Neal Gabler called Media Research Center "liars" on this evening's Fox News Watch. The accusation against NewsBusters' parent organization came in the course of a discussion of media coverage of Mitt Romney's announcement of his presidential candidacy.

View video here.

Conservative columnist Jim Pinkerton observed: "I don't think [the media] like Romney. I don't think they really want a Republican to win, and they're using his Mormonism as one way to get at him."

Gabler: "Who's this 'they' you're talking about? This strange 'they' that doesn't want Romney to win?"

Pinkerton: "I can answer that question for Neal. Thank you for asking. Media Research Center counted up the minutes and seconds . . . "

Gabler, interrupting: "A conservative organization?"

Pinkerton: "Yes. They counted up the minutes that CBS News had devoted to Barack Obama's announcement and to Romney's. And the ratio was 54:1. Fifty-four Obama. One Romney."

Gabler: "Figures don't lie, as my father used to say. Liars do figure."

"Democratic Victory in House" vs. "Gridlock in Senate"

At the Fox News site, an AP story entitled Senate Gridlocked on Iraq Troop Buildup has as its first paragraph of copy:

The vote was 56-34. That was six short of the 60 needed to advance the measure, which is identical to a nonbinding resolution that Democrats pushed through the House on Friday.

Back when I was in high school, 60 minus six equalled 54, not 56. I begin to ask myself, is AP truly biased, or is their staff so uneducated that they are unable to formulate a cogent thought?

When the Air Pelosi brouhaha arose in the last few weeks, the first story that came to my bias-obsessed brain was the Air Sununu scandal in 1991, a crusade led by The Washington Post. The White House chief of staff John Sununu (father of the current senator) drew great controversy for his use of government jets and then, a government limo trip to a stamp auction. Comparison to other scandals, including congressional travel, came in our newsletter MediaWatch. Consider the comparison of the Post's investigative vigor:

Air Pelosi, 2007: One story on A-15, headlined "Pelosi Catches Nonstop Flights Home," a header designed for yawns, 272 words.

Air Sununu, 1991: 25 stories in 68 days (April 21-June 27), eleven on Page 1.

As Congress debates nonbinding resolutions to rebuke President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq, and Democrat candidates for president move further and further to the left on this issue, an immutable fact about the press is becoming more and more apparent: no media outlet dares to completely challenge Hillary Clinton concerning her October 2002 vote in favor of the war resolution.

A fine example of what should be asked of the junior senator from New York occurred on Friday’s “Real Time” when host Bill Maher posed the following to John Edwards (video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated, forward to 4:30):

Don’t you find it comical when supposedly tolerant, antiwar Hollywoodans feel the need to hurl childish epithets at their political opponents as they’re feigning moral superiority?

Such was certainly the case Friday when actor Tim Robbins published a scathing article about President Bush and the remaining percentage of Americans that still support the war in Iraq.

Maybe even more ironic was the title, “Our Better Adult,” and the assertion by Robbins that he and his ilk are the mature ones in America as he callously insulted the most powerful man in the world thusly (emphasis mine throughout):

So here we are again. A new year faces us, a clear message has been sent to Washington - and some might say the world - by the people of the United States. Get out of Iraq. And the idiot drunk of a president says, "I hear you."

Yes, Tim, that’s certainly behaving like a better adult. Yet, that was just the beginning of his vitriolic attack:

Because the other one got full.

Interviewing anti-war Senator Russ Feingold this morning, Good Morning America weekend co-host Bill Weir offered his interpretation of the mid-term election results and virtually taunted Democrats for being insufficiently aggressive in confronting President Bush:

"Do you hold your party responsible, not only for the authorization, but for the seeming inability to muster a unified front to fight the president on this, to get what you want, and apparently what the American people wanted with the mid-term elections, and end the war?"

View video here.

Feingold, in full pass-the-buck mode: "This is George Bush's war without a doubt."

A senior Pentagon official has rejected as false and misleading recent media headlines, based on an AP story, depicting military recruits receiving waivers as 'ex-cons.' An example is this story: Military Accepting More Ex-Cons.
Said Bill Carr, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy:

"For those who have a felony waiver, not only are they not ex-cons, they are not felons for the most part. If one is charged with a felony offense, even if the charge is dismissed or the conviction is reduced to a misdemeanor, even under those circumstances the waiver still goes forward under our rule, simply so that we can be sure that the person, as a whole person, is going to be a good fit in the military. And so assertions that we're discussing ex-convicts are simply false, and frankly for a felony waiver we're typically not even discussing felons."

Carr made the remarks in a recent interview on rightANGLE, the TV show that this NewsBuster hosts. In comments made subsequent to the show, Carr observed:

"Society generally has a stereotypical view of felons as hard-core convicts. The majority of felons allowed to serve do not fit this stereotypical image. The press has headlined these as 'ex-cons,' yet in many of these cases imprisonment was not part of equation and the felony circumstance is a single instance and does not represent a criminal propensity.

I find it absolutely fascinating and disgusting that the media mogul types will cross any and all boundries of decency and morality to make more money and increase ratings except provide a balanced media perspective like Fox News.

You would think, that these greedy media executives at GE, NBC or CNN would possibly look at the success of Fox and possibly provide a little competition, by providing the American people with news reporting, rather than rhetoric and opinion vommiting.

In any competitive business market, you have to keep up with the competition, and mimic, at a minimum, or even better, leap frog past your competition.

Newspapers and Nightly News are continuing not to listen to their customers, and provide them with what they want, and their profits and marketshare continue to dwindle.

My brother and I sold positions in GE this week and wrote their Investor Relations department telling them the reason we sold was due to GEs support and employment of Keith Olberman and William Arkin of MSNBC and NBC respectively
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The negativity, cynicism and personal vitrol of these two pundits is way too unprofessional for both the journalism world and the business world.

I hope as many people on this site as possible do the same. I challenge each reader of this message to challenge 3 family and friends to write NBC and GE and tell them to be good "citizens" by, at a minimum, having an unbiased news outlet on cable. Ratings may also go up, as a positive side-effect.

We must change this cancerous media before it is too late.