As we reported last year, a stunning undercover videotape surfaced that appeared to show a staffer at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles advising a woman whom she thought to be a 15-year-old girl to conceal a statutory rape. Even though this eye-opening episode happened right in the backyard of the Los Angeles Times, the paper did not publish a single story about it. Not one.

Yet last week (6/9/08), the Times published a glowing, front-page feature about a 15-year-old "sex ed girl." The impressionable young teen walks the streets of Los Angeles and speaks to other teens about "safe sex." In the most flattering of language, the Times beams, "She has memorized pages and pages of information on sex education and sexually transmitted diseases. She's ready to pass out cards from ... listing services and clinics. She is also armed with condoms." A pair of flattering, smiling photos of the teen accompanies the article.

Any guesses on which organization trained this poor girl?

Andreina is 15. She's been attending Planned Parenthood sex education events since the age of 13.

An unbylined Associated Press report yesterday, at least as carried at MSNBC, acknowledges improvement, and then explains why it's not going to get much future coverage from the wire service as long as things stay that way:

BAGHDAD - Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets.

Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war's supporters.

It took a bombing which killed 51 Iraqis for NBC anchor Brian Williams to acknowledge “there's been a letup in the violence of late in Iraq.” Unlike his ABC and CBS colleagues, two weeks and a day earlier Williams failed to report the death toll for Americans in Iraq in May was the lowest for any month since the war began. On Tuesday night, however, he announced:

Last night here we reported there were more Americans killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq in the month of May. It's generally believed there's been a letup in the violence of late in Iraq. That is until today.

From Baghdad, Jim Maceda reported on the deadly bombing in a shopping area, but then he contrasted the incident with improving Iraqi expectations:

Not only did the blast break the relative calm here, but it shattered a growing sense of security as well. After three to four months of relative low violence, people were starting to come out into streets, returning to schools, stores and banks were opening.

The day after Al Gore endorsed Barack Obama in Detroit, MSNBC kept repeating the allegedly big news with the on-air question "Will Gore Help or Hurt Obama?" Left out of that question: Who cares? Does Gore’s endorsement matter at all?

Pundits usually declare in today’s media-saturated world that endorsements from major politicians or movie stars just don’t have much impact. A Who’s Who of the Beautiful People in Hollywood endorsed and actively campaigned for John Kerry – and had no impact.

With Al Gore it’s the same thing. He doesn’t bring a single vote Obama doesn’t already have. He could have participated in the process but he waited until the primary challenge from Hillary was over. Now he supports Obama. Where in the world is the news there?

Like most media outlets, Broadcasting & Cable magazine is wowed by Barack Obama. Introducing its cover story/interview with the candidate/savior, reporter John Eggerton declared Obama earned his nomination with "a profound appreciation of the media’s great possibilities." Or Obama profoundly appreciates the way the media’s always making his great ascent to power more possible. Is it possible Obama could say something critical about a media that’s been so uncritical of him?

When B&C asked him about the negative effects of media consolidation, Obama whispered softly into the ears of left-wing activists at Free Press and Common Cause and the Media Access Project:

The ill effects of consolidation today and continued consolidation are well-documented -- less diversity of opinion, less local news coverage, replication of the same stories across multiple outlets, and others. We can do better.

Few candidates have ever benefited from "less diversity of opinion" in the media as much as Obama. The nation’s political reporters resembled a nearly unanimous pack of enthusiastic Obama super-delegates. Surely this isn’t the opinion Obama’s talking about.

In February of 2007 a small group named the Tennessee Center for Policy Research published an interesting little story that made Al Gore, the king of global warming alarmism, look a tad foolish. The report that TCPR sent out showed that Al Gore's own home was an energy hog. The TCPR report revealed that Al Gore's Tennessee mansion used more energy each month than the average American household uses in an entire year. In a response to this report, Gore claimed that he was diligently working to make his home more green, but now it looks like Gore is being gored again because a year down the line his energy use hasn't gone down. It hasn't even stayed level. It actually increased by 10%. How will the media handle this bloated increase despite Gore's claims of trying to improve?

