ABC and NBC on Tuesday night joined the effort to undermine the anti-Obama tea party participants by smearing them as racists as ABC framed a story around the proposition “some prominent Obama supporters are now saying” the opposition to Obama is “driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President,” while NBC anchor Brian Williams touted how “former President Carter spoke up and spoke out about” the supposed racism. Williams alleged “a certain number of signs and images at last weekend's big tea party march in Washington and at other recent events have featured racial and other violent themes and President Carter today said he is extremely worried by it.” (MP3 audio of Williams, Video below)

With “OUT OF LINE?” on screen beneath what appeared to be pictures from the August town halls, ABC anchor Charles Gibson set up the piece from Dan Harris who recited a litany of liberal presumptions:

They've waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil, raised questions about whether he was really born in this country, falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels, decried his speech to students as indoctrination and called him everything from a fascist to a socialist to a communist. And all that was before Mr. Obama's speech was interrupted by a Representative who once fought to keep the Confederate flag waving over the South Carolina state house. Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President. (MP3 audio, Video below)

Chris Matthews, on Tuesday’s "Hardball," insinuated racism may have been behind Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst against President Obama, at last week’s health care speech, as he repeatedly asked his guests if they thought Wilson's exclamation was "A race thing," that represented "the old black/white attitude of the South."

In the very first segment of the show Matthews pressed Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, "Do you think this is a race thing...I mean was it a racial thing on the part of Wilson? Was he expressing contempt for Barack Obama because of his heritage?" For her part Edwards insisted, "I don’t think that at all." [audio available here]

However Matthews persisted and, later in the show, got the reply he desired from the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, as seen in the following exchange:

Once again, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow can't let a week pass without denigrating former vice president Dick Cheney, the better to shift attention from Obama's beleagured presidency.

Here's Maddow on her cable show Sept. 8, relaying news of British intelligence officials apparently still chagrined at Cheney for forcing their hand to arrest suspects in the '06 airline bombing plot before they were prepared to do so --

It’s very easy to be outraged by the way our "objective" media greeted the massive September 12 rally against Big Government in Washington and across the country. They treated it as a menacing surge of white anger, meanness, and racism. But all the media bias against this rally clearly illustrates one nagging truth for media liberals: they really don’t think conservatives should be allowed to protest. It’s somehow like a copyright violation.

On Monday night’s "Countdown," MSNBC’s David Shuster found the protest united "in apparent hatred of the current president, Barack Obama." It was undemocratic, a sign of people not accepting election results, and Shuster even suggested Sen. Jim DeMint’s speech at the rally signaled he favored a "military coup." The unglued anchorman also dismissed the crowd as "white, whiter, and whitest," all attending an "intolerance festival."

Appearing on CBS’s Sunday Morning, commentator Nancy Giles shared her thoughts on Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst: "Some sign waving and you probably heard about it, heckling. At a joint session of Congress....That’s the voice of Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, not some drunk at open mic night, calling the President a liar."

Giles continued, denouncing all health care reform protestors: "He later apologized, but still, it was a frightening mix of disrespect and bad behavior, with a dash of this summer’s town hall meeting craziness. I guess we should be grateful that there weren’t any ‘show us your birth certificate’ signs and at least no one beat anyone with a cane, which actually happened in the old Senate chamber in 1856."

Giles would certainly know about "disrespect and bad behavior," on the October 5, 2003 broadcast of Sunday Morning, she compared conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh to Adolf Hitler: "So as Rush’s world has steadily crumbled, it’s no wonder he allegedly had to turn to prescription pain killers....Edgy, controversial, brilliant....Hitler would have killed in talk radio. He was edgy, too."

Over the last several weeks, no one has been the target of the left-wing media and blogosphere more than Fox News host Glenn Beck, even more so than his radio host counterpart Rush Limbaugh.

Although conservatives have decried the daily ad hominem attacks, some voices on the left are starting to realize that's not an effective strategy for championing their cause, especially when it comes to the hot-button issue of the day, health care.

And that is really starting to bother Air America host Lionel - that is the daily repetitive nature of attacking Glenn Beck and/or Rush Limbaugh by giving a litany of complaints about what they said, as he laid out in a nearly three-minute tirade on his September 14 Air America radio show.

By now, most NewsBusters readers have seen the Drudge Report item alleging that President Obama called rapper Kanye West (he of the "George Bush doesn't care about black people" fame) a "jackass."  This report originated with Terry Moran's rogue tweet to that effect, which later caused ABC to apologize to the White House for relaying off-the-record information to the public at large.

Gossip Web site TMZ.com, however, has no such qualms about relaying off-the-record statements made by celebrities -- even, or especially, when the celebrity in question is the President of the United States.

Looking for news on the Obama administration these days? Look anywhere but the mainstream media, including the pages of the New York Times.

One may have thought it impossible for the nation's largest and most influential newspaper to virtually ignore the scandals involving the left-wing housing activist group The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, more notoriously known as ACORN.

One would be wrong.

A brief rundown of ACORN's scroll of shame: A hidden camera sting, set up by conservative activist James O'Keefe of the website Big Government, showed ACORN workers in three separate offices (Baltimore, Washington, and the Times backyard of Brooklyn) giving out tax advice on child prostitution and human trafficking. Then the Census Bureau dropped its partnership agreement with ACORN for the 2010 collection effort. Finally, and most noteworthy from a national perspective, the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to deny the group access to federal housing funds. Yet finding Times coverage of the controversies is like, well, finding an individual acorn in a forest.

Weatherman/global warming alarmist Sam Champion on Tuesday again promoted the cause of toilet paper-avoiding environmentalist Colin Beavan. In his brief "Just One Thing" segment, Champion touted books made on recycled paper and cheered that the tome No Impact Man is made on 100 percent recycled paper.

The weather man marveled, "And when [Beavan] was with us, he kind of shared the idea that not only did he do an entire year of living, trying to make no impact on the environment, but he thought he would carry it through with his book." Champion has aggressively promoted Beavan, who went a year without toilet paper, cars and electricity in an attempt to be carbon neutral.

The environmentalist has made three appearances on GMA in the last two years to promote his experiment, which eventually became a book and a movie. And in this segment, as when Beavan last appeared on September 3, 2009, Champion made no mention of the bizarre decision to forgo bathroom amenities.

This morning, co-host Don Wade of 890 WLS radio's Wade and Roma show in Chicago threw a question at ABC World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson that I suspect was on many listeners' minds: 

Don: Okay, here’s my news question. A Senate bill yesterday passes, cutting off funds to this group called ACORN. Now, we got that bill passed and we have the embarrassing video of ACORN staffers giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel with 13-year-old hookers. It has everything you could want – corruption and sleazy action at tax-funded organizations and it’s got government ties. But nobody’s covering that story. Why?

Keep in mind that James O'Keefe's and Hannah Giles's first pair of videos at BigGovernment.com showing an ACORN office engaged in the activity described appeared in the early morning on September 10. That was five days ago. 

But until that moment, the topic apparently wasn't on Gibson's mind. Here's Gibson's jaw-dropping answer, with additional follow-up banter (HT to Rush on the air; transcribed by Michelle Malkin, who also has audio):

Big liberal protests, such as the Million Mom March (for gun control), the 2006 demonstrations in favor of illegal immigrants’ “rights,” and numerous anti-war marches all garnered heavy play and adoring coverage from the broadcast networks, cable news outlets, and big papers like the New York Times. So how did those news outlets react to Saturday’s huge protest with conservative themes? MRC’s analysts scrutinized the coverage; here’s their report card:

■ ABC, CBS and NBC: The broadcast networks did not offer any pre-rally coverage before Saturday’s protests, but offered decent coverage of the event itself. ABC’s World News on Saturday was pre-empted by college football, but Good Morning America offered full reports on both Saturday and Sunday, as did NBC’s Today. Both the NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News led with the rally on Saturday night, although CBS’s morning news shows gave the protest almost no attention.

The tone of coverage, however, was largely antagonistic.

Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer blog noticed a development over the summer that seems to have escaped much of the news media: In a whole bunch of major radio markets -- from New York City to San Diego, with St. Louis in between -- Rush Limbaugh's listenership has surged: “As frustration with Obama's policies reached a boiling point during August, Americans clearly turned to Rush for help,” but “the state-run media has yet to take notice.”

