mess. the correct answer to our gps challenge question was d, the trial is being held at a police academy on the outskirts of cairo. it was formerly called the mubarak police academy, named after the man who is now the chief defendant in the trial. thanks for being part of my program. i will see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com we're in los angeles this morning. we'll begin with a washington drama ma became a media inflation, the self inflict pd crisis that has led to a downgrade in the u.s. credit rating. are the pun dilts right in declaring president obama the loser? have journalists grappled with the magnitude of these budget cuts and the economic impact we saw in the stock market meltdown. here in california we talk

to sharp waxman about the challenge of covering hollywood without getting too close to the studios and the stars. author ned z man on how he went plain crazy and had to investigate what happened when he lost his memory. i'm howard kurtz and this is "reliable sources." it was a made for television drama with the full faith and credit of the united states on the line. at the heart of the debt crisis craziness was a serious debate about the role of government. while the last-minute agreement between president obama and the republicans will slash $2.4 trillion from federal spending, much of the focus shifted to the narrative of who won an who lost. >> it is official, the compromise bill on the debt ceiling and lowering spending is now the law of the land. >> everyone in washington got bruised over this fight, and the president did, too.

>> both the president and john boehner are in the loser categories here. folks out there are saying to hell with all these guys. >> let's review. the president sets up a financial commission, then ignores it. president puts forth his budget and no one, not even members of his own party votes for it. would you have confidence in a guy like that? >> after brilliantly making the republicans look ridiculous at every stage of the negotiations, after slowly but surely educating the public about the importance of raising the dealt ceiling and after turning voter sentiment against the republicans, in the end the president blinked. >> so how are news organizations faring in chasing this fast-moving story and unraveling the compromise that kept the country out of default. joining us, dennis prayinger, the indicated radio host, joan walsh from salon.com and in washington terence smith, former

media correspondent for the pbs news hour. joan walsh, the commentary on the left has been that obama got rolled, capitulated. you have called his stance appalling and said the democratic party has lost its core values. have you taken a lot of heat? >> no. i think people feel the same way. i don't speak for his base. however, he did sell out core democratic principles. when you have a situation where one party says compromise is a mortal sin and the other says it's good. the party that says compromise is the highest good gets rolled. no way around it. >> dennis, they've been intransigent, unrealistic. >> terrorists, jihadists. >> who cares if we default? have you found that to be unfair? >> not only is it unfair, they are the ones who stood up for

america because we're becoming like greece, like italy, like portugal and so on. so i think they have stood up for america. >> what about the intransigence rap. >> it always goes to the republicans. i give you one example here of what troubles me. when jared loughner shot congresswoman giffords, the entire media was saturated with "look at the way the republicans talk." now that the democrats and blogosphere are saying jihadist, the vice president called the tea party terrorists. >> that's someone in dispute. we will touch on that. let me go to terry smith and give us a little altitude here. has the coverage captured the dysfunction in washington and the anger out there as opposed to chronicling the typical ups and downs of beltway politics? >> i think it did both, howie.

i think the coverage was exhaustive and exhausting, frankly. there was the familiar tendency to take an economic story and turn it into a political story and to assign blame, who is up, who's down, et cetera. i have to say you're doing some of that yourself right now in this segment. it's a big story. i would say the media failed to anticipate the consequences, the s&p downgrade, the market swoon, all the problems that are still coming. so this story is still going on, and i really argue that it's too soon to assign blame and maybe that's a fruitless exercise anyway. media always very quick to assign blame. we'll get to the economic impact in our next segment. joan, dennis referred to some of the language being used. "much of the country has watched in horror has the tea party republicans have waged jihad on

