In a recent editorial entitled “Denying Access to the Ballot,” the New York Times came out against some newly proposed voter reforms due to a fear that they might be discriminatory against the poor, the elderly, and minorities:

“It has been clear since 2000 that the election system is in serious need of reform. But the commission led by James Baker III and former President Jimmy Carter has come up with a plan that is worse than no reform at all. Its good ideas are outweighed by one very bad idea: a voter identification requirement that would prevent large numbers of poor, black and elderly people from voting.”

“But the bombshell recommendation is for the states to require voters to have drivers' licenses or a government-issued photo ID. That would not be a great burden for people who have drivers' licenses, but it would be for those who don't, and they are disproportionately poor, elderly or members of minorities.”

Having been a bank manager for six years, I know these statements to be 100% false.

CBS on Tuesday night delivered a sarcastic look at President Bush's visit to the Gulf coast. After reciting a list of problems people are having in New Orleans, reporter Sharyn Alfonsi jumped to a soundbite of Bush in Mississippi, declaring: “Every time I come back here, I see progress." Alfonsi gratuitously pointed out that Bush was “speaking inside an air-conditioned tent” and noted how “he toured a Folgers plant in Louisiana” but, she stressed, “small business owners say this kind of progress is the exception.” Then, over video of a row of damaged and abandoned store fronts in New Orleans, she countered: “This is the reality.” Alfonsi made it personal, holding Bush responsible for the frustrations of a French Quarter restaurant owner: “After five visits in three weeks, they want the President to wake up and smell the coffee.” (That cute line ran over video of Bush, in a sweat-soaked shirt, shaking hands at the coffee plant.) Restaurant owner Arly Questa demanded: "Hang out, no air-conditioning, eat some MRE's every day, and then you might really understand what it's been like down here in New Orleans."

Picture of Bush's sweat-soaked shirt and transcript follows. Video excerpt: RealPlayer or Windows Media

By now, everyone is familiar with CNNs never-ending attacks on President Bush.  One of their tactics is to try and use daily "polls" where they ask obviously biased and skewed questions to promote their anti-Bush point-of-view.  Today's (Tuesday, September 20) was a classic.  Here is a copy of an e-mail I sent to CNN.com on their feedback page:

MESSAGE SENT TO CNN:

CNN:  Today's poll question on your homepage asks:

 "Are President Bush's five visits to the areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina helping the disaster response?"
Yes 
No

So let me get this straight:  First the President "doesn't care enough", but NOW he "cares TOO MUCH"?  You people are incredible. 

Your biased poll questions will be posted on NEWSBUSTERS.ORG as an example of biased media "pushing" a particular point of view.

From the transcript at a Clinton Global Initiative panel discussion (in PDF format) from last Friday, it's apparent that Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons wants to proclaim that CNN, inspired by that global visionary Ted Turner, is the best international news outlet, with a staff who see it "almost as a holy mission" to deliver news to the world. Fox owner Rupert Murdoch won't stand for that, since CNN International is "anti-American." Clinton then feels compelled to come to Ted Turner's defense.

PARSONS: "I think that CNN is by far the best and best positioned global news company in the world. We have more, sort of, investment and people on the ground and assets on the ground around the world than anybody else, and it's expensive. But -- and here I give a fellow named Ted Turner a lot of credit.

Byron Calame, public editor of the New York Times, is having a difficult time getting columnist Paul Krugman or his editor to correct a mistake Krugman made in an Aug. 19 column.

In that column, which discussed the disputed 2000 presidential election, Krugman asserted that candidate Al Gore won two after-the-fact recounts conducted by news organizations. This, however, was not true as Calame pointed out in a Sept. 2 posting on the Times web site.

After spotting the error, Calame pressed Krugman for a correction. The columnist relented and printed a note at the bottom of a his Aug. 26 column. But the correction was also mistaken, causing Calame to continue to press both Krugman and his editor, Gail Collins, for a more accurate recorrection. So far, he's been rebuffed as the ombud relayed in a Sept. 16 posting:

The TVNewser blog at Mediabistro.com has a set of recollections from a Peter Jennings memorial service today, and includes "wisecracks" from his ABC colleague Ted Koppel: "Peter was famously, even notoriously, attracted to women. Even so, he only married four of them."

TV Newser reports Koppel also had some serious things to say. He preferenced these comments with "I am not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that," but "From the time I first met Peter 41 years ago, until our final meeting a few weeks ago, I felt a thrill whenever I saw him. Not many people have genuine charisma -- the kind of animal magnetism [that makes it hard to notice anyone else in the room]. Peter had that."

