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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:

People who are sick and tired of the smear campaigns against conservatives emanating from the left take heart, for it appears that last night's "O'Reilly Factor" was a foreshadowing of things to come.

Just hours after Bill O'Reilly came out strongly against media representatives parroting factually inaccurate statements promulgated by leftwing websites and organizations, the host of the "Radio Factor" issued a strong warning Thursday to press outlets participating in such smear campaigns.

Fasten your seatbelts, because this is really delicious (audio available here courtesy Johnny Dollar):

Keith Olbermann this week has been happier than Ralphie Parker on Christmas morning over a left-wing group-generated controversy over Bill O'Reilly. But like the BB-gun-receiving protagonist of "A Christmas Story," lil' Keithie needs to know the dangers of (metaphorically) putting his eye out. After all, on September 9 on NBC's "Football Night in America," Olbermann made a cryptic crack that could be taken to be racially insensitive, if not racist.

SEE Video (0:54): Real (1.46 MB) and Windows (1.64 MB), plus MP3 audio (417 kB).

CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed a "squinting" Bill Clinton for a segment on Wednesday’s "Anderson Cooper 360" (a 2-minute clip was featured on Wednesday’s "The Situation Room"), and if there was speculation on why Cooper, instead of someone "higher up the food chain" like Wolf Blitzer, interviewed Clinton on the occasion of the "Clinton Global Initiative" annual meeting, it could be because Cooper is one of the "featured attendees" at this meeting. Cooper moderated a "working session" panel discussion on Wednesday on "The Most Effective Strategies for the Most Vulnerable Children."

Cooper joins other members of the mainstream media who are "featured attendees" at this year’s "Clinton Global Initiative" annual meeting, including Daljit Dhaliwal of PBS; Nicholas Kristof and George Suroweicki of the New York Times; Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, and former (current?) Clinton lackey George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. Major media executives attending the meeting include Judy McGrath, Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks; Rupert Murdoch; and Ted Turner.

On Thursday’s "Good Morning America," ABC host George Stephanopoulos provided another example of the close relationship that the "This Week" host has with Bill and Hillary Clinton. After playing a debate clip of the New York Senator publicly disagreeing with her husband over a question about torture, Stephanopoulos revealed to co-host Robin Roberts, "My e-mail started going off the minute after that exchange happened. All the Clinton people."

Stephanopoulos, a former top aide to Bill Clinton, explained that Mrs. Clinton’s operatives "were thrilled" with the retort and "they like any moment where she can show that, actually, she's the one in charge. He's not pulling the strings." In other words, the Clinton camp e-mailed the ABC anchor, told him the debate moment they most appreciated and Stephanopoulos dutifully highlighted it the next day on "Good Morning America." This isn’t the first time the veteran journalist has touted his continuing ties to the Clintons. In March of 2005, he boasted to (then) MSNBC host Don Imus that he talked with liberal political operative James Carville "every day."

Appearing in the 7:00 a.m. half-hour of Thursday's "Fox & Friends," Media Research Center president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted that former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather is in utter "meltdown" over the National Guard hoax "although it's been proven documentably, no pun intended, to be false."

Video (3:50): Real and Windows, plus MP3 audio.

Asked by guest co-host Heather Nauert if anyone is going to buy Rather's claims that CBS is covering up the truth to curry favor with the White House, Bozell replied:

In the wake of the recent media-created scandal concerning statements made by Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on his radio show, a rather enlightening discussion has ensued regarding the existence of a well-organized campaign to demonize every television and radio personality whose political opinions don't march in lock-step with the left.

A rather frank and candid conversation concerning this matter occurred on Wednesday's "The O'Reilly Factor" between the host and outspoken radio talk show personality Tammy Bruce.

Here are some of the astounding highlights, with full transcript to follow (video available here, h/t Hot Air):

Your turn...

The Washington Post placed the O’Reilly soul-food scandalette on the front of the Style section on Thursday. Paul Farhi’s report provided some context to O’Reilly radio-show remarks on the improvement in race relations, but CNN’s Rick Sanchez implied that O’Reilly thinks white women are endangered by sexually overpowering black men. Or at least, that’s what comes through when you use the word "Mandingo," a 1975 movie about a white woman having an affair with a black slave:

Sanchez, in a phone interview, said O'Reilly is perpetuating racism by using "the Mandingo argument" against black rappers. "The idea [is] that there's a big, bad African American out there that we all need protection from," he said. "It's a dangerous way of looking at racial relations. The African American community is extremely complex. The thinking that black culture is confined to guys sticking their underwear out is just wrong, and many African Americans resent it."

