Thursday's NBC Nightly News led, yes led, with how, as anchor Brian Williams put it, President Bush had that morning conducted “a staged event" via satellite with ten U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi soldier in Iraq. “Today's encounter was billed as spontaneous,” Williams intoned. “Instead, it appeared to follow a script.” Andrea Mitchell warned that “the troops were coached on how to answer the Commander-in-Chief” and, indeed, not until two minutes into her three-minute story -- after showing clips of how a DOD official had told the soldiers the questions Bush would ask -- did Mitchell note how “the White House and at least one of the soldiers says the troops weren't told what to say, just what the President would ask." So, the answers were not staged. The soldiers, naturally nervous about appearing on live TV with the President of the United States, were simply told who should answer which question and to “take a breath” before answering. Scandalous! Over video of Bush on the aircraft carrier, Mitchell went on to remind viewers of how “this isn't the first time this administration used troops to help sell the Iraq war.” But she also admitted a media double-standard: “Many administrations, Democrat and Republican, stage-manage events and often the news media ignore the choreography.”

ABC's World News Tonight also devoted a full story, though not the lead, to the media-generated controversy. Terry Moran contended that “the fact that this was so carefully choreographed...shows just how urgently the White House wants not just a success on the ground in Iraq, but a PR success at home for this embattled President." Over on the CBS Evening News, anchor Bob Schieffer opined that “unfortunately for the President, after satellite cameras caught administration aides rehearsing the soldiers beforehand, Democrats dismissed the whole thing and said the troops deserved a lot better.” Lara Logan managed to cover other material in her story and uniquely showcased a soldier who told CBS: "The truth is that everything that was said was meant to be said, though it may have sounded scripted in some places. Nerves kick in, for one. Two, everyone puts their thoughts together. You put it down, you go over and over it a hundred times."

MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann also led Thursday with the “staged” event and the AP distributed a story breathlessly headlined, “Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged.” But on FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume, Hume noted complaints the event was "not entirely spontaneous" before Carl Cameron pointed out that Bush posed an unplanned question to the Iraqi soldier. In the panel segment, Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon recalled how when “back in December” a soldier asked Rumsfeld about armor, a question that “had been planted by a reporter, I didn't hear any outcry from the press.” (UPDATE with CNN coverage and transcripts follow.)

     For the media, Hurricane Katrina has been a story of zeroes – the more, the better. While reports before the hurricane’s landing incorrectly warned of tens of thousands of deaths, one prediction that has panned out is the gargantuan cost of the storm. Katrina wrought tens of billions of dollars in destruction and set in motion a $250-billion rebuilding effort.

     While not as visible of a step, freeing the market of government intrusion is almost as important as the endless zeroes in the relief budget. One broadcaster who has given these new policies serious attention is CNN’s Lou Dobbs. Unfortunately, he disregards free market solutions on a regular basis. Even raising the minimum payments for credit cards is a “mindless” step engineered by “idiots at the U.S. Treasury Department.”

At today's White House Press Briefing, Helen Thomas wanted to know what a 'total victory' meant in Iraq. As Scott McClellan was answering the question to her dissatisfaction, she interrupted and tried to trip him up again. Scott, tired of her anti-War rhetoric, came right out and said she was against the War on Terror. Helen responded and said that the Middle East knows we invaded Iraq and ended her remarks with "I'm opposed to preemptive war". Thanks for being fair and balanced Helen.

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Transcript follows.

Washington Post columnist Tina Brown today took the opportunity to mark the 80th birthday of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister, with a scathing attack on Harriet Miers.

In, "You've Come a Long Way, Ladies," Brown begins:

The healthiest aspect of the Harriet Miers nomination is that women haven't rallied to her cause. Ten years ago, there would have been a lot of reflexive solidarity about keeping the Sandra Day O'Connor spot on the Supreme Court from reverting to male type. But every female lawyer I've spoken with in the past week skips right past the sisterly support into a rant about Miers's meager qualifications or her abject obeisance to power. The good news is that for women, it seems, Miers's nomination is like the moment for blacks in Hollywood when it was suddenly okay to cast an African American actor as something other than a perfect hero. The Sidney Poitier phase is definitively over.

Cam Edwards, a talk-radio host at NRANews.com, drew out CBS Public Eye facilitator Vaughn Ververs on the subject of "60 Minutes" star Mike Wallace appearing at a $250-a-pop fundraiser (and birthday party for political humorist Art Buchwald) for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Ververs took that question to Wallace and CBS senior vice president for standards Linda Mason. Mason suggested the network was investigating whether Wallace would be allowed to report on gun issues after this appearance. Wallace claimed he had no idea the Buchwald party was an anti-gun fundraiser until a few weeks before the event. (This is a bit odd, since we raised a fuss about the perception of taking sides back in July.) He then decided to remedy the conflict by paying for his own ticket and tickets for family members. Doesn't that ADD to the conflict, that now he's not simply drawing other people into buying tickets, he's putting his own dollars in the Brady basket? Ververs declared:

Today, during a press conference with Scott McClellan (White House spokesman), MSNBC the White House press corps displayed their true feelings about our soldiers fighting in Iraq.

Earlier in the day, President Bush held a video question-and-answer session with some soldiers serving in Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's home town).

President Bush asked the soldiers to provide a report of the situation on the ground.  The solders advised, that, while things are tough, they are going well will hopefully get better after this week's Iraqui consitutional elections.

MSNBC, apparently picking up on almost instantenous charges on radical left sites like democraticunderground and dailykoz, almost immediately began to question where or not these soldiers were "coached".

During the press conference with McClellan a couple of hours later, white house reporters simply took it on faith that the soldiers WERE "coached" and why the White House felt justified (by implication) in "lying" to the American people.

Search as you may, it will still be difficult for you to find much good news about anything taking place in either Afghanistan or Iraq. It isn’t that positive news is in short supply. It is the “If it bleeds It leads” mentality of the mainstream media that keeps death and bombings in the headlines and relatively uplifting accomplishments banished to the inside pages of publications and almost always omitted from radio and television newscasts.

According to American military personnel communicating with friends and family, there is important progress being made all across Iraq. The problem is few correspondents will leave the security of Baghdad’s Green Zone to cover the events. Those who do write on significant accomplishments claim their stories get little attention by editors in the networks and newsrooms. The selective editing by those who control the content of news reports reflects a strong tendency by the media to tilt in favor of left-leaning ideas on the war.

Bruce Thornton has a good article at JewishPress.com about journalists who raise a fuss and then ask people what they think of the fuss they've created.

Imagine that you started receiving letters in the mail accusing your neighbor of being a child molester. Occasionally you receive photographs or even a video showing the neighbor with a child on his lap or dressed up like a clown at a children`s party. After a couple of weeks of this, someone then phones you to ask if you think your neighbor is a pedophile. What percentage of us do you think would say yes?

There you have one of the media`s favorite devices for disguising opinion as news, one on display in the coverage of the disaster in New Orleans. At the very height of the disaster reporters solicited opinions from people about what was happening and why, and unsurprisingly, the majority of poor black people asked said Bush and the federal government were to blame, a perception echoed by Democrats and black politicians for obvious partisan reasons.

NBC's Tim Russert proclaimed, "It's a year away but the Democrats are feeling almost giddy this morning," as he ran down the negative news from NBC's own poll. Matt Lauer opened this morning's Today show with a teaser for the Russert political analysis segment: 

Lauer: "Then to Washington where it rains it really pours. President Bush says he doesn't look at the poll numbers. He might not want to. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows his approval rating is at its lowest level ever. And there's some astounding numbers when it comes to African-Americans and their support for the President. Tim Russert's gonna be here and crunch those numbers in a little while."

During the media's coverage of Katrina the race card was played again and again so it's no surprise that Lauer and Russert led with the fruits of their labor.

The Times gives Democrats room for hope to take over Congress in 2006. Was the Times as enthusiastic about Republican prospects in 1994?

Robin Toner's Page One New York Times story ("Democrats See Dream of '06 Victory Taking Form") begins: "Suddenly, Democrats see a possibility in 2006 they have long dreamed of: a sweeping midterm election framed around what they describe as the simple choice of change with the Democrats or more of an unpopular status quo with the Republican majority."

But the evidence Toner cites could be a wee bit more convincing: "Already, the response to Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and soaring gasoline prices have taken a toll on the popularity of President Bush and Congressional Republicans; new polling by the Pew Research Center shows the approval rating for Congressional Republican leaders at 32 percent, with 52 percent disapproving, a sharp deterioration since March. (The ratings of Democratic leaders stood at 32 percent approval, 48 percent disapproval.)"

In March, the same Pew survey had figures of 39-44% approval-disapproval for Republicans and 37-44% approval-disapproval for Democrats, underlining the fact that Democratic approval ratings have fallen almost as far as those of Republicans, a fact Toner puts in parentheses.

Interestingly, the Times wasn't so hypersensitive to the possibility of an historic Republican takeover of Congress back in 1994, although the same polling group, Pew, released no fewer than three surveys within a month of the 1994 election indicating the strong possibility of Republicans gaining control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The first sentence of Pew's November 6, 1994 poll stated: "Going into the final days of the campaign, a nationwide Times Mirror survey finds the Republican party with about enough popular support to capture control of the House of Representatives, but not enough to guarantee such an outcome."

Yet despite that strong hint, a Nexis search indicates the Times was silent on Pew's predictions about an imminent Republican tidal wave. [Clarification: According to Nexis, the Times did run a small story in Section B on October 13, 1994, noting the favorable findings for Republicans by the Times Mirror center, findings which were then reported by Pew.]

Here is an interesting item linked to by Matt Drudge. London's Daily Mail reports that 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone will star in a new Rocky movie and a new Rambo movie.

Josh Rushing served as a Pentagon spokesman in Doha in 2003, during the first months of the invasion of Iraq. Now he is joining an all-English network owned by Al Jazeera. The new network, Al Jazeera International, is set to launch next year.

Joining him will be BBC veteran journalist Sir David Frost.

Rushing will report from the bureau in Washington and Frost will be in London.

Rushing was featured in "Control Room," a documentary about American efforts to create a positive image during the early stages of the war.

The former Marine, who quit the services to join Al Jazeera, did not like the Pentagon's reluctance to grant interviews to the news channel.

"I was struggling to get them interviews and access. This was the best way to address their Arab audience and we were blowing it because we thought they were critical."

Ever wonder where the media find those people for the heart-wrenching personal interest stories used to illustrate a point? Me too.

The Today show aired a doozy this morning, and used it to make a hair-raising prediction that pointed the finger at insufficient government welfare spending.

The topic was increasing fuel prices, and in particular the rising cost of home heating.

Reporter Tom Costello sagely informed us "those high heating bills will hit low-income families especially hard." Well, yeah. That's one of the things about being low-income, you can't afford as much stuff, nachos to natural gas..

We were then treated to a clip of Joanne Baker, a not-elderly black Philadelphia woman living in what appeared to be a comfortable two-story home who lamented: