Journo News: PBS

Posted by on Aug 18, 2005 in Blog | No Comments

Romanesko, the blog that most newspaper editors don’t realize is a blog, had an interesting link to a story in the Village Voice about Fareed Zakaria, media gadfly, Daily Show guest and Newsweek International editor and columnist. Zakaria, a “Neoconservative policy wonk,” can finally give Mr. Stewart’s sofa rest because he’s the winner of the brand new PBS show Foreign Exchange With Fareed Zakaria.

Now is where you ask, ‘A neocon? Is this more Red-stating over at PBS?’ I don’t thinks so. Continued …

His show is focused on international affairs and in his own words “the other 95 percent of humanity,” and his guest are primarily foreign so FEWFZ (great acronym) will probably avoid most of that partisan hack framing that you get on cable news punditry shows. Zakaria has built his reputation on his Islamic heritage, although it is noted that he grew up in a very upper-middle class secular home. He’s an interesting gent.

Nevertheless, the Voice’s article is terrible: there’s an intentional wink-nod to Tiger Beat style articles, but it just sounds sleazy and obnoxious. The repeated comments of about Zakaria’s hunky attributes dilute a piece that doesn’t get to Zakaria’s initial support and subsequent lambasting of Bush’s war until the last paragraph. This nugget was buried completely:

“… he protests that he is no longer a diehard Reaganite but a firm centrist. ‘And anyway, in America the entire spectrum has shifted to the right. I still like the same kinds of people I always did – conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, call them what you will. But we’re an increasingly embattled phenomenon in a country with a president talking about intelligent design.'”

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