David Zurawik

Everybody says they want truth, but few stood up as Trump and his allies buried it under a trash heap of lies. Let’s start by accepting that truth and go from there.

I usually don’t like talking heads telling me what I should think about the images I am seeing. But when the images are as potent and symbolic as those we have been seeing the last two weeks, I’ll take all the help I can get. I got that in Wednesday's coverage of the inauguration.

What happens when an African American homicide detective from Baltimore moves to a small town with a history of racism on the Eastern Shore of Maryland? It isn't pretty, but it is illuminating and moving in the documentary "The Friendliest Town" arriving Jan. 19.

In this week of the inauguration, with fences topped by concertina wire encircling the Capitol and some 20,000 members of the National Guard making Washington look like the Green Zone in Baghdad, I can’t help but wonder what effect seeing such images is going to have on viewers.

Mr. Trump, who is said to be still reeling from being banned on social media platforms like Twitter last week, is now being left behind by the mainstream legacy outlets of newspapers and TV news. This is what marginalization looks like.

Mr. Trump is rapidly becoming a man without a medium. But it took far too long.

In our post-mortems about who has blood on their hands beside the president and some GOP politicians, we need to take a hard-eyed look at right-wing media and the role it played in the rise of Trump and the fall of the Capitol to his followers Wednesday.

In more than 30 years of writing about media coverage of some of the worst moments in recent history, I have never been as heartsick and angry as I was Wednesday watching TV and streamed coverage of the takeover of the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters who had been incited by the president.

Of course, you can see it on video all over social media later. But don’t you want to try to see history as it actually happens in real time Wednesday rather than an edited version later?

All good journalism involves some education of its audiences. But it should not be the job of commercial news organizations to do what schools aren’t doing anymore.

Agreement on retransmission fees will allow Baltimore area Verizon Fios subscribers to continue to see WBAL-TV and NBC content.

This is what dementia can sometimes look like ― no prime-time, American TV whitewashing here. And that level of truth, as unpleasant as it can be, makes “Elizabeth Is Missing” that much deeper and rewarding a TV experience in this horrible age of plague.

Verizon right to carry programming from Hearst TV stations expires Midnight December 31.

If Baltimore is to get better in 2021, Baltimore broadcasters are going to have to do some of the heavy lifting of real journalism for a change. Here are some of my best hopes for local and national media in 2012.

As the pandemic ripped through almost every aspect of American life in 2020, driving people to isolate in myriad ways, media became more important than ever.

Virtually all of mainstream media, me included, played into Mr. Trump’s hands by adhering to the traditional values often encapsulated in words and catchphrases like “objective” and “down the middle.”

With the COVID-19 shutdowns grinding on, kids are watching more TV than ever. Some parents think that is a bad thing. But this is one show that could help your child become a smarter and more compassionate citizen by watching

The arrival of a new PBS documentary from 90-year-old Frederick Wiseman, the dean and master of the genre, has always been a cause of celebration for me.

You can sometimes tell a lot about politicians from their media styles. And I could not help but be struck by the clear differences in the inaugural videos of Mayor Brandon Scott and City Council President Nick Mosby last week.

Monday morning as a COVID-19 vaccine arrived at medical centers across the country, cable news embraced a narrative of hope with a fervor I have not seen with any other story in the last 10 months. And it made me hopeful to see it.

In a year of monumental, complex and challenging stories, no TV journalism outlet has done a more in-depth and responsible job of covering them than “Frontline” on PBS. Meet the person behind this powerhouse production, Raney Aronson-Rath.

One of the primary providers of a national platform for those pushing Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of dark conspiracies and epic fraud in the Nov. 3 election is the Hunt-Valley-based Sinclair Broadcast Group with its weekly program “America This Week" hosted by Eric Bolling.

I was not looking for any particular synergy between “The Undoing” and the cultural life of the nation today. But once I got hooked on the HBO series, I came to realize it is very much about privilege and can, in fact, be viewed as a highly informed meditation on it.

Gov. Larry Hogan might not look slick on first glance at the screen, but he is one very slick media creature. I wish he would give that a rest during this crisis, though, and just focus on the work of keeping us as safe as possible.

For all the good work that TV has done in recent months on Black life, I can think of nothing that offers the depth, insight and power of HBO's "Between the World and Me." This is one TV production not to be missed in this year of racial reckoning.

From the very first words and images that appear onscreen in the documentary “Lights of Baltimore,” you know you are in the hands of a skilled filmmaker with some poetry in her soul.

The doctors of cable TV have served us far better than our government.

Saturday morning when the news on Mr. Biden’s victory was announced, you could feel the fever breaking and a new energy burning through the airwaves.

Mr. Trump has developed a powerful messaging machine with Fox News, Breitbart News and others the last four years, but being contextualized this way on Twitter and pre-empted on major cable and network news channels is a serious blow to his ability to deliver his message at a time when he seems to need it more than ever.

Donald Trump will remain on our screens, because he cannot live without seeing himself on television. As much as he is a product of television, he is also its victim. If he does not see himself on TV, he does not exist.