Count CNN’s Jack Cafferty among the growing number of reporters who have expressed disdain towards those who criticize the mainstream media. During his 4pm EST "Cafferty File" segment on Thursday's The Situation Room, Cafferty was all riled up to take on those who believe the MSM’s coverage of Iraq has failed to report on progress being made there:

"This is nonsense. It’s the media’s fault and the news isn’t good in Iraq. The news isn’t good in Iraq. There’s violence in Iraq. People are found dead every day in the streets of Baghdad. This didn’t turn out the way the politicians told us it would. And it’s our fault? I beg to differ."

There was some good news in Iraq this morning as 3 Christian hostages were rescued by a joint force consisting of American British and Iraqi troops. Surprisingly, CBS’s "The Early Show" led with this news.

In her report from Baghdad, CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan explained the "irony" of the rescue in that "the group, who are members of Christian peacemaker teams in Iraq, had signed a statement before their capture saying they reject the use of force to save lives." Yet, a statement released from the organization Christian Peacemaker Teams, which is not mentioned in Logan’s report, and to be fair, we are not sure it was available at the time of her report, blames the rescuers for the fact that the 3 members of their group were taken hostage to begin with:

Gayle Taylor – the woman at Wednesday’s town hall meeting in West Virginia who asked President Bush how to get more positive news stories out of Iraq – and her husband Kent – a military journalist just back from a year of first-hand coverage of the incursion – were on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees” Wednesday evening. They gave Cooper quite a lesson in how most media coverage of the Iraq war is extremely negative and unrepresentative of what is really going on there on a daily basis (hat tip to Expose the Left with video link to follow). Gayle started the segment off smartly:

“I felt it so important because it seems that every time we turn on the TV, we just see something negative. We see someone else who's been killed. We see another car bomb. We see something that I know is happening and needs to be reported, but I don't see that balance with all the good that's going on.”

Anderson asked her how she thought the media could accomplish such a balance. As you would imagine, Gayle had an answer:

On Wednesday, Good Morning America asked viewers to go online and vote on which Iraqi story they thought should lead the news. The results were revealed on Thursday’s GMA and as Diane Sawyer said after a segment by Dan Harris, "And we’ll be back to Dan a little bit later in this half hour. He has the news on what you voted about what you wanted to hear from Iraq and it’s a surprise."

What surprised Ms. Sawyer? GMA viewers agreed with President Bush that more positive stories should make the broadcast. At 7:08, Charlie Gibson introduced Dan Harris for his second story of the day, "This morning we want to return to the question that the President has been emphasizing and that we discussed yesterday morning on this broadcast. And the question is: whether the media is only showing negative news from Iraq?

National Review Online was kind enough today to publish a little piece I composed, titled "Role Reversal: David Gregory finds out what it's like to be Scott McClellan." It briefly chronicles how Laura Ingraham started a wave of defensive media coverage with her fiery soundbites in favor of the liberal media getting off the balcony if-it-bleeds-it-leads beat. Here are some additional notes I took as I was putting this together...

Reporters were shaking their heads at the thought that a few speeches by President Bush could undo their handiwork in lowering Americans’ approval of the war and its commander.

One particularly absurd sentence came out of ABC White House reporter Jessica Yellin: "Even the President’s aides acknowledge this speech on its own won’t reverse falling American support for a war that increasingly defines the Bush presidency." No one on Earth expects one daytime speech in Cleveland to completely reverse public opinion. But it was almost a taunting sentence: the White House must admit that they can’t turn around public opinion if the TV news crews oppose them tooth and nail.

http://abc.go.com/site/contactus.html

Write ABC and demand they fire John Green for his breech of professionalism. Keep your petty personal political opinions out of your professional work. If you don't have the discipline to keep your mouth shut, time to retire.

http://abc.go.com/site/contactus.html

Write ABC and demand John Green's resignation.

What a breech in professional conduct. Keep your personal political opinions out of your professional work.

This is a confidential message to my fellow mainstream media journalists. All other "civilians" are to stop reading this right now.

First, I thank my commrades for the negative spin put on recent news of nearly full employment for college graduates. ABC News did a fine job of including this graf in their copy:

"Even as demand and salaries rise, college students should not be lulled into thinking that the job search will be easy or that jobs will be handed to anyone with a degree," he warned.

Sure, everyone might have a job, but your life will never be easy under this oppresive Bush regime. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you; just because this Bush economy is running great doesn't mean you have to paint it that way.

Speaking of ABC News, we all know it's perfectly acceptable to talk among ourselves about how much we hate Bush and ways we can destroy him, but come'on John Green, you need to remember that it can't be sent over your blackberry! As long as those Nazi's control the NSA, they will send all of that stuff straight to Drudge!

What happened to fact-checking at the Times?

On March 11, the Times fronted an interviewed with what it claimed was the infamous "hooded inmate" from Abu Ghraib prison. But Ali Shalal Qaissi, the man they interviewed and pictured on the front page, was not the man in the now-iconic photo, as the Times explained in the March 18 edition.

Donna Fenton, whose alleged struggles with the FEMA bureaucracy were the subject of a sympathetic (and in retrospect, extremely gullible) March 8 profile by reporter Nicholas Confessore, was not the victim of Hurricane Katrina that she claimed to be. Yesterday she was arrested for fraud and grand larceny. The editors' note in the corrections box of the Times explains:

According to today's Drudge Report, the executive producer of the weekend edition of "Good Morning America," John Green, sent an email in which he flatly states, "Bush makes me sick."

The producer went on to write, "If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke." Drudge cites the comment of a Green friend: "John feels so badly about this email. He is a straight shooter and great producer who is always fair. That said, he deeply regrets the sentiment expressed in the email and the embarrassment it causes ABC News."

