doctors, thank you so much. everyone out there, give something a try from today. that will do it for us. great to have you here. >> good to see you, see you next week. "media buzz" with howard kurtz, has a lot to say, coming up next. here's howard. on the buzz meter this sunday it was a local scandal involving bridge traffic until a newspaper dug up evidence that chris christie's aide deliberately caused a nightmare of traffic in new jersey as an act of political retaliation. suddenly according to the media his presidential hopes for 016 were roadkill and the story prompted christie to hold a marathon news conference sparring with reporters for nearly two hours. >> i am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the people on my team. i am who i am, but i am not a bully. i'm sad.

i'm sad, that's the were he dominant emotion i feel right now is sadness. listen, i have absolutely nothing to hide. that's a crazy question, man. >> the question now, are the media doing a drive-by on the governor? the book is a bombshell but is it also a betrayial? robert gates ripping barack obama over war policy recounting private conversations with the president and hillary clinton. should the former pentagon chief be cashing in with a tell-all? the media's full court press over dennis rodman and his north korea exploits after he loses it in a cnn interview. why exactly should we care? plus magazines still photo shoppic anorexic models and proof of how it influences young women. does this need to stop? i'm howard kurtz and this is "media buzz." most scandals are complicated.

the saga of chris christie and the george washington bridge not so much. e-mail shows contrary to earlier denials some of the aides relished the traffic nightmare caused by closing two the of access lanes. christie dismissed the scandal as media hype but then came the e-mail with one aide writing "time for some traffic problems in ft. lee." a text necessariage to a christie appointed saying "is it wrong i'm smiling?" this caused a media firestorm, pundits casting doubt on christie's 2016 hopes and pumping up the scandal. >> governor chris christie ran into a traffic jam today on the road to the white house. >> good evening, the governor of new jersey, chris christie said today is he angry, he's embarrassed e' humiliated but he's innocent. >> reinforces a negative is itter yo type has been out there for years about him that he's

just a bully at heart. >> an e-mail pops up with christie's name on it, copied, cc'd, sent, returned, replied, he's dead man walking politically. >> lauren ashburn, fox news contributor, brit hume, fox news analyst and the former washington manager editor and tai in a milbank, columnist for "the washington post." the press conference more than 19,000 words were spoken. >> 108 minutes. >> how did christie handle the reporters with the marathon until knopf us could take it anymore and leave for the bathroom. >> or lunch, to be not so crude, howie. 180 minutes was the problem. reporters can't hold on that long to information. however what he did write was i think he slapped reporters around. ? not like he usually does. he didn't call anybody an idiot. >> but i this i they like that, when he was very firm with them, and then he was also contrite. there is nothing more that the

media loves than to bring a politician way down. >> he was sad. he said he was sad. he said he was sad many times. >> to burr yu him, say this guy is done, he's toast, own this build him back up again. >> brit hume, who loves to spar with reporters but here he kind of had to be restrapd. we didn't see the full chris christie on display. >> you come out and announce you're humiliated it's hard to be the bully boy when it if that's what people think he is. it depends the outcome and extent of the coverage. one thing, did he tell the truth about what he knew or what involvement he had. he said he had none and didn't know. if anything surfaces to contradict that, that will further the story and if it turns out to be an unassailable fact that he did know then his national political career is over. >> dana milbank, any time you have to say i am not a bully is not a great day for a politician

but at the same time christie had been blaming the press for what he thought was a nothing story. turns out the press was right. >> the press was right and even in his disgrace and humiliation he still managed to make a good case for himself, those 19,000 words i counted 680 of them were the word "i" and many others were me and myself. >> is that a scientific analysis? >> we used word documents and did a search. >> it was too self-absorbed? >> that's what i think even defn absorption. two months ago we talked about the media swooning over chris christie and that's what i think was happening is we were building him up and now it's like okay, now is the chance to take the guy down. >> you have so expertly set me up for my next question which is christie was the press's favorite republican. lot of journalists on the east coast liked his pragmatic republican approach to conservative politics, personality, great copy and all

