Senator Hillary Clinton sat for interviews aired Monday night on all three broadcast network evening newscasts to promote her presidential candidacy, though only ABC’s World News got her live. CBS’s Katie Couric first pushed her from the left: “You're against sending additional troops to Iraq, and according to our latest poll, 66 percent of Americans agree with you. So why not vote to cut off funding so the President can't carry out this policy?” Couric did note that “some” call her health care policy management in the Clinton administration “a disaster” before worrying: “Even those who approve of you as a candidate have questions about your electability, some of those people. What would you say to them?” The “Couric & Co.” blog features a picture of Senator Clinton and Katie Couric, both smiling, posing together shoulder-to-shoulder.

NBC anchor Brian Williams treated her as a victim of the “burden” of celebrity: “Is it any kind of a burden for you, Senator, that so many opinions are pre-formed? Americans know Hillary Rodham Clinton.” And, in a question not aired, but posted in an online transcript, Williams fretted: “Because you've been a public figure, is it a burden for you to go back and amend or explain issues like health care, the vote for the war, things like that?” ABC’s Charles Gibson dared to raise a unique point: “You are a strong, credible, female candidate for President of the United States, and I mean no disrespect in this, but would you be in this position were it not for your husband?”Gibson pressed her from the right (“Would you take a pledge not to sign a bill that raised taxes?”) and then the left (“Can we finance this war without raising taxes?”) before echoing Couric: “Was your vote to authorize war in Iraq a mistake?”

...both shall fall into the Deitch.

You gotta love network blogs, if for nothing more they bring out those hidden gems of bias you otherwise wouldn't get from the people behind the camera. Like Ed Deitch, one of the men behind the curtain as it were.

Deitch, a senior producer for the NBC "Nightly News" expressed
bemusement recently on the NBC News "Daily Nightly" blog at the notion that there's opposition to a Bangor, Maine,
ban on smoking in cars with children.

I wrote more about that here at MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site. Deitch also expressed concern about the so-called obesity epidemic in a prior blog posting.

Having hit Chris Matthews hard here in recent weeks, let's give him credit for flashing some real reporter's instincts in going after Hillary aide Howard Wolfson on this afternoon's Hardball on the issue of whether the campaign is conducting opposition research on its Dem rivals.

And while Wolfson wouldn't flatly admit it, by the end of the interview there was little doubt that Hillary's campaign is actively digging for dirt on its Dem opponents.

View video here.

Matthews: "Let me ask you about opposition research. Is that part of your campaign: checking out other candidates's possible flaws in their resumes? Are you guys going to engage in that kind of politics to win the nomination?"

When Wolfson gave an evasive answer to the effect he and Hillary believe she can win by focusing on her record, Matthews persisted:

NBC's Thursday night comedy "30 Rock" took some good-natured potshots at "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams in a scene that depicted his office as rife with liquor bottles, dirty underwear, pornography ("Junk in the Trunk") and wall graffiti declaring "Katie Couric Sucks." (h/t TVNewser.com)

In a scene on last Thursday's show, "Jack Donaghy," a fictional NBC executive played by Alec Baldwin, finds "Kenneth," an NBC intern played by Jack McBrayer, cleaning an office with Brian Williams's name plate outside the door.

Looking at the mess, which also includes a sock filled with bird seed, Jack is astonished: "Good God, what does that man do in here?"

Mild-mannered Kenneth answers: "I don't know. I've never met Brian Williams, but his dressing room has to be cleaned up every morning between 11:00 and 11:30. That way, when Mr. Williams gets back from the liquor store, it's nice and tidy."

Documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has directed a new film that takes a look at the evangelical movement in America. Appearing on Monday’s "Good Morning America," she discussed the now disgraced Reverend Ted Haggard who served as a guide for her film crew’s tour of Red State America. Pelosi told host Diane Sawyer that most people think of evangelical Christians as "holy roller Jesus freaks," and seemed surprised that Haggard didn’t fall into that category. During the discussion, both the ABC anchor and the filmmaker appeared to be trying to treat evangelicals with respect. However, each succumbed to the occasional condescending sounding slip-up. Sawyer asked Pelosi whether the trip to conservative parts of America left her feeling as though "you had to get a visa to a foreign country." And later, Pelosi described the journey "as sort of a sociological field trip." It was the "Jesus freak" comment, however, that appeared too much for even Diane Sawyer:

Alexandra Pelosi: [On the Ted Haggard scandal] "I was heartbroken. Because pastor Ted was my tour guide. And he was so good to me. He took me under his wing and said, ‘Let me explain the red states to you’. And it was hard for me to understand, most people think of evangelicals as being these holy roller Jesus freaks, and Ted wasn't like that. And so, it was interesting for me to understand and say, these are good people. He was reasonable. He was reasonable. He was a normal, every day man. And so, it was hard to stomach, what had happened."

