Mark Halperin

Personal life

Halperin was born to a Jewish family, the son of Morton Halperin, a foreign policy expert, and Ina Weinstein Halperin Young. He has two brothers, David and Gary. He was born in Bethesda, Maryland, and raised in Bethesda, where he became a bar mitzvah at Congregation Beth El and attended Walt Whitman High School. During the summer of 1982, before he began his senior year at Whitman, Mark Halperin lived with a family in Japan as part of the Youth for Understanding program. He received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1987. Halperin resides in New York City with his girlfriend, Karen Avrich, co-author of Sasha and Emma with her late father and historian Paul Avrich.

Career

In 1988, Halperin started out as a desk assistant for ABC News and a researcher for World News Tonight. He then worked in the investigative unit of World News Tonight and as a general assignment reporter in Washington. In 1992 he worked full-time as an off-air producer covering Bill Clinton. In 1994 Halperin became a producer with ABC's special events unit in New York and later an editorial producer.

In 1997 he was named the political director for ABC News. As director, Halperin appeared frequently as a correspondent and political analyst for ABC News television and radio programs. He also founded and edited The Note, which appeared daily on ABCNews.com. In October 2006, Halperin, along with John F. Harris, released their book, The Way to Win: Clinton, Bush, Rove, and How to Take the White House in 2008 (ISBN 1-4000-6447-3).

Since 2006 Halperin has been a board member of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. He has been on the NHIOP public advisory board since it was created in 2008.

In March 2007, Halperin became a political analyst for ABC News and was replaced as political director by David Chalian.

In May 2007, Halperin was hired as a political analyst and editor at large for Time magazine. In June 2010, he was hired as senior political analyst at MSNBC. In 2011, Time released an iPad app called "Mark Halperin 2012" that contains material from Mr. Halperin's "The Page" as well as video, photos, breaking news, and Halperin's take on the news.

2004 elections

In October 2004 the Drudge Report published a memo Halperin sent to ABC News staff about coverage of the U.S. presidential election directing them not to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable" and that both John Kerry and George W. Bush used "distortion" in their campaign, but that Kerry’s distortions were not "central to his efforts to win." Halperin was criticized by conservatives who used the memo to reinforce long-standing complaints of media bias. ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider confirmed the authenticity of the memo and said Halperin "takes his responsibility to be fair as seriously as a heart attack." In 2006, Halperin would criticize the media for being biased in favor of Kerry after a controversial remark that the senator made.

MSNBC suspension

On June 30, 2011, Halperin was suspended from his duties at MSNBC for "slurring" President Barack Obama on the program Morning Joe, saying the President came off as "kind of a dick" during the previous day's press conference. His suspension was lifted a little over a month later.

Books and movies

Halperin with co-author John Heilemann wrote "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime," which was made into Game Change, which premiered on HBO on March 10, 2012. Halperin had a cameo role in the movie as a reporter.

Criticism

In December 2011, Halperin was listed as #1 in Salon.com's 2011 Hack List, his reporting described as "shallow and predictable" as well as "both fixated solely on the horse race and also uniquely bad at analyzing the horse race."

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) named Halperin as one of its P.U.-Litzer winners in 2013 for his comment about New Jersey governor Chris Christie: "Chris Christie is someone who is magical in the way politicians can be magical, like our last three presidents."

In his syndicated column, Ruben Navarrette accused Halperin of asking racist questions when interviewing Ted Cruz on May 9, 2015. Including asking the Senator to speak Spanish, list his favorite Cuban dishes, and favorite Hispanic music. Rick Moran, of the PJ Tatler, on May 10, 2015, wrote that "Asking Cruz to say something in Spanish is akin to asking a black person to eat watermelon or start dancing." Halperin responded to the criticism saying it was meant to be a light-hearted banter, and that "I apologize to those that were offended, and to Senator Cruz. I promise that I will work to make the tone and questions better next time."

Halperin drew criticism for his coverage during the 2016 United States presidential election, including for what some critics saw as uncritical and occasionally "sycophantic" coverage of Donald Trump. In October 2016, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank called Halperin's analysis in the race "soulless" and "amoral," and cited a number of instances where Halperin praised Trump. Alex Shepard, writing in The New Republic, criticized his coverage for being overly focused on the horse race and for shallow analysis. In November 2016, Brian Williams said Halperin had "gone out of his way" to give Trump favorable coverage.