the american people." don't liberals usually complain about inflammatory -- >> he wrote another segment and apologized. >> he did apologized. you talk about tea party crazies. >> i've said it was a hostage taking. i believe it was a hostage taking. do you know who agrees with me? mitch mcconnell. mitch mcconnell joked about it. some people in the party wanted to shoot the hostage. we got some ran sosom. i don't believe that the vice president said it. it sounds like someone else said it. >> the vice president never denied he said it. he said people shouldn't say it. that is what he reacted to the politico piece. >> politico reported vice president biden in a closed door meeting with democrats referred to the republican tea party types as terrorists. biden sort of denied it. your point is that the media

don't get very exercised when this language is used by liberals? >> there was one sarah palin shot with a gun side on giffords' district as a vulnerable district in the election. we republicans were excoriated for causing shootings. but when the rhetoric is satan sandwich, satanic the bill, right, and nancy pelosi said there were satan fries with the satan sandwich. >> a real happy meal. >> exactly. >> howie, this was a manufactured crisis. so in a sense it was a political debate more than an economic debate. it was pushed. let's face it, by a group of tea party freshmen in the house largely and pushed forward into a crisis situation right down to the deadline. so i guess in this case it's

really more understandable to treat it as a political story. but in it, the economic consequences get lost. >> let me play for you, terry, part of a scorching commentary by keith old man in which he talked about the role of journalists. >> it will do no good to suddenly remember the media to remember the origins as the free press, the watch dog of democracy envisioned by jefferson. they are too busy trying to get exclusive details about exactly how the bank robbers emptied the pockets to give a damn to tell anybody what they looked like or which way they went. >> i'd say keith is striving a little hard himself there, maybe to get somebody to watch current tv. i don't know. there's some truth to all of this you know. >> sure, but olbermann is making the indictment saying

journalists are more interested in the behind-the-scenes action than talking about the substance of what happened. it brings me to this question, joan, we have $1 trillion in budget kouts noun, another $1.5 trillion down the road, the super committee. there's been little reporting on the human impact of what these reductions are going to mean and much more did obama lose the upper hand, who is going to capture the independents? does that trouble you. >> yes, it does. i'm probably guilty of it, too. what they did is very complicated. part of why this is such an anti-dem crammic thing to do is it happened so quickly, it wasn't part of the normal budget debate. i don't think the normal budget debate is a great debate either. a lot of washington is disfungal. but to do it with this deadline hanging over their heads, no one understands what's in the bill, no one understands what the super committee is going to do. that's troubling. people will lose jobs, people will get hurt, and i can't really describe all of it for

you. >> let me just ask you, does it trouble you that nobody knew what was in obama care? that was rushed far more than this was rushed. >> wasn't that debated for over a year? >> no, it wasn't. nancy pelosi said i don't know what's in the bill. we'll know it when it's passed. nobody knows. we don't the extra taxes. >> media double standard in your view? >> totally. by the way, you asked about the human impact. i wish the media did a segment or many segments on the human impact of such debt. that you'll never see. you'll see human impact of cutbacks but not the debt. >> howie, just to wrap that point, that's the test going forward for news organizations now. take a look at the consequence of what was done and cover the super committee. don't drop it in favor of other faster-moving stories. >> i think that's a great point. i also think there's a belated

focus, what the polls are showing us that people really care anti, that's the 14 million people in this country that don't have jobs. totally overshadowed by that debate. understandable to some extent because of the histrionics and deadline and the fact we were facing a default. whether the poll shows it or not, that's an economic story that seems to me to have gotten overshadowed. when we come back, the stock market melts down, the s&p downgrading federal debt. were the media too quick to declare this crisis over? [ male announcer ] members of the american postal workers union

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declare this crisis over?

