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When it comes to advancing a liberal agenda, New York Times Co. employees not only give at the office through the paper's slanted reporting, but also through the New York Times Company Foundation, which matches donations by NYT Co. employees -- including many made to leftist environmental and "journalism" groups.

The company website describes the Matching Gifts process this way:

"The Foundation administers the program by which The Times Company matches gifts by full-time employees, directors and retirees to qualifying organizations. The match is $1.50 for each $1 contributed, up to an annual limit of $3,000 in gifts each year."

Our friend Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer has an excellent run-down of Media Matters (MMA) latest attack on another of its favorite bogeymen: Rush Limbaugh. Earlier this week it was sharpening its knives over Bill O'Reilly:

 

Not content to wait until Bill O'Reilly's hoped- for demise, the George Soros- funded Media Matters / mainstream media smear machine has added a second target: Rush Limbaugh.

And this time, the distortion of words may actually be more severe than in O'Reilly's case.

Now, Media Matters has twisted and edited Rush's words in a way that makes it appear he's insulting the troops. They've taken the false idea that he called anti- war soldiers "phony troops" and spread it across the Internet. But Limbaugh said nothing of the sort.

Maloney explains that MMA took out of context a remark Limbaugh made about "phony soldiers:"

Giving a live concert on the Friday, "Today" show Bruce Springsteen didn't just sing but railed against the past six years of George W. Bush's administration. Although he didn't mention Bush by name, the outspoken liberal rocker, didn't need to connect the dots as he hit just about every complaint leftists have charged against the current administration. During his talk-up before his performance of "Living In The Future," Springsteen yelled about "rendition," "illegal wiretapping," "voter suppression," "an attack on the Constitution," "the neglect" of New Orleans and "the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war."

Video (1:18): Real (2.17 MB) and Windows (2.47 MB), plus MP3 audio (340 kB)

Last night's GOP presidential forum was marked by a lack of attendence from the top candidates who said they couldn't come due to "scheduling conflicts."

Could the real reason they didn't come was that the debate moderator, liberal PBS host Tavis Smiley, has a long history of making offensive remarks about Republicans?

Attending the debate in person, I decided to ask that question to Smiley, specifically about his remark that he considered then-Texas-governor George W. Bush to be a "serial killer" for his enforcement of that state's capital punishment laws. His answer was both misleading and evasive.

On August 26 and September 2, the Washington Post refused to run the weekly "Opus" comic strip by cartoonist Berkeley Breathed out of concerns of insensitivity to Muslims. NewsBusters associate editor wrote about the controversy here and here, and MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell discussed the Post's double standard on religious sensibilities on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News program.

Weeks after the controversy has subsided, NewsBusters reader Rusty Weiss shot me a message informing me that a classic "Bloom County" strip from Breathed in the September 28 edition of Yahoo Comics is quite appropriate coming on the heels of the controversy (see below fold for the comic strip). Writes Weiss:

Original caption (spin):

Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly appears on the Fox News show, 'The O'Reilly Factor,' on Jan. 18, 2007 in New York. After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant recently, O'Reilly started a controversy after he told a radio audience he 'couldn't get over the fact' that there was no difference between the black-run Sylvia's and any other restaurant in New York.

On Friday’s "Good Morning America," for the fourth time this year, the ABC program skewered America for not being generous with paid leave and openly lobbied viewers to support a Democratic, big government initiative. After lumping the U.S. in with countries such as Liberia and Lesotho, as being one of only five countries that don’t provide paid maternity leave, GMA contributor Tory Johnson appeared with Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd to promote his legislation.

"First and most important is to make your voice heard, Johnson exclaimed. Openly advocating this government expansion, she added, "On the GMA website, we have links to all the senators’ and congressmen’s offices. Call them. E-mail them. Let them know where you stand." Would GMA promote legislation for family friendly television that a Republican presidential candidate was sponsoring? Also, there was almost no mention of the expensive cost of providing eight weeks of paid maternity leave and how that would effect the U.S. taxpayer. Instead, co-host Robin Roberts mentioned that unpaid leave is already available and wondered, "What's stopping the government from making the law truly family friendly?" Johnson alternatively described paid leave as "government’s relief" and "great benefits" without much consideration of where these "benefits" are coming from.

On September 30, a Sunday – the Lord’s Day in the Christian church – San Francisco will host the Folsom Street Fair, perhaps the most hedonistic event held in public in America. The fair is the San Francisco homosexual community’s annual celebration of promiscuity, sadomasochism and debauchery. The ad for this year’s fair mocks Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with a half-naked beefcake Christ and disciples bedecked in all manner of leather and chains. The bread and wine of The Last Supper are replaced with sex toys. Many Christian groups have expressed outrage. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells CNSNews.com "I do not believe Christianity has been harmed." Hear the audio there.)

Will the national media cover the story?

Washington Post reporter Steven Mufson noted in a September 28 Business section front-pager how new advertising campaigns are "Recasting Big Oil's Battered Image."

Within his article, Mufson brought in advertising critic and NPR host who injected his own political beliefs about oil companies like Chevron (emphasis mine):

"What these ads, like all oil company ads, do is accentuate the positive and don't mention the venality, the environmental impact and overarching greed that is at the bottom of their businesses," said Bob Garfield, a TV ad critic for Advertising Age.

[...]

Discuss amongst yourselves...

A fascinating new liberal defense mechanism has arisen in the past couple of years: Whenever you want to dodge criticism, just claim you are being swift-boated.

In fact, this has become such a part of political parlance that Microsoft Word now recognizes the term "swift-boated" without highlighting it as errant. Isn't that special?

With that in mind, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, is claiming that recent accusations made about him - that he was involved in a GISS report in 1971 predicting an ice age, and that he received money from multi-billionaire George Soros - are nothing more than swift-boating by his critics.

Of course, folks who offhandedly use this defense seem to forget that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) actually never proved that any of the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were false.

Similarly, in Hansen's case, though he admirably tried to deflect scrutiny, he also failed to thoroughly refute the claims made against him (emphasis added, h/t NB reader M. Hoff):

There was a time when professional journalists were driven toward their profession out of a desire to protect the interests of the public through thoughtful and informative information gathering and reporting. It was an honorable job in a profession that was kept on course by a civic responsibility and a "journalistic code of ethics". This concept has been around for so long that you will often hear the phrase repeated in schools and newspapers.

The Associated Press managing editors even went to the trouble of publishing a laughable statement of Ethical Principles that lists responsibility, integrity and independence as their guiding standards.

The good newspaper is fair, accurate, honest, responsible, independent and decent. Truth is its guiding principle.

It avoids practices that would conflict with the ability to report and present news in a fair, accurate and unbiased manner.

MRC director of research and NewsBusters senior editor Rich Noyes appeared on Friday's "Fox & Friends" to discuss the MRC's statement calling on CBS and CNN to apologize to Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.

Video (3:42): Real (2.76 MB) and Windows (2.32 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.06 MB)

Here's an excerpt from Noyes's appearance:

One of the most disgraceful assertions from global warming alarmists such as soon-to-be-Nobel Laureate Al Gore is that a scientific consensus exists concerning man's role in climate change.

Of course, skeptics around the world accurately counter that science isn't accomplished by a show of hands, and that until it can be proven that man is indeed responsible for the slight increase in global average temperatures in the past 100 years, the percentage of people who "feel" that way is totally irrelevant.

With that in mind, a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature (subscription required) tears apart the "scientific consensus" regarding the cause of a hole in the ozone layer, and should act as a warning to folks claiming that the climate change debate is over, assuming of course the media pay any attention to this paper.

For those interested in science rather than consensus-driven hypotheses, here were some of the paper's astounding findings a global warming obsessed press are guaranteed to withhold from the public (emphasis added throughout, h/t Benny Peiser):

Say goodbye to the Great Green Hope. Biofuels are on the endangered list, although the media in America won't tell you that. Reuters reported in its September 26 article that Jane Goodall, the internationally famous primate scientist and environmental icon who presented at Al Gore's Live Earth, added her criticism of vegetable-based biofuels to a growing list experts.

On Wednesday, Goodall, best known for her chimpanzee research and media appearances, said “on the sidelines” of the Clinton Global Initiative that growing crops for vehicle fuels is endangering rain forests in Asia, Africa and South America and adding to anthropogenic global warming (bold mine throughout):

David Shuster's tasteless game of "gotcha," that we reported here and here, in which the MSNBC "correspondent" exploited the name of a fallen American soldier to put Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on the spot, is getting considerable media attention. Brit Hume featured it in last night's "Grapevine" segment of "Special Report."