Specifically, for KFI-AM in Los Angeles, Arbitron reported Limbaugh “gained a full share point overall, from 5.9 to 6.9 to take first place with a weekly cume of 635,700 listeners. With men 35-64, the jump was from 4.7 to 5.6. In the 11am hour, Rush pulled in a mammoth 6.3.” Yet, Maloney observed:

Judging by the coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Business Journal, this feat was somehow accomplished without the help of the medium's star performer, Rush Limbaugh. In covering the achievement, the latter two publications didn't even mention Rush, while the Times noted Limbaugh only in passing deep into one story and left him out of another entirely.

A bipartisan consensus of senators in Washington is newsworthy in these fiercely partisan times, but when the matter of agreement is something that leaves egg on the faces of the left-wing community organizers, eh, not so much. 

Yesterday, in an 83-7 vote -- 50 Democrats and 33 Republicans for; 6 Democrats and 1 independent against -- the Senate passed an amendment to an appropriations bill that would bar the use of federal funds to the scandal-ridden Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). [related item on media ignoring the ACORN story by my colleague Dan Gainor here]

This morning, neither ABC's "Good Morning America" nor CBS's "Early Show" nor NBC's "Today" reported on the vote and the underlying controversy surrounding the liberal community organizing group.

So what if his network is drawing a larger audience than its combined competition? So what if one of his newest shows has drawn unprecedented numbers for a start-up that airs at 5 p.m.? According to Newsweek's Howard Fineman, Fox News President Roger Ailes is tarnishing his own personal reputation.

It could just be sour grapes for Fineman, who is affiliated with rival network MSNBC and was appearing on that network's "Countdown" with fill-in host David Shuster, but he attacked Fox host Glenn Beck and the 9/12 protestors he helped inspire.

"Well, he can - he can pretend to cry all he wants on the stage and call himself a televangelist," Fineman said of Beck on MSNBC's Sept. 14 "Countdown." "He is not into uniting the country, from everything I've seen. He is making a boatload of money dividing the country. When you say with no real evidence whatsoever that the president of the United States hates white people, you aren't behaving in the spirit of 9/12, you're behaving in a spirit that we thought we've gotten rid of at the end of the civil war and the end of the second civil rights movement. So, you know, he can cry the crocodile tears all he wants. That doesn't seem to be what he's actually doing."

Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer on Tuesday conducted a surprisingly tough interview with Tim Geithner, grilling the Treasury Secretary on tax increases, spending and highlighting the 9/12 rally in Washington D.C. Speaking of the American people, she asserted, "They don't see a possible way out without tax raises."

After Geithner tried to squirm out of responding, Sawyer, who will leave GMA in January to become the anchor of ABC’s World News, reiterated, "Are you still guaranteeing that no one in America will have their taxes raised unless they make more than $250,000 a year?" Geithner noted how this was a "commitment" for the President, prompting Sawyer to again attempt to nail down a firm answer: "That's your promise? It will not happen?"

This is a notion that hasn't really gotten any traction anywhere yet, but could Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. be a viable 2012 presidential election candidate? 

The hosts of Fox Business Network's "Happy Hour," Eric Bolling, Rebecca Diamond and Cody Willard, contemplated that possibility on their Sept. 14 show, which comes on the eve of a vote on a "resolution of disapproval" on Wilson for calling out "You lie!" as President Barack Obama spoke to a joint-session of Congress Sept. 9.

"First off, House Dems appear set to censure South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson for shouting ‘you lie' at President Obama during last week's health care speech, but Wilson is not backing down," Diamond said. "He told Fox News Sunday he will not apologize to the House tomorrow. Instead, he is turning this - all of this into a fund-raising campaign, claiming he has raised $1 million since the outrage incident last Wednesday. So we are asking, ‘Hit or Miss' on whether Democrats risk turning Representative Wilson into a viable conservative candidate for 2012."

Seen at the massive Tea Party in Washington, DC on September 12:

[H/t: FreeRepublic.com]

Approaching the 11-year anniversary of the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard, on Tuesday’s CBS Early Show co-host Maggie Rodriguez spoke with his mother Judy Shepard and asked about her efforts to pass hate crimes legislation: "Do you think this is finally the administration and the Congress that will get it done?"