of that. now that seems to be changing. everybody is savaging the guy. >> golden boy to pinata and punching bag, which is what as i said earlier people love to see. they love to see politicians getting it and getting whacked, but here is the other thing is that the same things that people loved about chris christie earlier is what they hate now. so he was brash. he was a jersey shore kind of guy, you know, forget about it. >> get off the beach. >> get off the beach. then when he starts doing that in this scenario it's a liability. >> on that point, brit, we have all the stories popping up, is he a bully. "new york times" bully image trails christie. "l.a. times," scandal underscores his bully image and an ex-governor stripped of security and a senator who had a program canceled and all the videos you talked about used to be christie unplugged now being cited as evidence of a guy who maybe has a temper problem, put up just one of christie's

greatest hits. >> and let me tell you something, after you graduate from wall street, you conduct yourself like that in the courtroom your rear end is going to get thrown in jail, idiot. >> that was an ex-navy s.e.a.l. who challenged him at a town hall. what about this bully narrative? >> i would have to say in this fem nilesed atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and old-fashioned tough guys run some risks. >> feminized? >> atmosphere. >> by which you mean? >> by which i mean that men today have learned the lesson the hard way that if you act like kind of an old-fashioned guy's guy, you're in constant danger of slipping out and saying something that will get you in trouble make you look like a sexist or seem thuggist. that's the atmosphere in which he operates. he's an old-fashioned masculine

muscular guy and there are political risks associated. >> we're so used to blow-dried candidates who don't say anything that is outside of what should be political speak, and they've got their hair perfect and you know, if you thisnk abot mitt romney so much care. >> chris christie has also lost weight. talk about how much is too much. there's a lot of chatter about that data. on wednesday the day the, mails surfaced, the day before the news conference that went on forever msnbc was covering the story every eight minutes, cnn did a lot, fox news did little that first day, what is your take on it? >> i think it follows the usual pattern, a tally, two hours and 40 minutes on msnbc, two hours 0 minutes on cnn and 14 minutes on fox. so i think fox realized it had underdone things a bit and built it up the next day but when

these things happen in reverse, when it's a democrat on the receiving end of this, you're going to see maybe not that lop-sided but you're going to see the mirror image of that occurring. >> one fox commentator, todd starnes wrote mainstream hyperventilating over a traffic jam? >> listen, that's dead wrong and this is why. that's a traffic jam but that's no ordinary traffic jam and that's no ordinary bridge. in fact it was an on-ramp but that's beside the point. you start thinking about the number of people in this country who have traversed that bridge, it's the busiest in the world. it's part of the major north/south traffic artery of the entire east coast and literally millions of americans who have never lived anywhere near new york or new jersey or connecticut have been over that bridge, they remember it because it's so unpleasant even on the best day and people read about this and they can remember the bridge, and they can picture themselves stuck in a traffic jam there because much of the time there is a traffic jam.

my view, this is something like the irs scandal for president obama, people can feel it. they can imagine and they can feel if it doesn't affect them, they can imagine it affecting them. >> of course there were the callous e-mails in the midst of this. i worked for the paper who covered the story and the port authority. >> a century ago? >> maybe half a isn'try. it's been a patronage haven. it was old-fashioned newspaper digging. >> the bergen record gets the commendation of the year for the story. they started in september covering the traffic jam at which point chris christie had this to say, it's not that big a deal just because the press runs around and writes about it both here and nationally. i know why that is and so do you. >> he said that as recently as december. >> december, that's right. in between all of this the port authority chief stonewalled, first he said he was going to say something, then he said he with aent' going to say something, wouldn't address it. christie blamed the democrats in

the beginning of december, then the port authority chair was silent and then we have this and goes to sean boberg who covered the port authority for sticking with the story and continuing to push. >> you mentioned if it's a democrat or republican, i hear chatter what about the various obama scandals and somehow the press is interested in this story which wasn't that much of a national story until the e-mails this week made it explode and christie himself let let's face it by holding that entertaining two-hour extravaganza provided a lot of visuals for television to replay when it and again and again. is it fair to say the irs scandal should have gotten more coverage? >> the press loves a scandal and the love of scandals even greater than ideological division there brit hit it exactly right in terms of why. people can understand the whole waiting in traffic thing. they could understand the irs thing. they could understand the website problem but take something like benghazi, that's

complicated and i think it's harder for people to grasp it and therefore less appealing for the press to follow it. >> this is not a hard scandal to understand. the only question is what did the governor know and when did he know it and maybe he didn't know any of it. you get into the press saying briefly, did he create a culture in his office. >> this is one of the new feature of our political landscape in which politicians are responsible for the things they've done and ordered done and also responsible for the amorphous things called climates and cultures and atmospheres for which they're also in some respect held responsible. you can nail somebody even if they didn't actually do anything if you can establish to the section of enough people they created a culture and atmosphere. >> the buck stops at the top. send me a tweet about our show, @howardkurtz. when we come back, did robert gates disclose rite vital information about president obama or betray in a tell-all

