In the midst of the media's typically one-sided view of Thursday's civil rights protests in Jena, Louisiana, Jason Whitlock, the black sportswriter who called Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton terrorists during April's Don Imus controversy, penned an op-ed in the Kansas City Star that should be must-reading for all Americans.

Entitled "Lessons From Jena, LA," Whitlock's piece marvelously exposed a side of this story that mainstream media outlets, as well as folks like Jackson and Sharpton, want to desperately withhold from the public in order to provoke racial tension rather than reduce it.

After a wonderful introduction, Whitlock got down to business (emphasis added throughout, h/t NB reader Thomas Rosenbrook):

If you still weren't convinced about the media's bias, maybe this will change your mind: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be speaking at the National Press Club on Monday.

How delightful.

As announced at PR Newswire Friday (h/t Charles Johnson):

This one takes the cake as today, Reuters is trying to manufacture a controversy. Apparently Reuters doesn't understand the concept of "context" because they're idiotically claiming that in his Thursday press conference Bush said that Nelson Mandela is dead. Calling what Bush said "an embarrassing gaffe," Reuters took Bush's words out of context to make it seem as if Bush was talking about something he was not talking about. But any intelligent person can easily understand Bush's context merely by listening to his whole sentence instead of shortening it to just two words.

With a headline that reads, Mandela still alive after embarrassing Bush remark, Reuters does its best to make a Bush "gaffe" where none exists.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.

Heartwarming that Reuters is so concerned over Mandela's health, isn't it?

Original caption:

Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather gestures during an interview on the Fox News Channel in New York, in this June 12, 2007 file photo. Rather filed a $70 million law suit Wednesday against CBS, Viacom and three of his former bosses.

Steven Milloy asks, "Is billionaire investor George Soros using environmental pressure groups to block a gold-mining project for his own financial benefit?"

Milloy connects the dots and raises many of the same questions that I have been asking about Soros' involvement in the campaign to stop a gold mine project in the impoverished village of Rosia Montana, Romania.

The New York Times, PBS and other media outlets that have covered the Rosia Montana story have not pressed Soros on his motivation for opposition to the mine, even though he is a major investor in competing mining companies that have used similar mining processes he now opposes in the Rosia Montana project.

Here's something you don't see every day: A rapper condemning MTV for, of all things, promoting homosexuality. It makes a little more sense, though, when you realize that he only did so to shift the blame from the increased criticism that rap music has come under following the Don Imus "nappy-headed-hos" incident.

In an interview with Complex magazine (h/t RightwingSparkle), rapper Jeffrey Atkins, aka Ja Rule, blasted both MTV and homosexuality. I've taken the liberty of removing his numerous vulgarities:

Yeah, they got my man Doug Morris under fire and s---, they got him going down to go speak to Congress about hip-hop lyrics, are you f---ing serious? There's a f---ing black kid right now about to get 25 years for having a fight with some white kids over hanging the nooses over the white tree, lets get to that. Let's get into s--- like that, because that's what's tearing up America, not me calling a woman a b---- or a hoe on my rap songs.

I have to figure, after looking at the results of this Google News search on "real earnings" (in quotes), that Old Media business reporters found what came out in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Real Earnings Report too difficult to understand. The search shows that only the Providence Journal among Old Media outlets mentioned the report, which was released Wednesday.

So in the interest of education, I'll break down the BLS report into simpler terms:

When members of the Duke University lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping a black stripper last year, media focused great attention on the woman in the middle of the controversy, and the supposed crime.

Yet, as pointed out Thursday by NewsBuster Matthew Balan, as the press report activities in Jena, Louisiana, the name of the white boy who was beaten by the "Jena 6," Justin Barker, is rarely mentioned, and the assault which precipitated the arrest of the "6" is either ignored, or downplayed.

Such was certainly the case on Thursday's "Nightly News" which led with the day's civil rights protests in Jena, but, for all intents and purposes, ignored the assault which precipitated the arrests of the six students in question.

Ironically, NBC's Brian Williams began the broadcast:

Can the Associated Press distinguish between racial supremacy groups and civil rights groups? Apparently not. AP writer Maria Sudekum Fisher covers the appointment of 73 year old Frances Semler to Kansas City's parks board, which Fisher opposes because Semler is a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. As Fisher writes,

But Frances B. Semler's appointment could now cost the city millions of dollars because she is a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group that advocates vigilante patrolling of the Mexican border and reports illegal immigrants to authorities.

Canadian news magazine Maclean's photoshopped George Bush into the familiar black beret, mustache and pseudo-military garb that defined the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. This photo illustration accompanied a September 20 cover story that claimed Bush is the new Saddam because he's “reaching out the the late dictator's henchmen.”

In "How Bush Became the New Saddam," writer Patrick Graham described a decaying civilization that is doomed to fail in this rambling, disjointed article. He traveled around Iraq separately from the US military and even criticized journalists embedded with them because they “learn mostly about Americans...and end up sounding like a visiting columnist for the New York Times“ (my emphasis throughout). Ah yes, Canadians wouldn't want to echo that notoriously pro-military, pro-war and pro-American voice of the NY Times.

