Harry Smith, co-host of CBS’s "The Early Show," has spent the last few days reporting from Baghdad. On Friday, he reported the security situation was such that he couldn’t go out and get ice cream. But today, he decided to look for a success story. He found one, but he proved that while he can report a bad news story without mentioning any good news, he can’t report a success story without finding negative items to talk about. Reporting from Baghdad, Harry Smith began his piece, which profiled the work of the U.S. Army 4th Infantry Division’s work in the town of Sababor, talking about the violence in Iraq: "Yeah, good morning. I'll tell you what, just an illustration of how much bad news there is here. A friend of mine here in Iraq told me the other day 'the busiest people in this town are the terrorists.'" Later, he talked of a bombing in Sababor which occurred a month ago: "It hasn't been easy. Just a month ago, a bomb here killed 15 people."

And at one point, "The Early Show" co-host appeared surprised to learn that people in Sababor view Americans positively. And Smith seemed even more shocked when one of the boys told him his name was "Bush" after Smith had an apparent James Bond like moment in introducing himself to the boy.

Video clip of exchange between Iraqi kid who called himself "Bush" and Smith (21 seconds): Real (700 KB) or Windows Media (825 KB), plus MP3 audio (125 KB)

What is he afraid of? Vicente Fox, the president of Mexico, announced that he would be taking "no questions" during his trip to the U.S. Is he afraid the media will ask him why Bush is being so cruel to illegals?

A news conference that was scheduled in Utah was canceled, as well as reporters' questions at five other events in the state. Events in Seattle and California will also bar reporters' questions. One organizer of the Utah events, Joe Reyna, says, "President Fox is not giving any exclusives (to anyone) in Utah, Seattle or California due to the heated ... debate over immigration."

The media will no doubt not make an issue of his ducking them, as they sympathize with his plight and understand the trying times he is in, with incessant attacks from his northern neighbors.

On May 22, the Federal Trade Commission released a report finding no systemic price gouging resulting from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The following day, USA Today -- which has carried a "nation's gas gauge" item in its front page sidebar for a few weeks now -- assigned the story below-the-fold treatment in the Money section.

Another story, on how average gas prices have dropped 6.4 cents in the past week, was relegated to the sidebar of the Money section page as well.

For my article on televised coverage of the story, click here.

In 2003, country music stations around the country boycotted the music of the Dixie Chicks, a group of three women that originated as a country ensemble. One of the members, Natalie Maines, told a London group in 2003 that she was ashamed to be from the same state as President Bush because of his starting of the Iraq war.

The group is facing the same problem with its latest album.

Reports UPI:

It appears the war U.S. country radio stations mounted against the politically outspoken Dixie Chicks has not abated in the least.

Since NewsBusters first broke the story about Google News capriciously terminating its relationship with conservative e-zines and web journals, and followed (with the help of writer and software developer Marc Sheppard) with a detailed analysis of the ramifications of such unrestrained power, the blogosphere has been abuzz with this issue.

One of the key players in this sad tale, Frank Salvato of The New Media Journal, posted an interesting response to Google’s banishment at his website that included a list of competing search engines as well as his opinion on the issue: “Google News and Google Search Engine are on a campaign of political correctness that sees them denying access to their service to any website - be it news, opinion or a hybrid of both - that dares to address the subject of radical Islam.” Salvato continued:

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tom Hallman apparently has a hard time nailing down the truth. In a profile of math guru Mark Provo, Hallman took vast liberties with the truth without actually picking up a phone to verify any of it. The subject of the story has listed about 30 facts that are not actually factual.

Hallman paints wild pictures of non-existent hills, phantom hotel rooms, even the thoughts that run through people's heads. He writes about the subject "glancing at the clock" and how "in that moment the turmoil of his past would disappear" which were both complete fabrications. As Provo correctly points out, these are the things of screenplays and novels. These are not accurate representations of the truth.

You can still win a Pulitzer Prize for writing a fictional play, so why do these reporters even bother with journalism? And why do newspapers fail to mention that falsities and fabrications paint their pages?

The monthly magazine Vanity Fair is still a Hollywood-crazed chronicler of the rich and famous, but in the past few years it's also become an increasingly shrill anti-Bush voice -- sort of a more elegantly written, hard-copy version of the Huffington Post.

Writer Marie Brenner, a frequent contributor to VF, sounded a little shrill herself this past weekend, claiming that "the atmosphere against the press right now is as onerous as I can ever remember it," and that judicial demands for reporters to reveal confidential sources may result in a comeback for "the anti-press hysteria of the Nixon years."

Brenner, whose 1996 VF piece on Jeffrey Wigand was the basis for the 1999 movie The Insider, spoke at a journalism conference in San Antonio. Excerpts from a story by Sheila Hotchkin in the San Antonio Express-News:

Courtesy of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, following are some of the Chicken Little writings of the New York Times and Time Magazine over the years.

