Ken Shepherd's blog

In an April 4 blog post to "Couric & Co.," the University of Virginia alumna (Class of 1979) worries that kids these days don't know their way around the library, and hence will be up a creek when they drift into the college library cramming for term papers:

Many kids skip the library altogether and head for the store. Sales of juvenile books rose 60 percent from 2002 to 2005. It's an encouraging sign that kids value reading, but many tech-savvy kids never experience the joy of using the library's shelves as a place to discover new worlds. And students are arriving in college unable to navigate libraries with a Dewey decimal system many have never used.

Of course, kids love books, they just need authors that know how to capture their attention. Katie knows this well, having plugged the heck out of Harry Potter novels repeatedly over the years. But it's the last line in the above excerpt that caught my eye about students being unfamiliar with "a Dewey decimal system many have never used."

Aside from being a bit alarmist, does Katie realize most colleges and universities use the Library of Congress Classification, not Dewey decimal, and yes, that includes Katie's alma mater.

Makes me wonder if Katie spent much time roaming the stacks of Alderman in her days in Charlottesville.

UPDATE at bottom of post.

Our good friends at Get Religion noticed that the New York Times's Dining & Wine section had a bit of trouble today digesting the real meanings of Easter and Passover.

Now, to be fair, no one expects a newspaper's foodies to be experts on the finer points of theology, but it's pretty safe to say that knowing Easter celebrates the physical resurrection of Christ is not asking that much of someone writng a column about foods traditionally associated with the holiday.

That seems to escape the Times's Nancy Harmon Jenkins.

What follows is an excerpt from Get Religion (emphasis mine):

Two days ago NewsBusters documented how ABC's "Good Morning America" is hyping the "latest trend" for couples tying the knot this year, so-called green weddings. Of course, weatherman/reporter Sam Champion left out for his audience how the bride featured in his story, Anna Swinson, is a Sierra Club official in Atlanta, but what's a covert liberal agenda among friends?

ABC is not the only network pushing the phenomenon as a tactic to combating global warming. "Days of Our Lives" addicts will be treated to the earth-friendly nuptials of characters Sami and Lucas. Of course the NBC.com Web site doesn't just plug the liberal-friendly story arc, it also insults the intelligence of its readership by insisting that having a "green wedding" isn't just a matter of taste, it's a matter of life and death (yes, even if green is just not the bride's color):

UPDATE at post's bottom.

Lt. Col. Rick Francona (USAF Retired) is an MSNBC military analyst who also writes for the network's "Hardblogger" blog. But while Francona has plenty of thoughts on how to deal with Iran's hostage-taking and on the notion of setting a withdrawal deadline for U.S. troops in Iraq, a review of Nexis showed zero hits for Francona on MSNBC recently, and only one appearance on NBC's "Nightly News" the day after the British servicement were taken hostage. And even then, he was featured with a sound bite about the Pat Tillman investigation.

Here are the headlines and dates for his three most recent "Hardblogger" entries:

• MEMO TO TEHRAN: GIVE IT UP (March 30)
• WITHDRAWAL DATE FOR IRAQ AIDS THE ENEMY (March 23)
• GULF ARABS DRAW A RED LINE AGAINST IRAN (March 19)

The 15 British sailors and Royal Marines were captured on March 23. Francona has written more on Iran specifically and the Middle East in general, it's just not all been posted to MSNBC's Web site. Francona runs his own Web log, Middle East Perspectives, and has a few additional posts in the same time period, including one dated March 25 explaining the long-disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway in which Iran captured its British hostages.

So given Francona's expertise and his being on the MSNBC payroll, he's been pretty busy appearing on air, right?

Well, a Nexis search for "Rick Francona" among MSNBC documents from March 19-April 3 turned up no hits.

UPDATE (14:18 EDT): See bottom of post.

The front-page teaser headline for today's front page Washington Post article on the Supreme Court's CO2 ruling (emphases below are mine):

Court: EPA Violated Clean Air Act

Supreme Court rebukes Bush administration for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The link takes readers to today's front page article by Robert Barnes and Juliet Eilperin, "High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions."

