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Reporting moves by Fred Thompson to launch a presidential campaign, ABC's Jake Tapper on Wednesday night interjected a conservative take on the actor and former Senator, suggesting “Thompson will soon face questions” about “the liberal positions he's taken in the past on campaign finance reform and abortion.” Describing McCain-Feingold as “liberal” is noteworthy in itself. In his World News piece, Tapper had explained how, given conservative dissatisfaction with the three leading Republican contenders, Thompson thinks he can be “a conservative with star power.” But, Tapper cautioned, “playing a President is a lot easier than being one.”

The NBC Nightly News also took time to look at a potential Thompson bid, but neither Brian Williams or Tim Russert hinted at any liberal views held by Thompson. In fact, Williams relayed how “he would run as a red-meat conservative” and Russert reported that, to fill the vacuum felt by conservatives, “Thompson would try to cast himself as a consistent conservative.”

Although most media coverage of the closure of RCTV by the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela has been somewhat bland, we now have an example of a journalist who actually supports the takeover of that long established television station. It is the former Associated Press reporter in Venezuela, Bart Jones, who wrote an approving article in today's Los Angeles Times, Hugo Chavez versus RCTV. Jones justifies the closing of that station by the Chavistas by claiming that it supported the 2002 coup against Chavez:

RCTV's most infamous effort to topple Chavez came during the April 11, 2002, coup attempt against him. For two days before the putsch, RCTV preempted regular programming and ran wall-to-wall coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. A stream of commentators spewed nonstop vitriolic attacks against him — while permitting no response from the government.

In Tuesday's Chicago Sun-Times, TV critic Doug Elfman wasn't enthusiastic about a new USA Network program, "Starter Wife":

"The show just kind of lies there, like the bird poop that fell on our president's face at a press conference the other day. Oh, I mean, his shirt. Sorry. Wishful thinking."

When Elfman won an award at a newspaper he previous wrote for, the editor cited him for his "quick wit."

Perhaps among mainstream media types, wistfully dreaming of bird poop on President Bush's face qualifies as a real knee slapper.  What's next at the Sun-Times, the food editor hoping to see the President slide on a banana peel?

Elfman is right about one thing:  He is indeed sorry. 

Do you ever find it amusing when liberal newspaper reporters tear their hair out in frustration that all the Bush administration gives them is publicity, not news? If someone wants to argue that it's not a reporter's job to recycle robotically the publicity blurbs of the party in power, there is a two word retort: Bob Dart. Bob Dart of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote an article on how the House was taking up a bill to make gas price gouging a federal crime, since we face "much of the nation complaining that gas prices are the highest ever."

Dart's story featured this lineup of the notable and the quotable: Speaker Pelosi (Democrat); Rep. Bart Stupak (Democrat), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations; and Tyler Slocum energy expert with the left-wing group Public Citizen. He mentioned Sen. Maria Cantwell (Democrat) in passing. (CORRECTION: Dart's original story from the Cox News Washington Bureau also included, in paragraphs 19, 20, and 21, a statement from Marlo Lewis of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute and a refiners' representative, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution edited it out.)

In the new 40th Anniversary Edition of Rolling Stone magazine, Editor Jann Wenner asks rocker-icon Bob Dylan, "Do you worry about global warming?" and Dylan responds: "Where's the global warming? It's freezing here." 

The point is that Dylan was half-serious and questioning Wenner's liberal assumptions, as were a number of other 1960s rock icons who gave some startlingly sober answers to the hyper-idealized drivel regurgitated by Wenner and other questioners. (Hat tip to Cincinnati.com.) When asked his views about the 1960s, Director Steven Spielberg replied, "Just narcissism, a collective and personal narcissism." 

New York Times columnist and reporter Jim Dwyer provided comfort to left-wing anti-Bush conspirators everywhere when he gave respectability to Rosie O’Donnell’s wacky theorizing about how World Trade Center No. 7 collapsed (“miraculously, for the first time in history, steel was melted by fire”).

Even the headline misleads: “On Her Way Out the Door, Rosie O’Donnell Revives a Conspiracy Theory About 9/11.” Actually, the recently departed co-host of “The View” said it on the March 29 edition of the show -- two full months ago.

“The first day of the post-Rosie O’Donnell era on ‘The View’ television show has come and gone, and by any fair accounting, an often useful provocateur has left the building.

Actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson is close to forming a presidential exploratory committee, according to numerous media outlets, citing people close to the TV star. Reporting that news, CBSNews.com ran with a less-than-flattering AP photo of Thompson, pictured at right.