This AP report is a perfect example of how the western media hasn't the temerity to call things like they are, a perfect example of how it soft-sells the truth for fear of violating those vaunted codes of politically correct conduct -- and why we could lose this war with a radical Islam that isn't afraid of how they are perceived by their enemies. The weakness this time is displayed in an AP report titled "Ministry: Taliban spokesman arrested", in which the AP can't even call the Taliban a terrorist organization and treats these murderers as if they were just another normal government entity by according them the respect of the kind of language you'd reserve for the spokesmen of any legitimate government.

First off, at the top of the story, the Taliban is described merely as an "insurgent movement" instead of a terrorist agency.

In September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Some surrounding trees have been added to the design, but the giant central crescent remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign.

It's Thursday which means it's time for another episode of our new comedy webcast "NewsBusted!" You can watch the show over at the top of the sidebar of this page.

Click here to see the show archive, you can also subscribe to "NewsBusted" to be automatically notified via email whenever we post new vlogs.

If you like the show, help us spread the word! You can also help by leaving positive ratings and comments on YouTube since left-wingers love to vote down anything that's not PC.

This could be a first: Al Sharpton criticized for being insufficiently inflammatory; faulted for not shooting from the hip.

At the opening of today's "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough panned the Rev's "O'Reilly Factor" performance last evening, in which the normally obstreperous one was relatively subdued on the subject of his host's comments on Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem. Scarborough later escalated his criticism, calling O'Reilly a "moron," and accusing him of making "racist" comments.

View video here.

The morning after CNN and MSNBC began salivating over a potential “Imus moment” pushed by a far-left group to suppress Bill O'Reilly over a supposedly racist remark, CBS and NBC on Wednesday advanced the liberal group's cause with multi-part segments on the topic. But while NBC's Today at least provided some balance and proper labeling, CBS's Early Show, with “In Hot Water” and “O'Race Factor” on screen, aired a story which failed to identify the ideology of Media Matters and followed with Julie Chen pressing the only guest to agree O'Reilly's comment was racist and that he must issue an apology. Amazingly, neither show bothered to mention that Juan Williams, the black journalist who was on O'Reilly's radio show when the FNC host made the remarks in question, defended O'Reilly: “It had nothing to do with racist ranting by anybody except these idiots at CNN.”

Harry Smith teased Wednesday's Early Show: “Bill O'Reilly in hot water over race remarks. The controversy ahead, early this Wednesday morning, September 26th, 2007.” Chen hyped a “firestorm” over O'Reilly before reporter Bianca Solorzano innocuously described Media Matters as a “watchdog group.” Solorzano asked an employee at the Harlem restaurant O'Reilly talked about: “Do you feel Bill O'Reilly's comments about his meal here are racist?” The woman affirmed: “Definitely. One of the worst stereotypes ever of our customers, of our people.” Chen next interviewed Alex David of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. She pressed him: “You say ignorance, but do you think racist?” Chen also urged him to agree: “Does he need to apologize at this point, do you think?”

On Wednesday's "Countdown" show, just minutes before the beginning of the night's Democratic debate coverage on MSNBC, Chris Matthews remarked that he was "warming up to Hillary these days," while host Keith Olbermann responded that "I don't have anything to warm up from."

Matthews also attacked Fox's "partisanship" and suggested that its anchor, Chris Wallace, is an "ignoramus."

"When [Wallace is] the one that took down her husband a few months ago and he's talking about excessive partisanship. ... He's there representing Fox Television putting down partisanship. What? Of course she had to laugh. What else could she say, 'You're an ignoramus'?" (Transcript follows)

According to CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the election of a Republican president in 2008 will bring a certain end to Roe v. Wade.

Toobin has made the rounds promoting his new book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. In a recent Time.com article (a straight question-and-answer account of his interview), Toobin stated the following:

Time.com: Your book strongly suggests that personalities and personal views are more important than case law.

Brent Bozell, President of the MRC which runs NewsBusters, appeared Wednesday night on FNC's "Hannity & Colmes" to discuss comments Katie Couric made hostile to the Bush administration decision the launch the war in Iraq. Couric spoke about the Iraq war at a Tuesday night "Kalb Report" forum at the National Press Club (C-SPAN2 will air it Wednesday night at 11:15pm EDT). Couric contended that “people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war” and she expressed frustration: “I've never understood why [invading Iraq] was so high on the administration's agenda when terrorism was going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that [Iraq] had no true connection with al Qaeda.”

Bozell reminded viewers of how, in a September of 2006 profile of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice which aired on 60 Minutes, after Rice wondered “what's wrong with assistance so that people can have their full and complete right to the very liberties and freedoms that we enjoy?”, Couric retorted: “To quote my daughter, 'Who made us the boss of them?'” (MRC CyberAlert posting with video)

Video clip of Bozell on the September 26 "Hannity & Colmes" (5:30): Real (4.1 MB) or Windows Media (3.5 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.9 MB).