But both headlines not only skew the issue that was before the Court -- turning a legal matter into a political drama, and making the Supreme Court into a veritable high court of climate science -- they mislead readers about the actual finding of the Court's majority.

I'm no fan of the majority's reasoning or their ruling, but as Barnes and Eilperin themselves report deep in their article, Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, noted that "We need not and do not reach the question" of whether the EPA "must make an endangerment finding." In other words, the ruling is not some stern Al Gore-like command for the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Indeed, while the scientific geniuses in the Court majority in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. EPA did hold that carbon dioxide may be defined as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and hence may result in future EPA regulation, the ruling is not a rebuke to the Bush, and Clinton, administrations* for years of non-regulation.

UPDATE (13:45 EDT): The White House transcript is now available online here.

I'm watching the presidential press conference live and will update it and the coverage of CNN in real time as it rolls along. Stay tuned for more coverage this afternoon and evening.

10:15 EDT

* First question about Nancy Pelosi's Syria trip and if its sends mixed signals about U.S. foreign policy.

10:17 EDT

* Second question on British sailors and marines held hostage in Iran.

10:17 EDT

* question from Peter Baker on the role "loyalty" played in Bush's firing of US attorneys

10:19 EDT

* CBS's Bill Plante asks about a failure of the surge in Iraq. "People question the continued sacrifice of U.S. troops to make it work"

It seems CBS is expanding its search for interns by placing not just ads on its Web site, but sponsored "news feed" items on Facebook, a social networking site popular among college students and recent college graduates:

Attention aspiring journalists. SponsoredShare

Launch your journalism career with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work directly with Katie Couric and CBS News.

NB's Tim Graham and I have written about this recently. To win an internship, you may either write about global warming, an Iraq war veteran, or a "social entreprenuer."

Speaking of Facebook, yours truly has an account, and I encourage everyone on NB who has a Facebook account to join my group "NewsBusters.org Readers."

function fbs_click() {u=location.href;t=document.title;window.open('http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(u)+'&t='+encodeURIComponent(t),'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');return false;}Share on Facebook

Time's Joe Klein raves that the Supreme Court ruling that EPA can regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant is "fabulous":

This is fabulous news from the Supreme Court. Let's hope it lifts some of the remaining diffidence in DC regarding actual solutions--as in, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs, or a bit of both.

"Court trumps Bush on global warming," read the teaser headline on the front page of ABCNews.com, as accessed by this reader at 12:15 p.m. EDT today. No, the Supreme Court is NOT the high court of all things scientific, but ABC and other liberal media outlets are essentially portraying the new ruling as such, although it pertains merely to what the EPA may choose to regulate as an air pollutant.

When I clicked the link it took me to a two-paragraph Reuters squib about a Supreme Court ruling on carbon dioxide regulation that came down this morning:

Apr 2, 2007 — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a defeat for the Bush administration, a closely divided Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a U.S. government agency incorrectly determined it lacks the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.

The nation's highest court said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "has offered no reasoned explanation" for its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change

I didn't think anyone could really be offended by Karl Rove's "dancing" to a comedic rap routine at this week's Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner. Well, aside from maybe Julia Louis-Dreyfus (whose "Seinfeld" character Elaine Benes has been dethroned as World's Worst Dancer).

I was wrong.

According to Politico's Helena Andrews:

A popular listserv for the younger members of the National Association of Black Journalists (which this reporter is a member of) was abuzz early Thursday morning: Was it funny, offensive or just stupid?

Some compared the sketch to a modern-day minstrel show, others tried and failed to muster indignation against it and still others wondered whether the critics were simply over-thinking.

Should air around 9:30 p.m. EDT tonight, a producer told me in an e-mail.

But before you tune in, drink up our Rosie O (two cans short of a) Six Pack:

• Rosie's Blog Claims 'British Did It On Purpose' and Are Running 'False Flag Operations' With British Sailors In Iran
• Rosie Sees Only Evil in US, Not Iran, Speaks on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
• Rosie on Attorney Firings: False Facts, Bizarre Comparisons, and Impeachment Call
• Rosie Implies Captured Brits Are A Contrived 'Gulf of Tonkin' For War With Iran

On Monday, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) got a "town hall" meeting with a hand-picked audience on "Good Morning America."

