Robert Knight's blog

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the Nov. 3 edition of Time magazine just gave Barack Obama 13,000 words to a few hundred for John McCain. Starting with a corner shot on the cover, Obama is pictured 13 times throughout the magazine.

The only photo of his opponent in this election-eve issue is a goofy thumbnail of McCain under the Gaffes section of the Campaign Scorecard. Sarah Palin is featured exactly once, also, in the letters section under a quote from a reader who compares her to impersonator Tina Fey and says "They are both better entertainers than politicians."

As a well-documented member of Obama's adoring media paparazzi, Time seems to be competing with the TV networks for "most obsequious." According to a new CMI study, CBS, ABC and NBC ran 69 segments about Palin around the time of the vice presidential debate, of which only two were positive, 37 were negative and the rest neutral. But Time seems intent on outdoing them. This edition is so pro-Obama that it verges on a Mad magazine parody. The Obama pics are scattered through the first half of the magazine, amidst fawning features such as Joe Klein's "Why He's Winning." That piece, which was thoroughly crunched by MRC's Tim Graham in an Oct. 23 Newsbusters post, has a page and a half color photo of Obama surrounded by an adoring crowd. The next page shows Obama in a helicopter, with the facing page a portrait of Obama, chin in hand, looking positively regal.

On last night's Election Center, CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin, Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger and CNN Anchor Campbell Brown continued to promote the Obama talking point that John McCain had lied in an ad about Barack Obama's record on a sex education bill in the Illinois state Senate.

McCain's ad says Barack Obama's "one accomplishment" as a state senator was "legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education' to kindergarteners."

Toobin listed it among several "outright falsehoods" from McCain, and Borger claimed the Obama-backed bill was "about teaching children to recognize sexual predators."

The Obama camp and many media have repeated the line that the bill was only about protecting kids from sexual predators. But the McCain ad is correct. The bill, SB 99, is a radical expansion of sex education, ratcheting down the initiation age from sixth grade to kindergarten, and eliminating moral language that supports marriage and abstinence. Only a tiny portion of the bill addresses how kids can be protected from unwanted sexual advances.

Five years ago, The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly did a front-page smear of Christian AIDS activist Jerry Thacker, who had been appointed to the presidential AIDS commission. The headline? "AIDS Panel Choice Wrote of a ‘Gay Plague.'"

Thacker, who is HIV-positive himself, had merely written on his Website that health authorities and journalists had used the term "gay plague" during the early 1980s. Amid a media firestorm, he withdrew his nomination the next day.

Fast forward to Connolly's lede in the August 7, A-2 story "Early Lessons Forgotten, AIDS Conference Told," on the International AIDS Conference's finding that HIV/AIDS is skyrocketing largely because of homosexual sex. Connolly describes AIDS in a similar way to how Thacker put it:

"Liberal Dedication in the Face of Hatred" was the lead teaser on the front page of the print edition of the Washington Post's Metro section on August 2. Inside, staff writer Jacqueline Salmon reported on Unitarian Universalist vigils held in the wake of the July 27 shooting in a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn. in which two died and seven were wounded.

Salmon noted the Knoxville police chief's assertion that the shooter "hated the liberal movement." This corroborated other media reports about a letter that the shooter had left in which he expresses a visceral antipathy to liberals.

Salmon moved on to report about a gathering on July 28 at a Unitarian Congregation of Fairfax in Oakton, Va.: "Bill Welch, the congregation's minister for programs, talked about how isolating it can be to be a liberal in today's world of right-wing talk radio and conservative Christians ‘that talk about liberals as if we are bad people.'"

Salmon did not bother to quote a talk radio host or Christian conservative in response to the minister's broad-brushed charge. Nor did Salmon bother to acknowledge that the shooter at the Unitarian church, Jim Adkisson, had also rejected conservative Christianity. One of Adkisson's neighbors told The New York Times: "[Adkisson] said if you read the whole Bible, everything in it contradicts itself." Salmon didn't even bother to challenge the dubious proposition that "right-wing talk radio" is "isolating" liberals, when most major media are dominated by liberals, as documented in the new Culture and Media Institute Special Report, "Unmasking the Myths Behind the Fairness Doctrine."

NBC outdid itself in promoting the pro-gay view in its Nightly News coverage Wednesday of a hearing held by the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on personnel. NBC served up a litany of gay "victims" of the military's ban on open homosexuality, plus pro-gay congressmen, and played up a recent poll showing most Americans wanting to overturn the ban.

NBC cited only one pro-ban witness, a retired Army Ranger sergeant who got 3 seconds of airtime in the 2:39 segment. Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, who gave a detailed testimony supporting the ban, was not featured at all. The sergeant's statement, by the way, was immediately and angrily refuted by a veteran Army officer now in Congress.