A preview of an interview of impeached former president Bill Clinton ran on Wednesday’s "The Situation Room," in which Clinton blasted "disingenuous" Republicans for their "feigned outrage" over MoveOn.org’s ad attacking General David Petraeus. Clinton put on his best "angry face" during the clip. "This was classic bait-and-switch.... These Republicans that are all upset about Petraeus - this is one newspaper ad. These are the people that ran a television ad in Georgia with Max Cleland, who lost half his body in Vietnam – in the same ad, with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. That’s what the Republicans did."

As NewsBuster Jake Gontesky reported, an editorial in Investor's Business Daily Monday claimed one of billionaire leftist George Soros's foundations gave $720,000 in 2006 to the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen.

Since this editorial was published, according to LexisNexis and Google News searches, not one major media outlet has reported these allegations.

Maybe even more shocking is that had press outlets looked into this matter - you know, acted like journalists instead of advocates! - they would have found Hansen's name prominently mentioned in the 2006 Soros Foundations Network Report (relevant section on page 123):

Katie Couric "really sounds like... a light-headed Hillary [Clinton] and it sounds like she's trying to claw back into the good graces of MoveOn.org and maybe she's trying to rub the belly of the Buddha, Frank Rich, and everybody who attacked her for being some sort of Bush tool when she went to Iraq."

That's how MRC director of media analysis and NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham described Katie Couric's recent conversation with Marvin Kalb in which the CBS anchor laid out her liberal opinions of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

We knew that'd get you hooked. You can view the entire segment on the September 26 "Your World w/Neil Cavuto by checking out the Video (3:57): Real (2.91 MB) and Windows (2.43 MB), plus MP3 (1.80 MB).

Did Chris Matthews, on his September 24th edition of "Hardball," really hear Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "allow" that there was a Holocaust? This is what he insisted to New York City Councilman David Weprin:

MATTHEWS: OK, let‘s talk about that very point. The hottest issue of the last century, of course, and the worst case of inhumanity to man, of course, is the Holocaust. I listened carefully to him. And I know you did, sir. Didn‘t you hear him allow the fact that there was, in fact, a Holocaust?

WEPRIN: Well, he—his statement today was different than his statement in the past.

MATTHEWS: Right.

WEPRIN: In the past, he‘s clearly said that the Holocaust was a hoax, it never existed. Now he‘s talking about doing more research. There‘s no question...

What is Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger's main qualification for being publisher of the New York Times? According to Huffington Post blogger, John Ridley, it is living through birth. Although generally liberal, Ridley sometimes refreshingly breaks from the leftwing party line as I have noted when he accused the Democrat presidential candidates of being cowardly for refusing to appear at debates sponsored by Fox News. Now Ridley's ire is directed against Pinch Sulzberger in his Huffington Post blog of yesterday, "How the New York Times Betrays Us."

Even after the Juan Williams "idiots at CNN" rebuke, CNN still pressed on about Bill O’Reilly’s race remarks, and a guest on Wednesday’s "Newsroom" took the language being used against O’Reilly and Williams to new lows. Syracuse University professor and blogger Boyce Watkins appeared on the CNN program, and compared O’Reilly to a murderous movie villain and to Iranian tyrant Ahmadinejad. "If the villain in a movie comes up and says, 'I love you very much,' that usually means he wants to kill you. The fact is that Bill O'Reilly is a guy who has made a career demeaning, degrading, and devaluing every black institution he can get his hands on.... You know, he's about like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when it comes to making ridiculous assertions and waiting for people to respond."

After his villain/Ahmadinejad comparison, Watkins blasted NPR host and Fox News contributor Juan Williams for coming to O’Reilly’s defense. O’Reilly’s race comments had come from an hour of his radio program that involved a segment with Williams. "Juan Williams sitting there, is sort of the 'Happy Negro' agreeing with Bill O'Reilly, doesn't impress me at all. A man cannot walk into your home and congratulate your mother for not being a prostitute and not expect you to be offended."

Video: Real (3.20 MB) or Windows (3.63 MB), plus MP3 (912 KB)

UPDATE -- SHUSTER APOLOGIZES: At 6:44 PM EDT, MSNBC broke into the Tucker Carlson show to air a terse apology from Shuster. See "My Take" below.

View video of Shuster apology here.

Here follows the text of Shuster apology.

DAVID SHUSTER: On Monday evening while guest-hosting the 6 p.m. evening hour, I conducted an interview with Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn. The congresswoman spoke at length about a newspaper ad that criticized General Petraeus. In what I believed was an effort to examine Representative Blackburn's priorities, I then asked her to name the last soldier from her congressional district killed in Iraq.

She responded "the name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district, I do not know." After that response, I identified who I believed to be that fallen soldier, a Tennessean killed in Iraq last month. But according to Pentagon documents, that young man came from a town inside a neighboring congressional district, not from Representative Blackburn's, and for that, I apologize for that mistake.

Read past the jump for the rest of the story..