it was an ugly day on wall street on thursday. the stock market kept going down, down, down. here is a little of what it looked like on cable television. >> the s&p down by more than 4%, biggest loss since 2009. >> hearing words like alarming, panic, devastating. >> a rather panic-stricken

selloff continues, 476.54 down and going further down. >> what a day. you will see the headlines tomorrow. no positive way of spinning this. the dow jones industrial average down 512 points. >> it is 4:00 on wall street. do you know where your money is? >> i want to check with my money is. that montage was put together by msnbc's rachel maddow show. that happening as well as the s&p downgrade of federal debt reminds me there's a real economic world out there. i wonder whether the media, once the deal was made, everybody went on vacation and were too quick to declare this crisis over? >> it's obviously not over. news organizations with are still in a sort of crisis mode on this. they're watching the markets today sunday, sunday night as we roll over into monday. we'll see this. there are obviously several shoes to drop here. so legitimately it will be

covered. it is somewhat in a crisis mode. at the same time you have people arguing whether the s&p downgrade was reasonable or appropriate or whether they even got the arithmetic right. so i think there's a lot of hard reporting to be done here. and it's clearly not over. >> among those doing the arguing, dennis prayinger, are white house officials sniping at the s&p, one of three credit rating agencies, and you are had this extraordinary spectacle of top economicixecutives going on. >> i don't know if it's become a political war yet. i think a lot of republicans and democrats don't have a high regard for s&p. i'm not sure there will be a political war on that. i just want to say one more time that we do have an indication of

world markets. there is one world market that has opened, israel, that have sunday as a work day. it's gone down 5% in the actual stock market. the issue is debt. the issue is that unemployment is a human tragedy. the economic tragedy is the debt. it's the debt in europe, the debt in the united states, and the media won't focus on that. they will focus on the human tragedy of unemployment and the human tragedy of cutbacks. >> how can the media not focus on the fact that the stock market is tanking and we now have this downgrade? it seems to me that forces journalists to confront the damage this self inflicted crisis has caused. >> there's a real debate over what the crisis is. i don't think it's a debt crisis. i think it's a demand crisis that people are unemployed, people were overleveraged, they were taking money out of their homes, they can't do that anymore. wages haven't risen, wages have

fallen while unemployment has risen. people can't buy, people can't restore the economy. that's when keynesians believe the government steps in and government voids demand. we didn't do that adequately and we're stuck with the ramifications of that. >> go ahead, terry. >> joan is exactly right there. there isn't a debt crisis. there's a debt problem. there's a growth problem and a growth crisis, if you like. and that is the essence of it. this is, in essence, an ideological argument to some degree. but there are real people who are really being hurt here. so that makes difference. >> i said that. there are real people being hurt. but the reason for the downgrading and the reason for the stock market and the reason for israel going down 5% is debt, not american unemployment. >> just briefly, why do you think the media in your view have not focused sufficiently on this enormous debt? >> because the media are left of

center. >> how is it a left-right issue? >> it's clearly the right believes debt is the problem, and the left believes that we don't spend enough is the problem, we don't tax enough and don't spend enough. it's as clear as day. that's my big thanks to this crisis, clarity. >> you two can continue this outside. thanks for joining us in los angeles. coming up in this second part of the special edition, we take our cameras to the offices of the wrap. st. petersburg time eric dug gan stops back to talk about msnbc's move to hire al sharpton and the network critics tour as well. "vanity fair" writer ned z man on what it's like for journalists to literally go crazy. a lot of times, things are right underneath our feet,

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we're here in cnn's hollywood bureau. you would think hollywood was one of the most well-covered beats in the world. 2 1/2 years ago, former newspaper reporter sharon waxman founded a website to scrutinize what's known in l.a. as "the industry."

thewrap.com. how does an up start compete with the established giants. we took our cameras to an editorial meeting where there's plenty of talk about television and movies, but also on a very big beltway issue. >> let's just do a story, hollywood reacts to the debt ceiling. it's the only [ bleep ] out there right now. there is nothing happening. >> we talked about this last week with the graphics and the over-the-top. any time the cable news channels go wall to wall on it -- >> one thing we can do, jay, why don't you scour twitter for reactions to that in the media in entertainment and could be also celebrity crowd on the debt ceiling? >> do we want the celebrity crowd? >> i definitely would love twitter reacts to the debt ceiling. >> i think it depends who the celebrities are, too. we need to get more serious celebrities. i like the second thing that he