Narrated by Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, the piece begins with lesbian retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah walking along a country path with her partner and a Frisbee-catching dog. She gives heartfelt testimony. Next comes retired Marine Sgt. Eric Alva, who lost a leg in Iraq and has been featured on other newscasts as the face of gay soldiering. Alva is shown with his prosthetic leg, in full uniform, and then testifying. Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), proclaims the gay ban "unpatriotic" and "cruel."

When is a Democrat a "conservative?" When he's featured in a scandal story about adultery and murder.

The Washington Post is downplaying the party affiliation of disgraced former Democratic Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.), identifying him as a generic "congressman" or as a "conservative." The coy treatment is in marked contrast to the paper's frequent references to the GOP affiliation of Sen. Larry Craig and other disgraced Republicans.

In the first four installments of a 12-part series on the unsolved 2001 murder of D.C. intern Chandra Levy, the Post mentions the party affiliation of her boyfriend Condit only once. In three of the four articles, Condit is merely a "congressman." In fact, in the third installment, "A Private Matter," which ran July 15, Condit is described only as "a conservative congressman from a right-leaning agricultural district." The series was written by Post staff writers Sara Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sylvia Moreno.

From CNN to the New York Times, the media hyped Barack Obama's Portland, Oregon rally on Sunday, some comparing him to a rock star.

Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007's The Crane Wife.

How many of the people showed up to hear Obama, and how many to hear the band?

Here's how the local paper The Oregonian, which estimated the crowd at 72,000, reported the rally:

John Cloud, Time magazine's in-house gay activist, attacked Obama supporter Donnie McClurkin over McClurkin's public testimony that he overcame homosexuality through prayer. In perhaps the only negative piece in the mainstream media on the California Supreme Court's decision legalizing "gay marriage," Cloud whines that it's not enough.

In his Viewpoint column, "What the California Gay Ruling Won't Do," Cloud complains that the nation has not yet caved in to accept "gay marriage" and that federal law still defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Cloud has covered such topics as "gay youth" for Time, and once wrote a piece for an alternative newspaper detailing his adventures in a gay bathhouse, where anonymous, promiscuous sex was rampant. Here's an excerpt from his May 16 Time posting on the marriage ruling, in which he goes after singer McClurkin:

How far left do you have to be to make the networks' progressive candidates dream team? CBS News Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield twice referred to Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) as "relatively liberal senators" during a live interview on Washington, D.C.'s WTOP News this morning during drive time.

Discussing the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries, Greenfield first described Obama and Clinton as "both relatively liberal senators," and then later as "relatively liberal senators from blue states."

Given that both have widely-recognized liberal voting records, with the National Journal naming Obama as "the most liberal" member of the U.S. Senate -- even to the left of Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and socialist Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) -- one wonders what an actual "liberal" would look like to Mr. Greenfield. Would it be Raul Castro? Ted Turner? Who?

It's World AIDS Day, so prepare for the usual media blitz of stories designed to promote more spending on failed approaches to HIV/AIDS, and more bashing of the Bush Administration despite increases in spending by the billions each year.

Here are some of the questions that the media probably won't ask the professional HIV/AIDS lobby, which grows ever fatter while the human tragedy rises:

When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two bills on Oct. 12 that essentially turn the state's public schools over to homosexual and transgender activists, there was virtually no media coverage outside California. There still isn't.

Beginning in January 2008, California public schools must teach children as young as 3 to 5 years old that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle and that kids can choose their "gender." This means banning the terms "husband" and "wife" for the more progressively inclusive term "partner." "Moms" and "dads" will morph into sexually neutral "parents." Textbooks will be rewritten to blot out any reminder of married-couple-led families as a social norm. Gender-confused kids will get to use the restrooms of their choice. Any expression of negativity toward deviant sexuality will be punished as "bigotry." The coming changes are so radical that they produce gasps or professions of disbelief from people who hear about it from sources outside the mainstream media.

Bruce Shortt, an advocate of private schooling who writes a periodic report called "the Continuing Collapse" about problems in government schools, provides this analysis:

So far, the media have maintained a near total news blackout on this development.

A recent article [at Medill Reports online] on homosexual gains in the schools reflects how the advocates of legislation to mainstream deviant lifestyles plan to respond to queries from naive or fellow travelling reporters:

ENDA Who? The House of Representatives passed a sweeping bill on Wednesday evening that elevates sexual behavior to the civil rights status of race, ethnicity and sex. Except for the New York Times, AP, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Miami Herald, the media swept it under the rug. TV networks ignored it Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is a major expansion of federal government power and civil rights law. Backers call it "historic." Opponents say it is a direct threat to religious freedom. But much of the media skipped the 235-184 House vote (including 30 Republicans for it and 25 Democrats against). Major papers including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today failed to carry the story.

If you think media bias is only a problem at the Katie Couric level, a recent trial in Worcester, Massachusetts shows that journalism can be slanted at the local level, too. A reporter for the Worcester [Mass.] Telegram & Gazette reported and testified that a pro-family activist had viciously assaulted a leftwing demonstrator at a rally. But no credible witnesses agreed, and a jury dismissed the charges.

