CBS News's Mark Knoller yesterday took some time in the White House Booth over on CBSNews.com to root through email and answer some questions. Most of the ones he featured were heavily skewed to the left, accusing the media of being too soft on the Bush administration.

I'm not sure how Knoller culled the email questions he answered, maybe it's just proof that CBS News's tiny remaining audience is liberally skewed and hungry for the bias that ole Gunga Dan used to feed them regularly.

Now, to give Knoller credit, he did fairly well handle the most outrageous railings of liberal emailers, refusing to echo their sentiments and factually address the questions presented, but he did lob this stinker in response to an emailer upset that the White House press corps never staged a walkout to protest faux journalist and Republican booster Jeff Gannon's access to the briefing room:

The Washington Post tosses the fluff title: "Vacationing Bush Poised to Set a Record."

The vacation hysteria, remember, is something that Michael Moore was hyperventilating about in his "blockbuster" movie, where apparently all Bush does is vacation.

But at least the opening sentence doesn't get too preachy about it: "President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of -- nearly five weeks away from the office, loaded with vacation time."

Bush's "vacationing" is some mysterious curiosity to the editors over at Wa Po. It takes 5 paragraphs of chronicling how many days he isn't at the White House and letting his critics rip before they suggest that, just maybe, he actually can do just as much work out of Washington as in it.

On November 9, 1979 a group of radical Islamic “college students” overran the American embassy in Iran and took 52 embassy personal and marines prisoner.  For 444 long days, Americans were held hostage against all international law and the very act of entering the American embassy was an act of war.  These hostages were abused and threatened nearly every day of their captivity.     

Brent Baker is VP for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center, where he writes the daily CyberAlert e-mail report.

Much of the European media and some of the U.S. press are picking up on a story about nine babies buried in various places around a home in Germany.

Woman arrested as nine babies are found dead in garden. While people are obviously horrified by what has happened, it is interesting to note a salient point that the media are not reporting: thousands of babies are murdered in Europe every day, with the full backing of the government. And this action is nearly glorified by the culture (there and in the U.S.)

If it is okay to kill children by abortion with the full backing (and financial help) of the State, then why is anyone surprised when parents kill children, or kids kill other kids, and so on? Margaret Sanger, this is how your garden grows.

CBS's The Early Show this week offered balance in its treatment of embryonic stem cell research in its two part series, "Two Faces of Hope," but came short of fully delivering. Monday's installment by Hattie Kauffman centered on Cody Unser, a paralyzed stem cell research advocate, with no critics allowed talking head time to cast doubt on the promise of embryonic stem cell research. Tuesday's mostly positive portrayal of frozen embryo adoption by correspondent Tracy Smith, however, featured a critic of embryo adoption, as well as Smith asking her story's subjects, J.J. and Tracy Jones, if they had allowed their adopted son to be used as a "political pawn" at a White House event they attended in May which encouraged embryo adoption.

On this morning's Today show both Katie Couric and Andrea Mitchell took swipes at John Bolton. First at 7:04 am Andrea Mitchell aired footage of John Bolton getting booed as he got out of his car: "Well today is John Bolton's first full day on the job as UN ambassador. His challenge there will be to shake up the organization, as the President wants, without alienating anyone who can help him get the job done. As he arrived at his New York offices Monday Bolton ignored a handful of passersby booing his appointment." Later in the piece Mitchell ran a soundbite from Sen. Barack Obama critical of Bolton and then led into a warning to Bolton from Kofi Annan: "The President and his top advisors have been scathing in their criticism of the UN and its leader Kofi Annan. After the appointment Annan promised to work with Bolton but cautioned..."
[Kofi Annan: "It is alright for one ambassador to come and push but an ambassador always has to remember that there are 190 others who will have to be convinced."]

David Shaw, a well-regarded media reporter for the Los Angeles Times, died yesterday at 62 from a brain tumor. As Bill Powers of National Journal just explained,  Shaw's 1990 series on media coverage of abortion was remarkable in its candor and according to Powers, influential across the media. (I'm not too sure about that, although the media did largely drop "pro-choice" in that era and switch to "abortion rights" lingo. But is the media less biased on abortion? They probably do fewer stories today, as on many political topics. But when it comes up, the tilt is the same.) Powers recommends re-reading Shaw's findings on abortion. We did a summary at the time that you can find here.