The appropriately named Noah T. Winer has sent an e-mail to his MoveOn.Org Media Action team urging them to fulminate against CNN's plans to use conservative radio host Glenn Beck, complete with the panic-stricken headline "Stop CNN from Becoming Fox News." Winer pleads:

We recently alerted you to CNN's decision to hire right-winger Bill Bennett as a talking head. Yesterday, it got even worse: CNN Headline News announced plans to attract Fox News viewers by giving an hour of airtime every day to right-wing talk radio host Glenn Beck.

Variety magazine reports CNN "will look to build Beck into the type of TV personality that could siphon viewers from Bill O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts." There's not a single progressive host on CNN. Why is CNN trying to imitate Fox News? CNN's president thinks progressives don't really care, saying "they don't get too worked up about anything."

Ted Rall, the cartoonist that hates President Bush and the military, decries the January 13 “massacre” in Pakistan while claiming that the United States is committing “murder by mistake”.  In his Jan 17 op-ed, “Death From Above: US Drone Planes Have a Nearly Perfect Record of Failure”, Rall states that the Hellfire Missiles “slammed into three local jewelers’ houses” and killed “at least 22 innocent civilians, including five women and five children.” He neglects to mention that the #2 Al Qaeda terrorist was supposed to be dining with the “jewelers”.  He also neglects to mention that stories are now coming out that 3, possibly more, Al Qaeda terrorists are believed to have been killed in the air strike, including the bomb making mastermind, Abu Khabab al-Masri.

After NBC's Andrea Mitchell attacked Laura Bush when she called her a "potent political weapon" and says that Bush can say "partisan things without appearing partisan", she defends Hillary Clinton's recent comparison of the House with a slave plantation. Mitchell says that Republicans, specifically Newt Gingrich, can "get away with it", while Clinton "can say the same thing" and anything "controversial" will be used to "bludgeon her". She also notes that Clinton "has to be extra special careful" because she is "the opposite of the Teflon first lady".

She adds that Hillary was "with a friendly audience" and speaking to an "audience that wanted to hear that", which apparently makes it okay to make the comments according to Mitchell.

DOWNLOAD - .WMV

Transcript follows.

MRC's Mike Rule reports that CBS's "Early Show" had a typical breakdown of the debate over Oregon's assisted-suicide law. It's "patients" vs. "conservatives."

As Wyatt Andrews reported: "The ruling legalizes the right of terminally ill Oregon patients, patients like Jack Newbold, to end their lives when they choose with a doctor prescribed dose of barbiturates. Newbold died of his bone cancer but felt that his lethal prescription gave him power to the end...(Followed by old Newbold soundbite)...Patient groups in Oregon cheered the decision, and they predicted that other states will pass laws like Oregon's. Conservatives, however, will ask Congress to ban assisted suicide." (Introducting a soundbite from pro-life lawyer James Bopp.)

Last Saturday, the University of California, Santa Barbara hosted a media-bias debate between the moderately conservative Tucker Carlson and the distinctly leftist Eric Alterman, and the UCSB student newspaper, the Daily Nexus, was on the scene. (Hat tip: Romenesko.)

Highlights from Devon Claire Flannery's piece:

Carlson opened the debate with the assertion that America’s poorly informed electorate is the result of a badly biased press. He attributed low levels of political awareness among Americans to a liberal bias in the media and expressed disapproval of the way the media portrays politics in the United States.

Two days after Sen. Hillary Clinton stood in front of a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day to claim Republicans were running Congress like a “plantation,” the Times devotes a large front-page story to her by Hillary-beat reporter Raymond Hernandez.

Does the Times use the quote as a jumping-off point for an investigation to unmask the liberal agenda behind Clinton’s careful centrist public persona? Does it use the inflammatory remark to round up past controversial statements from Clinton, to suggest she’s not ready for her seemingly inevitable presidential run in 2008?

Not quite. Although a Republican would no doubt get that treatment, the “plantation” controversy is disposed of in a single sentence in “Senator Clinton Makes Her Run While Tiptoeing Around 2008.”

Before the first advertisements were playing out before the world, I’d already been tipped off that Spielberg had blown an awesome opportunity with Munich.  He had a chance not often seen in Hollywood, a chance to show the world a side of Israel they’re rarely allowed to see:  hero.

Trying to put out the fire that Hillary's "plantation" remark started, Dem strategist and Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Elaine Kamarck might unintentionally have added fuel to it in a just-completed Fox News interview with host Bob Sellers.

In fairness, Kamarck, pictured here, an advisor on the Gore 2000 campaign, did not unequivocally defend Hillary's comments, even saying that she personally would not have used the 'p' word.

But in defending the thrust of Clinton's remarks, Kamarck stuck her foot in it. She said:

"Plantations were terrible places where people were forced into doing certain jobs. But at least they were doing jobs."

When Republican leader Trent Lott made racially insensitive remarks, the MSM was immediately flooded with speculation as to whether he could survive in his political leadership post.

But when Hillary Clinton did the same, the Today show portrayed her as going on the offense, not being on the defense.

You might have imagined Today's graphic for this morning's segment would have read along the lines "Hillary Feeling the Heat". Imagine again. In fact it read "Off and Running? Hillary Attacks GOP." Offense, not defense.

Today also conveniently failed to mention that her 'plantation' comment was made in church. Even the New York Times was constrained to acknowledge that her remarks came at "the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem."

The piece begins by painting the poignant image of a Palestinian killed by Israelis and his bereaved family member who "choked back tears and wiped his red, swollen eyes." It ends with this slogan: ''When you have no hope, you vote Hamas."

"So what?", you ask. Palestinians are permitted to distribute campaign literature in preparation for their legislative elections on Jan. 25th. What's the big deal? Well, true. Except this wasn't a Hamas campaign flyer. It was an article in this morning's Boston Globe: A Death Hardens Support for Hamas.

One wonders whether the author, Thanassis Cambanis, wasn't smoking cannabis when composing his one-sided piece. The image he paints is of repressive Israelis hounding the innocent Hamas. But in fact, the dead man in question was the leader of a Hamas terrorist cell, according to the Israeli Defense Forces,. who was killed in a shootout with Israel forces during a raid in which Israel arrested 18 suspected "militants."

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

Since November, the media have carried around Rep. John Murtha around on their shoulders like a conquering hero for his opposition to the war in Iraq. They’ve thrown around the words “war hero” like clowns throwing candy at a parade. Murtha was broadcast far and wide attacking Vice President Cheney for his five deferments from Vietnam, suggesting these chicken hawks don’t like any suggestions about how to fight a war.

If Murtha were a Republican accusing a Democrat like this, we know what would happen. The so-called nonpartisan, objective, “mainstream” media would either (a) totally ignore him as an irrelevant, obscure House wacko, or (b) investigate his own military record to see if he earned all the “war hero” talk. And if discrepancies were found, all hell would break loose. And if you don’t believe me, just ask John O’Neill and the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, who underwent first (a) and then (b) when they challenged John Kerry.

Leave it to Keith Olbermann to rationalize Hillary Clinton's comparison of the Republican-controlled Congress to a plantation, a comparison she made during what should have been a celebration of the civil rights movement. On his January 17 Countdown show, the MSNBC host argued that because former House Speaker Newt Gingrich once compared the Democratic-controlled Congress to a plantation, a comment that had nothing to do with any racial issue, that reaction from the GOP in criticizing Clinton was perhaps "too swift," as he implied that the Republicans live in a "glass house." Olbermann asked Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne if there was "a rush to be holier-than-thou" by Republicans.

Writing in the January 18 Washington Post, staff writer Manuel Roig-Franzia begins a story about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's apology with a reference to talk radio:

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 17 -- An avalanche of criticism, stoked by heated talk-radio rants, forced Mayor C. Ray Nagin to apologize Tuesday for declaring that God wants New Orleans to be a "chocolate city."

Nagin, who is black, had said during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech that "this city will be an African American majority city. It's the way God wants it to be." He also said "God is mad at America" and "is sending hurricane after hurricane" because He disapproves of the United States invading Iraq "under false pretenses."

Cracks in the positive media spin of Democrat Anti-War spokesman Representative John Murtha have started to appear in a number of places, including mainstream and online news outlets.

There are sources, however, such as the Independent Media Center that maintain the anti-war stance of most reporting entities. In its “The Corner” editorial column on January 14, IMC praised the meeting between the leadership of anti American “Code Pink” activists, Representatives Jim Moran (D-VA) and John Murtha (D-PA)

Code Pink, which has given financial support to terrorists and called upon American soldiers to kill their leaders, is also known for displaying protest signs at the funerals of fallen American heroes. At this meeting they gave Murtha a “pink badge of courage” and thanked him for his courageous stand on Iraq. The leadership also said, “They will be working with Representative Murtha to deliver kindness and support to the wounded soldiers.”

The broadcast network evening newscasts on Tuesday night refrained from applying any ideological tag to the far-left group of lawyers, who represent terror suspects at Guantanamo and elsewhere, which filed a lawsuit against the NSA's program to eavesdrop on communications between terrorists abroad and people inside the U.S., but none hesitated to place a conservative label on those opposed to Oregon's assisted-suicide law (which the Supreme Court upheld). The network reporters avoided labeling the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which was founded by the radical-left William Kunstler, and whose President, Michael Ratner, declared last month: “Every American should be in political rebellion against the criminals now running this country."

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews related how, in ruling against the assisted-suicide law, former Attorney General John Ashcroft “was answering to conservatives pushing the Bush administration to protect life.” Andrews added: "This ruling also brought the first big case vote by the new chief justice, John Roberts, who sided with the conservative minority." But, without any labeling, John Roberts reported how “the NSA spying program was branded a violation of the Constitution by two civil liberties groups.” ABC's Lisa Stark pointed out how “the court's two most conservative members, Scalia and Thomas, disagreed” with the majority ruling. Anchor Bob Woodruff, however, had teased the newscast: "Two major civil rights groups sue to shut down the Bush administration's secret eavesdropping program." Pierre Thomas made those suing seem innocuous, relaying how the “attorneys, along with authors, scholars and Muslim support groups, claim unauthorized government eavesdropping will limit their ability to do their jobs." Over on NBC, Pete Williams noted how “Christian conservatives today called the ruling dangerous,” yet anchor Brian Williams announced how “today, civil rights lawyers filed the first lawsuit to challenge the government's program of monitoring the overseas phone calls of some Americans." (Transcripts follow.)