Chris Matthews grew "verklempt," he said, on Wednesday night’s Hardball, as he pondered how a class reunion made plain for him that some people watch him every night, and trust him like people trusted Walter Cronkite. From there, Matthews and his guests took up the subject of objectivity in journalism:

Ana Marie Cox, Time.com: "I also want to say that this idea about voice being very important to the current viewer and, and Eugene’s right that it’s true, that this idea that we should be aiming for objective truth in, in journalism is a relatively new thing for us."

Chris Matthews: "I agree."

Cox: "And I think what’s important is that people trust, they could trust an unbiased [sic], they could trust a biased source."

Matthews: "Okay, this country was built on biased reporting."

Via The Catholic League.

In a speech in New York, Harvard professor Jessica Stern reportedly told her audience, "Catholic priests are not stepping up to condemn those who kill abortion doctors." Her comments were reported in today's New York Sun (Fri. 6/15/07).

Well, Jessica. The reason that Catholic priests aren't "stepping up" is that there has been no reason to. There have been exactly ZERO murders of abortion doctors and clinic workers in the United States and Canada so far in the 21st century. The last murder was nine years ago in 1998. (Even the defenders of abortion recognize this. Look here.)

See on Drudge that some 4th grade teacher got his students to "research" global warming and have taken an unveiled swipe at the 15 year-old featured in that story recently run here at NB.

Too bad these kids will find out what it is all about. The responses at the site of the Maine newspaper article is overwhelmingly against what the teacher did.

When two mainstream media outlets like CNN and the New York Times converge as they did on Thursday's "American Morning" and discuss Hillary Clinton, you might expect sugar-coated discussion of the leading Democrat presidential contender. But that wasn't the case when "American Morning" co-host Kiran Chetry interviewed New York Times correspondent Don Van Natta Jr., who is the co-author of a new book on Hillary Clinton entitled "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton."

The mainstream media often obsess about the profit margins of "Big Oil" companies. We at NewsBusters and our friends at the MRC's Business & Media Institute have frequently documented how the media view the petroleum industry in a particularly fiendish manner at the very worst and a highly skeptical light at best.

So surely the MSM will have just as much outrage when there's a corporation that receives from the taxpayer what literally amounts to blood money, and, to top it off, has a very healthy profit margin, right?

Unlikely if the name of that corporation is Planned Parenthood:

(CNSNews.com)* - Despite a drop in donations and the first fall in income from clinics in its history, the nation's biggest abortion provider made a high profit last year, thanks to the American taxpayer. Pro-lifers want this to stop.

During its 2005-2006 fiscal year, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America performed a record 264,943 abortions, attained a high profit of $55.8 million and received record
taxpayer funding of $305.3 million.

According to its annual report, income is divided roughly into three major categories: clinic income (fees charged to customers at clinics); donations (gifts from corporations, foundations and individuals); and taxpayer money (grants and contracts from federal, state and local government).

If you want to be a "hero" to Time magazine you need a left-wing political agenda that includes:

• Trying to stop climate change
• support for taxpayer funded stem cell research
• support for radical gun control
• support for subsidized housing
• OR raising taxes by 18 percent sometime during your term

Time's Michael Grunwald gushed about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) calling them "New Action Heroes" on June 15.

The article, which labeled both Republicans as "social liberals" praised the way the politicians embraced left-wing positions on domestic issues, especially radical environmentalism.

John Cusack appeared on the June 15 edition of "The Early Show" to discuss his new movie "1408." At the very end, host Russ Mitchell brought up his upcoming film "Grace is Gone." Cusack claimed the film is about Iraq and "some of the issues the families have when the coffins come home because...the Bush administration banned photos of the dead," which Cusack believes is a "very egregious political act."

RUSS MITCHELL: You’ve got a movie coming out later this year, "Grace is Gone," that you're very proud about, very proud of.

JOHN CUSACK: I produced a film called "Grace is Gone" coming out about -- it's about the Iraq conflict and some of the issues that the families have when the coffins come home because, you know, the Bush administration banned photos of the dead. So I thought that was a very egregious political act –

No, this is not a joke. Michael Moore really did call Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) "sexy" in his soon-to-be released movie "Sicko."

According to a copy leaked via the Internet, Moore makes the point that poor Americans went without health care until Clinton came on the scene:

"This went on for years until this man [Bill Clinton] rode into town, bringin' with him, his little lady."

Then as flattering photographs of Hillary flashed on the screen and the song "I'll Take You There" played, Moore described the senator.

"Sassy. Smart. Sexy."

The Business & Media Institute will be offering a full review of "Sicko" next week.

Photo at right found and available at CarryOnAmerica.com.

One of the more persistent myths in this country is that lower income people are liberals. Anyone who's spent more than a weekend in the Midwest, South, or West can tell you that in many places, it's the richer neighborhoods that tend to vote Democrat.

The fact that the left now has money (and lots of it) has significant benefits for it but there are downsides, especially if you're one of those liberals who is obsessed with wealth redistribution. The trouble for these folks is that now that in many ways the left has made peace with capitalism, it simply doesn't have the stomach to engage in the extremist regulation that statist liberalism demands philosophically. Instead, the left focuses on "higher-order needs" such as environmentalism, identity politics, and political correctness.

That's very frustrating for many who long for the days when being liberal wasn't synonymous with pampered, rich media elites as Matt Taibbi writes in the left-wing "Adbusters."

Here’s the real problem with American liberalism: there is no such thing, not really. What we call American liberalism is really a kind of genetic mutant, a Frankenstein’s monster of incongruous parts – a fat, affluent, overeducated New York/Washington head crudely screwed onto the withering corpse of the vanishing middle-American manufacturing class.

Here’s something a little more light for a Friday afternoon, but demonstrates the mainstream media’s biased view of the world.

Among the "Quick Hits" on CNN’s "American Morning" on Friday was a brief on how the drought in the Southeast is affecting the production of Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. The water levels in the cave spring that supplies the Jack Daniels distillery are "dangerously low" according to the brief by co-host John Roberts.

After giving the brief, Roberts and substitute weather forecaster Reynolds Wolf began the weather report with the following exchange:

Just in case our kids weren’t getting enough global warming alarmism from their teachers and the mainstream media, MTV announced Wednesday that it will be further brainwashing youth with junk science about the planet’s imminent doom.

How might that change Mark Knopfler’s fabulous “Money For Nothing” lyrics and video?

Before we get to that, here’s how Variety reported this announcement (h/t Tim Graham, emphasis added throughout):