Does the name “Aaron Broussard” ring a bell? Well, he is the president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, who was immortalized on NBC’s “Meet the Press” right after Hurricane Katrina hit when he suggested – with tears in his eyes – that the slow response by the federal government resulted in the unnecessary death of the mother of one of his colleagues. When it turned out that his claims were disputed by the son of the deceased woman, Tim Russert invited Broussard back on “Meet the Press,” and as was reported by NewsBusters, Russert let him off the hook again.

Last evening, Carl Quintanilla did a report on the “NBC Nightly News” about concerns being addressed by residents of Jefferson Parish that the drainage pump operators responsible for preventing flooding during storms were dismissed by Broussard before Katrina hit, and that this is why so many houses in the parish ended up being destroyed. These grievances have now become a class-action lawsuit against Broussard, a fact that was downplayed in Quintanilla's report.

Also missing in this piece were recent revelations that Broussard – in a possible effort to cover his tracks – is seeking to fire the head of the East Jefferson Levee District.

Yet, with all this intrigue, Quintanilla didn’t interview Broussard concerning any of these recent allegations, and, instead, chose to address e-mail messages that were transmitted between FEMA representatives in the midst of the disaster.

What follows are highlights from an article by the Associated Press concerning the class-action suit against Broussard, a Times-Picayune article about the firing of the Levee District chief, a full transcript of Quintanilla’s report with a video link, as well as video links of both Broussard appearances on “Meet the Press.”

Gaggle is a daily comic strip about the Washington press corps and Larry the press secretary. Larry deals with the shenanigans of reporters who couldn't imagine anyone voting for a Republican.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

Sometimes, journalists simply flub a key fact, as did San Francisco Chronicle Washington correspondent Edward Epstein in this article about Saturday's constitutional referendum in Iraq:

Analysts do not see an end to Iraq's nonstop jockeying among competing ethnic and religious groups or to an insurgency that is averaging 570 attacks a day, despite voters' apparent approval of a new constitution on Saturday.

Epstein claimed that terrorists in Iraq were averaging 570 attacks each day in Iraq. When I emailed him asking for the source of this staggering figure, he quickly responded:

From latest CSIS report: "The Bush administration’s Oct.

ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas set up a Tuesday World News Tonight story, about Saddam Hussein's trial set to start Wednesday, by noting how “many Iraqis are eager to see him in the docks, finally held accountable for atrocities committed by his regime.” But then came the inevitable “but,” as in: “But already, human rights groups are worried about the fairness of the trial.” In the subsequent story, reporter Jim Sciutto in Iraq devoted most of his piece to how Iraqis are angry at Hussein and glad he's going on trial. Sciutto quoted one man who argued that “he should be tortured the same way he tortured the people.” Sciutto, however, ended with the concern earlier highlighted by Vargas: “Human rights groups doubt the former dictator will get a fair trial, with five inexperienced judges unable to resist pressure for swift justice, and his legal team with little time to answer the charges.”

A little bit on CBS's story, and a full transcript of the ABC story, follow.

In a mostly nice interview with the Vice President's wife this morning, Today co-host Katie Couric had to go from Lynne Cheney's new book on history to current events, the touchy investigation of White House staff telling reporters about Valerie Plame's CIA job, with all liberal media eyes currently on the Vice President and his staff. This is NOT how she interviews Hillary Clinton. Asked Couric: "Let me ask you real quickly about what's going on, what's making history right now and obviously there's this investigation into the CIA and I know you're not at liberty to discuss it but John Tierney in the New York Times wrote about the fact that this is just really hardball politics at work. Do you think that's the case? That it's, it's more of a political thing that's going on rather than a legal issue?" Mrs. Cheney declined to answer. She also asked Mrs. Cheney to address the possibility that "there might be sexism at work" in criticism of Harriet Miers. Mrs. Cheney disagreed. Let's just pick one example of Katie Couric interviewing Hillary Clinton and skipping the scandal beat.

Hello .

In light of the mass media's recent claim of interviews with soldiers being staged, I present to you the following video:

http://www.riotvideo...

This video , amongst many other instances of staging done by the mass media , was mentioned during the Rush Limbaugh show .

Josh Benson's Sunday article for the New York Times on the suddenly-close race for New Jersey governor between Democratic Sen. Jon Corzine and Republican candidate Doug Forrester discusses the outside political celebrities each campaign is calling in: Karl Rove and Dick Cheney on the Republican side, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama for the Democrats.

But while Rove and Cheney are labeled as "two distinctively conservative and polarizing figures," neither Clinton or Obama are labeled as polarizing or even liberal, but instead are "two of Mr. Corzine's more celebrated colleagues." (Moderate Republican and liberal media favorite Sen. John McCain, who will campaign for Forrester next week, is "iconic.")

Hillary Clinton is probably no less polarizing among Republicans then Rove and Cheney are among Democrats. However, when opposition to Hillary Clinton is mentioned in the Times, she's not seen as "polarizing." Instead, her critics are described as haters. That's how reporters Raymond Hernandez and Michael Cooper treated them in an October 15 story on Sen. Clinton's Senate race: "[Sen. Hillary] Clinton still inspires great antipathy among conservative Republicans, who have seen the 2006 Senate race in New York as an opportunity to damage her politically in advance of her possible presidential bid in 2008."

From 1979 until 2003, Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. He was a brutal dictator, a head-of-state who waged war on his neighbors and his own people. He ruled over his people with an iron fist, utilizing torture and murder as weapons of statecraft. The coalition that ejected him from Kuwait in 1991 left him in power, at extreme cost to thousands more Iraqis. He supported terrorism in Israel, paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He provided safe haven for Abu Abbas and other international terrorists.

Well, he's finally going to be put on trial for his crimes, and what is the first concern of the NY Times? That he might not get a fair trial.

CBS’s Hannah Storm introduced a new problem to America this morning on “The Early Show.” It’s called “presenteeism,” and it stands for employees who show up to work sick. Syler and her guest, Dr. Emily Senay, suggested that this is almost as big a problem as absenteeism, which, of course, is people NOT showing up for work.

Senay presented some statistics to support her case. She mentioned that 48 percent of employers surveyed see presenteeism as being a problem. However, isn’t that a minority? Moreover, 36 percent of employers discourage their employees from coming into work when they’re sick. Conversely, this suggests that 64 percent don’t.

It would have been interesting to see some methodology concerning these surveys. For instance, what kind of employers were questioned? Were they business owners, or managers and supervisors of large corporations?

What follows is a full transcript of this report, along with a video link.

Washington Post staff writer Michael Powell has been covering the Dover, Pennsylvania intelligent design (ID) federal lawsuit since it opened in September. The challenge was filed by teachers and parents with the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU) and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. The controversy surrounds a single paragraph that teachers were required to read to students alerting them to the existence of the intelligent design critique of Darwinism and suggesting it as an alternative theory which wouldn't be learned in class, but could be researched by the students in their own spare time.

When the trial began in late September, the ACLU went first, bringing their witnesses to the stand. Powell's articles on those testimonies were placed on page A3 on successive days (September 27-28). Now that the trial has progressed to the point where the respondents, the Dover, Pennsylvania school board, is calling its witnesses, and the story centered on the testimony of an ID defender is placed on page A13.

In the classic backseat driver tradition, CBS News president Andrew Heyward said the "network news assignment editors should have been running FEMA" during Katrina.

Heyward also said the mainstream media's coverage of Katrina was superb, proving that the bloggers had not replaced it.

"No one on the Internet could match what the network and cable news did."

The news exec spoke these words as he accepted a Murrow award for overall excellence.

"Journalists had the courage to speak truth to power," Heyward said, although he was likely not referring to the media's overhyping of the level of water contamination and the amount of violence in New Orleans.

In an article headlined "The Conservative Machine's Unexpected Turn," Washington Post reporter Peter Baker gets a little too light in the metaphor department. He begins by noting that the White House wanted to build an army to fight for his judicial nominees. "Yet now, as the president struggles to sell the nomination of Harriet Miers, much of Bush's army is refusing to leave the barracks -- and part of it is even going over to the insurgency."

Since the "I" word is now standard lingo for the press to describe the anti-democratic terrorists of Iraq, is that really the best image for the Washington Post to apply to disappointed conservatives? (While Baker used the word "conservative" eight times in the article, and quoted Jay Sekulow with another two C-words, reporter Chris Cillizza's piece today on Emily's List -- the PAC that funds only pro-abortion female Democrats -- didn't have a single liberal label in it.) This is not the first time Peter Baker has grown a little overenthusiastic in his metaphors.   

Gaggle is a daily comic strip about the Washington press corps and Larry the press secretary. Larry deals with the shenanigans of reporters who couldn't imagine anyone voting for a Republican.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.