Mark Silva, national correspondent who covers the White House for the Chicago Tribune, essentially wrote a 750-worded epithet titled "Hard Times Wear on Bush," that sounded more in sync with the giving of "last rites" than what a national news correspondent would write. 

Reporting about Bush's first formal news conference since May 31, Silva opens this way: "Stepping out from the Oval Office on an overcast morning, President Bush appeared browbeaten. He sounded wistful about his party's political fortunes and even his own."

"Browbeaten" and "wistful" being not nearly enough for Mr. Silva, he continues to pile-on with more negativity from events that have nothing to do with what the president called this formal news conference for, namely to talk about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers:

Hurricane devastation has left millions trying to rebuild their homes and lives. But flood-damage lawsuits against insurance companies now threaten the industry’s solvency across the country, and the broadcast media are helping make the case against industry.

According to reporters on CBS and NBC, the fact that some homeowners didn’t have flood insurance is “an ugly surprise” and a “hard lesson” for people “who thought their insurance companies would pay for the wreck they used to call home.”

Reporters have given the impression that Gulf Coast homeowners didn’t understand their insurance policies and that that might give them the legal standing to demand money they weren’t contracted to receive.

CBS’s Harry Smith introduced trial lawyer Richard Scruggs, famed for his $250 billion settlement from tobacco companies, on the October 5 “Early Show.” Scruggs has indicated plans to file suit against three private insurers for coastal clients, accusing insurance companies of misleading them and denying coverage for hurricane losses.

The New York Times reported on October 5 that Scruggs’ first suit, filed on October 4, centers on one Mississippi couple who did not have flood insurance. They say their insurance company misled them into thinking they had protection that they didn’t. Scruggs has said he might file more than 1,000 similar suits, avoiding a class-action suit.

CNN’s Kelly Wallace interviewed former president Bill Clinton for an “American Morning” segment today while he was visiting Hurricane Katrina evacuees.  Although the intention was to discuss the money that Clinton and former president Bush have raised for hurricane relief, as well as how they plan on spending this money, CNN couldn’t help but include a few digs for the current president.

The first came from a New Orleans evacuee sitting in a “roundtable” discussion with Clinton:

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was the difference? Why we couldn't get the attention and the help that Texas got, when a whole -- I mean, from the east bank to the west bank was destroyed?

The next shot came from Wallace herself in a voice-over: “Along the way, he steered clear of criticizing the Bush administration's response to Katrina and how he thinks the president should roll back tax cuts for the wealthy to help pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast.”

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

Like Yogi Berra said “It’s deja vous all over again.”  We’ve been had.  We put our trust in a candidate named Bush, voted for him based on a campaign promise only to be disappointed.

You remember George Herbert Walker Bush telling us to read his lips, and then when the democrats exerted a little pressure, he caved.  He caved like every country club republican before him by raising our taxes and grinding the economy to a halt.  But we knew W was different.  He cut our taxes.  We pointed to the war and we were positive he was different.  This man would do what he promised, after all he learned from his father’s mistakes, the mistakes that cost him the presidency.

60 Minutes on Sunday featured correspondent Bob Simon interviewing Elian Gonzalez. In his piece, we learn that Castro's cameraman/propagandist Roberto Chile helped Simon produce the interview.

Bob Simon: "Elian's arrival in Cuba seemed designed for a conquering hero. And here he was without his two front teeth.

Simon: "Elian embarked on a two-month tour of Cuba, all recorded by Castro's personal cameraman, Roberto Chile, who helped us on our story, too. Chile was rolling the first time Elian met Fidel.

Simon then goes on to catalog Elian's celebrity in Cuba, listing all the ways he's used as propaganda, but never labeling it as such or asking Elian if he feels he is being used by the Cuban dictator for political purposes:

On his nightly PBS talk show Monday, Tavis Smiley questioned John Edwards about the Harriet Miers nomination. Oddly enough, Edwards, who presumed he was ready to be President of the United States after being in the Senate about the same amount of time Miers was in the White House, suggested the big Miers issue was her lack of experience:

"I mean, the first question about her, of course, is that she has no record. Never been a judge, has no judicial experience. And that is certainly not disqualifying by itself, but what it means is that we don't know much about what her positions are. She has never written an opinion."

When Edwards said Senate Democrats will have to question her with vigor, Smiley wondered: "How vigorous do you expect them to be? There are some who would argue that they weren't terribly vigorous on Mr. Roberts, now the Chief Justice. And the Democrats split voting for the guy." Didn't they know they were supposed to vote 44 to 0 against?

MSNBC's Hardball correspondent David Shuster revealed he is a lot more comfortable at MSNBC than he was at Fox News. In an interview for the Herald Times the Bloomington, Indiana bred Shuster told his hometown paper he feels more at home with the liberal MSNBC. The following is from the October 2nd interview with the Times' Mike Leonard. I've bolded the more illuminating portions:

"The NBC and MSNBC reporter did appreciate being pulled off the Hurricane Rita story to hustle over to Sugarland, Texas, to cover the grand jury indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. 'That's what I feel most comfortable with," he explained, 'the political corruption sort of story.'

Covering the Whitewater investigation of President Clinton for Fox News gave the Bloomington South graduate his first big exposure as a national television correspondent. He currently works on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews program and said he thoroughly enjoys spending most of his time in the nation's capital and reporting for what he considers "the show of record when it comes to coverage of Washington."

At a citizen journalism conference organized by The Media Center, Big Media institutions are quickly coming to the realization that they are no longer in control. Some are taking it better than others.

Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World Service and Global News Division, told a conference the broadcaster's prominent use of video and other material contributed by ordinary citizens signaled that the BBC was evolving from being a broadcaster to a facilitator of news. "We don't own the news any more," Sambrook said. "This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public."

The good news for the BBC is that they won't have to produce all their own America-hating material, they'll be able to draw from the content of private America-hating contributors.

Another member of the opening panel, Farai Chideya, a correspondent for National Public Radio Inc. in Los Angeles expressed concern that many big stories may be affecting people who don't have broadband access to the Internet, resulting in a risk that they could be excluded from citizen-generated news. The big question, she said, was how to get people "in the caboose of the digital train" involved.

Well, I wouldn't worry too much about it. NPR has had no problem getting people in the caboose in the past.

I admire President Bush for having endured and dealt with more than his fair share of crisis, but throughout his entire presidency he has allowed Democrats to use him as a punching bag. Despite his religious background, Bush seems to have not heard that God helps those who help themselves.

The media is not in Bush's corner, and will never be, and he abets this bias by caving in on so many issues in the direction of the Democrats. He has failed to act as a Republican leader in educating the public to the media's omissions, selective reporting and use of sources and outright lies.

Briefly, at the start of Bush's presidency, he dismissed the reality of (and ignored the political advantage in) pursuing an investigation of Clinton's abominable 700-plus pardons, many for fund-raising purposes, of cronies, relatives and criminals; he added fuel to Democratic charges of racism against Sen. Trent Lott -- and by association, all Republicans -- instead of telling Americans about the GOP's many accomplishments to combat racism (this would've been valuable enlightenment to have had given Bennett's recent comment); and now Bush is passive about the potentially explosive scandal, Able Danger, that may have occurred during Clinton's watch (along with recent theft of documents by Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger). In fact, Bush seems impotent in helping his old friend and political ally, Tom DeLay, against seemingly contrived charges right there in their own home state, where Bush was once governor!

I listened for weeks/months as liberal media lambasted Karl Rove over the Valerie Plame affair, calling for his ouster.  They bashed constantly, and the story was kept alive.  Karl Rove was villified as the evil puppet master who venomously orchestrated the demise of an innocent CIA agent.  I saw it everywhere, on CNN, on NBC, on Fox.  But mostly it was on Air America.

Every day Air America spoke ONLY of this issue... for weeks!  I began listening to that dreadful station in my car every day on my way to and from work.  I would make bets with myself to see how soon I would hear the name "Karl Rove" mentioned as soon as I turned on the radio - sometimes it was the first word, sometimes the third, sometimes the tenth, but seriously, it became unbelievable to me the way they harped on it.  It solidified in me just how insanely illogical that radio station is.  And the flames were also being fanned by the mainstream media.

The Early Show's Rene Syler introducing a guest in the 7:30 a.m. half hour of today's program: "Last year, Ashley Smith became front page news when an accused killer took her hostage..."

Um, actually, Rene, that happened THIS year, in March.

Of course, with the 24/7 news cycle it feels like it was five years ago, sometimes looking back on it. At any rate, I'm sure I'm the only one of the show's seven-person audience who noticed, Rene, so don't feel too bad.

In the 7:30 a.m. newsbrief, Early Show co-host Hannah Storm set up a soundbite with New York Times reporter Judith Miller where she slams special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald for her 85-day long jail service for refusing to testify in the grand jury investigation of the Valerie Plame leak. But Storm didn't mention that Miller was there by her own volition for failing to divulge the name of her source, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who had months ago given Miller the go-ahead to testify to the grand jury.

Hannah Storm: "A formerly jailed New York Times reporter is speaking out. Judith Miller was thrown in jail for refusing to cooperate with the CIA White House leak case. Well, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wants to know who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. On CNN last night, Miller said she's anxious to see if Fitzgerald brings criminal charges."

Judith Miller on October 4, 2005 edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight: "I'm waiting to see like everybody else what he produces. But if he doesn't have anything, I will wonder about why I had to spend 85 days in jail."

Storm: "Miller says her 85 days in jail was [sic] demeaning and degrading."

Riding a wave of lawsuits against businesses, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is running for governor of New York in 2006 , and the New York Times Sunday Magazine delivers a one-sided story in his favor ("Spitzerism -- Is A Prosecutor's Zeal What The Democrats Need?") by Noam Scheiber, a senior editor at the liberal New Republic magazine.

The Times likes Spitzer, so it was only natural for them to go to Scheiber, who really, really likes Spitzer, to the point of applauding the idea last December of Spitzer intimidating companies into campaign donations:

The Washington Post has an article about where the real blame lies for a slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

News of Pandemonium May Have Slowed Aid: Unsubstantiated Reports of Violence Were Confirmed by Some Officials, Spread by News Media

Claims of widespread looting, gunfire directed at helicopters and rescuers, homicides, and rapes, including those of "babies" at the Louisiana Superdome, frequently turned out to be overblown, if not completely untrue, officials now say.... The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that National Guard troops found 30 to 40 bodies decomposing inside a freezer in the convention center, including a girl whose throat was slashed. The newspaper quoted a member of the Arkansas National Guard, which was deployed in the building. Other news organizations then passed the information on. That, too, was untrue.

In communities near and far, the seeds were planted that the victims of Katrina should be kept away, or at least handled with extreme caution.

That is a very important point. By referring to the people of New Orleans as vicious savages, the media did more to stereotype minorities and destroy race relations in this country than Bill Bennett ever did.

You wouldn't know it by reading a paper, though.