American radio show host, author, political commentator and film critic. His Seattle-based nationally syndicated talk show, The Michael Medved Show, airs throughout the U.S. on Salem Radio Network.
Medved was born October 3, 1948, into a Jewish family of German and Ukrainian origin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Renate (Hirsch) and David Bernard Medved, a Navy veteran and scientist. He was raised in San Diego, California, where his father worked for the defense contractor Convair and later for NASA. Medved attended Palisades High School when the family moved to Los Angeles, California. He entered Yale University, located in New Haven, Connecticut, as a 16-year-old undergraduate, and graduated with honors in 1969, and then entered Yale Law School.
After his first year of law school, he left to work as a head speech writer for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Duffey, and then for four years as a speech writer and political consultant. After political campaign work, including a position as an aide to Congressman Ron Dellums, Medved worked in advertising, and coordinated a campaign to recruit more African Americans and Hispanics to the police departments of the California cities of San Francisco,Oakland and Berkeley.
After writing more than 40 articles for the book The People's Almanac, Medved wrote What Really Happened to the Class of '65? , with David Wallechinsky. Focusing on the post-graduation lives of 30 of Medved's Palisades High School classmates who were featured in a 1965 cover story in Time, the book became a bestseller in 1976. The book also became the basis for a weekly television series on NBC that ran for 13 weeks in 1978.
Medved then wrote The Shadow Presidents: The Secret History of the Chief Executives and Their Top Aides (1979), a study of the leading White House assistants since the establishment of the presidential staff in 1857. The book included interviews with the chiefs of staff of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson,Nixon, and Ford. After the interviews, Medved continued his involvement in politics, befriending Ford's chief of staff, Dick Cheney, affiliating himself with the Republican Party, and campaigning for Ronald Reagan in 1980.
In 1984, Medved wrote Hospital: The Hidden Lives of a Medical Center Staff, which was discussed in Time, on ABC's Nightline, and Good Morning America. The book focused on 30 staff people who worked together in a California teaching hospital.
Medved continued his screenwriting work, writing for feature film projects and television miniseries, and he joined the Writers Guild of America. He also collaborated with his brother, Harry Medved, on four satirical books about movies: The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (1979), The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), The Hollywood Hall of Shame (1984) and Son of Golden Turkey Awards (1986).
Medved continued to review movies, through a weekly review on CNN (1980—1983) and a show he hosted on British network Channel 4 called The Worst of Hollywood. His commentary centered on what he considered to be bad movies, particularly in "The Golden Turkey Awards". The film selected by the Medved Brothers as The Worst Film of All Time, Plan 9 from Outer Space, has become a cult classic.
In 1984, Medved joined Sneak Previews, the weekly movie review show originated by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, co-hosting the program for twelve years with Jeffrey Lyons.
In 1993, Medved became chief film critic for the New York Post, a position he held for five years, during which he reviewed more than 700 movies for the newspaper.
More recently, Medved has played a prominent role in some movie-related controversies. Medved became an outspoken defender of Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ (2004), which had been criticized as anti-semitic by many prominent Jewish groups. After Gibson's DUI arrest in July 2006, Medved wrote that he felt "betrayed" by Gibson's anti-semitic outburst and urged Gibson to seek "reconciliation" with the Jewish community.
Medved writes a regular column for USA Today and is a member of the Board of Contributors for USA Today's Forum Page, part of the newspaper's Opinion section. He writes occasional op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal and blogs daily at Townhall.com. He also wrote the 1992 book Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values.
In November 2007, Medved became a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, hub of the intelligent design movement.
In November 2008, Medved released his eleventh nonfiction book, The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation. The follow up volume, The 5 Big Lies About American Business: Combating Smears Against the Free-Market Economy, was released in December 2009.