was saying, how is this going to affect obama's re-election. >> you're not going to have the matt damon and robert de niros doing these rallies where you have public support of him the last go-round. that seems to be more of a thing. we can ask that question. >> there's a different issue that is revealed by this whole episode and that is a question of obama's character. you may have loved him, loved him, loved him during the campaign. no candidate ever governs like he runs. he promised change and he does control the white house and a house -- the house of congress is his party. and he's governing like he has no power. >> i later sat down with the wrap founder sharon waxman to talk about her coverage of all media and entertainment issues in a hollywood culture where

access is everything. >> sharon waxman, welcome. >> thank you. >> the story that dominated the news has been the debt ceiling negotiations in washington. out here you feel like you're a million miles away, the weather is nice, the palm threes. the other day you were talking about the debt ceiling for an entertainment website? >> we have to follow the news. that's all anybody is talking about. whatever global story or national story is happening, we'll take the piece of it that impacts our core readership which is the entertainment industry and the media business. that's what we were doing and seeing how that's impacting, if the debt ceiling deal didn't happen, how would it affect their businesses. everyone knows that hollywood is an establishment of liberals and they are big, big funders of democratic politicians, so how might that impact their donations in the future, if they're angry at the president or the democratic party. >> hollywood is liberal, that's breaking news at the top. the television critics are out here this week for the industry presentations.

each network does a dog and pony show. does that produce legitimate stories? >> that sounded a little bit like a slam, but okay. >> a perfectly good thing for kretices to do, but are they really getting spoon fed by industry executives? >> um -- >> you're not sure. >> i'm of two minds. >> you only have time for one answer. >> there was a time when i came out i was very surprised at this spectacle and found it a little bit birote and also the opportunity to miss the big picture because the agenda was set by the people, the tv establishment who want to produce their ratings. at the same time, this is a pretty closed industry. that's an event where you can stand up and ask any question you want. i myself have used that forum.

sometimes i'm looked at a skrans for asking in the middle of the room a question that doesn't involve getting a six share on monday night which is obscure to most television viewers. >> it gives you a shot to get at people. >> access is unusual in this industry. there is nothing like that for the movie side of the industry where you can go up to an executive and ask them a question like, for example, why do you make so many bad movies. >> speaking of access, do you think a lot of the organizations that you compete with here in los angeles are so worried about access because it's a relatively small but very important and very lucrative industry, that they pull their punches? >> yes. i really think that has a lot to do with why we started the wrap because it was my feeling that the traditional trade publications had long ago stopped doing the job of asking tough questions of the industry and that we're very complicit in their coverage. >> you're talking here about

l.a. times, calendar section, to hollywood reporter, "variety." >> i think more specifically -- that's not what i was thinking of. i have to think harder because they have done hard hitting coverage over the years and they've got some excellent reporters over there. i'm thinking more about the trades who were advertising editorial and as the business model for print, as you well know, collapsed, all of that became unsustainable, that whole cycle of basically giving editorial in exchange for advertising. the hollywood reporter of today is a completely different ownership and they've actually stopped doing the daily. they now only do a weekly glossy, more oriented to a consumer audience. we're not sure if that's going to work or not. >> on the question of the similar bee ot tick relationship, you were showing what you put out. in order to get christina hendricks and julianna

margolies, isn't it in the back of your mind or in some of your reporters' minds if you're too mean toward their movies, they may not be on your cover? >> not at all. not at all. that's the same -- if you establish a line of credibility at the beginning, then you will be respected as a news organization. that's always been my approach when i was at "the washington post," when i was at "the new york times," we would write very hard-hitting stories sometimes and also write very benign features that are just interesting to the reader. it doesn't always call for an aggressive stance or watch dog sense. this is a very creative industry. there's many fascinating and talented people you can shine a light on wore think of editorial coverage. it's about looking at some of the interesting performers and writing and directing talents in the tv season. that doesn't mean we're not going to write a story that's