As reported by Brent Baker in today’s CyberAlert, Wolf Blitzer was taken aback by CNN founder Ted Turner’s defense of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his treatment of the North Korean people. Turner disputes Blitzer's charge that the North Korean leader's regime is "despotic", insisting, "he didn't look too much different than most other people." When Turner declared we should "give 'em a break," and insisted that North Korea poses a "non-existent" threat to the U.S., Blitzer suggested North Korean missiles could reach Alaska. In response, Turner stated: "Well, what, the Aleutian Islands? There's nothing up there but a few sea lions."

David Schatsky of Jupiter Research wrote an article about CBS using the tactics of bloggers for its new site, Public Eye.

Jupiter Research is a firm that analyzes blogs and "provides unbiased research, analysis and advice, backed by proprietary data, to help companies profit from the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on their business."

"Mainstream media outlets have come under assault by bloggers who have nimbly exploited the characteristics of the Internet to become part of a dynamic, decentralized information system featuring low cost, rapid dissemination, and a kind of Darwinian evolution where 'fitness' is determined by cross linking and traffic. It's these bloggers (and others) who have painted the media as beholden to advertisers and bogged down by a calcified bureaucracy."

A New York Times Sunday editorial, "Penguin Family Values," mocks conservatives for praising "March of the Penguins," a surprise hit documentary about penguin families: "The news that emperor penguins are exemplars of self-sacrifice, marital fidelity and steadfast parenting has brought joy to many religious conservatives, who see the brave birds in the documentary 'March of the Penguins' as little Christian beacons of family and faith."

The Times had further sophomoric mocking of those who would equate human behavior with animal: "Those who start looking outside the human family for old-fashioned values, in fact, will need to quickly narrow their search terms. They will surely want to ignore practices observed in animals like dolphins (gang rape), chimpanzees (exhibitionism), bonobo apes (group sex) and Warner Brothers cartoon rabbits (cross-dressing). Casting a wide net for chaste and saintly creatures, the mind flails, then comes up mostly empty. Yowling tomcats? Lazy, sexist lions? Preening peacocks? Better stick with the penguins."

On Tuesday, the Science section let the paper's liberal readership pile on in an unusually long letters section mocking those silly conservatives.

Yet two years ago, one of the Times' own ultraliberal editorialists did much the same thing, albeit with weaker logic, from the left side of the aisle.

The Gainesville Sun reports that the Alligator, the student newspaper of the University of Florida, has come under fire for a cartoon featuring rapper Kanye West and Condoleezza Rice. West stated during a nationally televised telethon that Bush doesn't care about black people.

"Andy Marlette's cartoon shows black rapper Kanye West, who two weeks ago said President George W. Bush doesn't care about black people at a fund-raiser for Hurricane Katrina victims, holding a playing card labeled 'The Race Card' while standing next to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The bubble over Rice's head contains the words: 'Nigga Please!'

Chuck Simmins takes a bit of time off from his labors in chronicling private sector support for Hurricane Relief efforts to take a U.S. Census Bureau data-based look at poverty in America under presidents Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II.

Simmins finds, among much else, that wage parity between men and women has never been greater than it is now under Bush II. Neither Simmins nor I can recall seeing a news release from the National Organization for Women noting that fact and giving Bush credit.

Simmins' post, which you can read here, is significant for another reason - It illustrates the value to bloggers of having the Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting (CARR) skills that are taught at the Heritage Foundation/Media Bloggers Association Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camp this Friday and Saturday in the Bloomberg Training Center of the Erik Friedheim Library of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

It was just a comment made in passing, but it was very revealing in its own way.

On this morning's Today show, in discussing incipient Hurricane Rita, Katie Couric observed "if Rita turns into a hurricane, it will be the seventh." She then added pointedly added "there have been a lot this year!"

We can all read Katie's 'subliminable' message:

"Gotta be the global warming/Bush's failure to sign the Kyoto Treaty/hole in the ozone layer/Halliburton/VRWC/Republican SUVs and who knows, probably the lack of 'free' national health care."

There's only one small problem with Katie the Climatologist's theory. Far from being "a lot," seven hurricanes in a year is very typical, and far from the recent high of 12, which occurred 36 years ago.

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.

There will be a new Gaggle strip, fully colored, every weekday.

Click here for previous strips.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Monday that there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career.

Rather famously tangled with President Nixon and his aides during the Watergate years while Rather was a hard-charging White House correspondent.

Addressing the Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan, occasionally forcing back tears, he said that in the intervening years, politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a "new journalism order."

Are you a Blogspot user who is annoyed by the fact that you can't make categories for any of your postings? If so, you might be interested in a new hack I just made for Blogger which makes it fairly painless to add categories to your blog. Instructions are here.