A number of MSNBC hosts, including Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O’Donnell and Ed schultz visited the White House today to meet with President Obama. The meeting was not for an interview (though it wouldn’t hurt to ask!) but rather to get briefed on the message the President wants to push as far as his tax plan goes. Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington also joined in.

Politico asked the White House for comment, here is what they said:

“This afternoon at the White House, the President met with influential progressives to talk about the importance of preventing a tax increase on middle class families, strengthening our economy and adopting a balanced approach to deficit reduction,” spokesman Josh Earnest said.

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MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell speaks with NBC’s Bob Costas tonight for Costas’ first television interview since his comments on gun control Sunday night following the murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher. Tomorrow, Costas heads across Sixth Avenue for a sit-down with Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly.

Costas went on Dan Patrick‘s radio show earlier today, telling Patrick: “My mistake is I left it open for too much miscommunication.”

What I was trying to say was, that if you want some perspective on this, there are a number of issues related to this that we could begin to talk about and think about. The problem was that I didn’t have enough time to get to many of them. And that, I think, was my mistake, to be quite honest, Dan. A friend of mine in broadcasting pointed this out to me yesterday, and I agree with him. He said, ‘you violated your own rule.’

Costas’ comments have been front and center on cable news over the last 24 hours, including on Sean Hannity‘s show, as we pointed out earlier and on “The O’Reilly Factor” as O’Reilly discussed the matter with Bernie Goldberg.

TVNewser was at this morning’s Viewpoints breakfast sponsored by the Wall Street Journal and headlined by CBS CEO Les Moonves. Moonves was asked if he had any advice for CNN’s new president — his former rival — former NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.

“I learned a long time ago not to give Jeff Zucker advice,” Moonves quipped. “I think Jeff Zucker is a very good choice. He is a showman. He made the “Today” show great. They not only need some help with their programming, but also their promotion, and he will do a very good job with that.

They need someone to help stave off Roger Ailes when he takes shots at CNN, which [Zucker] will do very well,” Moonves added.

As for CNN, Moonves acknowledged that CBS and the cable news channel had talked about pooling resources, but that the talks didn’t go anywhere.

“Is it a good thing to have a cable news network? Absolutely. Do I wish we had one? Probably,” Moonves said. “That said I am really proud of what our guys are doing.”

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NBC News is adding to its on-air staff at the White House.

Peter Alexander, who had covered the Romney campaign, has been named White House Correspondent, joining Chuck Todd and Kristen Welker on the beat. Todd continues as NBC News Political Director and Chief White House Correspondent, as well as anchor of MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.”

Alexander joined NBC News in 2004. Before NBC, Alexander worked at KCPQ-TV in Seattle,  KHQ-TV in Spokane and WKYT-TV in Lexington, KY.

Alexander is married to Alison Starling an anchor at WJLA-TV in Washington, DC.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was in Portugal last week shooting a story for CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” and he ended up being temporarily blinded for 36 hours.

He recounts the harrowing experience on his daytime talk show “Anderson Live.” In a nutshell, he was shooting out at sea, and sunlight reflecting off of the water burned his retina:

“I wake up in the middle of the night and it feels like my eyes are on fire, my eyeballs and I think oh maybe I have sand in my eyes or something. I douse my eyes with water. Anyway, it turns out I have sunburned my eyeballs and I go blind. I went blind for 36 hours.”

He took the picture above after visiting the doctor.

Video after the jump.
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This morning CBS CEO Les Moonves participated in a  forum sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, a portion of that conversation focused on CBS News. Moonves talked about how happy he was with the current state of the news division, and how he viewed it as part of the company. In something of a throwback  Moonves said that while CBS News makes money, it is not primarily viewed as a profit engine, rather, it is part of the public interest.

“When you are a network, a public company like CBS, there is a public trust factor, and I take that really seriously. Our news division does an extraordinary job of providing a public service,” Moonves said. “You talk about how the early ratings were off this year, well, part of the reason is that we had four nights of debates, which pre-empted — God forbid — “Two and a Half Men,” and we took a hit.

We covered the election, and the election night returns were great, it doesn’t help the bottom line, but it is very important for the image of CBS, and our place in society,” Moonves added.

He noted that he was pleased with the diction the news division has been taking.

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The murder-suicide that rocked the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs over the weekend, and Bob Costas‘ commentary about it Sunday night, was fodder on cable news Monday.

On FNC’s “Hannity,” the discussion got heated between guests Erik Rush and Leo Tyrell when attorney, author and conservative Rush said the Jovan Belcher case is instigating “fear mongering” and “histrionics” from “the big government political leftists who want to disarm the public.”

Tyrell jumped in, charging, “That is an absolute lie!”

Rush began to say, “It’s particularly irksome to me to see a black man come out for all of this gun control with specious arguments.” “Don’t even use race here, because you are being used right now,” shouted Tyrell. “You can go ahead and cut my mic off!”

As both men talked over each other, including several “shut up… no you shut up” comments, Hannity finally ended it and moved on. Watch the fireworks after the jump…

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A combined average of 24.688 million people watched the three evening newscasts last week — up almost 200,000 viewers from the same week last year, with most of the gains going to #3 “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.” Pelley was up +5% in total viewers and up +7% in younger viewers. “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” was up in total viewers: +3% but down in younger viewers: -4%. “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” which maintained a million viewer lead on ABC and 2.5 million lead on CBS, was down vs. last year: down -3% in both measurements.

Numbers for the week of November 26:

A last second Steelers win over the Ravens helped propel “60 Minutes” into the Top 10 last week. 16.15 million viewers made “60″ the 6th most-watched program of the week. Sunday’s show featured Steve Kroft’s investigation of for-profit hospital chain HMA, Bob Simon’s report on two adventurers who hope to fly their solar-powered plane around the world and, while he was Live on CNN hosting the annual “CNN Heroes” special, Anderson Cooper interviewed a North Korean defector for the CBS newsmagazine.

25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 133 | MSNBC: 147 | CNN: 103 | HLN: 116

• Primetime: FNC: 88 | MSNBC: 176 | CNN: 121 | HLN: 117

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	NewsHQ:	FNSunday:	Report:	Huckabee:	O’Reilly:	Stossel:	Huckabee:	O’Reilly:
	72	69	81	94	78	91	67	84
MSNBC	Caught:	Caught:	Caught:	Caught:	MaxDrama:	Investigates:	Lockup:	Lockup:
	110	96	136	182	144	202	280	238
CNN	Newsroom:	Newsroom:	Newsroom:	HeroesPre:	CNNHeroes:	Cont.:	CNNHeroes:	Cont.:
	75	98	96	79	144	141	129	107
HLN	Mysteries:	Mysteries:	Mysteries:	Mysteries:	Mysteries:	Mysteries:	Mysteries:	Mysteries:
	53	65	85	90	138	123	82	97

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