Juan Williams is a long-time columnist and commentator, who has been at the Washington Post (where he has an excellent column today) for years, as well as NPR and FoxNews. He has also written several books, the latest of which was reviewed in The Washington Post yesterday, by one Peniel E. Joseph.

Anyone who's followed the Washington media for any length of time over the past 20 years knows who Juan Williams is. And he knows that Williams is not a conservative. But the Washington Post, which has employed him and run hundreds of his columns, went out and found someone to savage his latest book. From the left.

Mr. Joseph, who is a teacher of "Africana Studies" at Stony Brook University, is apparently not interested in any discussion of black issues in America that isn't focused on white racism. The idea that blacks in America need to take any responsibility for their condition is apparently "simplistic."

Baltimore Sun reporter Nick Madigan says conservative politicians have discovered they can score easy political points by attacking the media, whose journalists are merely looking for the objective truth.

Reporters have long enjoyed front-row seats as politicians hurled volleys of abuse at each other. But with increasing frequency in recent years, the journalists have become targets.

In the quest for votes and allegiances, candidates have found the press to be a useful foil, whose ostensible prejudices are preventing the airing of higher truths. In many cases, it seems, reporters themselves are blamed for whatever shortcomings they might uncover in a candidate.

Editor and Publisher magazine sees one of its duties as protecting the reputation of the journalism profession, even if it means bringing up flimsy evidence against the famous WWII Iwo Jima flag-raising picture, saying that photo faced "the same charges heard today, concerning 'staging.'"

But the E&P staff admit that the evidence is "flimsy" and mere "speculation." So why bring up such charges against one the most memorable events from the war? To score a point: "But as with most of the allegations today, the theories about the Rosenthal photo were based on flimsy evidence or speculation."

The Associated Press once again comes through for the Democrats.  On Monday 14 August they report that Dirty Harry had to pay over $1,600 in interest in addition to returning a check for $3,000 that was made by a lobbyist to his Legal Defense Fund in 1999.  AP reports that the lobbyist was Ben Barnes, and that he was the former LtGov of Texas, but they leave out the fact that Barnes was also the man interviewed by Dan Rather on the infamous "Faked Document" story, who indicated that he got Bush his Guard slot to avoid combat.  How convenient of the AP to mention the man's job in 1968, but omit his most recent claim to fame. 

How is it that nobody picked up on this?  Especially given the renewed interest in Rathergate as a result of Reutersgate I would have expected at least a mention.

The pot is calling the kettle black again. Syndicated news agency Reuters, the eponym behind the "Reutergate" (or "Reutersgate" if you follow the Drudge model) photo scandal, now says scandals "rock" the post-war Israeli government.

The president is locked in a sex scandal, the justice minister is quitting over a purported stolen kiss, the prime minister is haunted by a property deal and the country's top general is under fire for stock trading.

Welcome to Israel, after the war.

With a ceasefire in Israel's bitter battles with Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas in effect for nearly a week, Israeli media have turned the spotlight on a series of scandals.

NY Times Nashville-based reporter Theo Emery has a story on those poor, persecuted Democratic country-music songwriters in Saturday's "In Nashville, Sounds of Political Uprising From the Left."

"Country music videos flashed on a television set at the Idle Hour, a Music Row bar where a Crock-Pot of beef stew simmered for hungry musicians.

"Sitting at a table in early August, Bobby Braddock, the longtime songwriter, lamented the conservatism of the country music industry that was demonstrated when the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks became a target of fury three years ago after saying she was ashamed that her band and President Bush shared the same home state.

At a White House press conference this morning, veteran reporter Helen Thomas once again--as Tony Snow famously said--presented "the Hezbollah view" and asked the President why he gives Israel "a pass" and only focuses on Hezbollah's rocket attacks against Israel.

Video available here.

But as President Bush went on to remind Thomas, "this never would have happened had a terrorist organization...not launched attacks on a sovereign nation."

San Diego talk-radio host Mark Larson blogs on a typical newspaper fumble on religious sensitivities with the San Diego Union-Tribune. They ran an advertisement for the "GLAAD-Award-Winning Masterpiece" play called "Southern Baptist Sissies" (starring Delta Burke!) The ad features a photo of a man in some kind of skimpy black underwear with his arms outstretched in front of a cross. Might that offend a few Christians? The Union-Tribune issued a statement that they would review the decision to accept the ad. Here's the latest from Larson:  

This past Friday, on PBS’s "Washington Week," NBC’s Andrea Mitchell noted that Hezbollah is winning the PR war around the world:

"And, I have to say, if you look at the mainstream media around the world everywhere other than in the United States, it is remarkably pro-Hezbollah. Hezbollah at this point is being described in most places now as a social service organization and a legitimate part of the Lebanese government, not as a terror group.

Was she critical of the world press for covering Hezbollah in this light, or critical of the American press for not being Hezbollah boosters? Her own comments about Hezbollah may provide some insight. As mentioned in Brent Baker’s July 18 CyberAlert, Mitchell praised Hezbollah as a group that provides social services and it’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as a populist:

Let's be clear: The press does not want you to think about current events. They want you to "feel" them. By doing so, they control your entire thought process on what you're reading, and what you're seeing.

This series of photographs, to me, is one of the basest examples of propaganda I've ever seen. There's no logical reason for a photograph like this—it contains no information, but merely reduces the entire argument over the war to base emotions. And, as we all have learned over time, information transmitted by raw emotion can only be referred to as one word:—Propaganda!

Check out some of the latest examples of raw, context-free emotion. If anyone can come up with a reasonable explanation for this kind of photograph, that excludes the possibility of the wires merely distributing propaganda, please be sure to let me know or leave a comment!

This week is shaping up as the MSM's kick-off of its Hillary for President campaign. Using Time Magazine's 10th cover of Hillary as a springboard, this morning's Today show convened a liberal coffee klatsch on Clinton's political future. Dem pollster Peter Hart summed up the segment's zeitgest nicely: "I think Americans are ready for a female president. I think they are definitely ready for Hillary Clinton."

Not a discouraging word was to be heard, as 'Today' found it unnecessary to invite to the party anyone who might have a negative view of Hillary

Those warm-hearted, feeling, sensitive souls of the liberal media are at it again. In a cartoon that this morning's Los Angeles Times found fit for publication, Jeff Danziger indulges his fantasy of a group of police and military unleashing a fusillade at Ann Coulter, who is shown screaming, presumably in fear. Danziger even manages to work in a bit of catty sexism, suggesting that the object of his apparent hatred is a bottle blonde.

Let's play one of our favorite games: 'Imagine.' Imagine that a conservative columnist had drawn a cartoon depicting a liberal woman icon as the target of a hail of police and military bullets.

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

Near the end of the CBS broadcast of the PGA tournament Sunday night, CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz promoted the forthcoming "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric," with a very typical serving of historical boilerplate about the "CBS Evening News" tradition, starting with Douglas Edwards, and including Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, and now Couric.

The untrained viewer might think from the list that Egbert Murrow (sorry, that's the name he was born with) was an anchorman of the "CBS Evening News," which he never was. Too bad they didn't illustrate it with Katie standing next to Hillary in the sky-blue Mao suit.