critical of a story that puts on "the good wife" that july ann margolies is in, but because we play fair, because we don't have an agenda, i think we have a really good relationship with the industry. >> since there's such intensive coverage of hollywood, when you started this website, was it an uphill struggle? you got some money from howard schultz, the founder of starbucks. why did he want to finance, some might say, another entertainment website? >> actually there was a really big gap in the marketplace for a professional, credible news organization that was geared to the digital age. so at that time, as i described to you just before, traditional print was die. there were a few blogs here and there that held people in its thrall for either being just very aggressive or being loud

and being very gossippy. you're right that the entertainment space in general is saturated. there's tmz and ew and access hollywood. we're not any one of those things. we're not a celebrity site. we really do cover the business in entertain. media. >> you don't do any gossip? >> there are many occasions when gossip intersects with real news. we like to think we have a sense of humor, but it's not our obsessive focus. we believe we serve as a news function. there was nothing like that serving that purpose when we started "the wrap." >> since you live online, there's a huge debate about aggregation, borrowing things from other sites. you got into a debate on "reliable sources" with michael wolf. are you finding out it's in your interest to link to other sites that might be considered rivals and are you getting ripped off,

in your view, by other sites. >> there is that competitive tension that exists. we have a policy of linking to and crediting other sites when they break news first or certainly if we're agating their news which sometimes happens. we do like to point to other stories weity are interesting that we may have not originated. i do draw the line when there are sites that will not link to us or ever credit us. i recently actually made a decision i'm not going to -- i'll cite those sites but not link back to them because i think it's a matter of professional courtesy. >> come back to my question about howard schultz and why the founder of starbucks wanted to fund "the wrap." >> we do have a starbucks downstairs. it's a total coincidence. we actually started "the wrap" in my back guest house. it was all home made coffee. to be more precise, howard schultz didn't fund the wrap, it's a venture capital firm

called mavron of which he's a founder. it was the partners who decided to back "the wrap" bz a business venture because they liked the opportunity. >> as a former reporter for "the new york times" and "the washington post," you've been based in paris. does it ever feel a little self-indulgence to go to cannes? >> for me it's a total transformation about my life as a reporter. i'm the ceo so i'm responsible for the business of this company. i'm responsible to my investors. i'm responsible to a staff of 22 people. i'm also a reporter. i'm also an editor. i'm also now doing print, i've never edited before since i was in college. that's a different squil. >> sharon waxman, thanks for

indulging us and letting us visit "the wrap". up next, msnbc close to hiring al sharpton. eric deggans on the television critics tour in a moment.

as the networks take their turns touting their programs to a gathering of the nation's tv critics not far from here, much of the buzz involves msnbc on the verge of giving a nightly program to a former presidential candidate who has been filling in for weeks. >> a lot of people are saying president obama caved to the tea party, how can you deal with a group of economic hostage takers? we'll debate that next. >> joining us to talk about this is eric deggans, media critic for the "st. petersburg times." eric deggans, al sharpton on the verge of getting an msnbc job. he would be the first african-american with a nightly show on cable news in years and yet he's not a journalist, he's a liberal activist and candidate. >> exactly. that's what worries some black journalists.

we have been pushing hard to try to have diversity, particularly in cable news prime time. we don't have a person of color hosting the show on any of the major cable channels in prime time. to have that one slot go to someone who is more of an activist and not a journalist. >> not a journalist by any stretch of the imagination. >> i also think it's a larger problem. when you see someone like eliot spitzer and he has to cover the peck dill lows of a politician caught in a sex scandal. there's a resonance there if you had someone with a straight journal iflt bach ground. >> sharpton was supposed to appear at an event but canceled because some of the members criticized the fact he was about to get the gig. what does that tell you about his attitude toward journal listic credibility? >> what we also saw was there were news stories that talked about the connection between the