But the royal treatment Clinton receives in the mainstream media isn't shared by even some staunch liberals who make ink in the nation's newspapers everyday. Including at least one who pays the bills with the cartoonist's pen, generally liberal artist and blogger Darrin Bell, creator of "Candorville."

It's not the first time Bell has lampooned Clinton, but check out the March 30 installment, where he makes fun of Hillary's penchant for trying to be all things to all constituents, envisioning Clinton trying to pander to a Palestinian-American and an Israeli-American at the same time.

Bell's cartoon follows two days after the March 28 "'South Park," in which Clinton was portrayed unflatteringly, sporting rather large hips (calling to mind radio host Mark Levin's label "Her Thighness" ) and speaking in a faux Southern drawl.

TownHall blogger/vlogger Mary Katharine Ham and trusty sidekick Katie Favazza attended our 20th Anniversary Gala and DisHonors Awards ceremony last night. They produced a special MRC Gala edition of the HamNation vlog showing the highlights of the evening.

You can find Ham's blog post with video here.

You can visit Ham's YouTube page for video here.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in for a world of hurt from his former constituents should he center his 2008 campaign on his handling of 9/11 and its aftermath, the Associated Press is reporting. But in his March 30 article, reporter Larry McShane left out some crucial facts about two people he cited in his story to bolster that point: Sally Regenhard and Hank Sheinkopf.

Let's begin with Regenhard. She's portrayed merely as the angry, distraught mother of a NYC firefighter who perished on 9/11.:

"If Rudolph Giuliani was running on anything but 9/11, I would not speak out," said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was among the 343 FDNY members killed in the terrorist attack. "If he ran on cleaning up Times Square, getting rid of squeegee men, lowering crime _ that's indisputable.

"But when he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem."

Below are some excerpts from Rush Limbaugh's acceptance spech given March 29, 2007, as he received the first annual William F. Buckley, Jr. Award for Media Excellence. You can watch the video at MRC.org. I took the liberty of putting some items in bold for emphasis:

Thank you all very much. I know it's late. Brent told me to cut my speech to forty-five minutes, rather than the hour and a half I was going to go. I, there have two references tonight to my humility, and I'm sorry the cover's blown.

Cal Thomas had to leave. He had to catch a plane, but he came by and told me he wasn't going to be able to hear my humble remarks. Brent has referred to it.

I, I, I'm a little stunned by it, because it's, it's been referenced also tonight I think by Cal that I do satire. And the humility that, that, that I, I think I bring to what I do is borne of really the roots of this award.

When, when Brent called me and said we've, we've got this new award, the William F. Buckley, greatest conservative in the world award, and you've won, won the first one. I think that's what he said when he first posed it. And I said, 'well, that fits.' A little humility there.

I said that is amazing, I, you know, we conservatives don't get many awards, but we actually have an audience. These PBS people and NPR people give themselves all these awards, but nobody's ever seen the shows that get awarded.

We actually have an audience, and so we are a threat, and we don't get awards. It's an honor to get an award. It really is.

MRC's Gala is the "conservative Oscars," the MRC is a "important resource," and Keith Olbermann is about as popular as Haman at a Purim celebration. Those are just some of the observations from conservative bloggers about the MRC's 20th Anniversary Gala.

Media strategist David All called our Gala featuring the DisHonors Awards the "Conservative Oscars" and added these observations right after the dinner:

UPDATE 11:03 PM: A few quick random thoughts…
…Wheel…of…fortune… Pat Sajak, yes, that Pat Sajak, totally owned (PWN3D?) the audience. He made a joke about YouTube, which of course grabbed my attention. And he made quite a few tasteful fat jokes about Al Gore. Honestly, tough to believe, but the guy had us all rolling.

Blogging Bloggy Bloggers …Lots of YouTube references throughout the night, though oddly, not a single reference to a blog. There was however practically a standing applause when Neal Boortz said that, “thanks to alternative media, we don’t need [the mainstream media] anymore.”

Two days ago, I blogged about how the Washington Post's Jeff Birnbaum believes that "without question," Reagan's tax cuts went "too far."

