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Touting it as “some unusually direct talk today from Democratic candidate Barack Obama on the issue of race, something he rarely focuses on in his speeches,” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Tuesday decided to showcase a clip of Obama delivering a standard liberal critique of President Bush for not spending enough federal money on social programs. Williams relayed how “Obama said the Bush administration has done little to address what he called 'a quiet riot' of discontent and despair among blacks in this country, one that erupted in L.A. 15 years ago and has been building again since the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.”

In the clip, NBC viewers heard Obama issue the hardly unusual liberal talking point that “this administration was color blind in its incompetence” before he avoided holding those in question responsible for their own plight: “All the hurricane did was make bare what we ignore each and every day, which is that there are whole sets of communities that are impoverished, whole sets of communities that don't have meaningful opportunity and don't have hope and are forgotten.”

For CNN, any opportunity is a good one to take potshots at U.S. policy in Iraq, even a solemn ceremony dedicated to honoring America's brave soldiers. This afternoon at 12:37 pm EDT, CNN International used the cover of a report on soldiers being honored for their valor to challenge MNF-I commander General David Petraeus on the success of the surge. CNN host Michael Holmes, an Australian, introduced the segment with a skeptical spin.

MICHAEL HOLMES: The U.S. troop surge. Is it working? Well, the top U.S. commander there says it’s too early to know for sure. David Petraeus is also urging patience, as the administration has for some time, despite the increasing number of U.S. casualties.

View video here.

Lewis 'Scooter' Libby's sentencing occurred on Tuesday and Katie Couric led the CBS Evening News the same way she did when Libby was convicted three months ago: With a comparison to the Iran-Contra scandal and how he's the highest-ranking official convicted of a felony in 20 years. But his conviction was news three months ago, not now. Back on March 6, Couric teased: “Guilty: Scooter Libby is convicted in the CIA leak case, the highest ranking White House official found guilty of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal.” She opened by pointing out how “Libby is the highest ranking White House official convicted of a felony in two decades.”

Fast forward to June 5 and Couric teased: “Tonight, the hammer comes down on Scooter Libby. He was once Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, now he's going to prison. The highest-ranking White House official in nearly twenty years convicted of a felony.” She began the newscast:

“Hello everyone. Not since the Iran-Contra scandal nearly two decades ago has such a high-ranking White House official been convicted of a felony. And today, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison in connection with that very convoluted CIA leak case. Libby was not convicted of leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, but rather of lying about what he knew.”

As reported by NewsBusters last week, NASA’s chief global warming alarmist James Hansen voiced displeasure with NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s recent comments concerning climate change not being an urgent issue.

With this in mind, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has published a detailed analysis of Hansen’s claims about global warming.

Moments ago, the center released the following press release concerning their study (emphasis added throughout):

The Republicans are debating again tonight on CNN. Discuss it here as it happens.

Tune in via web at this link.

On Tuesday's edition of The View on ABC, comedienne Kathy Griffin really seemed to be auditioning for the Rosie O'Donnell Chair in Conservative-Bashing. ABC's Barbara Walters began by deploring how two new Hillary biographies are "both nasty," spurring Griffin to accuse the authors of "good, old-fashioned, garden variety sexism." She also accused men of "taking down" vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, growled about "women eating their own" over an anti-Hillary letter in Newsweek, and said Condoleezza Rice is "not a pro-woman woman" because she "follows everything white men say....Any African American woman who is a Republican does not understand that she's not a part of their agenda. Wake up!" Walters told Griffin she was "so bigoted." Joy Behar cracked that Margaret Thatcher was a "woman with a penis." Only token non-liberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck insisted that Hillary ought to endure scrutiny like any other presidential candidate.

Here's a new T-W-I-S-T on the Spelling Bee story we blogged about here last Friday. You'll recall that the MRC Culture and Media Institute director Robert Knight noted that many news outlets ignored champion Evan O'Dorney's homeschooled status.

Now, Andrew Coulson of Cato Institute informs us, Sara Mead, an education issues blogger at "The Quick and the ED" is suggesting characterizations of O'Dorney as homeschooled are false, "because he is registered with a public school independent study program."

Yet, "As I point out [in my post], even the O'Dorney's liaison at the Venture alternative public school refers to him as a homeschooler -- I called and asked," Coulson told NewsBusters in an e-mail.

Here's an excerpt from his blog entry "Bee Sensible" posted today at "Cato-at-Liberty":

On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," the ABC program devoted two segments to promoting the religiosity of the 2008 Democratic contenders. At the same time, a graphic hopefully asked, "Are evangelicals embracing Democrats? New party of God?"

