Hot Air: All Talk, All The Time - Softcover

Kurtz, Howard

3

18 ratings by Goodreads

9780465030743: Hot Air: All Talk, All The Time

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465030742 ISBN 13: 9780465030743

Publisher: Basic Books, 1997

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Kurtz takes readers into the studio for an in-depth and disturbing look at the performers and pundits behind today's television and radio talk shows and at their corrosive influence on America's social, political, and moral fabric. From Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus to Michael Kinsley and the McLaughlin Group, he guides us through our brave new electronic democracy, pointing out how the culture of celebrity has pervaded and even perverted journalism.

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Review:

Talk has never been cheaper in political journalism. On radio and TV, cable and network, there are now dozens of political talk shows. They range from the calm and ego-less Brian Lamb conducting a C-Span roundtable to the vein-popping G. Gordon Liddy telling his listeners exactly where to shoot federal agents. For this book, Howard Kurtz, a Washington Post media reporter and sometime talk show guest himself, interviewed nearly everyone associated with the genre. Frequently, the interviewees put their finger on what's wrong. "It's gotten to be a game," Sam Donaldson says of the guests on ABC's This Week. "They come on with one thing in mind--to put forward their view on a particular topic or two, but make certain they don't give us anything else. . . . They'll lie as part of their game plan. I can't immediately disprove what they're saying. . . . We're just an extension of the PR mechanism." According to Michael Kinsley of Slate (and former Crossfire cohost), what television wants is "jovial disagreement. We're all pals here, just joshing around in the locker room, when I think they're (expletive) liars."

From the Inside Flap:

wash in talk. Loud talk, angry talk, conspiratorial talk that has changed the nature of journalism and politics, producing a high-decibel revolution in the way we communicate. In this fascinating, maddening, behind-the-scenes look at America's powerful talk shows, the author of Media Circus examines their excesses, conflicts, and impact, and explains how they are changing our culture.

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