More headline editorializing, this time on Yahoo. A June 5 Reuters article titled, “Bush bashes Putin on democracy on eve of G8 summit” sounds like Bush attacked Russian president Vladimir Putin, but the body of the article clearly did not support that view.

The headline told a very different story than the article. Editors not reporters are generally responsible for headlines, and they can greatly influence opinions about the news. The importance of a bias-free headline is that most people don’t read every word of every article; they often just skim the headlines. That meant the people who read just the headline got a very different impression from those who read the entire article (emphasis mine throughout):

"Russia is not our enemy," Bush said after meeting Czech leaders on a visit aimed at highlighting the country's emergence from Soviet domination.

He said he would urge Putin at the summit to cooperate with the U.S. plan to deploy a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, but later in a speech took a dig at Moscow's record on democracy.

"In Russia reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," Bush said.

ABC's Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos on Friday night lamented the lost “hope” in the defeat of the compromise “immigration reform” bill as Gibson fretted about how “polarization” killed it. “Immigration bust,” Gibson teased World News: “Is there still hope for immigration reform after a highly touted deal falls apart?” He then led the newscast by repeating his “hope” line: “Many had great hopes for the compromise.” Turning to George Stephanopoulos in Iowa, Gibson proposed: “The left and the right opposed it. So you've got this polarization that killed the bill, and also the President's strength wasn't enough to keep it alive.” Stephanopoulos agreed as he held conservatives most culpable: “This was driven by the wings on either side. Liberal Democrats who didn't like the guest worker program, probably even more important, conservative Republicans who thought this program was amnesty, they drove this process, they killed the bill.”

That prompted Gibson to ruminate: “So it makes you wonder, right now, the way things stand, if our political system is really equipped to attack and solve the big problems?” Stephanopoulos confirmed: “Certainly not this big problem, Charlie, even though, as I said, a majority of Americans support it.”

Why Liberals do what they do.

I decided I would try to condense the liberal view into a single core belief and a single core attitude. The thinking here is, given any topic, the typical liberal view should follow naturally from these. I’m sure others have done something like this and done it with more thought and effort than I, but I’ll go ahead and give it a shot.

I’ll first start by presenting the “Core Belief” and the accompanying views that follow from it in a pseudo-math format because, well, I’m a geek. Then I’ll talk about the “Core Attitude”. Please note, that this is just a little exercise on my part. I don’t really mean to suggest that the motivations, beliefs and attitudes of real life individuals can be codified in the way that I’m doing here. So take it for what it’s worth.

Washington Post reporter Lori Montgomery must not be reading Newsbusters.

Because this is the second time she painted the Democrats as the saviors of the middle-class for wanting to reform the alternative minimum tax, but neglected to inform her readers that they are the same Democrats who voted against the full repeal of the AMT in 1999.

Her June 8 story referred to House Democrats as “looking to spare millions of middle class families from the expensive bite of the alternative minimum tax …”

Following a report on fisticuffs in the Alabama State Senate, CNN reporter T.J. Holmes cracked a joke about Sen. Lowell Barron (D) being on the receiving end of a punch to the face from Republican Senator Charles Bishop.

Video (1:39): Real (1.21 MB) or Windows Media (1.02 MB), plus MP3 (470 kB).

"The Democrat didn't hit him back. I mean, they say Democrats are weak on defense, but that was ridiculous," Holmes, co-anchoring the June 8 "CNN Newsroom" quipped.

While past ABC reports have mourned the hardship facing the American auto industry, ABC aired liberal support for higher fuel efficiency standards that would make competition more difficult and manufacturing more expensive.

But reporter Dean Reynolds gave almost no time to the auto industry in his June 7 “World News with Charles Gibson” story.

Reynolds cited left-wing Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Phyllis Cuttino of Pew’s Campaign for a Fuel Efficient America.

“We have better cup holders in cars, we have better music systems in cars – that’s all good,” Dorgan said, “But the fact is we need cars that are more efficient.”

National Public Radio folks read NewsBusters. The new show "Tell Me More" noticed that NB Senior Editor Tim Graham analyzed their sympathetic segment on anti-war mothers of fallen soldiers and how they felt about Cindy Sheehan's decision to abandon her activism for now because of mean conservatives.

On Friday's edition of "Tell Me More," NPR played host Michel Martin's Wednesday phone interview with Tim as he sat in his messy MRC office about his objections to the NPR piece, and he explained how the media didn't play up that Cindy Sheehan didn't merely suffer from derogatory names, but she also threw around a lot of derogatory names of her own. Tim also called out Martin for inaccurately suggesting on her blog that President Bush never met with Sheehan.

Update added below fold

The Secretary of Defense has decided to recommend a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rather than re-nominate General Peter Pace. Reporting this development, this CBS/AP story noted that the Pentagon personnel move by Secretary Robert Gates was done to avoid a contentious Senate circus, more so than with dissatisfaction with Pace's performance.

