At about 9:40pm EDT during ABC's live broadcast of the Daytime Emmy Awards from the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, Rosie O'Donnell strode on stage to join Barbara Walters who had come out a bit earlier to present an award. When the applause died down, Walters asked O'Donnell: “What's doing?” O'Donnell joked about Internet rumors and then Walters announced to loud cheering from the audience: “Starting September you are going to join The View as co-host." O'Donnell oozed, "Let me tell you Barbara Walters: From the bottom of my heart, thank you for asking me. I'd be honored to do it." Then, with one hand on O'Donnell's shoulder and her other hand on O'Donnell's arm, Walters trumpeted: "We were amazed when she said yes and we were thrilled. So let me do it now very formally. Ladies and gentlemen, starting in September, the newest co-host of The View, and we're so lucky to have her: Miss Rosie O'Donnell!" (Transcript follows, as well as links to O'Donnell quotes and video.)

Video clip (1:05): Real (2 MB) or Windows Media (2.3 MB), plus MP3 audio (400 KB)

News broke on MSNBC at approximately 6:15pm EDT Friday night about the “arrest” of Rush Limbaugh on a “prescription fraud” charge. While the 7pm EDT Situation Room on CNN led with the “Breaking News” of the “arrest” -- which was really more of a booking session that did not put Limbaugh into handcuffs or any jail -- reporter John Zarella reported how it was really part of “a deal” between Limbaugh and the Palm Beach County prosecutor's office and CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin soon told anchor Wold Blitzer by phone that “the winner here is very clear: Rush Limbaugh. They cut themselves a very sweet deal.” But while the reports on the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News conveyed how in exchange for 18 more months of drug treatment by Limbaugh, the one single charge would be dismissed, World News Tonight viewers were left assuming Limbaugh was in dire trouble. [UPDATED below with ABC's more informed West coast feed.]

“Rush Limbaugh, one of the most popular and influential radio talk show hosts in America, was arrested in West Palm Beach today. The charges involve allegations of prescription drug fraud,” anchor Elizabeth Vargas announced at the top of the ABC newscast. Brian Ross explained: “He turned himself in today, Elizabeth, about 4:00 this afternoon. He was held for an hour and has since been released on $3,000 bail. What this involves is whether he used phony prescriptions to get oxycontin and other highly addictive prescription painkillers." Without anything about the deal, Vargas repeated the charge against him: "The allegations that he was doctor shopping, going to several doctors at once for big, big numbers of prescriptions." Ross affirmed: "Exactly, and the term 'prescription fraud' would apply to that directly." (Transcripts follow. UPDATED with Olbermann's "we have mug shot!" celebration of how Limbaugh has gone from "one half his brain...tied behind his back" to "both his hands cuffed behind his back.")

Did NBC allow a pro-illegal immigration message to air on the Today show? The singer Shakira appeared at 8:47AM EDT on the April 28 edition of the Today show. Wyclef Jean accompanied the Colombian performer and used NBC's platform to advertise a planned May 1 strike of illegal immigrants. Wearing a shirt that said "Immigration Rights" and below that, "Mayo Uno," Wyclef ended the song by bellowing, "May 1st! Immigration rights, baby!"

It should be noted that Wyclef Jean is also one of the artists recording a Spanish version of the Star-Spangled Banner that President Bush disapproved of in a Rose Garden press conference later in the day.

Nobody would argue that President Bush is overly popular at the moment. The media, however, seem determined to keep it that way. The April 28 edition of Today made this point extremely clear. Katie Couric opened the NBC program with this tease of a Brian Williams presidential interview:

Couric: "President Bush on those skyrocketing gas prices, his plummeting poll numbers and whether New Orleans is ready for hurricane season."

At 7:03AM EDT, Matt Lauer introduced the Williams interview this way:

Lauer: "Before we get to all that, let's talk about President Bush on those rising gas prices, the future of FEMA and his dismal poll numbers."

And the sneaky use of adjectives wasn’t the only tactic that Today employed.

National Public Radio offers a natural book-buying audience for ultraliberal Sen. Ted Kennedy as he sells his new tome, titled "America Back On Track." On yesterday's nationally syndicated "Diane Rehm Show," NPR reporter Andrea Seabrook sat in for Rehm. The show should have been called "The Senate Floor," since Kennedy's answers routinely went beyond two minutes and started sounding like floor speeches, as Seabrook deferentially waited for Kennedy to come up for air.

For example, Seabrook's second question was simple: "How did America get off track?" Kennedy offered a windy two-minute attack/answer about George Bush and Karl Rove's "politics of fear," as well as darkness, division, and personal destruction, just to round it out:

NBC White House correspondent David Gregory got into a sparring match with President Bush during a press conference today. Asked David Gregory:

"Mr. President, we're seeing some turnover and some change within your administration, and I wonder what it says about what you think is necessary to turn your presidency around at this point?"

The president responded with: "I think it's necessary to continue doing -- to achieving results for the American people. We've got big challenges for this country and I've got a strategy to deal with them."

Bush then cited off a laundry list of current issues to deal with, ending with, "So there's a lot to do today, but we'll continue to be results-oriented."

If there's any online media that would be free from infantile whining about corporate greed, it'd be investor Web sites, right? For the most part perhaps, but Motley Fool's Rick Munarriz found a corporate giant to attack for making money: Netflix, the online DVD rental service.

"How much money do you need when your largest competitor is against the creditors' ropes? Or when a digitally delivered future may mean thinner moats but without the same kind of capital intensive structure," whined Munarriz, who owns stock in the company. "There's never enough money, apparently, if you happen to be Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX). In a baffling move, the company is looking to initiate a secondary offering next month that will dilute investors by an additional 3.5 million shares while raising about $100 million."