Recapping a CNN sponsored event on Monday night where '08 contenders talked about their faith, ABC featured two liberals who were making the Democratic case for Christian voters. GMA co-host Robin Roberts interviewed Jim Wallis, the left-wing editor of Sojourners magazine. Neither Roberts, nor the ABC graphic made any mention of his liberal slant. Additionally, a segment hosted by reporter Dan Harris featured this quote from one Mara Vanderslice:

Mara Vanderslice (Sr. Partner, Common Good Strategies): "This year, I think the Democrats are more comfortable talking about religion and values."

 

Vanderslice just happens to have strong ties to the Democratic Party, is the former Director of Religion for the 2004 John Kerry campaign and had past associations to extreme left wing groups. Perhaps GMA viewers should have been apprised of those facts in relation to Vanderslice’s contention that Democrats are "more comfortable" with religion.

To hear the media tell it, Cuba is a great country to live in and visit. With propagandist Michael Moore’s “Sicko” soon to debut and glorify the Cuban health care system, NBC “Today host Matt Lauer broadcast from Havana, Cuba on June 5.

Lauer praised the “booming” economy and talked about the country’s stability.

“There’s stability here. Business is booming and tourists are flocking here, some two million a year.”

Lauer didn’t emphasize that those tourism dollars pay to keep Fidel Castro’s dictatorship in power, or that the Cuba seen by tourists is not the Cuba lived in by ordinary Cubans.

NewsBusters reader Paul Farmer (NoMoreClintons) sent along the following this morning a guest blog submission. Farmer touched on the decidedly vague guidance that the Associated Press gives reporters on when to include a politician's party affiliation.

Farmer has an older AP Stylebook than I have (I have the 2006 edition), but the portion on "party affiliation" he excerpts from his is nearly a word-for-word match with mine.

So in light of AP's pattern of obscuring the party affiliation of the recently indicted Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) (as reported by NB's Lynn Davidson) and an initial lack of interest by some media in Jefferson's scandal (see this oldie but a goodie from 2005, the early days of NB), I'd thought I'd share Mr. Farmer's thoughts with you:

Here’s a marvelous irony for you: as the leaders of the eight most developed nations meet in Germany to discuss global warming, South America has ended one of its coldest Mays in history.

You really can’t make this stuff up!

Eugenio Hackbart, the Chief Meteorologist for MetSul Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil, published the following Tuesday at ICECAP, the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (emphasis added throughout):

In what will surely be one of the largest ever, if not the largest, in-kind contributions to a presidential campaign if Al Gore decides to run, NBC Universal announced late last week that its networks will devote an incredible 75 hours of time on Saturday, July 7 to showing Gore's “Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis.”

In addition to the entirety of NBC's prime time that night hosted by Ann Curry of NBC News, CNBC will carry seven hours of coverage from 7pm to 2am EDT; Bravo will show the concerts around the world for 18 hours starting at 8am EDT; and both the Sundance channel and the Universal HD channel will showcase the concerts for 22 hours each beginning at 4am EDT.

Rounding out the 75 hours, mun2 will run a two-hour show at 5pm EDT and Telemundo will air a one-hour special at 7pm EDT. And that's not counting how NBC's press release touted that “MSNBC will broadcast special coverage of this global concert event throughout the day with live reports from the concerts in New York and London.”

No journalists in the last thirty years have built more of a legend than the old Washington Post pairing of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. As the Watergate wrecking crew that put Richard Nixon in the scrap yard, they are America’s most venerated “icons” of investigative reporting.

But since that event, the paths of Woodward and Bernstein have separated dramatically. Woodward is still considered the top-dog journalist in Washington, a titan no president can ignore if he cares about his historical legacy, or his short-term political standing.  By contrast, Bernstein has bounced around to cushy media jobs, at ABC, and at Time magazine, rarely distinguishing himself, with a mere fraction of Woodward’s celebrity aura.

Publicly, American media elites often deny that they attempt to influence the national agenda. They're professionals, so the story goes, and completely capable of not letting their personal viewpoints intrude accidentally into their stories. It's laughable given the mountain of evidence to the contrary and the fact that journalists support affirmative action on the grounds that white reporters can't cover minority issues as fairly.

Every so often, however, you hear journalists privately say the complete opposite--that not only do they have the ability to influence news, they also choose to influence it. Such statements are usually more common among the non-American press where the sham of "objectivity" is not perpetrated on the public.

With that in mind, I was still quite surprised to see the following statements said at a panel discussion in Israel on the influence that country's media has had on its foreign policy:

Former CBS host Bryant Gumbel, who was once infamously caught on camera calling a conservative activist a "f***ing idiot," defended and reaffirmed his comment while guest hosting on Tuesday’s "Live With Regis and Kelly." Discussing the possibility of inadvertently swearing on live television, Gumbel told co-host Kelly Ripa that he "was correct" when he used the F-word in reference to Robert Knight, then with the Family Research Council.

While explaining the 2000 event, Gumbel did announce that it was "wrong" to use profanity on the air, but added that he found Knight’s assertion, that gays should not be allowed in the Boy Scouts, "infuriating." He also derided Mr. Knight, now the director of MRC's Culture and Media Institute (CMI) saying, "I'm going to kindly describe him as a gentleman."

Video of the Gumbel’s original on-air vulgarity can be found here. Video of the June 5 "Regis and Kelly" can be found here: Video: Real (942 KB) or Windows (1 MB) plus MP3 (164 KB) [Warning: Discussion of the profanity follows]

For the second time in four days – oddly occurring coincident with a G-8 summit being held in Germany to address climate change – a major news organization has published an article extolling the benefits of global warming.

In fact, Reuters not only followed the Associated Press’ lead as reported by NewsBusters Monday, but did them one better.

In a piece entitled “Global Warming May Be Good For Greenland,” writer Wojciech Moskwa made this stunning revelation early and often (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer Sick-n-Tired):

Earlier this year, Democrats caved in to their left wing by canceling a debate hosted by FNC on the grounds that Fox wouldn't provide a fair forum for their presidential aspirants. Never mind that in 2003, the Dems eagerly and without complaint participated in a FNC-sponsored debate, the last CNN-sponsored debate had the network pulling far more strings than it should have, skewing the process in a way that it wanted.

As noted by Howard Mortman, the liberal dominated network deliberately placed the three highest-polling candidates right next to each other, thereby minimizing the exposure the "lesser" candidates received. Moderator Wolf Blitzer also took more time for himself than every candidate except Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Discuss the news of the day and anything else you like...

Update. Please move all GOP discussion to this thread.

As Drudge noted last night, a book review in today's New York Times by author-professor Robert Dallek trashed "Her Way," the new autobiography of Hillary Clinton by two of the paper's long-time reporters, investigative reporter Don Van Natta Jr., and Jeff Gerth, who worked at the Times for over 25 years.

Dallek's is a common name in the Rolodex of Times political reporters looking for a critic of Republican presidents past and present, and as shown by his negative review of "Her Way," he can also be relied on to defend Democrats. That's something Times' book editors surely suspected when they approached Dallek with the assignment in the first place, suggesting that in this case ideological loyalty to the liberal Hillary trumped the paper's corporate loyalty to its long-time reporters.

Earlier this morning on the Fox News Channel, MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell talked to the gang at "Fox & Friends" about the poor ratings at the "CBS Evening News" since Katie Couric took the helm. Video Real (2.5 MB) or Windows (2 MB) plus MP3 (1 mb)

STEVE DOOCY, co-host: Katie Couric, who makes a lot of money, is just about 15 blocks from here. Her ratings have never been lower. What's going on?

BRENT BOZELL: Well, I mean, I wasn't Nostradamus when I said, as said others when she got the job, that she was going to fail. It's the wrong match. She's the queen, the master of morning talk shows with, because of her perky personality and the pop culture format. You put her on the "Evening News" where there's gravitas that is necessary. It's got to be far more serious. There wasn't a match there. And we knew there wasn't a match. It was going to be one of two things. Either they were going to change the whole format of the news to fit her, or it would fail because she doesn't fit in.

(HT: MPJ)

Former hipppies from Haight-Ashbury are getting fed up (http://www.boingboin...)with the vagrants, drifters and homeless people driving down their property values.

Wonder what generation could have ever given them the idea that such behavior was acceptable and "rebellious."

The quotes are hilarious:

(Arthur) Evans, 64, says (the punks) should get help, clean up or go home...
"I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long," he said. "But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior...."

"I'm sick of stepping over gangs of kids, only to be told 'Die, yuppie!' A lot of us were flower children, but we grew up," said Robert Shadoian, 58, a retired family therapist.

"There are responsibilities in this world you have to meet. You can't be drugged out 24/7 and expect the world to take care of you."