Eric Alterman

Born in 1960, Eric Alterman is an American historian, journalist, and professor who began his journalism career in 1983 as a freelancer for The Nation. He became Washington correspondent for Mother Jones and then Rolling Stone, and in 1995 he returned to The Nation as its Liberal Media columnist, a position he held until 2020. He has written for The American Prospect, where his Altercation newsletter appeared. Hired by MSNBC in 1996, he was a commentator and created the early blog Altercation in 2002, later joining Media Matters for America. He has taught at New York University and Columbia University and has been a professor at Brooklyn College since 2004, becoming a CUNY distinguished professor in 2007. His first book, Sound & Fury, won the George Orwell Award, and he authored best-sellers including What Liberal Media? He appears in the documentaries Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004), An Unreasonable Man (2006), and Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (2008).