On CNN’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz questioned why the news media took so long to scrutinize Ron Paul‘s controversial newsletters.

On CNN’s Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz lauded The Daily Show as being perhaps the most important program for political satire on television. “Is there another program out there that’s not quite news but not quite just a comedy show –that has had more impact on politics through laughter and ridicule? Did it long ago eclipse Saturday Night Live?” Kurtz pondered. “The 2012 campaign is prime time for Jon Stewart as he pokes not just the pols but the pundits for being so absurdly fickle.”

Earlier in the week, NBC announced it would hire Chelsea Clinton as a correspondent for its “Making a Difference” series, a decision that clearly did not go over well for some. On CNN’s Reliable Sources today, Howard Kurtz‘s panel tore into the “Nepotism Broadcasting Company” for depriving someone without connections of such a job, with one panelist particularly noting it was offensive to “young people who played by the rules.”

On CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday morning, host Howard Kurtz gave Politico reporter Jonathan Martin a grilling worthy of Bobby Flay over whether the online paper had enough to publish its story on sexual harassment allegations against GOP frontrunner Herman Cain. The answer to that question was obvious, and gave short shrift to several more interesting questions that Kurtz touched on, but that didn’t quite connect.

On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz took the media to task for having roundly criticized President Obama‘s decision to get involved in Libya, but failing to give the President credit for Muammar Gaddafi‘s killing at anywhere near the same volume. “The media wallowed for months in criticism of the Libya policy,” Kurtz said,  ”Why don’t they stop now, give some credit to the President when a brutal regime is toppled, and the policy is successful?”

Earlier this week, we reported the failure of several trained journalists to challenge Rep. Michele Bachmann‘s dangerously irresponsible claims about the HPV vaccine, and while Bachmann’s claims eventually became big news, attended by fact-checking segments of varying quality, the journalists who allowed her to ring that bell got off scot-free. Reliable Sources‘ Howard Kurtz weighed in on the subject Sunday morning, but even his criticism amounted to little more than a soothing wrist massage.

There are currently about… seven thousand Republicans officially in the presidential race so far, and yet many in the media cannot take their eyes off Sarah Palin. Whenever the former Alaska governor appears in public, she gets a fair amount of coverage in the mainstream media. Is the coverage excessive? That’s what today’s Reliable Sources panel examined.

On CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday morning, host Howard Kurtz asked his panel to respond to the criticism, best summed up by Jon Stewart, that the media is unfairly ignoring the presidential candidacy of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). While the panel offered a familiar raft of excuses, Kurtz pushed back against the notion that Paul can’t be elected, saying, “That can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if you decide, in advance, that he’s not going to win the nomination.”

Yesterday, David Bohrman stopped by his old CNN stomping grounds, appearing on Reliable Sources where Howard Kurtz introduced him as the guy who helped bring us the 2008 election hologram (either a nice compliment or horrible insult depending on your view of that “innovation”). While there, he had a fascinating discussion about his new job, president of Current TV. Borhman discussed “outing” himself as a liberal, the differences between his network and MSNBC, and its relationship with Fox News.

Howard Kurtz spoke with Eric Deggans, a media critic from the St. Petersburg Times about the likely hiring of Al Sharpton to be MSNBC’s newest host of a nightly show. Kurtz and Deggans shared some worries with one another regarding whether or not Sharpton was the person most deserving of getting his own new show.

Jeff Jarvis, writes at BuzzMachine , but his Twitter “venting” at Washington gained national media attention and he explained his disappointment with the government to Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources. After two glass of wine, Jarvis tells Kurtz he took to Twitter to share his immediate emotion with all politicians and was soon shocked to see how many Americans agreed with him.

Former MSNBC host Cenk Uygur appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources to further explain his separation from the network and to speculate why he is likely being replaced by Al Sharpton. However, Howard Kurtz wasn’t really convinced by Uygur’s theories, and instead was curious why he gets “ticked off” by an employer giving him notes on his style?

Well, that didn’t take long: Greta van Susteren took a few minutes out of her Sunday afternoon to respond to a segment earlier today on Reliable Sources, where host Howard Kurtz argued that he did his best to cover scandals at CNN and that those at Fox News should be more vocal in doing the same. But in focusing on the lack of coverage on Fox News Watch, he seems to have forgotten On the Record, which van Susteren was more than happy to publicly remind me of.

