Cable news channels were pioneers in vituperation, as politicians learned they were more likely to get invited back by breathing fire. The rise of highly opinionated hosts at Fox and MSNBC helped fuel the trend, as has the invasion of pols-turned-pundits — Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, James Carville, Eliot Spitzer — who have blurred the distinction between us (the journalists) and them (those we cover).

And later:

[Bill] O’Reilly regularly portrays his network as the antidote to hopelessly biased rivals: “If you want to know what’s really happening in America, you have to come here because you will not get it in much of the mainstream media.” His chief antagonist, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, said Sherrod’s reputation had been “assassinated by Fox News” and “that scum Breitbart,” but he did not spare what he called “the cowering media, this network included.”

The article seems to draw from a discussion Kurtz had on his Sunday CNN program, “Reliable Sources:”

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Host Howard Kurtz brought on Kansas City Star television critic Aaron Barnhart to discuss Christiane Amanpour‘s debut as host of ABC’s ‘This Week’, barely an hour after it aired.

Said Barnhart:

Well, I think she played to her strengths as a well-prepared researcher, someone who comes loaded for bear for her interviews. These were gets that were — they were published on the Web ahead of time. We could watch much of the segments ahead of time.

So, that part is the known quantity about Christiane. The unknown quantity is the back half of the show, which is the roundtable, where she’s expected to let her guests sort of hold forth and move the news agenda forward. And in that, she seemed a little less ready for the new environment she was thrown into there.

Update: From Barnhart, who writes in from Beverly Hills: “I wasn’t in Kansas City for the segment, I was in LA on TV critics press tour, meaning that I watched the East Coast feed at CNN’s bureau at 6 a.m.! Still, when you compare it to Oscars night – where my review is due about two minutes after the ceremony ends – this was a walk in the park.”

The program also discussed the hyper-partisan state of cable news earlier today, referencing the Shirley Sherrod case and the New Black Panther party coverage, among other topics.

Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, former CNN exec turned George Washington University professor Frank Sesno, Former USA Today managing editor Lauren Ashburn and CBS News White House correspondent Chip Reid talked about the rhetoric.

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Howard Kurtz led a panel discussion on cable news’s prime time partisanship. “President Obama is routinely bashed on Fox News Channel and just as routinely defended on MSNBC, where the Republicans are often portrayed as the villains,” said Kurtz. And of his own network: “CNN, by and large, tries to play things down the middle, with liberal and conservative guests taking each other on.”

Baltimore Sun columnist David Zurawik, who described Keith Olbermann as “a cartoon version of Edward R. Murrow,” said, “That model works for MSNBC and Fox because they don’t have to cover news when they don’t want to.”

“This is not good for society,” addeds Lauren Ashburn of USA Today Live.

Later in the show Kurtz interviewed HBO host Bill Maher, who talked about his audience as the “limousine liberal crowd.” Maher then responded to comments made by FNC hosts Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld about him. (Maher had to be told who Gutfeld was, first.)

Click continued to see Sunday’s show (with the cable network conversation at 11:45 and Maher interview at 24:00)…

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