The worst show on cable television

It’s The Journal Editorial Report on Fox News Channel, writes Jack Shafer of Slate.com.

That’s the show run by Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot where editorial writers and contributors to the Journal’s editorial page are interviewed about what they wrote.

Shafer writes, “I wish I could write that The Journal Editorial Report has gotten worse since I first reviewed it two years ago, but it hasn’t. Instead, it has preserved its 2006 badness as if it’s an archeological artifact. Gigot still serves mostly softballs to his staff and guests, and the show makes almost no news. As if to acknowledge the show’s ongoing badness, Fox still buries The Journal Editorial Report in the 11 p.m. Saturday time slot, when most of the nation’s televisions take their weekly nap.

“The closest the show has come to breaking a pulse was the June 8, 2006, episode. Marvin Kalb—now a Fox News contributor—appeared to defend the New York Times‘ publication of its story about the SWIFT program, which the Journal editorial page had attacked. But even that segment dragged. The more you watch The Journal Editorial Report, the more you come to admire the skills of a broadcast news veteran like David Gregory, who can play the devil or devil’s advocate with equal aplomb. If advancing the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s ideology is the show’s intention—and I think it is—its producers would be better off hiring a host like Gregory who could torture some fresh intelligence out of Gigot and his staff.

“Instead, viewers endure the formlessness of Gigot’s ‘interviewing’ his writers about what they’ve written and published in the Journal.”

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