The Censorship Fairness Doctrine has been something near and dear to the hearts of the far left for a long time. With talk radio and the web being the main pillars of the center-right media landscape, effectively neutralizing conservative radio is a fantasy scenario for Bill Moyers and others like him.

That being said, it is becoming more likely that instead of going the congressional route to squelch conservative radio speech, the incoming Obama administration will try an alternate approach through regulatory bodies and the bureaucracy.

Conn Carroll explains:

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On an unrelated note, there will be no "NewsBusted" episodes this week as we are off for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Following on the heels of complaints from Time magazine's Mark Halperin that the press hugely favored Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election, ABC political correspondent Jake Tapper chimed in today to say that he agreed:

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I too wonder just how fair the media coverage of this campaign was.

Case in point: perhaps the most unfair and negative TV ad run during the entire campaign, by either side, was the Spanish-language TV ad Obama ran against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, that got very little media coverage.

Missed in the hubub of Tuesday night were some interesting remarks by former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin rebuking the American media for its overwhelming bias in the '08 elections.

"[T]here is a little bit of disappointment in my heart about the world of journalism today," Palin said.

"I have such great respect for the role of the media in our democracy, it is a cornerstone, it allows the checks and balances. But only when there is fairness and objectivity in the reporting."

Palin's comments are especially interesting because she seems to have gone out of her way to attack the press, responding to a general question of her thoughts as she returns to Alaska. Full transcript below the jump or watch the video above.

Normally we put out "NewsBusted" on Tuesdays and Fridays but today we're making an exception given the motherlode of material Barack Obama just gave us by winning the presidency.

Jokes in today's episode touch on a number of topics including the economy still remaining a problem, comparisons of Obama to Ronald Reagan, Joe the Plumber's reaction, and Obama's aunt who's currently living illegally in the U.S.

Now that Barack Obama is going to be president, what should the right do now?

Beyond the recriminations, what positive active steps should be taken? Post your thoughts or link to others with interesting remarks here.

Fundamental changes are needed to how conservatives and libertarians do things now, not just at the politician level. What changes would you like to see?

After the GOP rout of Democrats in 1994, one of the most common liberal media refrains was how Republicans shouldn't read too much into their victories. Similar things happened in 2000 and 2004 for George W. Bush.

With Barack Obama poised to take the presidency now, no such disclaimers are being uttered in media land.

That stark disparity bubbled to the surface tonight on CNN where outnumbered conservative pundit Bill Bennett was the lone voice trying to say that an Obama presidency is not a mandate for radical liberalism:

Things looking better for Barack Obama in contrast to John McCain. Post your comments here or join the chats below.

If you want to talk politics, click over to this room, if you want non-politics, try this room. Note: You must sign up with our third-party chat supplier Chatzy in order to participate. 

In what could be seen as a disturbing sign for the future, the Barack Obama presidential campaign has blocked the Washington Times newspaper from traveling with the Democratic nominee in the final days of the election.

The ostensible reason given was a lack of space:

Times reporter Christina Bellatoni, who has covered the Democratic campaign since 2007 is being asked to leave the campaign plane starting Sunday. In defending its decision, the Obama campaign said it respected Ms. Bellatoni's reporting and simply ran out of seats on the campaign plane for the finale because of high demand. It also noted that the Obama campaign is allowing some news media critical of the democrat to travel, including Fox News.

I've dropped a few hints here and there about a new project that I have been working on but now I can finally put it all on the table.

Starting November 10th, I will be working with the Washington Examiner to help take its web site to the next level through a managing editor position within the paper.

I will still be continuing my efforts here at NB, however. To help ensure NB readers get the hard-hitting media watchdog you've become used to, we will soon be adding an additional member to the staff. More on that in a few days.

The official press release is below the fold.

Part of the reason that liberal bias in the elite media exists is that not enough conservatives and libertarians decide to get involved in journalism, especially straight news reporting.

One of the best organizations on the right trying to combat this is the Phillips Foundation which has a program that pays generous amounts of money to encourage people to get involved in producing high-quality journalism that can really make a difference.

If the idea of this appeals to you, consider applying for the 2009 Phillips fellowships. Full-time fellowships pay out $50-75,000 to successful applicants. Part-time ones pay $25,000. 

Despite the huge media hubub that it's caused, the U.S. Secret Service is formally denying an allegation from a Pennsylvania newspaper that an attendee at a Republican rally shouted out "kill him" in reference to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"We have yet to find someone to back up the story," agent Bill Slavoski told the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. "We had people all over and we have yet to find anyone who said they heard it."

The alleged remark was first reported by David Singleton, a writer for the Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper. Singleton remains the sole person claiming he heard the offensive words:

With Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin receiving some return fire from the media for their criticism of the press, it's interesting to note that they are not alone in criticizing the media at this point in the campaign cycle.

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Democratic candidate Barack Obama lashed out at Fox News Channel, accusing it of portraying him as an "arrogant liberal" and making people not want to vote for him.

"I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls," Obama told liberal journalist Matt Bai. "[T]he way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latté-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?"

D'oh! In his haste to condemn Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin last night far-left MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann made a particularly elementary reading comprehension error.

The mistake, caught by our friends at Olbermann Watch, involved a report of a person at a McCain-Palin allegedly shouting out to "kill" Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Rushing to tag the GOP ticket with this as much as possible, Olbermann expressed outrage that "as usual, [Palin] does nothing about it."

Remember those fake "undecided voters" during the Democrats' town hall debates last year?

Looks like they're back. Turns out at least one of the questioners in Tuesday's presidential debate actually told event organizers that he would "most likely be voting for Obama" but was allowed to continue participate just the same.

Townhall's Amanda Carpenter caught the admission from Oliver Clark, the man who asked the first question about the disgraced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Fact-checking politicians seems to be the journalistic "in" thing to do this campaign season. Aside from the self-aggrandizing nature of such pronouncements, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with the concept.

The devil is in the details, however. Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto notes that these esoteric fact check stories too often end up as opinion pieces criticizing the policies or rhetoric of politicians.

In more cases than not, it's Republicans who bear the brunt of such "corrections," simply because truth in politics is often a highly subjective thing. Taranto focuses on one particular fact check by USA Today criticizing a John McCain ad for quoting Barack Obama out of context:

One of the hottest Internet videos during the mortgage and banking crisis has been a YouTube clip titled "Burning Down the House," which outlines the untold story of how liberal Democrats pressured banks and lenders to throw standards out the window and give money to people who couldn't pay it back.

Try watching it now, however, and you won't be able to, thanks to the growing problem of "flag spam," the practice of abusing online filter systems to squelch political speech with which one disagrees.

We've all seen spammers at work in our e-mail inboxes. Experts estimate that 90 percent of all e-mail messages nowadays are spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Luckily for most of us, the majority of it gets filtered out. That's caused the more sophisticated spammers to change course and target a more vulnerable part of the Internet - the hugely popular Web sites like YouTube, Digg and the blogosphere, where anyone can join the discussion by posting videos, essays, reviews and other content.

From the department of truth admission comes this email from inside a major newsroom:

Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working.

And this:

I have a couple friends who work in the MSM, too, and one of them tells me the newsroom is (exact words) “unbelievably cavalier” about any complaints viewers register about their reports, what they ignore, their bias or the way they edit Republicans vs. the way the treat Dems. “Cavalier” as in the fix is in and they don’t even have to pretend to care what half the country thinks or wants.

Amid all the false media hubub about Sarah Palin being an alleged "book banner" comes much more serious news about the British publisher of "Jewel of Medina," a book about the child-bride of Islamic prophet Mohammed has been set afire:

Three men arrested in north London on suspicion of terrorism continue to be questioned by police. They are suspected of attempting to set fire to a publisher's office in Lonsdale Square, Islington.

The publisher, Gibson House, is due to release a controversial novel about the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride, entitled "The Jewel of the Medina."

Writing in today's Washington Post, ombudsman Deborah Howell focuses on political cartoons and how in many cases they can cause offense. I was struck in particular by a few of Howell's offhand admissions most. The first is that the top editorial cartoonists across the country are mostly liberal.

That concession came after Howell had briefly profiled Pat Oliphant, one of America's best-known cartoonists, who attracted controversy over a recent cartoon that ridiculed GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Pentecostal faith and its belief in glossolalia, the ability to speak unknown languages in a moment of inspiration.

That is where the second admission comes into play. The Post, which has the ability to reprint any Oliphant cartoon as part of its deal with his syndicator, chose not to reprint the cartoon in its print edition even though it did so on its web site, something it did not do with the famous Mohammed cartoons:

In recent memory, every presidential debate eventually distills down into a few catchphrases. Al Gore became known for his sighs and love of lockboxes. John Kerry actually served in Vietnam. Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy.

Barack Obama has a bracelet, too.

That inartful comeback will likely filter out through the political ether in the days ahead. What might not filter through our partisan press is that shortly after pointing out that, like John McCain, he sports a bracelet given to him by a military family, Barack Obama had to stop and look down find out the name of the soldier he's honoring.