"It would be a backward looking and very contentious process," the AP quoted Gates, noting that Gates insisted the personnel move had "nothing to do" with Pace's performance.

So why this teaser photo illustration on the CBSNews.com front page, done in a grainy black-and-white and preparing the Web site reader for a negative take on the outgoing 40-year Marine veteran? (picture below jump)

Friday's New York Times predictably led with the dramatic stalling in the Senate of the immigration bill endorsed by President Bush (a story by Carl Hulse and Robert Pear that offers the pleasant surprise of the term "liberal Democrats" to characterize some opponents of the bill). As a counterweight, the Metro section fronted a sob-story by Jennifer Medina, "Arrests of 31 In U.S. Sweep Bring Fear In New Haven."

Some of those in federal custody are suspected of being illegal immigrants, and Medina described in sympathetic terms the liberal attitude toward illegal immigrants by New Haven, Conn. officials who "wanted to bring them out of the shadows."

"Within hours, any sense of sanctuary that the city and advocates for immigrants advocates [sic] had developed over the years was turned upside down, replaced with fear."

Original caption:

Media representatives wait for Paris Hilton to arrive at a Los Angeles municipal courthouse Friday, June 8, 2007. They were disappointed because she was driven in using an underground entrance as she arrived.

****Closed to further comments

National Public Radio’s weekend show "On The Media" is often a liberal oasis inside of a liberal oasis. Last weekend, NPR host Brooke Gladstone invited on Paul Waldman of that Hillary Clinton-cloned media pressure group, who wrote a study claiming the religious left was underrepresented on TV. (It might be because you often can’t really tell the difference between the "religious" left and the secular left. Both want socialism, abortion on demand, forced gay acceptance, the banning of the SUV, and the restoration of the 90-percent top tax bracket. But just one half says Jesus wouldn't drive an SUV.)

Gladstone’s other guest was Jeff Sharlet, a leftist blogger at a media-and-religion site called The Revealer. (It's the counterpoint to Get Religion, in other words.) At the segment’s end, Gladstone uncorked a new motto jokingly: "We really span the spectrum here from sort of left to very left."

As part of our continuing efforts to keep NewsBusters on the cutting edge, we're conducting a general survey of readers in conjunction with the Blog Readership Project.

If you have a few minutes, please take a moment to participate. The nice thing about this survey is you can skip questions you don't want to answer.

On Friday’s "Good Morning America," co-anchor Chris Cuomo, the son of former Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo, slammed conservative immigration hawk Tom Tancredo for using "scary" words and wondered why he chose to "rip" down the Senate’s immigration bill. The GMA anchor slyly asked if the Congressman was "driving anti-immigrant sentiment."

Cuomo’s overall tone fit the very definition of loaded questions and a liberal agenda. The ABC anchor, whose brother is the Democratic Attorney General of New York, began the segment by aggressively inquiring, "Why did you feel the need to rip a bill like this down?"

So much for objective journalists.

From the moment word got out that Rupert Murdoch had offered billions to buyout The Wall Street Journal, the media have cried foul.

Journalists and media critics charged that a Murdoch takeover would turn the prestigious business newspaper into a journalistic joke, that the media mogul would page six-ify the Journal.

An art director at The New York Times, carried those complaints a step further by creating a mock-up of what the Journal would look like under Murdoch. According to The Washington Post, the image has been circulating Journal and Times newsrooms for about a month.

The tabloid style page (See below) reveals the anti-Murdoch bias that exists even in the Times art department.

H/T to Talking Biz News.

The AP has given us a piece on how "Right-Wing" book publishers are "worried" over the future success of publishing books on conservatives topics. One cannot help wonder, though, if the "worry" by the so-called "right-wing" publishers is more like the APs glee when you read their piece titled, "Right-Wing Publishers Worry About Future", by Hillel Italie, AP National Writer.

The first half of this story leads the reader to imagine that Conservative books are hurting in the market with all the negative quotes employed about their future. Naturally, after that first half about how dismal the future for conservative books is, the story then takes a turn to praise liberal books, showing how "energized" they are, after which the story broadens into a piece about the entire BookExpo America gathering.

When done reading the report, you realize that, despite the story's title, it isn't just about how bad the conservative book market is, but, instead, it is a story on the whole of the BookExpo America trade show. Why, exactly, is this titled the way it is, then, if it isn't just about how bad the conservative market is?

Your opportunity to discuss whatever is on your mind...

When covering religion, the news media has a tendency to grant the Roman Catholic Church the lion’s share of religion coverage – in part due to its size, and in part due to its centralized authority in Rome. Protestant denominations, even the evangelical Protestant mega-pastors, are covered less each year. Unfortunately, that centralized authority also leads to media caricatures of tyranny (remember New York Times editor nastily Bill Keller comparing the Vatican to the Kremlin, the Polish Pope to the Soviet autocrats?)

Time’s David Van Biema and Katherine Mayer crack a little too wise in this week’s story on Anglicanism (their cover story in the Europe and the South Pacific editions), noting not only "Roman-style lockstep," but a "useful Catholic authoritarianism." This has a very obvious whiff of politics, comparing Pope Benedict to a tinhorn dictator like a Francisco Franco or a Juan Peron. The pontiff is not a dictator, and no one is forced to join a Catholic church or forced to obey its moral dogmas.

What are the odds Ben Affleck would refer to Muslims who believe literally in the Koran as "Neanderthals?" But when it comes to Christians . . .

As NewsBuster Geoffrey Dickens has noted, Affleck appeared on yesterday evening's edition of Hardball. And while it's true that the actor/director/Dem activist offered a generally innocuous analysis, he did manage to engage in a bit of religious bigotry.

Affleck's foul foray arose in the course of his discussion of the way the various Republican candidates have dealt with the issue of evolution and creationism. Talk turned to the former governor of Arkansas.

BEN AFFLECK: I think Huckabee actually framed his position in a much less dramatic way than had been made out. Which was he said it could be six days, or it could be six epochs, which I thought was much more along the kind of intelligent design lines than his position had been cast. In other words, he had been made out to a little bit of a kind of like a real sort of Neanderthal about it, a literalist.

View video here

You know, it seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Stuffing secret documents down your pants and removing them from a secure room in a federal facility, that constitutes stealing.

USA Today's "On Deadline" blog isn't sure, though. (bold/italics are USA Today's):

Sandy Berger, the national security adviser under former President Clinton, was disbarred yesterday in the District of Columbia.

The Washington Post says Berger agreed last month to give up his law license in order to avoid a prolonged investigation that grew out of his conviction in 2005 of removing classified documents from the National Archives.

Much to his chagrin, Time’s Joe Klein has become a Democrat that liberal bloggers love to hate, thereby making him the Joe Lieberman of journalism.

Of course, rightwing bloggers don’t care for him much either, conceivably making Klein more like Rodney Dangerfield.

Fortunately for our entertainment pleasure, since Klein isn’t a politician – actually, his frequent disabuses of fact lead one to believe he’s more of a comedian! – he doesn’t feel the need to take the attacks lying down.

Maybe more fortunate for us on the right is how Klein seems to be more offended by what those in his own Party are saying about him, making this whole thing that much more delicious.

With that in mind, Klein published a piece Wednesday that is guaranteed to put smiles on the faces of right-thinking Americans across the fruited plain (emphasis added throughout):

Give Food Stamp Challenge organizers in Michigan and New Haven, Connecticut some credit.

We'll probably never know whether they figured it out on their own, or perhaps read of other organizers' errors when they were pointed out by syndicated columnist Mona Charen and by yours truly (at NewsBusters here and here; at BizzyBlog here and here). But unlike their comrades in most other cities and states, they have at least framed their Challenge using a correct amount of $35 per person per week ($5 per person per day) based on this table, which was adapted from information available at the USDA's web site (near the bottom at link; the weekly amount is result of dividing by 4.345, the average number of weeks in a month):

On Thursday's The Situation Room, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer seemed to worry that the recently announced G-8 plan for cutting greenhouse gas emissions was "full of hot air" because it is not strict enough in requiring cuts. Blitzer introduced a story filed by correspondent Brian Todd: "President Bush joined other G-8 leaders today and forged an agreement to try to fight global warming, but is that agreement full of hot air?"

The CNN anchor then set up Todd's story: "Is there less to this deal, Brian, than meets the eye?" Todd thought there was some "substance" to the plan, but cited "experts" who accused G-8 leaders of "over the top rhetoric." After a clip of British Prime Minister Tony Blair contending that it was "a huge thing" that they were "considering" cutting emissions in half by 2050, Todd made his own clarification: "'Considering' cutting emissions in half by 2050, not actually agreeing to that hard target for cutting them, as the German chancellor and other European leaders had hoped." (Transcript follows)

In an interesting slam against the Left-Wing Blogosphere, one time Clinton man, now Time Magazine writer, Joe Klein, hits 'em hard. Left-Wing Bloggers are vile. Left-Wing Bloggers are mean. Left-Wing Bloggers are disloyal. Left-Wing Bloggers jump to wild, unsupported conclusions... So says Klein in a June 6th piece titled >"Beware the Bloggers' Bile." But, don't get your hopes up because, while everything he says about the nut-roots is dead on, it all ends up being Bush's and Radio icon Rush Limbaugh's fault, instead of the left's fault -- it's not as if the left could ever imagine anything is ever their fault, I suppose.

Still, for most of the piece, Klein slams his nut-roots followers in just about every which way you can imagine but calling them ugly and having bad B.O. and it's fun to read.