Time, Sept. 10, 1923: "The discoveries of changes in the sun's heat and the southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to conjecture of the possible advent of a new ice age."

NYT, Sept. 18, 1924: "MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age."

NYT, March 27, 1933: "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise."

Time, Jan. 2, 1939: "Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right ... weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer."

Time, June 24, 1974: "Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

NYT, May 21, 1975: "Scientists Ponder Why World's Climate is Changing; A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable."

Time, April 9, 2001: "(S)cientists no longer doubt that global warming is happening, and almost nobody questions the fact that humans are at least partly responsible."

NYT, Dec. 27, 2005: "Past Hot Times Hold Few Reasons to Relax About New Warming."

Anyone who says the Earth will get (circle one) hotter/colder is right, given enough time. We've had ice ages, little ice ages, as well as warming periods. None of them were caused by humans.

Why is this any different?

Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen has died. The ex-Senator from Texas was Secretary of the Treasury (under Bill Clinton), a World War II veteran and, in 1988, the running mate to Michael Dukakis. But take a look at what ABC chose to include in their two-line "Breaking News" headline announcing his death on ABCNews.com (as of today at 11:42AM EDT):

"Former U.S. Senator, Vice Presidential Candidate Lloyd Bentsen–Famous For Telling Dan Quayle ‘You’re No Jack Kennedy’–Has Died"

I guess no matter what you accomplish, if you zing a conservative or a Republican, that’s what the media will always remember. Also, in July of 1992, NBC’s Tom Brokaw noted that Bentsen’s famous verbal body slam may not have been, in the strictest sense, accurate:

"It was Lloyd Bentsen who said to Dan Quayle `I knew John Kennedy, and you're no John Kennedy.' It was one of the electrifying moments of the campaign. At the Kennedy Library, just outside Boston, they went through all the files. They couldn't see much evidence Lloyd Bentsen knew John Kennedy very well. But it certainly was an effective campaign ploy for him."
-- Tom Brokaw in convention coverage, July 16, 1992.

ABC News has officially picked Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson to shore up World News Tonight. Is that good news for conservatives? Well, when he hosted the 2004 town-hall style debate between President Bush and John Kerry, Gibson chose a balanced set of questions that equally represented liberal and conservative concerns. Good for him -- that’s a balancing act that previous town hall moderators, like PBS’s Jim Lehrer and ABC’s Carole Simpson, failed to do.

But as a frequent fill-in on World News Tonight and on Good Morning America, Gibson has rarely tinkered with the media elite’s liberal template:

Sometimes you just want to throw up your hands. Interviewing another big oil exec this morning, Katie Couric's proposed solution to high gas prices was to repeal the laws of supply and demand . . . just a little bit.

Whereas Matt Lauer took a while in his interview of another oil exec to get around to his price-cutting point, Katie wasted no time. Interviewing Shell Oil President John Hofmeister, Katie's opening salvo was

"I am just wondering, you and many other oil companies are posting record high profits, of course. And while the average consumer is hurting. I am wondering, Mr. Hofmeister, would it help the long term reputation and value of your company and shareholders if you could feel the pain that consumers were feeling and decrease the wholesale value of gasoline? Is that something you would ever consider?"

Beware of supposedly objective scientists and their not-so-secret political opinions. At the tail end of "Today" on Monday, MRC's Geoff Dickens found that one Louisiana scientist had a two-faced moment on Hurricane Katrina. Al Roker asked: "We had historian Douglas Brinkley here and his book The Great Deluge and he suggested that, that Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff should resign. What's your take on that?"

Ivor Van Heerden, author of a new book simply titled "The Storm," seemed to agree that Chertoff should go, as NBC showed a photo of Chertoff and former FEMA boss Michael Brown: "I think that if you do not have disaster experience, you shouldn't be in these positions of leadership. You need to have folk who have been through the fire, so to speak to understand all the complexities of dealing with a disaster. It, it's wrong to bring in folk who do not have that experience." But experience wasn't everything when it came to Ray Nagin:

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

Gloria Borger concluded her Monday CBS Evening News story on the FBI’s weekend confiscation of cash from a freezer in Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson’s home by declaring a pox on both parties: “At a time when 77 percent of the American public believes that all members of Congress take bribes, Congressman Jefferson's troubles help no one in either party.” Unlike ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas and NBC anchor Campbell Brown who noted Jefferson’s party affiliation in their story introductions, CBS’s Bob Schieffer managed to set up Borger’s report without identifying Jefferson’s party: "The government says FBI agents videotaped Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson taking $100,000 in cash from an informant and later found $90,000 in his home freezer.” Borger did subsequently identify Jefferson as a Democrat. (Partial transcript follows)