ABC News can't seem to figure out what percent of whites in their latest poll believe that the response to Katrina would have been faster “if the victims were wealthy and white,” with World News Tonight anchor Elizabeth Vargas (20 percent), an on-screen graphic (21 percent) and ABCNews.com (24 percent) all offering a different percentage. And while Vargas highlighted Monday night how “dissatisfaction...with the government's response to the hurricane is growing and hurting President Bush's overall approval rating. It now stands at just 42 percent, the lowest it's ever been,” in a WashingtonPost.com article posted at 5:30pm EDT, Richard Morin pointed out that “Bush isn't the biggest loser in the post-Katrina blame game.” Indeed, though 45 percent said Bush deserved a “great deal” or “good amount” of blame for “problems” in the response, 57 percent said the same about state and local officials.

Like Vargas, ABC News polling analyst Gary Langer skipped those numbers as he focused his online posting on how “on Katrina, opinion has moved further away from Bush and his administration.”

Transcript from ABC and excerpts from ABCNews.com and WashingtonPost.com follow.

"Entertainer" George Carlin was a panelist on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher this past Friday September 9, 2005.

The panel was discussing the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Carlin said this (audiotape on file) (emphasis mine):

CARLIN: "It shouldn't be a surprise that rich white men don't care about poor black people. Period."

Gee. The last time I checked, Carlin had sold several successful comedy albums, toured the country many times, and had appeared in scores of television and movie projects. And he's white. Wouldn't that qualify him as a "rich ... white ... man"??

So, George, would your own remark apply also to yourself?

HEY, BIG BIASED MEDIA, ANYBODY KNOWS WHERE CINDY IS ?

On to promote her book Talking Back, NBC's Andrea Mitchell offered a mea culpa on pre-war reporting and asked to recall her favorite interviews called Fidel Castro, "engaging" and Bill Clinton, "fun."

At 8:44 am Katie Couric began the interview asking Mitchell about her start in the business and how it has changed.

Couric: "Well you know obviously a lot has changed in the business since you started and you've been at NBC since 1978, right? Andrea how has, how has newsgathering changed? I guess the technology..."

Mitchell: "Oh it's, it's completely different and that's one of the reasons I wrote the book because we are now in this environment where everyone is being inundated by information. There's the internet and cable and broadcasting. When I started there were three broadcast networks. There was a 6:30 news or a 7:00 o'clock news. That was it. And now you have so many different choices and I think people are really, not only confused, but we've seen the polling. Our own credibility is, you know, has really gone down. So as journalists I think we have to be concerned about our profession and particularly after the war and the misjudgments that we and political, you know, leaders made. We have to ask ourselves so I wrote about that. I took a really hard look at myself, my colleagues and political people."

Yesterday marked the complete withdrawal of Israeli military forces from the Gaza Strip, which has been returned to full Palestinian control in the hopes of moving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process along. As part of the handover of control, Israeli soldiers shuttered or destroyed the empty buildings once occupied by Jewish settlers. Among these, the synagogues were left standing, emptied of all their sacred artifacts and Torahs and the like, but tagged as holy places which should not be desecrated. Of course, this courtesy was not afforded of the Jewish houses of worship as masses of Palestinian militants have desecrated the synagogues in the hours since, burning them to the ground, an act exhibiting violence and hatred towards the Jewish faith of their Israeli neighbors.

Of the three broadcast network morning shows, only CBS's The Early Show completely ignored the story, although CBS, like its competitors widely reported the since-disproven allegations of Koran desecration which made the pages of Newsweek months ago.

Coming out of the John Roberts opening statement at 3:30 on MSNBC, anchor Brian Williams asked Tim Russert that Roberts is "not a perjurer or a lawbreaker that we know of," but how can one greet his claim that he has no agenda? That's quite a dramatic way of suggesting Roberts may not be trustworthy.

UPDATE: Brent Baker has given me the transcript. On both NBC and MSNBC, Williams said of (unlabeled) liberals: "If you're a member of one of the interest groups, perhaps one of the Senators dead-set against this nomination, when you look at this man who is ready for lifetime appointment to the federal bench, who is not a perjurer or a lawbreaker that we know of, say quote, 'I have no agenda, my job is to call balls and strikes.' That must be a pleasing, calming message no matter what your position."

PostWatch spotted an exchange during today's online session with Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz. Each week Kurtz answers questions emailed to him by readers.

Reports PostWatch:

Recap: Weak defense of selective victim photography....

Arlington, Va: Lots of conservative web traffic concerning the media insisting on photographing and publishing pictures of the dead in N.O., but refusing to publish/show photos of those forced to jump from the towers on 9/11 - what's your take on this argument?

Howard Kurtz: Some organizations published those pictures from 9/11, because I remember seeing them. The controversy, as best I can recall it, is whether television would show these suicides, and I don't believe the networks did.