Shepard, who was on to discuss her new book about her son, was hopeful that it would pass, especially after some legislative manipulation: "Well, I hope so. We know that this President will sign it if the bill comes to his desk, with his other requirements, because it’s attached to a Department of Defense bill, so that makes it a little trickier now. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed."

When Rodriguez initially asked about her activism, Shepard praised the role of the media in pushing the gay rights agenda: "What Matt’s story did was cause a lot of unintended education, if you will, through the press. People were made aware of what was going on in the gay community and it started a national dialogue...The gay community was part of every public discussion, where it used to be, you know, something you didn’t talk about, in the closet, if you will."

Threshold Editions, part of Simon & Schuster, announced today that conservative radio host and author Mark R. Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto” has officially sold one million copies since its release in March. No thanks to the mainstream media.

As the Culture and Media Institute detailed in a new Special Report “Unmentionable: Best Selling Conservative Books and the Networks that Ignore Them,” Levin’s book, which spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List, has been ignored by the mainstream media. Levin told CMI that “we have not heard from any of the major networks, and the only major newspaper that has interviewed me is Philadelphia Inquirer, and that’s because I’m from Philadelphia.”

Obviously, that hasn’t harmed sales. “The book is selling by word of mouth,” Levin said. “I’ve done very little media, and its chugging along.”

WOR radio's Steve Malzberg likely had no idea the hornets nest he was walking into Monday when he decided to discuss race relations with Fox News's Geraldo Rivera.

Regardless of the tension on display or the uncomfortable conclusion, what transpired perfectly demonstrated how far we as a nation are from ending racism.

At first, Rivera seemed rather reasonable when he called CNN's Rick Sanchez a jerk for his comment a few months ago that Hispanics working for Fox News are all sellouts.

But when the discussion turned to the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and whether her comments concerning a wise Latina woman making better decisions than a white man could be perceived as racist and sexist, Rivera got quite defensive and eventually hung up on his host (15-minute audio available here, rough transcript below the fold):

Two days after her magazine published Evan Thomas's "Case for Killing Granny" -- see related NewsBusters post here -- Newsweek staffer Jesse Ellison lamented that her "grandmother lived a full life and sought a quiet death" but "America's health-care system had a different idea of what was best."

In a September 14 Newsweek Web exclusive, Ellison laid out a story of zealous coverage aimed at prolonging her late grandmother's life, complaining that her grandmother's wish to die peacefully was disregarded as she was "treated like a problem to be solved, not as an elderly woman who had had enough."

Although Ellis's grandmother "had great insurance" plus "enough savings to pay for anything that Medicare and her insurance company would not," the writer found cause for complaint in the health care system having a bias to save and extend life, as well as the high costs that that approach incurred:

Interviewing Barney Frank this morning on proposals to regulate the financial markets, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan seemed set on appeasing the notoriously rude representative.  Ratigan had surely seen the video of Mark Haines' CNBC interview of Frank back in June, and was determined not to suffer the same fate, in which Frank ripped off his earpiece and ended the segment short.

Even before posing his first question to Frank, Ratigan began by laying a sop at the great man's feet: "I know you're working very hard on this legislation.  And before we begin, I had a lot of folks come to me and say listen, make sure you thank the representative for his efforts to try to deal with this.  You are dealing with an incredibly complicated problem with a variety of issues.  So I wanted to pass along the appreciation of your efforts before we begin this conversation."

His tribute to Frank didn't spare Ratigan a reprimand when later on he dared to get in a word edgewise.  So Ratigan naturally concluded the interview . . . by apologizing to Frank for having interrupted him.

All together now: "I'd like to teach the world to stop global warming."

Though such likely won't be the lyrics, a group of the world's leading celebrities have joined together to create a new song to draw attention to climate change.

After all, with an Oscar-winning film, a Nobel Peace Prize, and all the focus on Al Gore's now completely debunked schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth," there certainly hasn't been enough attention given to what is indeed becoming one of the biggest scams in history.

Despite all that, folks who regularly fly around the world emitting more carbon dioxide in a year than most people on the planet will all of their lives feel the need to scold those barely making ends meet.

As reported by Agence France-Presse Monday (h/t reader Rod Richardson):

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: You tell us.