group that he runs and the way it got money from comcast and the way it advocated for approval of comcast taking overrunning nbc universal. did he cancel because people were having a discussion on the list serve or because he didn't want to deal with that larger public controversy. >> lesley stahl said he told her not to criticism president obama on anything because that would aid people who wanted to aid the president. the sharpton spokesman denied this. how do you give this nightly platform to somebody who reportedly claims he is not going to criticize the president? >> well, you know, that is something that's troubling. i don't -- what bothers me mother is that he has a history

as an activist. again, coming back to this idea that he is connected to an organization that has money from nbc universal to advocate for certain issues, all of a sudden he's going to go on their air and be fair about some of these same issues. i think that is the concern that people are worried about. is he going to criticize obama or not? you can look at somebody like sean hannity and say is he going to criticize a republican president? we have these people in prime time who are pundits and often they come from certain -- >> to have a policy if that is what he told lesley stahl. >> i think it would be awful programming. >> i first covered sharpton in 19 1987 who represented a teenager who made what turned out to be false claims. let's switch to the cbs presentation, cbs news chairman jeff factor promoting his new anchor scott pelley.

he said about katie couric, we did loose viewers. couric was frustrated. we realized she needed to spread her wings. it was not the right vehicle for her. >> i talked to jeff after that press conference and he did sort of indicate that she felt limited by the hard news environment. i think we all rulz that once jeff factor took overrunning cbs news they would be an even morhard news organization. they would turn more away from the kind of features orientation that she shines in. it made sense they would part company. >> scott pelley much more of a hard news approach, and fager trying to promote his new anchor. >> eric deggans, thanks for stopping by. how do you write a book about a descent into madness when you've lost your memory? ned zeman joins me next in the studio.

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welcome. >> thank you. >> let's start with your description of life ativanity fair. quote, you'd spend an hour faning interest in their latest piece of junk. spend 5,000 words trying to make the subject seem fun and lively while signaling to the reader your snarking contempt for the whole process. >> that's about it. not every time, but i would say more often than not, yes. >> when you covered celebrities and would write about their drug problems and mental problems and going to rehab, did it occur you might end up in a similar situation? >> absolutely not. as a younger man, i thought this was -- there's a line separating us and them and i thought that was all sort of just kind of entertainment. never occurred to me in a million years. >> when you wound up hospitalized for mental problems, what was the diagnosis? >> the diagnosis was depression, classic depression like so many

people have, but just to the inth degree. >> being out here caused you to get depressed? >> you think if that's going to make you depressed -- if you can be depressed in that circumstance, you must be pretty depressed. >> as you went through your treatment, you were diagnosed -- you knew yourself you were suffering from amnesia. >> yes. >> was it shocking to realize you couldn't remember whole sloths of your life? >> i think it's shocking for anyone, but it's particularly shocking if you make your living as a reporter. if anything is going to freak you out, it's not remembering what you did 15 minutes ago. no one is going to trust me and why would they? i don't remember anything. >> how do you write about this long and painful episode of your life while suffering from amnesia? >> there's short-term amnesia and long-term amnesia. you wait until the short term subsides and you have to look at yourself the way you would

writing about someone else as a reporter. >> you had to go and investigate what you had done when you were in and out of the hospital and you had to look at e-mails you sent and received from family and friends. that must have been a bizarre experience? >> extremely bizarre. you have to interview everyone around you at the try to be as objective as possible. and, you know, ask them to not only tell you the good stuff that happened but to tell you the ugly stuff, which is what you would do as a reporter. >> you wound up getting electroshock treatments. >> i did. that's what caused the amnesia. >> did it also contribute to your being able to regain a normal life? >> it didn't in my case. i want to be careful about that because i do believe in it as a treatment. in my case, no, it just gave me amnesia. >> the portrait that emerges of you in this book is not a pretty one. you were constantly lying to families, to your family members, to friends, to girlfriends, to ex-girlfriends. >> right. >> and yet you're laying it all