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bob gates has always got good press as a classy guy in washington. media folks were stunned when his memoir called "duty" came out not just it contained harsh criticism of president obama but because of the confidential conversations that immediately became news. >> robert gates is harshly questioning president obama's leader shup and commitment to afghanistan war from the start of the surge he ordered. >> act of betray ol or an act of emotion? if he was so seething and so angry during all those years,

why did he stay? >> brit is there something discerning about a former presidential adviser revealing private conversations in order to sell books? >> yes you can say in order to sell books or simply it's the truth obviously this is a long book, what, 694 pages, something like that. there's a lot in it that's favorable about president obama but a lot of conversations which i think that the people involved would have had a reasonable expectation of privacy as the supreme court describes it, and these things are now revealed. issing may be lost there, something may be lost in terms of the khan dar in which aides around a president feel they can comfortable speak. >> right, because how can a president conduct war and peace sensitive conversations if if he thinks people are gathering material for a best seller. >> exactly right. the other one barbara starr raising when the book hit which is if he felt this strongly and thought things were being

managed this badly and that the process was this dysfunctional, then what was he, why did he stay on? toward the end of the bush years, i knew from talking to him that he was dying to leave. he stayed on very reluctantly. it's not surprising he was having unpleasant experience and what he describes in the book suggests why it became more unpleasant. something's lost there. >> i want to be clear. >> doesn't make it less true however. >> i'm not questioning the veracity and gates has every right to speak his mind about war policy and what he thinks of the president. the business about the private conversations and the criticism that he says in the book that he did not make at the time, he was angry about the budget and the way the white house was stealing authority from the pentagon, an age-old problem he seems to have saved a lot of this for the tell-all. >> it seems like it's poor formed because he was a guy that everybody revered as a really fair and honorable guy here in town. i think in his defense, if one can be made here, it's that i think the excerpts may be being played more harshly than he

intends it. that's internal what he says and i think it's because basically most of us have really seen are the excerpts and in particular bob woodward's portrayal of that in my paper and i think that set the tone for a lot of the coverage. he may be a little more on the one hand nuanced than he's being portrayed. >> that may be true but the idea of putting out in excerpts the juicier stuff, the revealing anecdotes to make somebody look bad is an old game. >> i find it gets boring. you read the actual book and all the juicy stuff is already out there and you just have the"b" matter. pr people choose what to do and how they sell it. i'm done with it. >> you don't want to read the book? >> no, i've heard it all. >> i always saw gates as a guy because he worked for republican and democrat presidents he was above politics. he's hardly the first one to write such a book. >> no, george stephanopolous,

paul mcclellan. howie, my question is does it affect the long-term reputation of the person who is being written about and i say no. >> stephanopolous going back to the clinton years, writes in the wake of monica lewinsky and the impeachment drama bill clinton was not fit to be president. he was self-destructive >> who remembers that now? clinton is an elder statesman, head of gci. people don't remember that. george stephanopolous is the "good morning america" anchor now. it didn't really make a difference. it did at the time and maybe others can argue against that but it doesn't now. >> does this have the potential to tarnish a little bit gates' own reputation? >> oh i think so. i think as much on the question as whether he should have written the book at all at this stage as on the question of why he stayed. the question on whether he should have written the book doesn't go to veracity. the question of why he stayed goes to character with him.

>> in the book he said he came close to quitting at one point. >> yeah, but he didn't, and that question hangs in the air. >> right. naturally the press has pounced on these anecdotes like hillary clinton according to gates saying she opposed george w. bush's surge in iraq in 2007 because of the presidential campaign she was about to mount against president barack obama. >> that will come up in her presidential campaign like christie's bridge. >> is it a disservice, the portrayal or not? >> it probably did a disservice but all information will get out there. >> the truth of the matter is there's no real contradiction between the questions that go to whether a president can expect candid advice and so on and the fact that the public is served by having this information about the president, which you know, is backed by certain facts about the way the president did things particularly on afghanistan, so the sense he was half-hearted

doing it. when you think about it, it is really a damning charge. scl we look forward to receiving the book and his 47 interviews promoting the book. brit hume and dana milbank, thank you for coming by. up next, dennis rodman and his antics. >> and why television is out of tricks when it comes to your living room set. she keeps you on your toes. you wouldn't have it any other way. but your erectile dysfunction - it could be a question of blood flow. cialisadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment's right. you can beore confident in your ability to be ready. and the me cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequent or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates forhest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure.