Sawyer: "Yes, and I'm going to have everybody write you who wants to write about ‘holy roller Jesus freaks,’ okay?"

In perhaps an ominous sign of the fawning media coverage Senator Hillary Clinton will receive as she runs for president, CBS News correspondent Joie Chen proclaimed that "it may be easier to get an audience with the Wizard of Oz than steal Clinton’s thunder right now." Yet isn’t it the media that is creating this thunder? Monday’s "Early Show" ran four stories pertaining to Hillary Clinton entering the Democratic race for president, including an interview with her top advisor, Howard Wolfson, and to be fair, "Early Show" co-host Hannah Storm did ask him some tough questions. Yet, when top tier Republican candidates have announced their intentions, as Arizona Senator John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney have all formed exploratory committees, the "Early Show" has not provided any coverage at all.

UPDATE 2: Full video (3:18) posted at the BMI Audio/Video Vault. What's linked in the first update is the highlight reel, as it were.

UPDATE 1: Video posted. Dan's segment aired at 4:50 EST.

Video (Windows Media format)

Video (Real Player format)

Dan Gainor of the MRC's Business & Media Institute will be on "Your World with Neil Cavuto" today at approx. 4:40 p.m. EST to talk about the Depression/Recession of 2006.

New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti gets Saturday's front-page with some hot news -- a Senate Democrat attacking Bush's foreign policy ("Leading Senator Assails President Over Iran Stance").

"The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday sharply criticized the Bush administration’s increasingly combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003.

Last Friday, I was shocked to see a series of photographs on the news wires, sent across by Reuters photographer Kevin Frayer, one of the photographers of Qana fame. The pictures illustrated a picture of a large crowd, grieving the death of a ten-year-old Palestinian girl, Abir Aramin, who was reported to have been injured by a stray rubber bullet fired by none other than the Israeli Defence Forces, and whose subsequent death has "enraged" the local Palestinian population.

There were some immediate problems with Mr. Frayer's depiction of these events, though. First and foremost, as someone who is constantly monitoring the news wires, I can comfortably say that there are no pictures on the wire of any anti-barrier protest at Anata during this time, and certainly no pictures of what would be a very injured girl. Furthermore, there are no photos of her in the hospital, a scenario that would obviously be very sympathetic, something which would attract every photographer in the area!

In other words, there is no photographic evidence that the Palestinian version of this story happened at all!

So what did happen?

There’s so much to find offensive about Fareed Zakaria’s article in this week’s Newsweek that it’s tough to know where to begin. Put simply, the piece stated rather strongly that President Bush is responsible for a declining rate of democracy around the world.

Of course, one study that Zakaria cited to prove this premise “points out that 2006 was a bad year for liberty, under attack from creeping authoritarianism in Venezuela and Russia, a coup in Thailand, massive corruption in Africa and a host of more subtle reversals.”

Zakaria never addressed what President Bush did to advance creeping authoritarianism in Venezuela and Russia, the coup in Thailand, and the massive corruption in Africa. Instead, he reported the following (emphasis mine throughout):

I was astounded, but not shocked today. I decided to Google two different terms using quotation marks (to ensure it was all encompassing). The two terms were "Democratic presidential candidate in 2008" and the flip side of that, "Republican presidential candidate in 2008."

The results?

The Republican candidate phrase showed up with 674 hits. The Democratic candidate phrase scored 9,274 hits.

Searching Google News continues to be a wonderful way to quantify the skewed way the MSM approaches dolling out only the news it wants us to digest. I, however, have not taken the time to further parse out this information by the source of these reports, but I think it would make for an interesting tabulation.

The Washington Post published no preview story for the March for Life on Monday, despite its massive annual size. But it did have room on the front page of the Metro section to review "Macaca" and how Virginia Republicans "might" (the Post hopes) be ruined in state elections this fall for their insensitivity.

On Page B-4, the Post did have a traffic diagram with the headline "Streets to Close for Antiabortion March." The March is rebutted right underneath the diagram, listing ''ABORTION RIGHTS EVENTS." They reported Planned Parenthood will "toast the Roe vs. Wade anniversary with a benefit tonight featuring actress Kathleen Turner," and NARAL Pro-Choice America "plans a benefit Thursday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel."

On the front page of the Metro section was a story by Macaca specialist Tim Craig headlined "Offensive GOP Words Might Speak Louder Than Va. Transit Deal." It had the typical Post thesis that social conservatives (the "far right") are destroying the Virginia GOP:

For general discussion and comment.

