On tonight's Countdown With Keith Olbermann on MSNBC (Monday, February 13, 2006), Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank appeared for an interview wearing a bright-orange hunter's vest and hat. Michelle Malkin has the photo and video.

How on earth is anyone supposed to believe that the Washington Post can maintain any objectivity on the Cheney hunting story when one of their most veteran and prominent reporters shows up for an interview dressed like this?

Think back to 1998. Imagine a female newspaper reporter (not an opinion columnist, but a reporter, mind you) showing up for a television interview dressed in a beret and looking like Monica Lewinsky. Or a male columnist wearing a Clinton wig and holding a cigar. It never would have happened, because these people would have lost their jobs. Their employer's credibility would have been shot.

I'm surprised that I'm not seeing more about Al Gore's ranting speech in Saudi Arabia over the U.S. treatment of Arabs. Gore's comments were almost to the point of being treasonous.

In "Challenging a Rival, Viewer by Viewer," The New York Times’ TV reporter Jacques Steinberg gives a  pretty straight-forward account of CNN’s ongoing struggle to catch up to cable news titan Fox News.

 Sure, Steinberg tries mightily to find a silver lining in the cloud of this ratings trouncing, but there’s none of the overt bias he often displays. But there is this…

 Two instances in which the liberal-leaning synergy that so clearly unites the Times and CNN is actually acknowledged. Twice in one article.

To most of America, unions are the stuff of history books, relevant almost exclusively to families that have a parent working for government, now the main source of union support. But to The New York Times, every development heralds a great resurgence; every activist is the next Ceasar Chavez.

So it is with today’s article, “Union Takes New Tack in Organizing Effort at Pork-Processing Plant,” by writer Steven Greenhouse. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is trying, for a third time, to unionize the Smithfield Packing Company plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina.

Is George Bush a slave owner? Viewers of this past Friday’s Inside Washington on PBS, may think so. Washington Post Columnist Colby King inferred as much saying:

Colby King: "They were supposed to behave because Masta [sic] was in the house? I mean come on."

The discussion pertained to the politicization of the funeral of Coretta Scott King, and Colby King and Dana Priest, a reporter for the Washington Post, were determined to defend the gratuitous rudeness of some of the speakers who thought it was appropriate to take political shots at President Bush. Their arguments were weak, ranging from politics at the funeral was expected:

With regards to the war on terror, what is the focus of the mainstream media? Is it fighting and winning? Or are they more concerned with embarrassing the Bush administration? Fran Townsend, a White House Homeland Security advisor, appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN and Fox News on Friday, February 10^th. The contrast could not be more stark. CNN, CBS and ABC focused on warrants, wiretaps, and whether the mayor of Los Angeles was properly informed of the President’s speech regarding a foiled attack. All of these networks, except FNC, failed to ask Townsend about the prison break of 23 terrorists, including 13 members of Al Qaeda, which one would assume is an important story.

Ms. Townsend appeared first on the CBS Early Show at 7:10AM EST. Harry Smith seemed skeptical about the timing and the subject of the President’s speech. He started by asking, "Why did the President choose yesterday to reveal this information about a plot that’s almost four years old now?" Ms. Townsend patiently explained that the members of the cell had been arrested and the leads exhausted, therefore this case was one that the President could freely discuss. Smith then went on to question whether there was an actual threat:

If there is any area of news coverage where media bias exists, it is the seemingly universal ignoring of the human face of war by the mainstream press.

Those labeled as “traditional” broadcast outlets and print publications have consistently offered the public a laundry list of bombs, bodies and devastation, but have seldom reported little more than the numbers. It is rare indeed when a person or group are examined as living, breathing participants in what is perhaps the most horrifying and uncivilized of endeavors.... war.

To bring the reality of the conflict in Iraq into focus, one must turn to what is rapidly being referred to as “the new media”. In more precise language it is the combined efforts of talk radio and the electronic publications of the Internet that reach the heart and the hurt of what is happening to the men and women of our armed forces.

From today's Washington Post online chat with Howard Kurtz, where even he grew tired of the conspiracy theorizing:

Bethesda, Md.: Noon tv news said that the Cheney shooting was "accidental". Shouldn't that be allegedly accidental? How do we know its accidental without an investigation? What are "good" media rules on this?

Howard Kurtz: I think this will require a special prosecutor.

Over at the official Democratic Party blog, this headline: Cheney Shoots 78-Year-Old Man, Bin Laden Still at Large. Joe Rospars jokes:

Former NY Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld lovingly profiles “staunch conservative” Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska in a cover story for the Sunday magazine. If Hagel, a frequent critic of Bush and the Iraq war, does run for president in 2008, he may give media favorite Sen. John McCain a run for the cherished “maverick” label.

On the cover of the magazine, Hagel is called a “war-criticizing, anti-abortion, slash-the-deficit, multilateralist conservative.” In the table of contents, he’s “A war hero and staunch conservative.” (Incidentally, Sen. Hillary Clinton has never been called a “staunch liberal” in the Times.)

 Lelyveld insists on Hagel’s strong conservatism in the text itself:

On Thursday's "Countdown," we learned from Keith Olbermann that:

• The CIA leak investigation roars back to life. Scooter Libby claimed he had been authorized to reveal classified information, authorized by his boss, the vice president.


• Newly disclosed documents indicating that the vice president's former chief of staff already has testified that he was authorized by his superiors to disclose classified information to reporters in order to make the a case for war in Iraq...


• If he's defending himself by saying, Well, he did, and saying the vice president told him to, because that's not really germane to this case, did he just throw the vice president of the United States under the proverbial bus?

Note how the wording of these statements leaves the impression that the authorization claimed by Libby included the Plame leak. Did it? What is it that Olbermann isn't telling us this time?

Remember back in October when Al Franken joked with David Letterman about Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby being executed for treason? Well, Franken is at it again with a blog entry Sunday evening at the Huffington Post. This time, the target of his tasteless satire is Vice President Dick Cheney who accidentally shot his hunting partner on Saturday:

“Over the weekend, Vice President Dick Cheney shot a man in Texas. Asked why he shot the man, the Vice President said, ‘Just to watch him die.’"

Much like other members of the media, Franken saw a bizarre connection to a previously documented hunting trip that the vice president went on: “You know who's doing a ‘there but for the grace of God go I?; Scalia.”

Then, Franken painted a sophomoric picture of what would happen if Bush and Cheney went hunting:

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Good Morning America took a double-barrelled blast at Vice President Cheney this morning over his accidental shooting of a quail-hunting companion, suggesting the White House might have tried to cover up the incident and calling into question a witness's version of events.

GMA did at first describe the accident as having occurred because the victim, attorney Harry Whittington, failed to observe the quail-hunting rule by which hunters remain in a single line as they advance, indicating that the accident occurred after Whittington left the line to retrieve a bird from the tall grass.

But GMA host Charlie Gibson later claimed that there was "growing political fallout" from the incident, wondering:

Over the weekend, there was more bias by placement on the economic news by the Washington Post. On Saturday, February 4, the great news about the jobless rate dropping to 4.7 percent, with the Post sub-headline explaining "Unemployment Hits Lowest Level Since July '01," ended up on page D-1, the front page of the Business section, a regular lower-profile location for good economic news.

On Saturday, February 11, "Trade Gap Hits Record For 4th Year In A Row" ended up on page A-1, with the Post warning in the first paragraph that this statistic that "soared to a record" is "a reminder of the dangers hovering over a generally robust economy." We should give the Post a little credit for noting the "robust" part, even though that's usually left in the D-section. Both articles were written by Paul Blustein, but both had a blend of positive and negative notes. But the jobless-rate article quoted a mix of experts, from a statement by the Treasury Secretary to independent experts to the Center for American Progress, labeled a "pro-Democratic think tank." (That's a creative way to avoid the "liberal" label.) The trade-deficit piece, on the other hand, features this rather monochromatic list of experts expressing concern over the trade gap:

What's with the naked woman on the cover of Newsweek, shrouded only by an eyeglass? The provocative cover is meant to advertise an issue on "Sex and the Single Baby Boomer," the demographic that started turning 60 this year -- what reader in their prime really wants to read about this subject? Once again, baby-boomer journalists display an obsession with themselves.

The hot item on the Newsweek website right now is a "Carnal Knowledge" quiz, a 45-question interactive test. The headline encouraging test-takers is "Boinking, boffing, bumping, bedding—boomers always thought they invented it all. So here’s a pop quiz on the half century of sexual high jinks they lived through. Show us how much you know—in the Biblical sense." Unsurprisingly, there are no Bible questions, and there are a lot of questions on gays, transsexuals, feminists, porn, hippie be-ins and 1970s TV. And a question noting the Moral Majority was not "pro-environment."

Robert C.J. Parry, a first lieutenant in the California Army National Guard's 1st battalion of the 184 Infantry, has published a must-see op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times (Sunday, February 12, 2006), entitled, "The war you didn't see." In the piece, he reports something that is rarely reported but has been known by many all along: The mainstream media has been giving our troops a raw deal by harping on negative news and ignoring positive accomplishments.

"We served with honor. We served with valor. We earned distinction," writes Lt. Parry, as he recounts a number of brave actions in battle from men with whom he served. (Emphasis mine:)

"So far, 14 of our soldiers have been decorated for valor and another 48 have earned the Bronze Star for service. But that cannot be found in print.

In the midst of ABC's lead story Sunday night about how Vice President Dick Cheney had, on Saturday afternoon, accidentally hit hunting companion Harry Whittington with shotgun pellets while he was aiming at some quail, reporter John Yang resurrected a two-year-old media-created scandal which amounted to little at the time: How Cheney invited Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia along on a hunting trip while the court was facing a decision on a lawsuit involving the Vice President's official duties. Yang brought up Cheney's affiliation with the NRA and then asserted: “His hunting made headlines in 2004. He took Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on a duck hunting trip to Louisiana on board Air Force Two, at a time when the court was considering a case filed against Mr. Cheney by environmental groups." The Supreme Court sided with the VP's office, which sent the case back to a federal appeals court which rejected, 8-0 in 2005, the Sierra Club's request to learn what advice industry experts gave Cheney's energy task force. (2005 AP story.) (Brief transcript follows.)