The paper has refused to issue a clarification, apology or retraction, despite the extreme variance of the reporter’s account with that of people directly on the scene. The Telegram reported last December that a pro-family, Catholic activist, Larry Cirignano, had assaulted protester Sarah Loy at a pro-marriage rally at city hall. Reporter Richard Nangle not only reported the “assault,” but became a star witness for the prosecution. Witnesses who actually saw the incident up close refuted Nangle’s account, and a jury on Oct. 22 unanimously threw out the charges.

Cirignano had, with one arm on her back, escorted a sign-waving ACLU officer, Sarah Loy, from near the podium and into the crowd. After he turned and left, she tripped over a girl’s foot, eyewitnesses testified. But check out this lead in the original story on Dec. 17, the day after the rally:

In a September 18 entry on the Washington Post's Maryland Moment blog, two of the paper's writers spend most of their digital ink criticizing Tuesday's Maryland Court of Appeals ruling upholding the state’s marriage law.

Even the opening sentence reflects the Post’s bias, describing Maryland’s marriage law as “the state’s ban on gay marriage” and “the controversial law.”

For starters, the marriage law is not controversial, at least outside homosexual activist circles. All 50 states have laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman (even Massachusetts, which has no business issuing same-sex marriage licenses without a change in the law). What is controversial is the lower court ruling in January by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock striking the law down.And what about the Post describing Maryland’s marriage law as “the state’s ban on gay marriage?”

Anna Quindlen has advice for the Republican Party: Throw religious conservatives overboard.  In her Sept. 3 Newsweek column. "Disinvited to the Party," she lauds the heartland's apparent embrace of Rudy Giuliani despite his serial marriages and "quasi-liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control."  To Quindlen, "quasi" means not adopting the actual platform language of the Democratic Party. 

Quindlen's rant is a typical leftist smear, lamenting the rise of the Religious Right and blaming it on ... sheer malice. She fails to acknowledge the political and cultural forces that have assailed every traditional institution from church to the Boy Scouts.  She fails to recognize that social conservatives could possibly be human beings with real interests who don't want to turn all personal responsibility for their lives over to government bureaucrats.

Here's her nostalgic look at the Republican Party she used to love:

In last night’s installment of the six-hour, three-part series God’s Warriors, CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour loads the deck to portray conservative Christians as dangerously at odds with science. She first uses an interview with maverick Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, who has been criticized by many Christian leaders for his embrace of man-made Global Warming theory as fact, then turns to a family of homeschoolers.

Here’s a partial transcript:

Reacting to an MRC press release, Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper lashed out at MRC President Brent Bozell and Culture and yours truly for applauding the record-breaking viewer numbers racked up by Disney Channel’s "High School Musical 2." Roeper makes the nonsensical argument that Disney is known for wholesome stuff, so what’s the big deal? But then he wraps up his piece with this shot:

CNN says Ohio policeman and slaying suspect Bobby Cutts Jr. is just a “complex” guy in a headline on a June 26th AP story.  Slaying suspect Cutts had complex personal life 

Yeah, it’s complex all right. Cutts fathered four kids with three  women, and then allegedly murdered his pregnant girlfriend. To most people, that’s evil. To CNN, it’s merely … complex. As Culture and Media Institute writer David Niedrauer notes, “They tell the story as if circumstances simply drove a good man to do an evil thing.”

After the Massachusetts Legislature voted to crush the marriage amendment ballot measure yesterday, the networks largely ignored the story. But ABC’s Web site carried this headline:

Gay Marriage Safe in Massachusetts: A Vote to Redefine Marriage as a Union Between a Man and a Woman Was Defeated

To ABCNews.com, defining marriage the traditional way is a radical “redefinition” of the institution. Is it any wonder that a majority of the American people, according to the National Cultural Values Survey, believe the news media are a major factor in America’s moral decline? (hat tip to Matt Barber at Concerned Women for America)

Most of the media have spun the decision not to re-nominate Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace as being solely about the Iraq War. Only CNN and The Washington Post reported that Pace’s comment about homosexuality being immoral and his support for convicted White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby could be factors. David Niedrauer of the Culture and Media Institute looks at the media spin.

The Washington Post (“Immigration Judges Often Picked Based On GOP Ties,” June 11) is trying to create another crisis for the Bush administration. Reporters Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen charge that immigration judge appointees are unqualifed. Here's their lede:

The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show.

(14:50 EDT) Video of Tim Russert misspelling "Iraq" at bottom of post.

When California homeschooler Evan O’Dorney, 13, won the National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, the nation’s press reacted with a yawn.

Instead of focusing on the winner, The New York Times ran a story about an immigrant from India who lost in the second round of the competition. That boy, Kunal Sah, 12, who is living in Utah, had hoped a victory would secure his family’s legal status in the United States. Thus, the Times managed to use the National Spelling Bee as one more forum for pushing the plight of immigrants.

Not until the middle of the story did The Times get around to announcing the winner, noting only his name and hometown and the fact that the AP reported his victory.