insider's tipsters said CNN was tossed off the ranch, but CNN says that's an exaggeration, that there was "no physical removal" of anyone, that there was a "conversation" and that "as conversations like that go, it was fairly cordial." The tipsters also say that what apparently rubbed Mr. Lucas the wrong way was that Ms....