View video here.

Joe Scarborough is still trying to wring mileage out of bashing Bill O'Reilly over his Sylvia's comments. After calling the "Factor" host a "moron" yesterday, the "Morning Joe" host was back at it today.

When we voted for Jenna Bush to lead the war in Iraq, we all thought she would always be ready and able to lead the discussion in the press about that important issue... Oh, wait. No one voted for Jenna Bush for anything, much less to make Iraq policy. This fact, then, makes it curious that the AP would give us a piece titled "Jenna Bush Ducks Iraq, Talks Engagement." Why, exactly, the AP would think Jenna Bush is the one to ask questions about Iraq during an interview about her marriage plans is anyone's guess. What kind of headline is that anyway? The subhead is even worse, "In Book-Promoting Interview, First Daughter Avoids Iraq Questions, Discusses Her Romantic Engagement Story." This is just another example of the APs Bush Derangement Syndrome where they cannot even have a nice, happy story about the daughter of the president announcing her engagement and talking about helping the poor without badgering her about policies she has nothing to do with.

On this afternoon's "Tucker," the eponymous host was discussing with Dem strategist Peter Fenn and former Dem congressman Tom Andrews [a grown-up among liberals, IMHO] the unwillingness of the leading GOP presidential contenders to participate in the debate moderated by Tavis Smiley, billed as addressing issues of concern to black Americans.

On the one hand, Tucker criticized the Republicans' reticence. On the other, he flashed anger at the way Dems play the race card. Carlson concluded with a particularly tantalizing comment.

View video here.

At the end of Thursday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC's Bill O'Reilly gave a shout out to the Media Research Center, publisher of NewsBusters, for tracking the media's distorted coverage of the remarks made by O'Reilly last week on his radio show which the far-left has tried, with complicity of several media outlets, to turn into an “Imus moment”:

And finally tonight, the mail. Before we get to the letters, I want to thank Brent Bozell and his staff at M, as in Mary, RC.org. They're doing a great job covering this racial deal. Thank you guys.

On Thursday, the MRC issued a press release: “BOZELL CALLS ON CBS AND CNN TO APOLOGIZE TO BILL O’REILLY; CBS and CNN Embarrassing Themselves by Associating With Dishonest, Far-Left Organizations Such As Media Matters.” (As posted on NewsBusters and MRC.org)

Video clip (15 secs): Real (450 KB) or Windows Media (500 KB), plus MP3 audio (75 KB)

The CNN.com article "Mistake Costs Dishwasher $59,000" details the trials and tribulations of Pedro Zapeta, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala. The article explains that:

Two years ago, Zapeta was ready to return to Guatemala, so he carried a duffel bag filled with $59,000 -- all the cash he had scrimped and saved over the years -- to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

So an illegal immigrant (who, by the way, doesn't speak English) tries to leave the country on an airplane with $59,000 cash stuffed in a duffel bag. How could this plan go wrong?

The article goes on to paint Zapeta in the most sympathetic light possible, pointing out that Zapeta, "lived his version of the American dream in Stuart, Florida: washing dishes and living frugally to bring money back to his home country." The article claimed that Zapeta had worked in this country for 11 years.

Yes, the "Big Three" are skipping tonight's debate. That shouldn't stop you from heading over to the NB live chat and discussing the questioning or your favorite lesser-known candidates though. For a more permanent discussion, feel free to post on this thread.

2225|Shepherd: End of debate. Back to your regularly scheduled boring PBS programming. 

2222|Shepherd: Williams to Brownback: "is the supreme court right to say school integration is no longer key to equal justice for all" Williams is spewing the false, biased meme the media used months ago. SEE related NB post here.http://newsbusters.org/node/13896 

2217|Shepherd: Suarez asks Paul about capital punishment: "Do you think the deathpenalty is carried out justly in the United States, and do you want to see it carried out."

2214|Shepherd: Tucker to Gov. Huckabee: Gov. does the us govt have a role to play in ending the genocide in Darfur, and if so, what would that be. 

Ted Turner made a rare appearance on CNN on Wednesday’s "American Morning," and made an odd statement about what his priority was in global affairs. "Well, the two things that I'm most concerned about are the nuclear arsenals and the fact that they are still on hair-trigger alert, the Russian and American arsenals, and if something were to go wrong, or a mistake, and they get accidentally launched, it's the end of the world in an afternoon. I think that's probably the greatest danger that we face. And the second one is probably global warming."