"Former Sen. Fred Thompson attends the Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford Conn., on May 24, 2007," read the caption.

By contrast, ABCNews.com ran an AP photo that features a stern-looking Thompson. With skyscrapers in the background, it evokes his current TV character incarnation, New York County District Attorney Arthur Branch on NBC's long-running court drama "Law & Order." You can see that screen cap pictured below:

Why is it that GWB and his cast of bandit appointees continue to attack Americans? This article was covered up so desperately this week by the "media" that it took two days for it to finally come to the attention of most of us. With Bush's over 350 million dollars directed at building "detention centers" a new name for concentration camps we can tell from this article what they are intended for. read on!!!

http://au.news.yahoo...

Monday May 28, 08:47 AM
Website links gay rights with terrorists
The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a website it operated that included gay rights and anti-war organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists.
The website identified different types of terrorists, and included a list of groups it believed could spawn terrorists. The list also included environmentalists, animal rights advocates and abortion opponents.

Al Gore’s new book "The Assault on Reason" has definitively established one fact: Al Gore is still the sorest loser in American politics. Even liberal book reviewers are wincing at the tone of his jeremiad against the Bush administration. The book should have been titled "They Should Have Elected Me Instead: How Much Better America Would Fare With President Gore."

He seems to believe his own silly "Saturday Night Live" skit from last year, the one in which he pretended to be president and gas was 19 cents a gallon and the budget surplus was $11 trillion. He even implies he would prevented 9/11.

Like many liberals with the itch to micromanage our lives, Gore clearly believes the American people are ignorant to the point of endangerment. So he’s become a media scholar, and unloaded his communications theories in a book excerpt hyped by his friends at Time magazine.

Update posted below w/link to NRO's Bench Memos.

"Over Ginsburg's Dissent, Court Limits Bias Suits," blared the May 30 front page headline by the Washington Post Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes. While the 5-4 ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. hinged on a plain and simple application of a 1964 federal law, Barnes front-loaded his article with the dissent of liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, buried the majority's rationale deep in the article after pro-Ginsburg feminist talking points, failed to include comment from Goodyear Tire, and gave readers an unbalanced portrait of the ruling focused on feminist reaction.

Let's take a look at how Barnes's bias unfolded, starting with the lede and second paragraph:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have said she saw evidence of climate change in a recent trip to Greenland, but leave it to CNN to press her and other Democrats from the left for not doing enough to stop greenhouse gas emissions "in their own backyard." Both "American Morning" and "The Situation Room" on Tuesday featured CNN congressional correspondent Andrea Koppel's segment on how the heating and cooling power supplied to the U.S. Capitol building comes from the Capitol Power Plant, which is half-fueled by coal, and emits "tens of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases into the air." The blame for these emissions is placed on the politics of Senators Robert Byrd and Mitch McConnell, both of whom come from "two of the biggest coal-producing states."

Koppel interviewed two people for her segment, both of whom have left-wing affiliations. The first was Pelosi's chief administrative officer for the House, Dan Beard, who talked about the massive environmental advantage of switching to compact fluorescent bulbs. The second, Frank O'Donnell of the group Clean Air Watch, was given two sound bites in the segment. O'Donnell compared Senators Byrd and McConnell to a famous television mobster. "It's as if Tony Soprano had a seat in the Senate. They're saying this plant must stay alive. It must keep burning coal, even though it is causing pollution and global warming."

Updated with video (14:35 EDT).

On Wednesday’s "Good Morning America," the ABC program attempted to justify and explain away the booing that Miss USA, Rachel Smith, received in Mexico City during Monday night’s Miss Universe pageant. In a tease for the segment, GMA anchor Diane Sawyer even wondered aloud, "Was it fair?"

Video (1:21): Real (2.19 MB) or Windows Media (2.49 MB), plus MP3 (376 kB)

Updated with video (13:50 EDT).

Is "Early Show" anchor Harry Smith stumping for an Al Gore presidency? On the May 30 edition of the show, it appeared like he did as he tried to place a "Gore 2008" pin on the former vice president’s suit. Before a tee ball interview, Smith demonstrated his desire for a Gore presidency to co-anchor Hannah Storm.

Video (0:29): Real (798 kB) or Windows Media (906 kB), plus MP3 (130 kB)

New York Times reporter Michael Luo’s Tuesday profile of Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, the GOP leader in shepherding through Congress a Bush-style immigration bill unpopular among Republicans, followed some familiar patterns of bias.