In today's Post, Slate's Timothy Noah went a few steps further in his negative review of John Patrick Diggins's Reagan biography "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History."

Noah tried his hand at being a shrink, attributing psychosexual motives to Reagan's economic policy. Emphasis mine.:

...Reagan, like just about every other actor who ever passed through Hollywood, had a very hard time viewing sex as something to repress. This genial hedonism would later express itself in Reagan's embrace of supply-side economics. Tax cuts would pay for themselves, he told himself, and when they didn't, he left to his two White House successors the drudge work of reducing the huge budget deficit.

I suppose it's possible she could defensively argue that this refers to Iran's Ahmadinejad or North Korea's Kim Jong-il, but in context it seems NY Post columnist Liz Smith refers to President George W. Bush in her March 29 article "Cruise-ing to WWII":

March 29, 2007 -- 'EVERY SECOND is a door to eternity. The door is opened by perception," said Rumi.

How does a nation's elite rid itself of a deranged chief executive or commander who is bent on leading the country astray? No, we're not talking here about our own life and times. We're talking Nazi Germany.

Smith's piece was syndicated to other papers, including The Toledo Blade, where NewsBusters reader John Page noticed the item and forwarded it to me. The Blade headline for the Smith item: "Tom Cruise to star in film about Hitler."

Okay, now that we've all got MC Rove out of our systems, here's a reminder about the real main event of the D.C. social circuit this week: the Media Research Center 20th Anniversary Gala.

Did I mention that legendary radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh will be there?

Rush told his listeners as much in his opening dialogue a few minutes ago, and we at the MRC are very much looking forward to Rush and other friends of the conservative movement sharing the evening with us tonight as we mark 20 years of the Media Research Center busting liberal media bias.

Remember, you can check out the live Webcast at MRC.org starting at 8 p.m. EDT tonight. We'll also have a comment thread open at NewsBusters so you can add your comments in real time.

This is a developing story, so there's room for it to play out a bit, but the law firm congressional Democrats are hiring to help plow through the U.S. attorney firings, Arnold & Porter, has a history of heavy donations towards Democrats.

From the last two paragraphs of a March 28 Associated Press story:

[House Judiciary Committee Chairman John] Conyers , meanwhile, has signed a contract with the law firm Arnold & Porter worth up to $225,000 through the end of the year to help with the investigation.

For today's lesson in bias by labeling, class, turn to today's "Annapolis Notebook" in the March 28 Washington Post.

It's there that reporter Lisa Rein skewed her portrayal of a debate over tuition for illegal aliens in favor of the liberal Democrats in the Maryland General Assembly, with everything from watering down the label "illegal immigrant" to painting Republicans as angry partisans and Democrats as righteously angry protecters of the underprivileged.

While the headline reads: "House Heats Up Over Bill to Give Illegal Immigrants In-State Tuition," Rein herself chooses the term "undocumented immigrants," even though, well, they apparently must have enough documentation to prove they've lived in Maryland for a "length of time" under the proposed legislation:

No, it's not bias per se, but it is a bit of a pet peeve when the media are sloppy with terminology that relates to the military.

This morning, CNN has been reporting on how Iran may release the female sailor that was captured along with 14 of her comrades. But in doing so, the CNN chyron referred to her as a "troop."

"Troop" is not used in the singular to refer to a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine. "Troop" traditionally refers to a unit of soldiers, although in modern usage "troops" may refer to soldiers collectively irrespective of a unit organization.

CNN would be correct to say that Iran has said it will release the female sailor among the 15 captured British military personnel, as the woman in question serves in the Royal Navy.

(h/t Snarking Dawg)

From Ana Marie Cox's post to the "Swampland" blog at Time magazine:

Let me say that I did some self-cringing last week, when I choose to describe Tony as the "most fun" press secretary of the administration. I was looking for something non-controversial, non-partisan and true to say about the guy. "Fun" seemed like something he'd appreciate -- he is fun. The biggest change in the press operations of the WH since he's gotten there is that the briefings are no longer thuddingly boring. So, really, "most fun" was kind of a low bar.

He's also a class act. He clearly respects the press, and his tangles with them are leavened with a humor and self-awareness that make him hard to dislike, even when you violently disagree.