If opposing abortion makes you a "social conservative," what does supporting abortion make you? Why, nothing at all, or certainly nothing worth mentioning in NBC's eyes.

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell narrated a segment on this morning's "Today" about the three candidates who threw their hats into the presidential ring over the weekend: Hillary, Bill Richardson and Sam Brownback.

O'Donnell described Hillary simply as "Senator Hillary Clinton." Nothing about her views on abortion.

O'Donnell identified Bill Richardson as the first potential Hispanic president, "adding to the Democratic field of potential firsts if elected: Clinton, the first woman and Barack Obama, the first African-American." How nice.

Nothing about Richardson's views on abortion either.

But when it came to the Republican newly in the race, virtually the first words out of O'Donnell's mouth were: "Two-term Kansas senator Sam Brownback is a social conservative who opposes legalized abortion."

View video here.

With Democrats returning to power in the House and Senate, political reporters touched on how they felt abused and ignored during their time in the minority. But National Public Radio isn’t treating the Republicans now as a minority. They’re treating them as nonexistent in some stories. On Friday’s Morning Edition broadcast, reporter Elizabeth Shogren assembled an entire story on new Democratic proposals to halt global warming, but there were no Republicans, no energy industry representatives, and no warming skeptics. They only heard new socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders saying "one has got to be a moron" not to be concerned.

No one in the Shogren story was a "liberal" (not to mention a socialist – Sanders was merely described as "independent.") The proposed bills weren’t liberal either, just "aggressive." It was the Bernie Sanders-Barbara Boxer bill versus the Dianne Feinstein bill, which seemed conservative by comparison.

The Washington Post, today, seems to be lamenting that this year's White House Correspondent's dinner will somehow be too nice to President Bush. In a piece titled "With Rich Little, Press Corps Is Assured a Nice Impression", the Post sees a "controversy" brewing over the fact that an act has been hired that doesn't treat president Bush as a despised figure.

Being nice (to a Republican) simply isn't an option to the Washington Post, it appears.

Stung by criticism that comedian Stephen Colbert went too far last year in his remarks at the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner, the group announced last week that it had lined up a different kind of entertainer for its next dinner on April 21: impersonator Rich Little.

Our Next President?

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (white atheist ).  When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced, and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim -- moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school. Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Obama, Sr., and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr., was two. Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro, who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta's Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world. Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.

Would you vote for him?

Our Next President?

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (white atheist ).  When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced, and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim -- moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school. Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Obama, Sr., and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr., was two. Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro, who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta's Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world. Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.

Would you vote for him?

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

Will the rise of blogging and "citizen journalism"* have a positive effect on news coverage of politics? I'd have to say yes. Kate Werk at Small Dead Animals posted the other day on a different reason this will be so:

The distinction between national and local is an important one. [...] I find the local reporting by mainstream affiliates in my part of the country to be, by and large, reasonably thorough and not nearly as tainted by the political "default setting" that infects much of national and international coverage. [...]

Indeed, one wonders how different our perceptions of the national mainstream media might be if the chattering quasi -experts, political mouthpieces and overpaid anchors were sent into early retirement, and replaced with editing teams that simply compiled reports submitted by local affiliates and journalists in the field.

Removing the conclusion-drawing, forecasting and speculation that currently infects hard news could go a long way towards restoring the credibility of a troubled industry and the confidence of that "former audience" - those news consumers who have turned to the internet, not for its speed, but for the sources - to fact check, cross-check and provide context.

The emergence of blogging as a source of national news can bring out information that the elitist, liberal press can't or won't report.

Obviously George Stephanahole doesn't comprehend how much raising gas taxes would cripple our economy.  He talks like this action would curtail peoples driving and thus drive down gasoline consumption.  Hey George, you little monkey, not everyone lives in DC where the mode of transportation is mass transit for most folks.  I don't know of a single person who gets into their car purely for the purpose of joy riding.  We need them to get to work you fool!

Raising gas taxes has an effect on the cost of almost all commodities and that gets passed on to the consumer.  George probably just forgot this little fact and maybe he thinks we should all just be driving those little hybrids.  You know, the ones that fold up like an accordian when they are hit head on.  But George doesn't pay attention to those small incignifcant details because he drives a big car and has travel expenses paid by his leftist TV network.

Today (Sunday, January 21, 2007), the Los Angeles Times toasted Sen. Hillary Clinton's entrance into the 2008 race. Her announcement of a presidential exploratory committee was met with a whopping 2,050-word, front-page article ("Clinton joins 2008 race for president") (see image).

As we reported on Wednesday (here), the Times celebrated Sen. Obama's announcement of an exploratory committee with front-page treatment, accompanying photos, and a generous 1,469 words.

But how has the Times been treating similar announcements by Republicans?