No doubt Green deeply regrets the embarrassment to ABC News. Once again, here's evidence of the bias permeating much of the mainstream media.

Hillary-hailing reporter Raymond Hernandez makes the front page of Thursday’s Metro section with a story that isn’t about Hillary but nonetheless helps Sen. Clinton reelection campaign -- an expose of her Republican opponent K.T. McFarland (“Questions Arise About Resume Of Challenger To Clinton”).

“When Kathleen Troia McFarland stepped forward as a Republican challenger to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was a relatively obscure figure with two intriguing claims to fame: She had worked on President Ronald Reagan's ‘Star Wars’ speech and had been the highest-ranking woman at the Reagan Pentagon.”

Earlier this month, the New York Times wrote about a Katrina evacuee, Donna Fenton. The story focused on the difficulties the woman had encountered in receiving assistance, highlighting her frustrations with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Yesterday, the woman, who had falsely claimed to be a Katrina victim, was arrested for welfare fraud and grand larceny. Today's Times reports that story, and notes its previous coverage appeared "more than a month after Brooklyn prosecutors, prompted by suspicious officials at the city's welfare agency, began investigating her."

Interestingly enough, but the IMUS show on MSNBC has shown a big change in how the interview goes from IRAQ.

Usually, Don Imus just kills the positive response from the President, but this morning we heard it thru to the end on the news events. Big difference today...

Things looking up, and yes the interview by David Gregory,and Laura Ingraham has started the bandwagon effect.

Larry T. Doughty

Brewer, Maine

http://journals.aol.com/LarryT39/LarrysThoughts

larryt39@aol.com

Call it the Ingraham Effect. Two days after Laura Ingraham sent shockwaves through the MSM with a Today show appearance in which she charged that the media accentuate the negative in their Iraqi coverage, and just the day after a palpably stung Today responded with a segment defending its coverage, Today led its show this morning . . . with good news from Iraq.

To be sure, Today would under any circumstances have covered the rescue of three self-styled Christian peace activists. Story here. But would Today have otherwise highlighted the story of a successful coalition military operation in the way that it did? In the show's very opening, Katie dramatically intoned:

Are Late Innings the Time for a Relief Pitcher?

The big question on the mind of certain New York Times reporters is one that has been repeatedly answered over and over with a resounding “No.” Well we can dream, can’t we?

In an attempt to portray the White House as disorganized, in constant conflict, lost, and on the verge of a “shake up,” Elisabeth Bumiller and Adam Nagourney again show that the NYT is reporting news it wishes to happen, rather than what actually has happened.

“President Bush's suggestion on Tuesday that he may add a new senior figure to his White House team raised questions about the future of two of his closest and most powerful aides, Andrew H. Card Jr. and Karl Rove, as they struggle to put Mr. Bush's White House back on course.”

Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace has finally announced his retirement. His son, Chris Wallace, is host of "Fox News Sunday." On Wednesday both men appeared on "Larry King Live" to discuss the father's retirement and the son's ongoing career.

Chris Wallace chided his father for "complaining and whining" about never getting to meet the president. He said that he has "actually met the president--and several times--and been to a State of the Union briefing where he had lunch with us and discussed things."

The son jokingly added, "I'm happy to pass my father's best wishes onto the president the next time I see him."

Mike Wallace said his son only gets close to the president because he "works for Fox."

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

In leading his Countdown show on Wednesday night, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann pegged “the day in 1988 when the first George Bush sandbagged Dan Rather during a live interview on CBS as the moment” when “the process of blaming the messenger became an essential ingredient in American politics,” raised Joe McCarthy's name in noting the location of President Bush's criticism of press coverage of Iraq and railed against the “unforgivable” criticism of the media by radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, whom he described as someone “that I've known socially.” And that was all before he brought aboard Helen Thomas.

Olbermann asserted that the war of “the government versus the news has just escalated anew, and it is approaching a carpet bombing stage. Exhibit A, Wheeling, West Virginia, where Joe McCarthy started his string of the most memorable speeches, today's stop on the George W. Bush 'I am nothing if not deeply misunderstood ' Express.” After playing clips of Ingraham on Tuesday's Today show urging reporters in Iraq “to actually have a conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off," Olbermann presumed that meant she had no concept of journalists who have given their lives: “That hotel balcony crack was unforgivable. It was unforgivable to the memory of David Bloom, it was unforgivable in consideration of Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt...”

Video clip of Olbermann castigating Ingraham, and a little more of his insults (55 secs): Real (1.7 MB) or Windows Media (1.9 MB). Plus MP3 audio (330 KB). Bonus video of the 1988 Bush 41-Rather confrontation, cited by Olbermann, at the bottom of this posting.

When a conservative book comes out, the author usually spends some time talking about the media. The NewsBusters Book Review will provide excerpts from these passages and/or interview authors to learn what they think of the media and explain what they wrote.

Our first book is the novel "The Bathsheba Deadline" by Jack Engelhard. Engelhard is most known for "Indecent Proposal," which in 1993 was made into a movie featuring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.

Best job market since 2001 goes unnoticed as major media still not convinced that 4 ½-year economic expansion is for real. Free Market Project

It seems you can’t turn on your TV without hearing a new poll claiming how poorly Americans feel about the economy. Dean Reynolds of ABC said on the March 10 “World News Tonight” that “57 percent of Americans in our ABC polling say this economy is bad,” with an exclamation point that “only 17 percent say it’s getting better.” Similarly, CBS’s Bill Plante proclaimed February 28 on the “Morning News” that “People aren’t feeling as good about the economy.”

Yet, despite these claims, the good economic news is almost overwhelming.