out there. why? why tell people about what a scoundrel you were? >> well, a couple reasons. i mean, one, i was somebody who, you know, put up a good front for a long time. you know, that's pretty hypocritical if you're going to be a reporter and you're going around asking people tell me the truth, darn it, i want to know the truth and, you know, you're not doing it about yourself. i felt it was important to do that for therapeutic reasons. but also to show basically -- send up a red flag to people going through what i went through. take care of yourself, and you can pushed to nth degree. i became a caricature version of myself and a monster version of myself. it's good for me to know that, you know, and to be blunt about it because, you know, i think people need to know what can happen if you done take care of yourself. >> was it painful for you as you kind of reconstructed this period of your life to have people who were close to you tell you that you acted like a snake and then to broadcast this to the world as we're doing right now? >> yeah.

it was brutal. when you go through amnesia, you don't remember things but you kind of do in your heart. i knew it wasn't going to be good. but i was surprised, you know, i definitely put off some of the ugliest stuff till the very end, e-mails, i didn't want to look at them. but by that time i was committed. you have to go through with it. >> committed to the project. >> to the book. there was a deadline and i had to do it. i felt horrible writing some of the stuff i did, but i would have felt worse if i didn't. >> having been through this, in and out of the hospital, electroshock, how have you managed to put your life back together? do you feel the way you did before you had these mental problems? >> yeah. i feel better, actually, much better. this all happened about three years ago. and, you know, i went through -- i bottomed out. and after about six, nine months, it started -- everything started coming back. you know, your memory does return. i have about a year and a half that will never come back. but it starts coming back, and i

learned my lesson. if nothing else it's a slap in the face and tells you don't make these mistakes again. my memory is totally 100% back to normal. >> now you're back to feigning interest in celebry the rritcc? >> i would write about them but not all the time. >> it's a no-holds-barred book. still to come, a laid-off "l.a. times" columnist has some cunning words for the newspaper, and arianna huffington's website apologizes. at exxon and mobil, we engineer smart gasoline that works at the molecular level to help your engine run more smoothly by helping remove deposits and cleaning up intake valves. so when you fill up at an exxon or mobil station, you can rest assured we help your engine run more smoothly while leaving behind cleaner emissions. it's how we make gasoline work harder for you.

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to normal.

to normal. time for the "media monitor." the thing media writers know all too well is the battered state of the newspaper business. tim ruden, who wrote a smart and sharp-edged media column for "the los angeles times," has been let go after nearly 40 years at the paper, a victim of the latest round of layoffs. he talked about his pink slip and how businessman sam zellmann drove paper into bankruptcy after buying its parent, the

tribune company, with an interview. he said the "l.a. times" is a shell of what it was ten years ago. strong parting words from an awe bankruptly unemployed media columnist. t"the huffington post" had o back down after getting into a scrap with conservative activist andrew breitbart. he was charged with doctoring a clip showing cbs's news new white house correspondent nora o'donnell saying this about the debt crisis. >> tough choices made by both sides in that potential agreement that was not reached, and we did not get that done. >> okay. it gave them everything they wanted and we got nothing. >> some people couldn't hear the

first part of what o'donnell said, but you have democrats saying that thought o'donnell was expressing her personal opinion about the situation. well, breitbart, who once helped hu huffington create the site, asked her, you want a war, dolly? she didn't. huff took down the article and apologized to him. that mistake aside, "the huffington post" reached a milestone this week. readers have posted 100 million comments on its stories. the way in which arianna's site, now owned by aol, has engaged people in a dialogue is one of the secrets of its success. now, it sounded like a tantalizing tech story. a canadian research firm reported people who use microsoft's internet explorer web browser are dumber, that's right, dumber than other folks online. the atlantic, forbes, yahoo!, cnn.com, the "daily mail" and the telegraph all went with it. but some further digging by the bbc determines the company doesn't exist. the whole thing was