At lunchtime, I went to a panel for the new IFC six-part documentary series, The IFC Media Project. Hosted by Arianna Huffington, it featured Media Project host Gideon Yago (late of MTV News), NYT conservative columnist William Kristol, Legendary NYC writer Pete Hamill, and excommunicated National Review scion Christopher Buckley. It was the sort of panel where people discuss the state of the media and how terrible it is that cable news is full of shows with people yelling at each other. Naturally, the best part came when Kristol and Hamill yelled at each other. (Over coverage of the Iraq War. I’ll let you guess who took which side.)
Media Project debuts tonight at 8 p.m. E.T. Because I suspect Tuned In readers have an above average interest in how the media work, I’ll recommend it. But for the same reason, I’ll make the recommendation qualified. If you’re a media junkie, you’ll have seen many of the same critiques and stories before. (Albeit in print rather than on TV, save for The Daily Show, which does media criticism funnier.)
Still, there are some good sausage-making features, such as one on a man whose job it is to get missing-white-girl stories into the news rotation. And—speaking of the Daily Show—Tucker Carlson recalls in an interview his legendary throwdown with Jon Stewart on Crossfire in 2004, in which Stewart essentially made him the poster boy for all cable news’ sins. (Watching that clip, I’m amazed how Paul Begala has escaped the memory of that incident unscathed, since he was, after all, the other co-host of the show that was “hurting America.”) You’ll have to go elsewhere for your people-yelling-at-each-other fix, though.