The first sign something was fishy was when a typically conservative Republican like Kyl got a chance to play hero in the Times -- “Change on Immigration Turns Senator Kyl Into Lightning Rod.”

“Angry calls poured into Senator Jon Kyl’s office this week by the thousands, expressing outrage beyond anything he said he had witnessed in his 20-year political career. The callers were inflamed by Mr. Kyl’s role in shaping the bipartisan immigration compromise announced May 17, which lawmakers continue to debate.

I see that the book "The Reagan Diaries" is out-selling AlGore's "Assault on Reason". Even a dead Republican is more interesting than Gore!

This is really getting hysterical. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) tours Europe to discuss the imminent doom to the planet at the hands of the left’s recent bogeyman anthropogenic global warming, late-May snows are falling all around her.

Honestly, folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

As she set out on her journey, such late-season white stuff hit parts of America, Canada, and Great Britain as reported by NewsBusters Tuesday.

Even better, as she met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a late-season snowstorm rocked Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, and Italy.

As reported by England’s Daily Mail (hilarious emphasis added throughout):

It's b-a-a-ck. Discuss the news of the day and anything else you like here.

I watched Rosie fold and fall to the ground after being unable to dominate a conservation with Hasselbeck. Elisabeth called her on facts which Rosie was unable to deny and forced to back away, in this case leave.

My facts tell me more than 4,600 terrorists have died since Jan 2006, not to mention a multitude of their leaders. We are not losing to them, the dems/news media are beating us. If our volunteers had been provided the necessary equipment long ago what impact would it have made on them? How can the dems be for the troops yet against supplying the funding? Rosie was against it.

Rosie is now writing blog rebuttals from her home, evading all possible confrontation.

Imagine conservatives standing up to them in similar fashion as Hasselbeck to Rosie.

JDW

Boy, if this is not communism what is? I see where HC wants to move the US away from a "do it on your own" society to one of "shared responsibility and prosperity." One thing about this is that we can really see her true colors with this speech to a technical school in NH. Needs coverage in my mind, big time.

Based on its own ABC poll, "Good Morning America" could have run a segment this morning on the theme "support for universal coverage slipping as Americans express increased concern for keeping taxes down." But that wouldn't have fit ABC's big-government paradigm. So instead, GMA used this prescription for pushing universal health care:

• Cherry-pick results from a poll you've conducted; ignoring inconvenient findings.
• Bring in a spokesman from a left-wing group that pushes universal care.
• Uncritically rely on a clip from, yes, Michael Moore's latest propa-mentary, "Sicko."

Today's "Good Morning America" took Barack Obama's announcement yesterday of his health care proposal as a jumping-off point for a segment on the broader issue. Co-host Diane Sawyer flashed a graphic showing that according to an ABC News poll, 56% of Americans favor Universal health coverage. What Diane didn't tell you: the number of people backing universal coverage has dipped since ABC last conducted such a poll, when support was at 62%.

On page 23 of the June 4 edition of Newsweek, there's a subtle bias on the "Perspectives" quotes-of-the-week page this week. Note the editorializing by using quotation marks suggesting progress will never happen in Iraq:

"It could be a bloody -- it could be a very difficult August." --President George W. Bush, on what is in store for U.S. troops in Iraq in the months before a "progress report" due in September (emphasis mine).

On page 33, there's a story by Melinda Liu on actual progress in Iraq, headlined: "Gathering the Tribes: U.S. field commanders are finally beginning to tap the traditional networks that helped Saddam stay in power." Liu reported from Ramadi that "Marines and Iraqi tribesmen and police are sitting together, swapping jokes and stories. Some of these Iraqis were probably shooting at Americans less than a year ago. Now they and the Marines are fighting side by side against Al Qaeda."

Politicians like Nancy Pelosi who carp about high gas prices and brood about gouging while simultaneously bemoaning global warming are hypocrites. That's the gist of Robert J. Samuelson's column in today's Washington Post. The actual title is A Full Tank of Hypocrisy, but the teaser headline for it on the online op-ed home page is "The Case for Gouging."

Samuelson in fact disputes that gouging, in the sense of collusion among oil producers/refiners, is taking place. He points out, for example, that concentration of ownership in the oil industry has been deemed low-to-moderate, "less concentrated than the auto industry, which is considered intensely competitive." But the long-time WaPo columnist does make the case than many politicians in the global-warming crowd are engaging in some have-it-both-ways hypocrisy on the issue of higher gasoline prices.

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