Turner also made a thinly-veiled attack on the Bush Administration while making a prediction about the future of the world. "We're in a dangerous spot, but we can pull it out if we really work together and go to work on it, and do the smart things and stop doing the dumb things, like bombing Third World countries."

Video: Real (1.85 MB) or Windows (1.56 MB), plus MP3 (1.15 KB)

MRC President Brent Bozell this afternoon called upon CBS and CNN to apologize to Fox News host Bill O'Reilly for promoting the false charges of a left-wing hate group:

"Bill O'Reilly's accusers -- the dishonest leftists at Media Matters, CBS and CNN -- have gone beyond the pale. There was absolutely nothing that Bill O'Reilly said that was in any way offensive," stated L. Brent Bozell III, President of the Medias Research Center. "People are sick and tired of these far-left character assassination campaigns, whether they come from Media Matters or MoveOn.org.

If you've got an extra-billion dollars laying around and you happen to be a fan of "Today" co-host Ann Curry, just donate that extra cash at a Bill Clinton-fronted foundation conference and you may just get a kiss from her. On the Thursday, "Today" show Curry got so excited by a paper company exec's donation of $1 billion at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting that she actually planted a kiss on him.

After the chairman of Pratt Industries, Anthony Pratt, told NBC's Al Roker he was donating the money to help recycling efforts, the notoriously green Curry went into a tither as she exclaimed:

Curry: "$1 billion?! $1 billion?! You get a kiss!"

Pratt: "Yeah, thank you."

With a huge assist from the New York Times' Patricia Cohen, feminist author Susan Faludi revealed apparently incapable of connecting to the 9-11 tragedy in human terms in Thursday's Arts section story "Towers Fell, and Attitudes Were Rebuilt," in which Faludi cast heroic acts after 9-11 as an anti-woman lurch back to "prefeminist thinking."

"The terrifying and wrenching photographs from September 2001 on display at the New-York Historical Society are suspended from clips in neat rows like laundry hanging on a line. Among them is a black-and-white picture of a life-size cardboard cutout of John Wayne in his prime, with a placard hanging from his neck that reads: 'This is no time for cowboys.'

"'That could be the cover of my book,' Susan Faludi said. She was visiting the Historical Society's exhibition of photographs and artifacts from the World Trade Center attacks and talking about her work 'The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America,' out next week from Metropolitan Books."

Reuters is busy smearing the troops by claiming they opened fire on civilians. But while accusations of misconduct are always good for several months worth of front-page stories, somehow the media never has time to comment on the many good deeds that the United States Armed Forces perform all over the world. And unfortunately, the US military does not do as well as we would wish at getting the word out.

Many conservatives who feel passionately about reaching out to black voters are infuriated that the Republican front-runners have not consented to a PBS debate hosted by PBS and public-radio talk show host Tavis Smiley. Newt Gingrich assured ABC viewers the other morning that "Tavis Smiley is a very responsible, very clear-cut commentator and analyst. He's going to run a very fair debate." But have these critical voices ever really looked at Smiley’s actual record when it comes to Republicans?

Start with October 24, 2000. Smiley told Geraldo Rivera on CNBC that George W. Bush was a serial killer. "There are, there are some issues on which if you are a voter of color, certainly if you are an African-American, you have a hard time choosing. For example, both of these guys support the death penalty. As far as I’m concerned, Bush in Texas is nothing more than a serial killer." Does Gingrich think that's "responsible" commentary?

I think I’ve heard it all now…a NY Times Op-Ed writer plagarizing himself, and now a Reuters reporter who is his own source. The MSM sure knows how to find quality talent. Hat tip to Jammie Wearing Fool who says:

I think I’ve seen it all now. An story from Reuters reporter Noor Mohammad Sherzai quotes extensively from … Noor Mohammad Sherzai.

And Sherzai claims U.S. troops opened fire on civilians in Afghanistan.

If this story is proven to be bogus, will he claim he misquoted himself?

The Reuters article, titled U.S. fire scatters crowd after Afghan bomb, starts out with “By Noor Mohammad Sherzai”. Later in the article it goes on to say: