Columnist and New York magazine editor-at-large  Frank Rich has strong feelings about a lot of things. TV news is one of them. In this week’s Media Beat interview, Rich tells PRNewser editor Tonya Garcia, “I think the worst influence can be cable news, particularly cable news getting obsessed, not with political stories, but with natural disaster, missing children, and driving all coverage of the national story off the air.”

After the jump, part I of the interview in which Rich talks about his role as executive producer of the HBO comedy “Veep.” “I think comedy, satire, and farce, which is also a little bit of Veep, heightens everything,” Rich says.