On CNN’s Larry King Live Thursday night, Dan Rather insisted that his $70 million lawsuit against CBS was an attempt to save “our democracy” from “big government interference and intimidation in news;” claimed once again that his 2004 60 Minutes story on President Bush’s National Guard service was correct “and I think most people know by now that it was correct;” and charged that CBS’s investigation was “a fraud. It was a setup.”

And when Larry King asked him about Peter Arnett — whose career at CNN ended over a fraudulent 1998 report alleging the U.S. murdered defectors and used nerve gas in Vietnam, and who was last seen making propaganda films for Saddam Hussein during the 2003 invasion of Iraq — Rather embraced him: “Peter Arnett is a great reporter. He was then and he is now.”

Talk amongst yourselves...

Partners in deception, partners in denial . . .

Earlier today I noted that in her HuffPo column, ex-CBS producer Mary Mapes continues to cling to the delusion that the Memogate documents were authentic. In an inteview on "Morning Joe," Dan Rather has now made a comparable reality-defying claim.

Mika Brzezinski, who, as was repeatedly pointed out, used to work at CBS and has friends on both sides of the issue, conducted the interview. Bubbles didn't have the gumption to challenge Rather regarding the forged documents at the heart of the story. Interestingly, Rather chose to raise the issue himself, and in doing so demonstrated his tenuous grip on reality and some twisted journalistic standards.

View video here.

Well, Bill Press has really sank to a new low with his current op-ed. In his liberal mindset, the Jena 6 are justified because of the racial tension that had been present at the high school.

I finding it extremely hypocritical that defiling anything Christian or portraying Jesus as homosexual is permissaable as Freedom of expression, but hanging 3 nooses is not. Personally, I have yet to see this Freedom guaranteed in the constitution. Furthermore, I find all of my examples reprehensible. The point is and that Bill Press misses, people cannot just assault other people because they do not like what they did.

Racism is terrible. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton devote themselves to promoting racism, not ending it.

Jake Byrd, the celebrity-obsessed character of sketch comic Tony Barbieri, appeared on the Thursday night "Jimmy Kimmel Live" show to discuss his impromptu performance behind O.J. Simpson's lawyers.

He didn't say much, the clips said it all. Barbieri's performance was picked up by all of the cable news channels. WMV video available here.

Is Jake Byrd set to become the next Borat? Quite possibly so and for exactly the same reason. He makes a smart cultural critique in a silly and funny way.

Reading the actual legal complaint in the Dan Rather lawsuit quickly (but repeatedly) reveals the extreme egotism of the disgraced CBS anchor. The first finding begins: "Plaintiff, Dan Rather, one of the foremost broadcast journalists of our time, seeks to recover damages from CBS, his employee of 44 years" for "CBS’s intentional mishandling of the aftermath" of the fake-documents story.

It added: "Throughout his career, Mr. Rather has promoted, championed, and been emblematic of journalistic independence and journalistic freedom from extraneous interference such as governmental, political, corporate, or personal interests. Defendants’ improper responses to the attacks on the Documents wrongfully damaged Mr. Rather and these values which he championed."

How can I put this nicely? Mary Mapes [file photo] has reality "issues." Three years after the Memogate producer was exposed for having perpetrated one of the worst frauds in the history of presidential-campaign journalism, she continues to paint herself as the victim of a right-wing conspiracy. And incredibly, despite a mountain of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, she clings to the notion that the blatantly forged documents at the heart of Memogate were authentic.

Mapes's meltdown-in-the-guise-of-a-column appeared in yesterday's Huffington Post. Excerpts from the metaphor-gone-wild "Courage for Dan Rather" [emphasis added]:

On Thursday's Countdown, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann used his latest "Special Comment" to attack President Bush's "pissy juvenile blast" for the President's criticism of the MoveOn.org "General Betray Us" ad during the day's news conference, accusing him of "hypocrisy" for not criticizing what Olbermann called the Republican "hamstringing of Captain Max Cleland and the lying about Lieutenant John Kerry." Olbermann further accused Bush of "pimping" General David Petraeus and of making the general into a "political hack" at the risk of moving America's government toward a "military junta." Olbermann: "It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a military junta. Get back behind that line, Mr. Bush, before some of your supporters mistake your dangerous and stupid transgression as a call to further politicize our military." (Transcript follows)

CBS and NBC on Thursday night aired brief updates on how the Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Norman Hsu, the captured fugitive Democratic/Hillary Clinton campaign donor, for bilking $60 million from investors -- but ABC was once again absent on the story. ABC's World News hasn't uttered Hsu's name since its one and only story the Friday night of Labor Day weekend while Thursday's mention was the fifth for NBC and fourth for CBS. (Coverage details below.) On the NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams read this very short item: “Norman Hsu, that Democratic fundraiser indicted today by federal prosecutors -- accusations of a massive Ponzi scheme. Hsu funneled a lot of money to Senator Clinton's campaign.”

Over on the September 20 CBS Evening News, Katie Couric relayed a bit more expansively: