CNN this morning did a series of reports from New Orleans focusing on the problems with that city’s levees. “American Morning’s” Soledad O’Brien first interviewed Joey DIFatta, chairman of St. Bernard Parish, along with New Orleans city council president Oliver Thomas. Later, O’Brien questioned an Army Corps of Engineers colonel. During these discussions, it was suggested that lower quality repairs to the levee system were made in the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans, an assertion that the colonel thoroughly refuted (video to follow):

Media reports on scientific findings are often misunderstood, misrepresented or overblown. One such example is a study by Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychologist at King's College London. CNN and others claimed "workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana."

Of course, that is not even what the study found. The first clue should have be the fact that an IQ is constant, you can't 'gain' or 'lose' points like studying for the SAT. While the motor skills required for many facets of the test slow in advanced years, base IQ stays the same.

Had CNN taken the initiative to actually talk to the person who conducted the study, they would have known all of this. But CNN is apparently too busy stroking the delicate anima of Anderson Cooper to fact check their content.

This is a considerable and obviously unreported problem in journalism. So the next time you see a report on global warming, diets, aspertame, pesticides, or any other study from any news provider, take it with a grain of salt for it may not be worth the electrons used to light the screen.

Steve Malzberg at NewsMax.com has reported in his new column that HBO host Bill Maher compared First Lady Laura Bush to "Hitler's dog." I guess that would make President Bush, according to Maher, like Hitler himself!

On the Friday, September 23, 2005, episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, as part of a "comedy" bit, Maher was displaying a series of doctored photos to "show" that the President had resumed drinking. (This story has been reported in the, um, National Enquirer.) One such "photo" portrayed Mrs. Bush with a black eye and a bandage over her eyebrow. According to Malzberg, guest Christopher Hitchens objected to the photo and challenged Maher. (The following is re-formatted from Malzberg's column:)

HITCHENS: "It must be to his credit he (the President) got Laura Bush to marry him. She's an absolutely extraordinary woman."

MAHER: "Oh, come on. That's like Hitler's dog loved him. That is the silliest reason ..."

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.

In a televised interview with former CBSer Marvin Kalb, retired CBS anchor Dan Rather stated that his network will not allow him to continue to pursue the story of President Bush's Air Guard service.

"Straight-up, no Chaser, no," the exiled anchor said when asked if he would consider filing a story about it on the "60 Minutes" news magazine since he continues to believe in it.

"CBS News doesn't want me to do that story. They wouldn't let me do that story," Rather said, declining to elaborate further.

Rather also expressed suspicion about bloggers' role in publicizing CBS's mistakes in the Memogate affair.

"There are some strange, and to me, still mysterious things, certainly unexplained things that happened about how it got attacked and why, even before the program was over," Rather said, adding that his network was derelict in not "knowing enough of how quickly bloggers could strike."

The anchor appeared to have softened his attitude toward some (unnamed) web authors, but remained suspicious about those involved in the exposition of the document scandal. Rather expressed wonder that professional journalists immediately looked at blogger accusations that CBS had run with phony documents.

Full story and large transcript after the jump. Video of Rather's comments which were broadcast on C-SPAN, compiled by the MRC's Brent Baker: Windows Media, Real. An MP3 audio file is also available.

Washington Post pits motorists against ‘profit-guzzler’ oil companies.

“Winners and losers” is a familiar journalistic story construction that often oversimplifies situations. The September 25 Washington Post dubbed motorists the “big losers” and oil companies the “clear winners” in U.S. gas prices, turning the free market into a battlefield.

Justin Blum’s article was based on the fact that “the recent rise in gasoline prices has not benefited everyone in the production and distribution chain equally.” Thus began an unfair distribution of commentary on the market forces at work, including a reference to the economic laws of supply and demand as the “view” of oil refiners.

The drumbeat has been steady since Hurricane Katrina ripped its path of destruction throughout the Gulf Coast and flooded New Orleans. As bannered by the media, nature’s wrath is secondary. What really caused the devastation was America’s racism.

Reporters and broadcasters have sought out personalities such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond and other left-leaning black activists who have been more than willing to advance the charge of racism.

Even more disconcerting is a positive story of kindness that is wrapped in the hate actions of past years.

It his attempt to portray continuing racism in the United States, Todd Lewan of the Associated Press filed a story September 26, 2005 headlined “Town once plagued by racism gets 2nd chance”.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article314944.ece

Faithful readers of NewsBusters are quite aware of the ever-changing opinion of the Army Corps of Engineers by America’s Old Grey Lady, the New York Times.  As reported here and here, the Times for more than a decade has had a very negative view of the Corps.  They have questioned the value of its work, its accounting practices, and the environmental impact of its projects. 

However, in the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina, the Times mysteriously reversed this view without any explanation, and began suggesting that if President Bush had fully funded the Corps, the levees in New Orleans would not have failed.

Having suggested just weeks ago that the Corps should have been basically given a blank-check for its services, the Times published an article today by Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon wherein it has reverted to its pre-Katrina view that the Corps wastes taxpayer money:

Saturday's “anti-war” protest in Washington, DC featured a long list of little-known characters from a litany of far-left and even further out groups with an America-hating agenda. But amongst the speakers on the stage, as shown live by C-SPAN, was actress Jessica Lange. She denounced President Bush's “propensity to lie” and how he's “a man who traffics in deadly lies.” Lange argued that those behind the war want “a continuing military presence in the Middle East, control over the region, control over the oil. They have their eyes on the prize, the master plan.” Citing how “not one military funeral has been attended by George Bush or his Cabinet,” she charged that “this disregard for human life only reinforces the knowledge that this man has no heart.” Lange also maintained that “when I hear his empty words with phrases like 'armies of compassion' or 'culture of responsibility,' I understand how deep their mendacity runs: They are a lie.”

Back in 2002 in Spain, Lange claimed “the election was stolen by George Bush and we have been suffering ever since under this man’s leadership” and that “it is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It’s humiliating.” That won her the “The I’m Not a Geopolitical Genius But I Play One on TV Award” at the MRC's DisHonors Awards. For a RealPlayer video clip.

Full transcript of her Saturday rant at the rally follows.

Too slow on Katrina, too quick on Rita? During Saturday’s special hour-long NBC Nightly News, reporter Kevin Corke suggested President Bush ran “the risk of looking like a political opportunist” with Hurricane Rita by taking exactly the active hands-on approach demanded by media critics in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast last month.

The liberal media are never satisfied.

MRC news analyst Mike Rule caught Corke’s reasoning:

Byron Calame has gotten to the bottom of the Geraldo vs. NYT title fight. While Geraldo is the victor, the New York Times refuses to surrender the belt. In the end, the NYT public editor tells us what we already know; the New York Times is not a fair publication.

ONE of the real tests of journalistic integrity is being fair to someone who might be best described by a four-letter word. The New York Times flunked such a test in rejecting a demand by Geraldo Rivera of Fox News for correction of a sentence about him in a column by the paper's chief television critic....

Since Ms. Stanley based her comments on what she saw on the screen Sept. 4, the videotape of that segment means everyone involved is looking at exactly the same evidence. My viewings of the videotape - at least a dozen times, including one time frame by frame - simply doesn't show me any "nudge" of any Air Force rescuer by Mr. Rivera. (Ms. Stanley declined my invitation to watch the tape with me.) I also reviewed all of the so-called outtakes shot by Mr. Rivera's camera crew at the Holy Angels Apartments in New Orleans on the morning of Sept. 4. Neither the video nor the audio revealed any nudge of an Air Force rescuer.

We all remember during those first few days of Katrina that there were reports of terrible atrocities occurring in the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center, and WHERE WAS BUSH!, and all that nonsense. Well, it turns out that the vast majority of those stories at best were urban legends which the media reported as facts and in the process created a lot of ill will toward the Federal government:

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

As amazing as it might seem, it is now four weeks since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana.  Yet, even though another major storm has pummeled our country this weekend, CNN is still fixated on the perceived errors made by the federal government four weeks ago rather than the successful evacuation and preparations for Hurricane Rita.

On Sunday’s “American Morning,” CNN’s Elaine Quijano spent part of her Hurricane Rita report chastising the president for his performance during Hurricane Katrina (video to follow):

TIME's cover this week asks "Are We Making Hurricanes Worse?" Jeffrey Kluger is back with a longer version of his theory that man-made global warming is worsening hurricane season, titled "Global Warming: The Culprit?" They also take another bite out of the Mike Brown apple with a longer piece on how the Bush team has been good at placing political cronies in places with genuine power in the bureaucracy despite their unconvincing resumes.

Also in the enviro-sensitive department, a story headlined "Centipedes Deserve Your Respect."

The catalyst for the latest "cycle of violence" is in the last paragraph:

Hostilities first erupted when a blast on Friday killed 16 people at a Hamas rally in Gaza. Hamas blamed Israel and militants fired at least 40 rockets into the Jewish state in response, though Israel denied responsibility and the Palestinian Authority said it appeared to be an accident caused by Hamas members carrying explosives.

The Reuters scorecard:

Hamas:
> ends attacks
> said it would stop attacking the Jewish state
> said it was halting attacks
> announced his group's decision to halt attacks
> declares an end to its operations from the Gaza Strip
> would abide by a ceasefire declared in March
> blamed Israel [for the blast]