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UPDATE: Check out reaction from some of the chief Weiner-defenders below the break.

The so-called Weinergate scandal provided a true spectacle of media bias and conspiracy theorizing. While there was certainly plenty of good reporting throughout, many opted to take Rep. Anthony Weiner's claims at face value and search for other culprits or scapegoats.

Others devised more malicious theories about why a lewd picture had appeared on the congressman's Twitter feed. It was Andrew Breitbart's attempt to gin up another bogus story, or a coordinated effort by conservatives to provide cover for Clarence Thomas. These wild theories actually gained quite a bit of traction among liberals online, and even a few mainstream personalities.

We know now, by Weiner's own admission, that they were all nonsense. So with the facts readily available, it's worth reviewing some of the dominant narratives that pervaded media coverage of the scandal.

In the June 5 Washington Post article, "Palestinian Protesters Attempt to Cross at Golan Heights, Israeli Troops Open Fire," co-writers Samuel Sockol and Joel Greenberg managed not to fill in viewers on significant background from the Six-Day War from 1967, namely that Egypt, Syria and Jordan provoked an attack from Israel by amassing troops next to the tiny Jewish state along the 1949 armistice lines, as if they were about to strike. Referring to the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, Sockol and Greenberg vaguely noted that Israel "captured those territories" during the 1967 war: "The protest near the Golan Heights and other demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip marked the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 Middle East war, in which Israel captured those territories."

Similar to Greenberg's May 15 piece in which he neglected to inform readers that several Arab countries had driven most Palestinian refugees from Israel by simultaneously attacking the Jewish state in 1948, the June 5 article also avoided such details as it referred to the "establishment of Israel in 1948 and the Palestinians' displacement in the war that followed": "Despite the reported casualty toll, the scope of Sunday’s protests was more modest than the coordinated marches May 15, when thousands of Palestinians converged on Israel’s borders from Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to mark the anniversary of the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the Palestinians’ displacement in the war that followed."

ABC's George Stephanopoulos went beyond challenging assumptions from Ann Coulter's newest book "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America" on Tuesday, as he repeatedly attempted to correct her on historical facts. The former Clinton advisor interrupted her multiple times on Tuesday's Good Morning America to make a point that she was either wrong or lying about history.

You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts, said the late Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Yet Stephanopoulos interrupted Coulter as she claimed that the Ku Klux Klan in the South was Democratic. "Started out Democratic, but turned very quickly," Stephanopoulos asserted.

[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]

Appearing on MSNBC today, Newsweek senior writer Andrew Romano attributed the findings of his magazine's study showing Americans don't understand basic facts about U.S. history to the country's lack of a top-down federal government-imposed curriculum.

When daytime anchor Thomas Roberts asked Romano to explain the significance of the survey, the Daily Beast scribe indicted federalism: "Another reason why we don’t do well is because we don’t have a kind of centralized curriculum in our schools. Everyone in different states kind of learns different things. And that definitely contributes to it as well."

The Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor has been digging up the dirt on the deep-pocketed lefty media mogul George Soros’ funding of media operations, and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly invited him on to discuss Gainor's latest piece in which he says there are ‘nearly 30 Soros-funded media operations that are part of the ‘War on Fox’.”

Video below fold.

Asked by new CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley why Congressman Anthony Weiner “matters,” CBS Capitol Hill reporter Nancy Cordes on Monday night maintained he’s vital as a critic pushing Obama from the left.

“The President has a lot of critics on the right,” Cordes noted, “but Weiner is one of his most outspoken critics on the left wherever liberals feel that the President is straying too far from their principles,” so “it's unclear how well he's really going to be able to perform that role now, a role that even the President has said is very important.”

When I began watching my DVR recording of Morning Joe today, I was of course wondering which clip from yesterday's Weiner press conference Morning Joe had chosen for its show-opener. When instead a clip of Jon Stewart mocking Sarah Palin appeared, I literally wondered if I was playing the recording of the wrong day's Morning Joe.

But as the first half-hour unfolded, it became obvious that Morning Joe had made a conscious decision to black out any mention of Weiner-gate during today's first half-hour. Hat tip NB reader Matthew E.

View video after the jump.