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dennis rodman was back cozying up to north korea's young dictator this week with a bunch of former nba players. it would have zero news value except for his train wreck interview with chris cuomo on cnn. he was asked if he'd intervene for release of kenneth bae. >> if you can help kenneth will you take the opportunity? >> what i said the one thing

about politics, kenneth bae did -- look, if you understand what kenneth bae did. >> yes. >> do you understand what he did? >> what did he do? you tell me. >> in this country. >> you tell me what did he do. >> no, no, don't. you tell me! you tell me, why is he held captive? >> they haven't released any charges. >> no, no, no i don't give a [ bleep ] i don't give a rat's -- what's sea saying. look at this guy, look at him. >> this caused a media eruption as everyone ganged up on rodman. >> we get the latest on dennis rodman's bizarre basketball. >> he wept on cnn to defend heading to north korea. >> joining us from new york is marissa guthrie for "the hollywood reporter." how did chris cuomo handle

rodman's ranting and raving? >> as best as he could i think. when you ask dennis rodman a geopolitical question, you really can't expect to get an erudite, intelligent, coheerpt answer. >> no kidding. >> and the media should know this. >> i thought cuomo handled it fine. he kept pressing him without getting down into the trenches so to speak and i love that rodman later apologizes saying i was drumpg drunk. >> drumpg and stressed out. he didn't use the word drunk but said he was drinking. >> i'll translate that into say he was drinking a little too much. did the network go heavy flogging it in the text day? interviewing the nba commissioner saying the league had nothing to do with it and so on. >> they had kenneth bae's sustr. they realized what they had and could get people to comment on it because of rodman's comments about kenneth bae implying that he actually deserved to be in

north korean labor camp and so i think that's what gave it legs and certainly having john mccain call dennis rodman an idiot made a good headline for other media outlets. >> it's a slam dunk of a story, easy and colorful. should everybody else have picked it up and treated dennis rodman's temper tantrum as real news? >> dennis rodman is catnip for the media, he says outrageous things, that's like his purpose, right? so i think that the fact that there really is a victim in this case, kenneth bae held in a labor camp since december 2012. the comments were inappropriate and outrageous. >> no question about that. i was going to say the first time dennis rodman went to north korea and met with kim un-jong, he went on george stephanopolous and had a debate but now that

he's done this more than once isn't it a stunt that we all buy into? >> yes he's been there four times in a year i think and i think that now after this episode and certainly his follow-up comments about being, drinking and stressed and the comments from bae's family, and bae's family accepted his apology. i think that now hopefully i hope the media can kind of shut the door on this guy and his sojourns over to north korea. you're shaking your head. >> you're very optimistic. somebody gets a call at any show, network, hey, rodman's there, happy to talk to you, i'm not sure there will be a lot of turning down but there is a serious aspect by going and lending his celebrity presence to the dictator of north korea he is legitimizing a brutal strong man who just had his own uncle executed and that sometimes tends to get lost in the hoop llah. >> it does get lost in the

this did bring more attention to the plight of kenneth bae. the state department has been working on this but i think a lot of people didn't know what he did or did not do, why he was over there, who this guy was and i this i that any time there's more attention focused on someone that that is a good thing. >> right. >> but i don't think that -- hopefully that you know, dennis rodman i think he's starting to exhaust the media's patience because he doesn't ever say anything coherent. >> right. >> it's one thing to get a flashy headline but you don't really get an answer from him. >> he did unintentionally shine a spotlight on an american in prison. thank you for joining us this sunday. >> thank you. coming up, more pundits leaving big media to cash in on their fame. can they make it on their own. and altering pictures of anorexic models is illegal.