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Stephen Spruiell at NRO reports that among the new features on CBS's Public Eye blog are a defense of "Sunday Morning" commentator Nancy Giles. Some have asked how she would know about hurricane rescues, given her biography at NancyGiles.com. (And don't miss the "Press Clips" page for TIME critic Richard Corliss agreeing to watch her more now that he sees their politics agree.) In addition to her one-woman shows like "Notes from a Negro Neurotic," she played "girl GI Frankie Bunsen" for three seasons on ABC's "China Beach," as well as "hostile waitress Connie" on the short-lived ABC comedy "Delta" (with Delta Burke). Those shows haven't been on since Clinton was elected president. Her page on the Internet Movie Database is here. Producer Rand Morrison replies:

Jim Hughes of the Denver Post covers the local activists on both sides of the Robert nomination this morning. Sort of.

Of 18 paragraphs, three discuss the pro-Roberts Judicial Confirmation Network, four equate the two sides, and seven discuss NARAL and other left-wing opponents of a sane judiciary. (Four paragraphs are neutral, not mentioning the activists directly.)

While the Post is silent on the conservatives' desiderata, the coverage of the lefties includes the following:

NARAL "action teams" will be watching the hearings from Colorado, ready to cry foul if they don't like what they see, executive director Meg Froelich said.

"Let's not have a coronation with Roberts," she said. "Let's have a real, genuine process."

The Boston Globe claims some readers "get confused about the relationship between the editorial page and the rest of the newspaper, especially since the term 'editorial' is often used to describe everything in the Globe that is not advertising."

"But the news operation, led by editor Marty Baron, is completely separate from the editorial (opinion) pages, led by editorial-page editor Renee Loth. The two do not coordinate coverage or influence the others' professional judgments. Globe endorsements of candidates, for example, are made without consultation with any news reporter or editor, and Globe reporters are expected to cover campaigns without regard to whom the editorial page has endorsed."

After seeing that it had no presence in the blog world, CBS News has finally launched its own blog.

They claim that the fundamental mission of "Public Eye" is "to bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News." This is commendable, but it is likely the blog will devolve into a way for CBS to finally respond to charges made against it in the blogosphere.

From the about page:

"Breaking out of the traditional 'ombudsman' role, Public Eye will also try to explain and describe how news is reported and produced at CBS -- a mystery to most viewers. We hope this will be both entertaining and edifying."

"Public Eye is not primarily a forum for the personal opinions of the folks who write Public Eye — so perhaps it is not a classic blog in that sense. Like all human beings, the Eyeballers have opinions and will express them from time to time."

Just a quick note to prepare you for the fair and balanced coverage of the John Roberts confirmation hearings you’ll surely be reading in the coming days.

Before the opening bell on the hearings rang, the AP provided a predictably slanted breakdown of the eighteen members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

There are ten Republicans on the Committee and eight Democrats. Surely this accounts for six mentions of the word ‘abortion’ in the Republican bios and only one for the Democrats.

Today's pushing of Bush's low poll numbers continued at 7:14 am when Katie Couric opened the political analysis segment with Tim Russert: "And now to the President's trip, back to the hurricane zone amid approval ratings that have sunk to an all-time low. Tim Russert is NBC's Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press. Tim, good morning."

Couric then implied Bush's war in Iraq could impede the salvaging of New Orleans: "Can we afford it? I mean Tim, obviously, with the war in Iraq's sucking a lot of money and the federal deficit quite severe, I mean can this country afford to, to put so much money in the rebuilding of New Orleans?"

To his credit Russert said both Republicans and Democrats agreed that it was affordable but Couric then moved on to Today's theme of the day, Bush's record low polls: "Alright let's talk about the approval ratings of the President as Kelly O'Donnell mentioned there at an all-time low. We found that in Newsweek he has a 38 percent approval rating and the Associated Press poll found the President to have a 39 percent. Kelly, I think also mentioned the Zogby poll which is 41 percent, the lowest in their poll numbers. So can the President bounce back from this? How does he go about rebuilding his image?"

The Kellino Zone notes:

After 9-11, the media self-imposed a restriction preventing the display of dead bodies, because it might be too offensive and disturbing.

4 years later, CNN wants dead bodies from Katrina on TV so badly that they were willing to sue the federal government in order to do so.

I wonder why the sudden interest in dead bodies...

The New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller has an article today that continues to dwell on the supposed impact that racism had on the immediacy of hurricane recovery efforts, and how this is hurting the president as well as Republicans:

“The storm also appears to have damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, to make inroads among black voters and expand the reach of the Republican Party for decades to come.

“Many African-Americans across the country said they seethed as they watched the television pictures of the largely poor and black victims of Hurricane Katrina dying for food and water in the New Orleans Superdome and the convention center.”

Ms. Bumiller felt it was necessary to quote a rapper in her political analysis:

“The anger has invigorated the president's critics. Kanye West, the rap star, raged off-script at a televised benefit for storm victims that ‘George Bush doesn't care about black people.’"

This morning Today show viewers woke up to the following from Katie Couric: "Good morning. Up close and personal. With his approval ratings at an all-time low President Bush gets set to take his first ground tour of New Orleans." Co-host David Gregory, subbing for Matt Lauer then piped in: Katie the President is making his third trip this morning to the hurricane zone but it's really it's first detailed look at New Orleans. He, of course, has taken a major political hit through all of this."

Later at 7:04am in a taped segment Kelly O'Donnell piled on as well:

"A less visible part of the damage done by Katrina may be what's happened to the President's approval rating." O'Donnell then threw it to Charlie Cook for his doom and gloom analysis of the President's current standing: