It was almost too easy. Up until this morning (August 24, 2005), I had never heard the Stephanie Miller Show on Air America's outlet, KTLK, in Los Angeles. Within 45 seconds (I swear), in a discussion on the media coverage of the recent incendiary remarks by televangelist Pat Robertson, I heard Miller mislead her audience by suggesting that there has been only modest coverage of this story! [link to audio (about 10 minutes in)]

MILLER: Can you even imagine: If any left-winger in this country had said anything even vaguely like that [Robertson's remark], this would have been everywhere!

CO-HOST ("Chris"?): Yup. Fox News would have covered it!

        Apparently, Miller and her friend missed some of the coverage of the Robertson episode on these major media outlets:

• ABC's World News Tonight: lead story, August 23, 2005.
• NBC Nightly News: full story, August 23, 2005.
• CBS Evening News: full story, August 23, 2005.
• CNN: lead story on Anderson Cooper 360 ... Paula Zahn Now ... and NewsNight With Aaron Brown. [Thank you! MRC link]
• MSNBC lead story on Hardball with Chris Matthews and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
• Los Angeles Times: front page story, August 24, 2005.
• The Washington Post: p. A02, August 24, 2005.
• New York Times: page one paragraph with a lead to an inside story, August 24, 2005.

        Oh, yeah. Fox News covered the story as well, as it was the lead item for quite a while on its news updates every half hour.

------------------------------------------

        Also ... A little later, when Miller and her friend were taking some shots at Bill O'Reilly, they similarly mislead their audience:

MILLER: (imitating O'Reilly's voice) "She's done. She's done. She's done."

CO-HOST ("Chris"?): According to the ratings, The Factor is pretty much done.

        Says who? The O'Reilly Factor still remains the number-one-rated show in all of cable news ... by far. Take last Wednesday, August 17, 2005, for example: (link): In the 8pm EST hour, O'Reilly garnered 2,784,000 viewers. His nearest competitor was CNN's Paula Zahn, with 560,000 viewers. O'Reilly had nearly five times as many viewers as Zahn!

—Dave Pierre is the creator of TheMediaReport.com and a contributor to NewsBusters.