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there's no such thing as a little flu. so why treat it like it's a little cold? there's something that works differently than over-the-counter remedies. prescription tamiflu attacks the flu virus at its source. so call your doctor right away. tamiflu treats the flu in people 2 weeks and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if you're pregnant, nursing, have serious health conditions, or take other medicines. if you develop an allergic reaction, a severe rash, or signs of unusual behavior, stop taking tamiflu and call your doctor immediately. children and adolescents in particular may be at an increased risk of seizures, confusion or abnormal behavior. the most common side effects are mild to moderate nausea and vomiting. so don't wait. attack the flu virus at its source. ask your doctor about tamiflu, prescription for flu.

hi we're live from america's news headquarters. robert gates saying he felt like a complete outsider in the obama white house, also describing a "poisonous atmosphere" there. earlier excerpts criticized president obama's leadership and his handling of military strategy. the memoir is called "duty" and it will be on store shelves tuesday. and frustration is growing in west virginia, 300,000 people now without clean water for a third day following the leak of about 7,500 gallons of chemicals from a facility along the elk river. it's not clear how much entered the water supply but officials say it could take them several more days until it's safe to use tap water for anything again. i'm jamie colby. see you at the top of the hour for a brand new hour of america's news headquarters. back to "media buzz" and howie.

>> journalists are all about building their personal brand these days, numbers with nate silver leaving the "new york times" for espn. walt mosberg and kara swisher jumping from the "wall street journal." the guardian's glenn greenwald, liberal ploger and msnbc panelist ezra aklein may quit "the washington post." how many can make it on their own? joining us from las vegas is sarah lacy who launched her own startup as editor and chief of pandodaily.com. i don't know if ezra klein is going to leave "the washington post" but as somebody who worked for "business week" and "tech crunch" and launched her own site not that easy raising money, is it? >> it is not easy to raise money. the easiest thing i did was raise my first round of capital because you're just selling a promise at that point.

what's hard is building a company and you know, i think a big media brand and twitter following is table steaks. you have to have that doing it. it does not mean you'll be successful. >> so when you have walt mosberg and kara swisher, great tech columnists, they have corporate backing for leaving the "wall street journal" and put in a lot of years to help "the journal" and drive its traffic, is this the new game you build up your own brand recognition and s sayonara? >> old media needs new media stars and brands. just because someone is worth millions of dollars to the "wall street journal" or to "the washington post" it doesn't mean they can create a multimillion-dollar cop on their own. i've seen this over and over again, "trek crunch" by company at "business week" i've lived it myself. you can't confuse yourself with the platform. the best journalist with the best brand the magic is them plus a platform and when you break that magic up, sometimes it turns into a bigger business,

and sometimes it doesn't. but the main thing i think journalists underestimate is time. it takes five to ten years to build a big media company. i don't a care if you're jesus christ with 8 million twitter followers. >> there's the sound bite everybody is going to use. for example, blogger andrew sullivanwent out on his own and asked his readers to give him money, raised wiabout $800,000 e first year. nate silver's blog became a big traffic driver of the "new york times," he went to espn and glenn greenwald leaving "the guardi guardian" funded by the founder of ebay. are there a lot of rich guys want to invest in media? >> yes and thank god. because you know, back in the days of catherine graham and henry loose you had to have big family money to absorb losses for ten years to build a media company. lot of people jump up and down saying tech billionaires are

funding these things. aren't there conflicts? you have to be accountable to your readers and serious questions you have to answer and you have to like walk your talk. that said i actually think it's great that you don't have to be one of the wealthiest families in america to start a media company these days and the fact that people are actually putting big money into content which we've seen throughout the fall, i think it's an amazing trend obviously. i'm a journalist. no journalist is going to hate that trend. >> well, jump in, the water is fine, anybody who wants to help invest in this business. it helps to have the big media platform. are there a lot of people who say to themselves hey look at all these hits i'm getting on xyz.com. uhm' goi i'm going to go on my home, i'm a genius but not perhaps as they think. >> howie, we are in the business of being flattered. everyone tells us we're geniuses because they want favorable coverage. as a reporter you don't want to believe all the nice things

people say about you because you don't want to believe the horrible things say about you. you and i could list 15 different big media brands. everyone has been busy building a personal brand. it's not unique anymore. it's like a company has to have a website. that's no longer a differentiator. >> sarah, have i told you, you're really, really smart? sarah lacy, thanks for joining us from las vegas. >> bye, howie. >> bye-bye. can tvs tap into the web or has the good old tube reached its limits? later, why do all the reporters stand out in the freezing cold? is welcome back. how is everything? there's nothing like being your own boss! and my customers are really liking your flat rate shipping. fedex one rate. really makes my life easier. maybe a promotion is in order.

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. we usually talk about what's on television but today i want to focus on the tv set itself. there's a lot of fancy hardware on display at this week's consumer electronics show but as the "wall street journal" reports, tv is stuck in an innovation cul-de-sac. there are no new ideas that are worth paying for so thanks to competition and production efficiencies, good tvs are getting cheaper, the cheaper they get the more desperate tv makers become, filling their sets with more and more useful piffle. joining us from pa low al to is farhad manjoo. you have a 42 inch flat screen at home and you're bored. >> yes i've had this tv for four years now and you know, i've

looked around like i do for all other gadgets for better things but there really isn't anything better than my 42 inch tv. they have this huge innovation about 10, 15 years ago with the lcd panels and ever since then what happened is they've gotten cheaper and just better at producing them and they haven't come up with a new idea that we should pay for. >> there are some new ideas as you note in your piece, curved screens now are the hot thing, 3-d, ultrasuper high definition. you weren't excited about any of those? >> yes, so the curved screen thing to me is really silly. i have no idea why i'd want to watch a tv that kind of bends a little bit on the sides. it doesn't make any sense to me at all but it's just one of those instances where like tv makers can do that, there's new innovations that allow them to curve glass in a way they can do

it at high production but it doesn't really make any practical sense. 4k is this new resolution that they're trying to push. the problem with that is, you know, like basically all kinds of innovations in the media business, there's not much content and there's this kind of content catch 22, like people need to buy these 4k tvs in order for content makers -- >> to make the programming. why can't they make tvs to connect to the internet, to connect with netflix without having to buy some additional gadget so people can watch movies or surf on their television set? >> this is the huge problem with the standard living room setup. it's difficult to kind of get all that other content on your tv especially if you have one of the older tvs with terrible menu systems. the problem for tv makers, is they're not very good at that stuff, at software, at ui, user

interfaces. the better companies, the better companies like apple and microsoft which are making these add-ones and you know, i say what you should do is buy an old tv, buy a cheap tv and then get something like apple tv or xbox or something and get your media that way, that sort of adds intelligence to your tv. >> but in a larger sense, farhad, maybe the problem is that tv is fading and that we're all, you know, looking in our little screens here and stuff on our smartphones. >> yes, this is the other problem for tv, right? for the tv makers, we've just gotten inundated with screens and so we have this big screen in the living room, for a lot of people it works fine enough and like if you're going to spend money to buy a new thing, why not spend something, you know, spend it on like the new ipad that has like a lot more intelligence and can do a lot more for you than a bigger or slightly sharper screen in your living room, with limited dollars i think we have other things to spend it on, other electronics to spend it on that are more innovative. >> right. i'm old enough to remember when

color tv was a big innovation, and friends of mine had sets and i had a black and white and i used to go to their houses. i think a lot of the innovation as you say has already taken place. farhad manjoo, thank you for getting up early to join us. >> good to be here. >> great to talk to you. ahead the media's use of anorexic looking models women's magazines are adding a few pounds digitally. how sad is that? hey kevin...still eating chalk for heartburn? yeah... try new alka seltzer fruit chews. they work fast on heartburn and taste awesome. these are good. told ya! i'm feeling better already. [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer fruits chews. enjoy the relief! [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer fruits chews. those litt cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet helpsapproved to treattime the msymptoms of bph, like needing to go freently. tell yr doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthenough for sex.

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time now for our digital download. fashion magazines, let's face it, are obsessed with women who are thin. so thin they border on anorexic. >> now a microsoft study finds seeing anorexic models online

leads to twice as many searches for these people and for information about anorexia itself. >> we used to speculate about this, but now we know that the people who see these images of ultra thin models online, especially if the media don't kind of report on the downside of it, what do they do? they start searching for information about anorexia. these are young women. >> these two statistics alone made my blood boil. 80% of 10-year-olds are afraid to be fat. 42% of first through third graders, first through third graders want to be thin. >> where are they getting that from? >> they're getting it obviously from magazines, from television. >> do you remember thinking about this when you were growing up? >> not that young. i don't remember that. >> how about 16, 18. >> i remember in high school trying desperately to maintain i'm not even going to say what the weight was. >> a lower weight than you have. >> a lower weight than i have right now. but i even remember doing slim

fast, which was popular among people trying to lose weight instead of eating lunch. i think a lot of my friends were concerned about it too. >> well, here's what's fascinating to me, because everybody knows by now that magazines do a lot of digital retouching. so israel in 2012 banned photo shopping in ads to make models appear thinner and also banned the use of anorexic malls. i don't think you can do that in the united states but one country felt strong enough to make it illegal. >> and the actual limit is that you have to have a bmi, body mass index, of 18.5 or higher. and in order to be on tv, you also have to do the same thing. here in the united states, models, the average is 5'11", 110 pounds. the average woman, how tall do you think she is? >> not 5'11". probably 5'3", 5'4". >> 5'4", right, and 140 pounds. and so there is this huge culture here not just for young kids, but for women and for men.

there are a million men in this country who battle anorexia and binge eating. >> right. i shouldn't just portray it as a problem for women. there was an article in "the daily mail" written by the former editor of cosmopolitan -- >> we call it cosmo. >> i've read it, i've seen it. reverse retouching. now some of these models are so thin that she says that when she was at cosmo, i also faced the dilemma of what to do with models who were frighteningly thin so they will add a few pounds so you're not looking at their rib cage. >> and they did that for cameron diaz, which is one of the pictures that they showed. what she said is you never see the horrible, hungry downside of being a model. and you hear about that. but you -- it doesn't -- you don't see them starving and bingeing and having bulimia. >> right. so it seems to me the media have a lot to answer. for everyone likes to look at nice-looking women but the idea

that you can't just run a picture of them but you have to either add a few pounds or take off pounds because there might be a bulge showing somewhere sets an unrealistic standard. >> it does. and tv is also to blame. you know, i -- i was at a dinner party last night and someone said to me, wow, you've lost weight. is that because you're now on this -- on tv a lot more than you used to be? and the answer is probably yes. and, you know, i would love to hear from women. they can get me @lauren ashburn on twitter. >> you are going to get a lot of feedback. still to come, a big-time network anchor who isn't as famous as we thought. and television's frigid winter warriors. what on earth are they doing?

got a few of your top tweets about whether the chris christie

bridge scandal is a big story. jim lany writes unless there is a paper trail back to christie, chalk it up to mainstream media malice. christie's scandal does not affect the nation yet while obama scandals do and yet much easier on obama. the liberal bias on on display in this faux scandal is ridiculous. describes totally immune to their own naked hypocrisy. it was a big story. it's just that fox news spent most of its time downplaying this story. network anchors are by definition world famous, right? a pew survey asked people to identify this man. he's a regular on "the daily show" and hosted "saturday night live" and only 27% knew it was brian williams. 3% thought it was tom brokaw and 2% joe biden? if you own a television set you may have seen something about this week being cold, very cold, in january. and that means correspondents hitting the pavement for team

coverage. >> it's 6 degrees. it's a balmy 6. it just went up a degree the last hour. it's also very cold up here, brian, 7 degrees. negative 13 with the windchill. >> i was planning to use this spray bottle as a prop but within 15 minutes the water inside just froze. >> so cold that this cup of boiling water instantly freezes in midair. here we go. >> wow! >> amazing. >> i made snow. >> i feel their pain, but what exactly are they accomplishing out there in the cold? >> people love to see people freezing. i remember in a blizzard in harrisburg i once was standing on top of my car because i could, and because that's what news directors want. the weather is an integral part of local news, and people always love to know what the weather is. >> all right. i'm going to put on my parka in the next big storm, stand out there and see if you're right. that's it for this edition of "media buzz." i'm howard kurtz. let's continue the conversation on twitter. go to our facebook page, we post

a lot of original content and videos there. we are back next sunday morning at 11:00 eastern with the latest buzz. the book is astounding. it peels back the secrets of what really happens behind closed doors at the white house, and now former bush and obama defense secretary robert gates giving his first television interview about his scathing tell-all. among his observations, mr. gates suggests politics drove the obama administration's military decisions. even says the president did not trust some of the military's top brass, and had reservations about their mission. hello, everyone, welcome to "america's news headquarters." >> great to have you here. we're learning a lot o