Eric Alterman

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Eric Alterman is a liberal American journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator, possibly best known for the political weblog named Altercation, which ran at MSNBC from 2002 until 2006.

Alterman writes a political column for The Nation, and is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America and the World Policy Institute. He is also a Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He received a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University, an M.A. in International Relations from Yale, and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford.

Alterman was hired by MSNBC in 1995, and appeared as a commentator on the cable channel and wrote a column. In 2002 MSNBC directed him to create the daily Altercation blog, which was the first blog run by a mainstream news outlet.^[1] In September 2006, MSNBC fired Alterman. Media Matters for America then hired Alterman as a Senior Fellow and agreed to host Altercation, effective September 18, 2006.

In October 2004, Alterman released When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences - a book version of Alterman's doctoral dissertation on lies of major consequence told by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. He is currently working on a book about the history of Liberalism.

Alterman's academic expertise is in American history, but he is better known for his media criticism, which is the subject of his Nation column as well as a weekly column he writes for the American Progress website and two of his books. Alterman argues that the press is biased against liberals rather than in their favor.