In 2007, to a sensational reception the TCPR noted that the Gore family burned through energy at an amazing rate saying, "Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh -- guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359."

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani is the latest Marine to turn out not to be a "cold-blooded killer" that the media and Democratic politicians painted Marines charged with the Haditha "massacre" to be. This two weeks after another Marine was acquitted in a Haditha court martial.

FoxNews.com has the AP story about the dismissal of charges against him here.:

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A military judge dismissed charges Tuesday against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis.

Col. Steven Folsom dismissed charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani after finding that a four-star general overseeing the case was improperly influenced by an investigator probing the November 2005 shootings by a Marine squad in Haditha.

As you might have guessed, this story is not exactly commanding the airwaves of the cable news networks this afternoon, although the media obsessed about the "massacre" in 2005.

From my colleague Scott Whitlock's June 5 post about the media's similar lack of interest in the acquittal of Marine Lt. Andrew Grayson:

Does Barbara Walters refrain from publicly airing her personal opinions? The veteran journalist said just that on the June 17 "View," though the evidence does not back her up. Discussing the death of Tim Russert, the conversation quickly shifted to journalistic objectivity.

Walters claimed to have been "trained" to "not give" her "opinion." As the conversation progressed, Walters questioned the panel if they know "what my opinions are." Joy Behar replied "I sort of get it, but not really." Elisabeth Hasselbeck added, "I may guess, but you’ve been objective."

Either Behar and Hasselbeck have been absent minded, or they are sucking up to the boss. Although Barbara Walters has not been as outspoken as the other co-hosts, she has offered her opinions on more than one occasion.

"The View" creator has used her perch to praise House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then attacked the same speaker from the left. She endorsed left wing films such as Michael Moore’s "Sicko" and Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth." Barbara Walters and objective journalist? Hardly.

The relevant transcript is below.

The front page of Monday's New York Times featured Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg's pro-Obama puffery, "Obama the Delegator Picks When to Take Reins."

Like rock journalists following Bono, the Times reporters seem utterly fascinated by the minutia of Obama's day, while taking a few potshots at a Bush administration it's already condemned as doomed to perdition in the history books.

Like most presidential candidates, Mr. Obama is developing his executive skills on the fly, and under intense scrutiny. The evolution of his style in recent months suggests he is still finding the right formula as he confronts a challenge that he has not faced in his career: managing a large organization.

The skill will become more important should he win the presidency, and his style is getting added attention as the country absorbs the lessons of President Bush's tenure in the Oval Office. Mr. Bush's critics, including former aides, have portrayed him as too cloistered, too dependent on a small coterie of trusted aides, unable to distinguish between loyalty and competence, and insufficiently willing to adjust course in the face of events that do not unfold the way he expects.

On Monday's "Nightline," ABC reporter Jake Tapper challenged Barack Obama over the fact that "there has not been a terrorist attack within the U.S. since 9/11." He pointedly asked Obama to provide an example of when he has actually reached across the aisle to break from Democratic orthodoxy and generally proved that it is possible for the Obama-friendly program to ask tough questions of the Democratic candidate.

After bringing up the Supreme Court's ruling last week that gave legal benefits to enemy combatants, Tapper reminded Obama that there has been no terrorist attack since 9/11. He then quizzed, "...And [the Bush White House says] the reason that is, is because of the domestic programs, many of which you oppose. How do you know that they're wrong?" Tapper also mentioned examples of Senator McCain bucking his own party and challenged, "Have you ever worked across the aisle in such a way that entailed a political risk for yourself?" In contrast, frequent "Nightline" contributor David Wright has previously rhapsodized that Obama rallies are like "Springsteen concerts."

ABCNews.com, reporting on the Catholic Diocese of Rome refusing permission to Ron Howard’s plans to film the movie prequel to Dan Brown’s "The DaVinci Code" in two historic churches, used loaded wording in the headline: "Church Cracks Down on New ‘Da Vinci’ Film."

The lead for the report, written by Phoebe Natanson and Luchina Fisher, also used similar imagery to describe the Catholic Church’s refusal: "Once again, the Catholic Church is coming down hard on writer Dan Brown, the author of ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ The producers of Brown's latest thriller to be made into a film, ‘Angels and Demons,’ have been banned from filming key scenes inside any church in Rome, on the grounds that the book is "an offense against God," according to a church spokesman.

