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by Mark Finkelstein February 11, 2006 When's the last time you recall a famous elected official being called a drunk on live national TV? It happened this morning on the Today show. Today was surely looking for a light touch on New Orleans when co-host Campbell Brown interviewed New Orleans magician, comic and eccentric extraordinaire Harry Anderson in a pre-Mardi Gras piece on "Life after Katrina." But the NBC show surely got a bit more than it was bargaining for. When Anderson took some shots at FEMA and the federal response to Katrina, Brown, in an apparent bid for balance,...

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Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown is making it clear how she feels about Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and her former network's softball treatment of the candidate. The 47-year-old television news reporter, who resigned from CNN in 2010 after her show was not renewed, took to Twitter on Tuesday evening to rant against her old network and the billionaire businessman. 'This CNN townhall is like nothing I have ever seen -- horrifying lovefest and official Trump endorsement,' Brown first tweeted... **snip** ...Brown is married to Dan Senor, Mitt Romney's senior foreign policy adviser during the 2012 election campaign. They have...

Campbell Brown and Kirsten Powers take on the leftist establishment Democrats are known for many things, but chief among them is the relentless determination to maintain a rigid progressive orthodoxy within their ranks. Bucking that orthodoxy requires character and conviction because those who do can expect a certain level of contempt directed their way from their oh-so-tolerant brethren. Campbell Brown and Kirsten Powers are two women who have demonstrated a willingness to take positions decidedly at odds with the progressive establishment. Brown’s Democratic roots can be traced back to her father, Louisiana Democratic State Senator and Secretary of State James...

I suppose you could give Campbell Brown and John Heilemann credit for candor. They've made it clear that when it comes to qualifications for replacing Jon Stewart as Daily Show host, there is one fatal flaw: being a conservative. On today's With All Due Respect, Brown and John Heilemann were kicking around the results of a poll as to whom Americans prefer to replace Stewart. Tina Fey came in first, with Dennis Miller a close second. Said Brown: "I can't imagine Dennis Miller. Hasn't he gone right wing?" Heilemann agreed: "that's not going to work." View the video here.

“What do you call Democrats with kids?” goes a joke of fairly recent vintage. “Republicans,” is the punch line. Former CNN reporter Campbell Brown may not have reached that point yet but she has become skeptical of some time-worn shibboleths of public school teachers’s unions. “I talked to one prinicipal who has been trying to get rid of an incompetent teacher for seven years,” Brown said in remarks at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on October 2, 2014. In her experiences with the New York City public schools, Brown discovered that three key obstacles to reform can be found in...

You remember Campbell don’t you? No, I mean this Campbell; a card carrying member of the Hollywood/Media/Entertainment complex: She used to work at NBC, where she got passed over for the TODAY show host. Later she went to CNN where they fired her for having bad ratings. That seems rather unfair and possibly even discriminatory, given that nobody has good ratings at CNN. Since CNN let her go, she, like Lady M, is technically an unemployed “single mother” - which has apparently been redefined to mean a busy mom with a busy husband. Or something. Lady M, fashion icon and...

Campbell Brown appeared on today's Morning Joe to promote her campaign against violence in entertainment media. But while she made some solid suggestions, it was Joe Scarborough who took matters a quantum leap further, calling Quentin Tarantino "a pornographer of violence." In line with her op-ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Brown criticized President Obama, post Newtown, for focusing almost exclusively on gun control while largely ignoring the issue of violence in media. She encouraged him to pull a Sister Souljah/Nixon-to-China and use his extraordinary ties with Hollywood to bring pressure on media makers to deal with the extreme violence...

It's turned into something of a week for TV hosts, if not to bite, then at least to nibble hard on the hands that feed them . . . First, as noted here, on Friday Joe Scarborough passed along the comment of an unnamed conservative biggie who wondered "what the hell [Rand Paul] was doing on MSNBC?", where during an interview with Rachel Maddow he caused controversy with his comments on the Civil Rights Act. Today, it was Howard Kurtz's turn. In the wake of Campbell Brown's withdrawal from CNN, in which she cited her show's poor ratings, Kurtz, host...

CNN's Campbell Brown has resigned. The following are statements from both CNN President Jon Klein and a heartfelt letter from Brown explaining her reasons for leaving. STATEMENT FROM JON KLEIN, PRESIDENT OF CNN/U.S. "Today is about Campbell. We want to wish her well as she begins the next phase of her life. We respect her decision to leave. We will announce our programming plans in the coming weeks." An Excerpt From Brown's Statement "Simply put, the ratings for my program are not where I would like them to be. It is largely for this reason that I am stepping down...

Campbell Brown, CNN's news anchor at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, is quitting the cable network, and is making no secret as to the reason why: poor ratings. In a statement filled with candor, Brown says, "I have also always marveled whenever a television anchor says that he or she pays no attention to ratings. I'm pretty sure the last time any anchor could honestly ignore ratings was well before I was born. Of course I pay attention to ratings. And simply put, the ratings for my program are not where I would like them to be. It is largely for...

Anchors aren't known for admitting their shortcomings but Campbell Brown is accepting defeat. The eponymous host of CNN's "Campbell Brown" has stepped down from the "toughest timeslot in cable news" due to low ratings. "Simply put, the ratings for my program are not where I would like them to be," Brown said in a statement released Tuesday. "It is largely for this reason that I am stepping down as anchor of CNN’s 'Campbell Brown.’ " Brown added that she had been ruminating over the move "for some time" and that she felt the urge to reveal the truth behind her...

Breaking: News emerging that CNN's Campbell Brown will leave the network. Mediaite's Steve Krakauer reports that CNN has granted Brown's request to be let out of her contract early, and that Brown will remain as primetime anchor of her eponymous show until a replacement is found: A source with knowledge of the situation tells Mediaite Brown made the request months ago -- and before all the 'how to fix CNN' articles began rolling out. We hear she originally lobbied for the 7pmET opening, with the thinking the show would work better at an earlier hour (and without the Bill O'Reilly/Keith...

The media might be overplaying the significance of the tea party movement, CNN anchor Campbell Brown suggested late Tuesday during a political discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Paraphrasing a story from the news Web site, Politico, Brown said: “The media didn’t see the tea party coming, and now are sort of over-compensating by giving these guys way more attention than they deserve.” SNIPIt was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, who offered up a defense, gently chastising rich attendees of a Beverly Hills conference for their unflattering characterization of tea party demonstrators as “unwashed simpletons.” “Stereotypes are dangerous...

With Campbell Brown's husband, Dan Senor, considering a political campaign for Senate against Kirsten Gillibrand, The NY Post's Michael Starr writes today, "[CNN] will have to decide if Brown can keep hosting her 8 p.m. nightly news show -- or if she would be compromised by the conflict." A CNN spokesperson told Starr they wouldn't comment on "hypothetical situations," but Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren did, defending Brown in a blog post today: There are all sorts of rumors out there that CNN's Campbell Brown's husband may run for the Senate and the question has been raised whether she...

"Campbell Brown . . . the only non-partisan cable news anchor at 8 pm." -- CNN description of Campbell Brown show "Non-partisan": yeah, right. The hit that Brown, with help from reporter Dana Bash, put on Jim Bunning this evening was worthy of that hyper-partisan guy over at MSNBC in the 8 PM ET slot. Bash first narrated a classic of the liberal media genre: an anecdotal story of someone allegedly hurt by hard-hearted Republican policies. Bash claimed that "in the real world," Bunning's position is having a "devastating effect" on people like single mother Madonna Alvarez. It got worse...

Here is video of CNN's Campbell Brown reporting on some of President Obama's favorite phrases. Topping the list: "Let me be clear." . . . (VIDEO)

Here is video of Rev. Franklin Graham talking to CNN's Campbell Brown about the War in Afghanistan and President Obama's speech in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Franklin Graham said "true Islam cannot be practiced in this country (America). You cannot beat your wife, you cannot murder your children if you think they commit adultery, as they do in these other countries." He pointed to Saudi Arabia as an example of a whole nation devoted to Islam that lives this way. Graham said wherever Islamic Sharia Law is practiced, this is how people are treated. Campbell Brown was disbelieving. Graham...

Here is video of CNN's Campbell Brown slamming Fox News for their ad asking why other networks - including CNN - "missed the story" - referring to the huge 9/12 March on Washington. Campbell Brown rightly points out that CNN did cover the story. We even posted video last weekend of a CNN Reporter being shouted down with chants of "Glenn Beck" and "Tell the truth" as she tried to report on the rally. So it is not true that CNN did not cover the story. But it is true they "missed" the story, because much of their reporting sought...

On an interview show called “Give and Take,” hosted by sometime TV pundit Julie Menin, CNN’s Campbell Brown patted herself and her network on the back for being “the only one that is still doing journalism” in cable land. Menin asked Brown if she felt odd being a “political independent” in this world of cable pundits and lamented that journalism seems to be scant these days. Menin told Brown that at one time, “obviously journalists were independent.” Brown replied by assuming the truth of that “independence” and stated that she and CNN are the only ones “doing journalism” any more....