I -- and I'm sure my fellow bloggers here -- wish him well.

I'm guessing Cox's successors at Wonkette didn't get the memo. Emphasis mine, expletive edited for content:

Yesterday's indictment of former Reagan budget director David Stockman was cause enough for the Washington Post's Jeffrey Birnbaum to use Stockman's personal ethical and possibly criminal lapses in the private sector as a way to lodge liberal attacks on the Reagan tax cuts. But that was just the beginning for Birnbaum, who, in a Washington Post chat later that day, said that "without question, the Reagan tax cuts went too far."

Four paragraphs into his March 27 Business section story, Birnbaum found a Stockman critic to assail the Reagan fiscal policy that Stockman defended in the late president's first term.

"I have vivid memories of his misusing and misstating data and using obviously phony economic forecasts," said veteran budget analyst Stanley E. Collender. "You wonder if those were habits that stuck with him when he became a Wall Street deal-maker."

Collender may be a crack budget analyst, but he's also politically active. A search of OpenSecrets.org found Collender gave $1,000 to Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in her first Senate race in 2000.

Birnbaum continued:

Writing in the "Swampland" blog for Time magazine today, Karen Tumulty insisted the U.S. attorney firings deserved "massive commitment of journalistic resources" before going on to cite a study showing that media attention in the past few weeks has skewed heavily towards the non-scandal scandal:

... And before all our commenters jump on me, let me stipulate: I think the unfolding U.S. Attorneys story is a huge one, it deserves a massive commitment of journalistic resources, it is not likely to go away any time soon and I'm skeptical that Alberto Gonzales is going to survive it. I also believe that history has shown us many times that the broadest measures of public interest are a lagging indicator of the significance of a story. Finally, the blogosphere deserves huge credit for leading the way on it.

Translation: "the public don't know it yet, but this is an important story, we're going to make it an important story, and, kudos to liberal bloggers for making a fuss over it."

In 1993, Time magazine didn't show the same interest in blowing up the Clinton/Reno firings into a story the public would care about. [continued...]

Today marks four days since Iran's Revolutionary Guard captured 15 British servicemen in what they claim are Iranian territorial waters. A similar incident in 2004 lasted just three days.

Yet the Washington Post, which has never hesitated to front-page negative developments in the war in Iraq, gave just 51 words on page A8 to the ongoing detention of 15 British servicemen.

By contrast, the March 27 New York Times devoted a full story to hostage-taking while the March 27 Los Angeles Times ran a 12-paragraph Reuters story on Iraq's government pressing the Iranians to release the captured sailors and Royal Marines. [continued...]

In much of the mainstream media reporting on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the focus has been on stoking a political controversy from the story, ruminating on Alberto Gonzales's shelf life as attorney general, etc.

Largely left by the wayside in mainstream media reporting have been legitimate deviations the fired attorneys exhibited from Bush Justice Department priorities, such as immigration enforcement -- for instance, San Diego-based attorney Carol Lam's prosecution of immigration cases reportedly bothered the decidedly unconservative Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) -- and pushing for the death penalty in capital cases.

It took a while but at least one major media outlet is reporting that a reluctance to pursue the death penalty might have been a factor in at least three of the firings. [continued...]

On Friday morning, news broke that 15 British servicemen (eights sailors and seven Royal Marines) were seized by Iran. Not the regular naval forces of that country, mind you, but the Revolutionary Guard naval corps, a wing of the military closely controlled by the country's extremist Islamic clerics.

Happening as it did one day before the UN voted on new sanctions on the nuclear power-hungry, terrorist-funding Islamist regime, you'd think the story would be worthy of front-page coverage in the largest broadsheet in Washington, D.C., right?

Wrong.The story earned page A11 real estate in the Saturday Post and a follow-up story was buried below the fold on page A12 in the March 25 edition. [continued...]

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow is set to undergo an operation. The Associated Press reports the surgery is to "remove a growth" in Snow's lower abdomen. Snow, you may recall, is a surviver of colon cancer.

Dean Barnett at TownHall.com noticed that outpouring of well wishes from Huffington Post commenters:

Naturally, the Huffington Post community weighs in with its own unique form of sympathy. A few samples: