Excellent article, but how could you not include Amy Goodman??

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Look up in the sky! It's a bird ! It's a plane!
It's Olbermann!

Keith Olbermann and I are on the same page. Anyone who would quote Ernie Kovacs on a news broadcast ("The money is nothing. Consequently it means nothing") is after my own heart. When he made his first appearance on MSNBC a number of years ago on a vehicle called "The Big Show" it was the begining of a beautiful friendship. And then, almost as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone! Back to ESPN, they told us. Sports? SPORTS??? What the hell was someone as talented as that doing wasting on sports?? (I'm unique in the fact that I don't follow sports at all. Who won the World Series last year? Nary a clue). For a number of years, I left a candle burning in the window. Since he's come home, I've been content.

How would won describe Keith Olbermann? A combination of Edward R. Murrow and Lenny Bruce? That's the best I can do but it even that doesn't work. The fact is this: There has never before been anyone like him. He is, no question about it, one of a kind. Occasionally he will cover a story that I have absolutely no interest in. But he'll always preface that paticular piece by describing it as a story "that my producers are forcing me to do". (A note to Keith's producers: If he doesn't want to do a story, don't make him do it. His judgement is sound). More often than not, Bill O'Rielly will come in first place in the segment, "Worst Person In The World". Maybe that's an ever-so-slight exaggeration. That he is the worst person on television there can be no doubt.

The image of Keith Olbermann that I have in my mind is that of a guy holding up a mirror in front of society. Society might not particularly care for what's being reflected but there you have it. He tells you the cold awful truth and yet he does it with humor. It is getting harder and harder to find any humor in the pathetic mess this country has gotten itself into and yet he manages to make us laugh while keeping us wise five nights a week. How he does it is a mystery. Quite frankly, I think the man should take a well deserved two week vacation

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled".

God bless you, Keith.

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
"The Rant" by Tom Degan

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Oh and by the way, this otherwise excellent piece neglects to mention Bob Herbert of the New York Times. He is raker of the muck supreme. He has got a book out with a collection of columns on the Bush White House. The book's title escapes me at the moment (Forgive me, Bob) but I absolutely recommend it to everybody! The guy is absolutely fearless!

Tom Degan
"The Rant" by Tom Degan

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...Robert Scheer and Joe Conason. I think we all have our favorites...

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No arguments about the above stated (I have issues with Lou Dobbs as would Mike Malloy) but you failed to mention Juan Gonzalez. In addition to co hosting Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez writed for the NY Daily News. Someone correct me if I am wrong but Mr Gonzalez was the first mainstream journalist to expose the dangers of Depleated Uranium DU.

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Sy Hersh and Helen Thomas top my pyramid of media heroes, cause they are relentless and have been for a long,long time, but I've been grateful to Ron Suskind for the way he infiltrated the Bush political machine for us in the "reality-based community" and Syd Schanberg for his insightful reporting until recently on the press in the Village Voice (he resigned when new management fired James Ridgeway, another stalwart) and let's not forget Bill Moyers, who tread where others dared not go on NOW, which David Broncoccio has taken up quite admirably, although the show has been cut to half an hour.

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Everytime I hear the tag-line, "Most trusted name in news", my skin crawls. Any entity (or person for that matter) that has to promote themselves as "most trusted", should not be trusted. Sounds just like a used car salesman promoting himself as my new "best friend."

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Shouldnt Bill Moyers be listed somewhere here? At least as an example of what "fair and balanced" SHOULD look like?

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Eric Margolis. Don't forget Eric Margolis.

A regular and unabashed television commentator as well as a columnist with Sun Media and Dawn (Pakistan). He's spent years and years and years in the mideast and knows of what he speaks.

www.http://ericmargolis.com

G. D. Warbeck

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Shameless self-promotion. Forgive me.
Tom Degan

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I never made it a practice to be a slave to any nightly news program before Keith, but now I'm hooked. I can depend on him to "tell it like it is" and cover the stories that I need to know.

He does need a two week vacation as Tom Degan said, but with the possible exception of Allison Stewart, those who sub for him are inept. I rarely watch when he's not there.

Keith is the embodiment of one of the first rules of journalism: Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

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How about Will Pitt

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Sean Gonsalves (Cape Cod Times), George Monbiot (The Guardian), et al. ...

keep adding names!

There are so many good, progressive writers here on AlterNet and also on Common Dreams.

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Or maybe I missed seeing his name mentioned.
In fact, Larissa Alexandrovna would not have been remiss to have done a bit of well deserved self-promotion.

Frank Rich on occasion doesn't get it, as when he shied from going after Judy Miller, even after everyone else was retching at the mere mention of her name, but when he does get it, he is peerless.

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Amy Goodman not only reports the facts straight, her program allows many of the people you mention a widely distributed forum. Democracy Now! is 'da Bomb.

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My first experience with Chuck Mertz of (WNUR 89.3 fm Northwestern U..sat am 9-1) was a 45 minute interview with Scott Ritter. Blew my mind on the info you can get in a full long chat. Every week has some of the very best guests I have found anywhere. Dhar Jamail is a regular, and that is just the beginning. I turn off my phone and up the volume on my computer ( I stream it live) for the full 4 hours. Check it out.

http://www.thisishell.net/

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at the NY Times always makes me laugh and cry at the same time...
By the bye, I know you will all enjoy this: Ask Google to search "Failure".

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I've been a fan of his for quite a while. WaPo's Thomas E. Ricks pleasantly surprised me with his book FIASCO. He's been an evenhanded Pentagon beat guy for a long time, but his book on Iraq sure doesn't pull any punches.

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I have to add Greg Palast, author of Armed Madhouse to this list, my favorite investigative reporter. Here's a link to his website.

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One of the most thoughtful, reasoned and on-the-money authors/talk hosts currently on the air today is Thom Hartmann (12-3pm ET M-F, both independently and as the Noon alternative to Al Franken on AAR - and hopefully Al's replacement when he runs for Senate). His well-reasoned fearlessness in taking on conservative blow-hards willing to be interviewed performs a great service to all of us looking for arguments to use on right-wingers' half-ass talking points. He is the only major talk show host who can intellegently and appropriately quote the founding fathers, and other historical figures, like de Tocqueville. A highlight of every week is his Friday "Brunch With Bernie" discussion with Rep. (and future Senator from VT) Bernie Sanders.

He also is the author of several books that lay out the reasons we need to be concerned about corportocracy, theocracy, fascism, peak-oil and other progressive issues. See:

"Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight"

"Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights"

"What Would Jefferson Do"

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You didn't mention Bob Herbert - New York Times.

He is articulate, fearless, compassionate - everything good!

Also Nicholas Kristoff and Frank Rich and E.J. Dionne!!

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Tom Oliphant has an interesting conversational style that spins facts and story together. You can hear him on Al Frankin regularly.

Al Frankin's talk radio is a platform form many great hardworking truthtellers who may not fit the journalist catagory but they deserve
mentioning.

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(First, I agree that the subject Alternet post was excellent .)

Sadly, I'm a latecomer to the brilliance and courage of Helen Thomas. I do agree with her "Lap Dogs" article that the collective press is lame, tending to gutless. Below is an excerpt from a March blog-piece.

"From the elite of the quill profession to the sometimes cartoonish talking heads of T.V., as in from Dowd to Hannity, the media of America do scant little to educate the public."

"Collectively they behave as if they were youth taking alternating peeps through a hole in the wall of the boys and/or girls gym locker room. Espying a calf or a buttock they clamor and jostle to press their eye to the peephole and set off en masse to repeat gossipy chatter as news. This gossip game, which is passed off as a profession, is today so ingrained that there is little reasoned analysis, leading the public to neither want nor expects any."

I also agree with Helen that "Why The War Georgie Boy?" (as posed by her to "W" in yesterday's (3.21.06) Presidential press conference) is a question to which every human being on the planet deserves an answer. If the neocons, as most analysts conclude, had forceful cogent reasons for invading Iraq prior to 9/11 then let the world debate those reasons.

With thousands of Americans dead and dust from the Towers still falling, rampant nationalism and fear allowed a closeted committed few to hijack our military, democracy and international law to implement a long held agenda.

History demands that this "Why The War" question be answered.

Iraq is such a cockup, so ill conceived, so poorly implemented, so internationally ill received, so inflaming and offering such dismal short term prospects that I think back to the Spring of 2003.

George Bush, in a meeting with Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac, says, "Look guys, if you don't join me in this war you're not getting any of the post-war goodies. No oil field contracts, no reconstruction contracts, nothing, we'll keep it all for ourselves."

Jacques and Gerhard huddle with their aides for a moment and then smilingly respond. "Our loss is your gain, big buddy, we're going to pass."

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Overlooked, but a good progressive voice, and especially good on labor issues.

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Some already mentioned above

Bob Herbert
Joshua Holland
Bill Moyers
Naomi Klein
Linda McQuaig

not exactly a journalist, more a pundit, Kevin Phillips.

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Why the blackout on this issue for instance:
Mexico Piquetero
By CLAUDIO ALBERTANI

Mexico City.

The revolt against the July 2nd electoral fraud in favor of Felipe Calderon, the right wing candidate, is expanding. After three weeks, the occupation of Mexico City's historic center shows no sign of fatigue, to the contrary, the movement is growing like an unstoppable avalanche. In the past few days, actions of peaceful civil resistance have multiplied in the Northern part of Mexico, traditionally a stronghold of the right. On the 11th of August, in Ciudad Juarez, farmers on horses took over the bridge that connects Mexico with the US, blocking for several hours hundreds of trucks crossing the border from both sides. In Hermosillo, sympathizers of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took over the airport for about half an hour, while in Nuevo Laredo representatives of civil rights organizations symbolically closed the Mexican equivalent of the IRS office, and in Monterey women armed with pots and pans occupied the site of the Mexican Employers Association (Coparmex). In other areas, like in Morelia, Queretaro, Veracruz, Acapulco, and Mexico City, the freeways toll-collecting system was disabled, with the enthusiastic support of drivers, as Mexican road tolls are amongst the most expensive in the world.

It is true, though, that the heart of the movement continues to beat in Mexico City, especially in the area between Avenida Reforma and Plaza De La Constitucion, where thousands of citizens have planted their tents after the July 30th demonstration, the largest in the history of the Country. It is here that as the writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II observed, the of poverty-stricken citizens exercise their multiple organizational skills, born out of decades of social struggles. In a festive environment, the ancient informal solidarity networks break the rules of the economy, mould new urban planning strategies, and create start unusual products. Products, one has to say, that are non-commercial, given that everything is free. Hundreds of cultural activities, theatrical performances, conferences, spoken words, music concerts, Danzon contests, chess matches, ska shows, mural newspapers, and a mobile library break the infernal daily routine of this monster-city and attract the attention of passersby. In the improvised camp hospital a baby has already been born.

"Nobody is paying us. We came to defend democracy", some protesters clarify in front of the camera of Caitlin Manning, a Californian filmmaker, who, while on vacation and touched by the events in Mexico, decided to shoot a documentary. "The time of the poor has arrived" states Donna Lupita, an elderly woman from Ixtapala, one of the most wretched neighborhoods in Mexico City. There is no hate in her words, only awareness of living in a historical moment. Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is sharing the joys and hardships (for example, the terrible hailstorms) of the encampment, echoes her. "We are prepared to resist for months. Even for years", he declared at the informative assembly of Sunday 13th, during which he specified the objectives of the movement. The first objective is, indeed, to fight poverty, this monstrous inequality in a country where next to Carlos Slim - a phone company tycoon and third on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world ­ millions of people survive in abject poverty. The second objective, as in Evo Morales' Bolivia, is the protection of national resources and public services: no to the privatization of electric energy, natural gas, oil, education and health. The third objective, of prime importance, is the right to information, which means breaking the monopoly held by private television networks and strengthening the public sector. The fourth objective is the struggle against white-collar corruption and the reduction of civil servants' astronomical salaries.

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Please add:
Randi Rhodes
Robert Parry
Diane Rehm
Terri Gross
Frontline reporters
Daniel Shore
Arianna Huffington
Mark Crispin Miller
GARRISON KEILLOR
Paul Craig Roberts
Sibel Edmonds
Peter Daou
Sidney Blumenthal
Salman Rushdie
John Dean
Daniel Ellsberg

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Keith Olberman certainly does have the self-righteous naivety of an Edward R. Murrow.

If the Second Coming of Christ were done in color for a full hour, there would be the likes of Murrow insisting that every channel should cover it, regardless of profit, regardless of choice, regardless of religious diversity.

It didn't have to be this way. But the battle was lost, even before Murrow stubbed out his last Chesterfield.

Why should snappy presentation be the preserve of the propagandists on Fox and CNN?

Why should real journalism wear dullness as a badge of honor?

Murrow's finest hours were spent describing the London Blitz in sensational terms to a radio audience. Nowadays such unabashed propaganda would be criticised in the likes of Alternet. But, at least Murrow's TV career picked some serious adversaries. You need to get basic cable and watch the comedy channel late at night to get that sort of activism these days.

The point is made by the speech at the end of George Clooney's preachy film "Good Night and Good Luck." Murrow really did believe it would be desirable to occasionally replace primetime entertainment (Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen's shows were the equivalent of Leno and Letterman today) with "a clinical survey of the state of American education" or "a thoroughgoing study of American policy in the Middle East."

The main problem with Murrow's proposition is that it abandons the field. Why doesn't the rest of the schedule (quiz show questions, satirical comedy sketches, factual news bulletins, interviews with "experts" etc.) break down the issues and jab us with insights into the state of American education and American policy in the Middle East?

Murrow seemed to suggest that the power of the electronic media should be distilled into its least attractive format to convey the most unappetizing information to an audience that was in a mood to put up its feet at the end of the day and have a laugh. The poor man was barking. He might as well have asked his viewers to open up their windows and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Olberman's NBC show sometimes contains 20 uninterrupted minutes of fluff and corporate one-upmanship. He picks on easy targets. Recently he apologised to a rival station's anchor immediately after showing a clip that showed her humiliating failure to improvise a tease for her upcoming segment.

Comedy Central does a better job.

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I nominate Maria Bartiromo. I think she's a top journalist, or maybe I just think she's dreamy.

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How did we all miss him?

He did some incredible work this year on Dick Cheney and his "cabal."

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Fabulous that you took the time to list some journalists who are not afraid to take on this administration. I can't agree with you more about your selection, however I do feel that Amy Goodman should also have been listed. She has done a remarkable job.

Keith Olberman DESERVES to be number one. He has consistently asked the hard questions, and, is not afraid to question the administration. He does it in such an iconoclastic way with such humor that it tends to relax one. I find myself letting go of the 'FEAR.' The "Fear" is not from the so called Terrorists that this administration keeps telling us are going to attack us. But from the anxiety I have because I FEAR that America is asleep. That we are allowing this administration and the corporations to manipulate us in order to take control and get this new world order of theirs going.

Well, Keith reminds me to give them enough rope and they will hand themselves. It is now starting to happen. When their best laid plans and hidden agenda unravel, as it will, God help them. This administration will be known as the most shameful in America's history. Betrayal has happened before in America's young hstory. What we have got to remember is America was formed on revolution. Her people have always said ......WAIT A MINUITE ........... and will again, I absolutely have to believe that!!!! Kieth Olberman helps me do that. Right now they are getting scared, because of what happend to Liberman. He is in the corporations" pocket also. He mouths the Bush administration's propaganda. Hillary, I feel does the same. We need to get control of Congress so that their can be an invistigation into 911, election fraud of 2000, election fraud of 2004 and so much more. We MUST hold BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD, RICE, ETC accountable for the horrors they have committed, AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE, THE IRAQI PEOPLE AND THE WORLD AT LARGE.

In the mean time Keith is really doing what a journalist is supposed to do, make you think, come to your own conclusions, and then take action.

In a Democracy people should never be afraid of its Leaders..... Leaders should be afraid of the people.

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Many other worthy news reporters are listed above, but in my humble opinion, the list would truly be incomplete without my two heros of Comedy Central - Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I had a problem with Colbert's self-righteous parody of the right-wing pundits until I watched him tear Bush a new one at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. After that, no matter what else he does, Colbert will always be a favorite of mine.

Thanks Jon, and thanks Steve, for bringing humor to the outrage. A person has to try to keep their sanity somehow, and with their presentation of current events, it does help. Honest.

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No one has mentioned Robert Woodward of Watergate fame. Oooops. Sorry, I'm feeling kinda dizzy. Got to go. I believe Joe Liberman is at my front door...

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For decades of service overflowing with integrity and passion on the issues that matter, regardless whose feathers are rustled, my vote for the top of this list is Bill Moyers.

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Well, it is all these same individuals who make up a good chunk, I am sure, of the US governments "no-fly list," "terrorist watch list," "NSA surveillance program list" and probably a secret "round-up list." What a shame it is that these same courageous individuals are the ones who pay the price, pay the price for us all by telling the Emperor that he has no clothes.

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The poor man's Seymour Hersh.

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The versatile Ted Rall and rising star Matt Taibbi.

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The worthwhile people you mention and many more are on the INTERNET and you don't have to contend with commercials or the pollution of any Bush supporters via the TV. You have just read an ample list here on Alternet and a number of other web sites. Save your TV viewing for worthwhile entertainment.

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Chris Floyd of Empire Burlesque has been writing critically of the Bush administration for the Moscow Times for years

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