Speaking of "coming down hard," wasn’t Brown doing just that in "The Da Vinci Code" by depicting the Catholic Church as a nefarious organization?

On Monday’s CBS "Evening News," correspondent Lara Logan touted what was essentially a press release from a key terrorist leader in Afghanistan: "Afghan warlord Gulbeddin Hekmatyar spoke exclusively to CBS News about the state of the insurgency in Afghanistan in this interview smuggled out of his secret hiding place." Logan went on to offer a translation of the video: "‘The resistance is spreading in all directions,’ he says. ‘It's becoming stronger and more powerful.’"

Logan went on to repeat more of Hekmatyar’s propaganda:

‘Although I'm confined to one bunker and a village which is under the threat of American warplanes all the time, I sleep very peacefully at night, while George Bush cannot sleep in the White House without the help of sleeping pills,’ he says. Hekmatyar mocks President Bush as a warmonger and blames him for Iran's meddling in Afghanistan. He says the Iranians are pouring money and weapons into the fight that's destroying his country.

On the June 17 edition of "The View," Joy Behar stated the obvious that "more people die in hospitals than anywhere else." Of course, that makes perfect sense given that people who are dying tend to get rushed to the hospital. Instead Joy Behar, who blamed earthquakes on global warming offered a more intriguing answer: "because it’s germ free."

The panel conversed about the high prevalence of germs in our world and its dangers. Behar, attempting to refute that germs are always harmful, clumsily cited the high death rate in hospitals. Not only did she fail to note that dying people tend to check into hospitals in one last effort to cling on to their lives, they are hardly germ free given the high concentration of sick people.

Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck both disagreed that hospitals are void of germs.

Simple mistake, or wish fulfillment?  Appearing on MSNBC this afternoon, a Washington Post reporter claimed the paper's latest poll results showed Barack Obama with a "big lead" over John McCain on the issue of handling Iraq.  The only problem: the poll actually shows McCain with a small lead on the issue. David Shuster interviewed Ed O'Keefe of WashingtonPost.com at 3:03 PM EDT.

DAVID SHUSTER: Ed, when asked who do you trust on the economy Barack Obama is ahead by 16 points.  On women's issues he's ahead by 32 points. So where's John McCain making up the difference.

ED O'KEEFE: Terrorism. He's ahead of him big on that issue and that issue alone, it seems.  Also, there's a perceived weakness for Barack Obama generally on his experience. McCain's certainly ahead on those two things. But you're right: on everything else, especially the big issues—Iraq and the economy, health care—Barack Obama has a big lead.

View video here.

Time magazine writer Michael Lindenberger's dispatch "From Gay Marriage's Ground Zero," read more like puffy campaign literature for the liberal Democratic mayor of San Francisco than an objective news piece.

Here's how Lindenberger opened his paean to the thoroughly heterosexual Gavin Newsom.:

Same-sex couples began marrying late Monday night in courthouse ceremonies across California, putting triumphantly happy human faces on a debate that is nevertheless far from over. Crowds turned out to welcome - and, for some, to protest - weddings in Beverly Hills, Oakland and the wine country north of San Francisco.

Later in his piece, Lindenberger took at face value Newsom's recollection of how he decided in 2004 to challenge state law and grant marriage licenses to gay couples. Those "marriages" were later invalidated of course, but the recent decision by California's highest court paved the way for gay weddings, at least between now and November when a ballot initiative may outlaw same-sex marriage.

Lindenberger dutifully transcribed Newsom's insistence that he didn't know how big a deal his civil disobedience would be:

Here's something you don't see every day: four people on MSNBC agreeing that an ad attacking Republican presidential nominee John McCain is a "cheap shot."

Yet, that's exactly what transpired Tuesday morning when Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist, and John Ridley discussed the new ad just released by the far-left MoveOn.org suggesting that if McCain is elected president, the baby pictured will be fighting in Iraq eighteen years from now.

First up to criticize the piece was NPR's Ridley (video embedded right, use scrollbars to center):