Msnbc

For all their ability to react instantly to a developing story, cable news channels can be surprisingly slow to make changes in their own houses. Until last week, Fox News had not altered its early evening lineup in eight years. But the cable landscape has been reshaped in recent weeks with each of the three news channels bringing in new talent to anchor some of their most competitive hours. And bucking a long-standing trend, two of the networks have ousted ideologically charged personalities in favor of more traditional and experienced journalists.

If you think television couldn't possibly report the Clinton-Starr-Lewinsky drama any more breathlessly than it has in the last week, wait till the videotape of the President's grand jury testimony is released Monday.Three all-news cable channels -- MSNBC, Fox and CNN -- have promised to run the uncut, unedited testimony the instant it is received from the House of Representatives, ratcheting up their soap opera coverage yet another notch despite poll after poll in which viewers say they have heard enough about the matter and want to move on.And that is the big disconnect: While cable news reports round-the-clock that the President is all but finished, the polls on Clinton's approval ratings and the public's attitude toward impeachment suggest a different social reality.

All the networks and cable channels attached some form of advisory yesterday to their saturation coverage of President Clinton's testimony before a grand jury, but none was quite as memorable as CBS anchorman Dan Rather's."

There is no excuse for the kind of coverage TV has delivered the last two weeks on the sequester. Television news has been polarizing, sensational and mostly focused on personality rather than the policy behind the $85 billion in federal spending cuts that has come to be known as sequestration. President Obama went into full campaign mode weeks ago, warning of massive disruptions in American life if the cuts were enacted - and blaming them solely on Republican members of Congress.

When John Nicol, director of technology for MSNBC's Internet news site, came to work at 7 a.m. Jan. 22, he smelled trouble. MSNBC's powerful computers were being strained to the limit by Web surfers frantic for the latest on some former White House intern named, uh, Lewinsky.Nicol launched an emergency plan developed after the October stock market drop, when investors desperate for market data nearly halted MSNBC in its electronic tracks. Technicians swiftly stripped the luxuriant MSNBC front page to a bare-bones report of the scandal for quick downloading.

Getting information on the air fast has always been something to brag about in television news. But how fast is too fast?That is one of the questions being asked in the wake of allegations of a sexual relationship between President Clinton and a former White House intern.In the new world of competing all-news cable channels and the Internet, information on the Clinton story has been moving at a dizzying speed, obliterating traditional news cycles and raising concerns that television might be adding a false sense of urgency to the story.

Late Monday night, reporters found themselves forced to pivot on the fly as a sniper striking anew in the suburbs of Washington knocked the foundation out from under an apparent scoop. The day started with near-saturation coverage of no news - apparently no one had been shot by the sniper over the weekend. The cable news channels carried the now-familiar news conferences that gave reporters little real information. Late Monday afternoon, two Baltimore stations reported that a 38-year-old former Marine had drawn the intense interest of law enforcement officials.

Sharp questions of ideological bias in the media have been raised for more than three decades, but news organizations appear to be more vulnerable -- and sensitive -- than ever to the charges. In separate incidents over the past week, three major news organizations -- Fox News Channel, MSNBC and The Wall Street Journal -- have come under public fire for the perceived slant of reporters or contributors. The details provoking the three cases are starkly different. On the merits, readers and viewers may look askance at the behavior of any of the three media figures involved in the episodes.

A TV wake of six days and five nights for NBC newsman Tim Russert came to an end yesterday with a moving memorial service on cable channel MSNBC. Aptly representative of the arc of Russert's life, those eulogizing the 58-year-old anchor of Meet the Press ranged from an elementary school nun in Buffalo, N.Y., to the stars of mainstream media and singer Bruce Springsteen. From the announcement of Russert's death shortly after 3:30 p.m. Friday to yesterday's service that began at 4 p.m., TV served one of its primary ritualistic functions as a medium of mourning, offering access and an outlet for the affection that millions of Americans felt for an ebullient anchorman - as well as the grief they experienced at his death.

Your phrase "irate tea party protesters regard federal civilian employees as enemies of the people" is just unbelievable ("Help for the jobless?" Feb. 20). Is this a phrase of the day from Media Matters or Moveon.org? It is so spurious that I find it hard to believe a sane person would put it in anything sent out for a million people to read. I stopped watching MSNBC due to their continuous attacks on people rather than ideas, and you are more and more doing the same thing. The U.S. cannot continuously borrow 40 cents on every dollar it spends and last very much longer (see Greece)