CBS's Mike Wallace spent a half-hour of network air time with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and some of his questions were tough, about Hezbollah violence and Holocaust denial and the Iranian leader's desire to wipe Israel off the map. Most surprisingly, he suggested the Iranians were providing explosives to the Iraqi insurgents (something the American news media doesn't usually highlight), and ended by suggesting there were reports of Iran having 52,000 trained suicide bombers to launch against American and British targets in case they are attacked.

While it was measurably tougher than Dan Rather's embarrassing 2003 sit-down with Saddam Hussein, CBS did air moments of Wallace kissing up to Ahmadinejad. "I couldn't be happier with the privilege of sitting down with the President of Iran," he wallowed at one point, as Ahmadinejad claimed Wallace was getting angry.

Katie Couric is on the cover of today's Parade Magazine supplement in the Sunday Washington Post, among other papers nationwide. The article by novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard (the first author honored by Oprah's Book Club, Parade tells us) seems pitched at the female viewer, with heavy focus on her personal life and personal grief. But there are a few tidbits about the news. For one, Couric had one quote that sounded like her CBS ad: "The biggest job isn't telling people what happened. It's getting them to understand why they should care." Sounds like a recipe for a lot of editorializing.

Just above that, Mitchard complains about anyone who would question the gravitas of Couric taking over the Dan Rather chair in media distortion. The nerve! She may be talking about you, Matt Felling, meow:

Last week, in this NewsBusters post, we took issue with the anti-Catholicism in an August 5, 2006, column from Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten. In an especially ugly and vitriolic piece, Rutten capitalized on the arrest of Mel Gibson to imply that orthodox Christians and supporters of Gibson's The Passion of the Christ film were anti-Semitic. Rutten's column builds the case that anti-Christian and anti-Catholic prejudice is alive and well at the Los Angeles Times.

Getreligion.org has a collection of postings analyzing Jon Meacham's cover story on Billy Graham in Newsweek -- by Terry Mattingly, Daniel Pulliam, Douglas LeBlanc, and Mollie Ziegler. Mattingly began by being direct, that Meacham is writing to thump the tub for religious laxity and liberalism:

Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham really doesn’t do ordinary journalism anymore. Instead, he writes cover stories that are doctrinal essays that seek to guide Americans toward a more mature, nuanced, educated, intelligent approach to religious faith. This would bring us closer to Meacham’s approach, of course.

Posted this a few days ago at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org and thought it worth syndicating here simply because it's so outrageous and yet demonstrative of the insufferable sanctimony of The New York Times.:

What did a Happy Meal ever do to Melanie Warner? In March the Business & Media Institute showed you how The New York Times advertising reporter found nothing funny in humorous beer ads. Now she’s at it again, pooh-poohing the toys that come with the child-sized meals sold at McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD)

On August 11, a state judge struck down an early voter law passed by the liberal Democratic legislature over Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich's veto. In his August 12 story covering the decision, Washington Post staff writer Matthew Mosk relayed fiery, class warfare-centered talking points from liberal Democrats incensed at the ruling.

Yet Mosk curiously omitted an early voting option that costs Marylanders $0.78 (two first-class postage stamps): an absentee ballot.

"Sheet metal workers and crane operators and people who have to leave the house at 5 in the morning to get to their jobs at the Pentagon, they're the ones who are helped by this," Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said earlier this year.

I offer a case study in the way journalists serve the cause of global warming alarmists -- in this particular case, by claiming scientists are associated with the fossil fuel industry using "evidence" even a superficial investigation would have rendered void, and by misleading readers in other ways.

In June, columnist Tom Hennessy of the Long Beach Press-Telegram wrote a laudatory column about Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." Two readers whose critical letters were published by the newspaper included the Australian scientist Dr. Bob Carter (letter published June 29), and Canadian scientist Dr. Tim Ball (letter published June 26).

Hennessy responded with another column, "Sense Wins in Heated Debate," published July 5, in which he ignored the substance of both scientists' letters, preferring instead to lead readers to believe two things for which he had scant-to-zero evidence: 1) both scientists had received funds from the energy industry, and 2) in exchange for these funds, the scientists have agreed to espouse views they otherwise would not.

QANA, Lebanon - Abu Shadi Jradi pulled bodies out of wreckage for hours — two toddler girls wearing tiny gold earrings, a small boy whose pale blue pacifier still hung from his neck. Somewhere in the middle, Jradi slumped beneath a tree and wept.

I addressed the AP's defense of Lebanese Civilian Defense worker Salam Daher previously, now more information is coming out. It turns out that the author of that defense, Kathy Gannon is AP's Burea Chief in Iran. It's only speculation, but I wonder how long she'd be effective in that assignment if she published something negative about Iran, or Hezbollah.

And now someone is claiming to have witnessed photographers go as far as to re-use dead bodies for photo ops in Lebanon.