On the April 27 "World News Tonight," anchor Elizabeth Vargas coined President Bush's call for more regulation of fuel standards a "bold" move:

We turn, now, to ABC's chief Washington correspondent, George Stephanopoulos. And George, we had a bold move by the President a short time ago. He wants the ability to change the miles per gallon standards, the so called CAFÉ standards, on his own, something he currently does not have the authority to do.

So let's see, the President's move to wiretap incoming phone calls from terror suspects has been roundly criticized as illegal and in reckless disregard to civil liberties. The call to drill for oil in ANWR to increase oil supply and lower gasoline prices has been called "controversial," but seldom if ever bold. But the call to put more regulatory power over industry in the hands of the President, and grow the scope and size of government, that's "bold."

Amazing. The day after Anemona Hartocollis's puff piece on the court appearance of 18 anti-war 'grannies' accused of blocking an entrance to a military recruitment center in Times Square, the Times follows up with front-page coverage of their aquittal("New York Judge Tells Grannies To Go in Peace").

"They came, they shuffled, they conquered. "Eighteen 'grannies' who were swept up by the New York City police, handcuffed, loaded into police vans and jailed for four and a half hours were acquitted yesterday of charges that they blocked the entrance to the military recruitment center in Times Square when they tried to enlist.

Today's starters-- Media: Reacting to Muhammed cartoon controversy, student newspaper prints offensive Jesus toons, nothing follows. Popular blog web presence provider Hosting Matters is down at the moment, taking a number of popular blogs down with it. Tonight is opening night of "Flight 93;" in it's scoring 94 percent positive in Rotten Tomatoes online reviews (HT Roger Simon.)

Politics:  Hillary Rodham Clinton polls better than Hillary Clinton, coinicdence or not? Howard Dean et al. start legal defense for accused "nonpartisan" CIA leaker Mary McCarthy. Jeff Goldstein has more. Dean Esmay asks readers for help with "overlooked news from Iraq" effort.

Misc: Quentin Tarantino to direct life of Jimi Hendrix movie. Pamela Anderson provides further proof that not just anyone can get an op-ed printed. France's Jacques Chirac wants to create European Google rival.

I caught Wednesday’s edition of “The Daily Show” on rerun, specifically a segment on gas prices with Wall Street Journal writer Rebecca Strassel. After fussing at those excessive oil company profits, host Jon Stewart joked that she felt like “you’re talking to a retarded person,” then insisted (with some self-deprecation) “The important thing is my visceral emotional reaction to it.” Smiling throughout, Strassel said he should be mad at Congress for its policies (such as its mandated use of ethanol). Stewart replied: “I’m mad at an administration that feels they have the vision to spread democracy -- I will, you know, invade a country and it will flower like the Genesis Machine -- and yet when it comes to oil, their most innovative solution is (in dumb-guy voice, like David Letterman asking if you got any gum) ‘uh, what if we look in Alaska?’ It lacks imagination to some extent.”

Hold on to your seats, but there’s a new CNN poll out analyzing Sen. Hillary Clinton’s chances of being elected president in 2008. What a shock, huh? During Thursday’s “The Situation Room,” host Wolf Blitzer and political analyst William Schneider were having a hard time hiding their glee concerning these poll results as well as a possible return to “the good times under the Bill Clinton era” (hat tip to Expose the Left with video link to follow). In fact, the viewer got a glimpse of how thrilled both of these supposedly impartial reporters were as soon as the segment began.

Blitzer introduced Schneider thusly: “Let's bring in our senior political analyst, Bill Schneider, who is already smiling. He hasn't even started to tell us about the results of this poll -- Bill.”

Isn’t that special? The results are so heartening to Schneider that, as you can see from the attached picture, he’s smiling ear to ear. Then, after discussing the plusses and minuses of Hillary using or not using her maiden name of Rodham – a question that clearly must be keeping most Americans up at night – Schneider took the opportunity to contrast President Bush’s current poll numbers to former President Clinton’s:

Media Week reports that Air America is about to lose the New York station that carries Air America, viewed as the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh, et al. And what a shame it is to lose a station with the call letters WLIB. Having a diversity of opinion is always a good thing, but the media have propped up a dead horse while not realizing that liberals prefer other formats to get their daily fix of Bush bashing.

Air America Radio will lose its New York flagship station, WLIB-AM, on Aug. 31. While the left-leaning radio network’s original lease for the Inner City station ran out March 31, AAR managed to get an extension which only lasts until Aug. 31, according to an informed source.

Now that Fox News's Tony Snow has been announced as the new White House press secretary, reporters are getting flustered at the fondness the administration has for Fox.

A report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says reporters complained about the Fox fare on an April 27 Air Force One trip.

Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei told current press secretary Scott McClellan that "requests – this is a serious question – to turn these TVs on to a station other than Fox" have been denied. He wanted to know if there was "a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?”

As oft-documented by MRC - NewsBusters' parent organization - the MSM is quick to label people 'conservative', 'right-wing' and various 'ultra' variations thereon. But the MSM typically turn shy when it comes to the 'liberal' label. In a surprising twist, not only did Katie Couric speak of George Clooney as a liberal this morning, but the Hollywood star didn't hesitate to pin himself as a liberal, and an old one at that. What's more, Katie even suggested that Clooney's advocacy of countless liberal causes might be diluting the brand.

The topic was Clooney's advocacy of international involvement to end the humanitarian disaster in Darfur in the Sudan. Wikipedia entry on the Darfur conflict here. It is notable that although the conflict largely pits Arabs against non-Arabs, the populations on both sides are Muslim. This seems, by the way, to have been something of Celebrity Advocacy Week at Today. As noted here, yesterday it was Angelina Jolie's opportunity to tout her support for universal childhood education [courtesy the American taxpayer].

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