As the News of the World phone hacking scandal continues to claim scalps, the coverage– or lack thereof– of the story on its sister organization Fox News continues to claim headlines. On today’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz, admitting he felt “very strongly” about the issue, chided Fox News for keeping quiet, noting that “when CNN has controversy, we always do it” and that, by not covering the scandal, the network “undermines its credibility.”

After a week that was filled with news and commentary regarding the verdict in the Casey Anthony murder trial, Howard Kurtz spoke with Lauren Ashburn and Diane Diamond about the role of legal pundits. All seemed skeptical over Nancy Grace‘s role in the coverage with Ashburn explaining that Americans just need to be entertained by everything and with Kurtz suggesting many other legal analysts may have simply viewed this trial as an opportunity to become a star, like many journalists did with the O.J. Simpson trial.

On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, a debate over the media’s treatment of New York’s recently passed Marriage Equality Act, between conservative radio host Dennis Prager and AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis quickly devolved into a series of tangents and interruptions that missed the entire point of host Howard Kurtz‘s question. Kurtz wondered if there was anything wrong with the news media’s “relentlessly positive” coverage of the law’s passage.

On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz and panelists Michelle Cottle, Matthew Continetti, and A.B. Stoddard tossed around Mark Halperin’s ill-advised phallic non-bon mot, and made some key observations. In Halperin’s favor, he was assured, even “egged on” by Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to go weapons free, but also that Halperin clearly premeditated the remark. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, as the saying goes. Halperin weirdly did both.

Glenn Beck‘s time at Fox News Channel as a daily host is now officially over, and on Reliable Sources Howard Kurtz asked his guest Gail Shister, columnist at TVNewser and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, how relevant Beck might remain in the future with his new online venture? Shister predicted, “I don’t think that he will become a part of the daily conversation like he is now.”

The normally sharp Howard Kurtz really missed the boat in his rundown of the recent Jon Stewart/Chris Wallace interview, and Politifact-ual aftermath. On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, he and his panel missed the mark on Stewart’s response to Politifact’s charge that his assertion about Fox News viewers was false, and when panelist Aaron Barnhart tried to bring up the crucial edit of an exchange about Fox exec Bill Sammon, Kurtz promised to go back to it, but never did.

On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz and panel discussed the debut of Keith Olbermann‘s Countdown II: The Wrath of KO, and former Mediaite-er Glynnis MacNicol made a great observation about Olbermann’s ostensible olive branch to former colleague Rachel Maddow. She noted that Olbermann’s strategic demonization of MSNBC (noted here awhile back) doesn’t seem to be working, and that his decision not to overlap with Maddow’s show could represent a step away from that strategy.

It seemed a lot of people recognized that Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann all of a sudden started getting favorable news coverage, a phenomenon that left Howard Kurtz scratching his head this morning on Reliable Sources. Kurtz asked his panel, “why was this a collective newsflash ‘hey, she’s not so crazy’” after she did pretty well in the debate?

On Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz asked his panel whether it was a big deal that a President Obama impersonator, Reggie Brown, spoke at the Republican Leadership Conference where he received laughs for his racially-sensitive jokes about the President, but was yanked off stage once he turned his attention to the Republican presidential nominees.

Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers spoke out about her past relationship with Congressman Anthony Weiner with Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher and how she believed his communications with various women demonstrated misogynistic behavior. Today she appeared on Reliable Sources and told Howard Kurtz she couldn’t stay silent on his behavior just because Weiner was a former friend.

A recent story on CNN reviewed various political sex scandals in history and strangely didn’t mention a former New York Governor who just so happens to host a nightly show on CNN. CNN’s own Howard Kurtz similarly noticed the “glaring omission” and didn’t hesitate to criticize his own network.

Earlier this week, CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria made the strange admission that he met with President Obama to discuss international issues. Our own Colby Hall called it a “stunning revelation”, which Howard Kurtz quoted on Reliable Sources today as he made the point that in his opinion, such meetings should have been disclosed.