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Possible discussion point: "Two-thirds of US adults admit to being in the dark about political issues outside the United States, and only a third are well-versed in US politics, the results of a poll published Tuesday showed."

The Seattle Times today has published the photos of two men the FBI wants to locate and talk to in regards to their suspicious behavior aboard several Puget Sound ferries in recent weeks, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer continues to refuse to do so - even though the photos have now been widely published in the Seattle area and nationally via other media outlets and the blogosphere. As we discussed yesterday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer offered a haiku contest related to the case, but refused to help the FBI locate the men by publishing their photos.

Sometimes watching the MSM grapple with the challenges of web journalism can produce some quite funny results. Such was the case with the editor, Earl Maucker, of my hometown newspaper, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, as he attempted to explain how his newspaper was dealing with that newfangled thing called the Internet. In his reponse to the question on how the Internet has affected the newspaper business, Maucker provides a pollyannaish response with Web offers new visual dimension:

Last night, it occurred to me, as I was preparing an e-mail to notify New York Times business columnist David Cay Johnston about updates to yesterday's original posts (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog) about his "smaller average incomes" report and a new source data update post, that I should bring a festering Times-related business reporting matter to his attention.

So I did (links to previous NewsBusters, BizzyBlog and other posts not in the e-mail have been added by me; Mr. Johnston was advised that this portion of the e-mail would be posted):

David,

..... Until earlier this year, I really didn't have too adverse of an opinion on the hard business reporting at the Times (outside of Paul Krugman, but he's a commentator). I've usually seen AP as consistently worse on hard biz-econ news.

Then, in February, Times reporter David Leonhardt told readers that manufacturing was in a recession. Not heading towards one. Not on the verge of one. Nope -- IN one.

Mika Brzezinski might be taking a break from "Morning Joe," but the MSNBC show hasn't missed a liberal beat with her replacement. Tamron Hall today seemed to suggest that Christians and Jews could be next to emulate Muslim terror tactics.

At 6:35 A.M. EDT today, talk turned to the CNN series "God's Warriors," a classic exercise in moral equivalence. Hosted by Christiane Amanpour, the series focuses on extremists in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Earlier today, Hall had watched the segment on Jewish extremists. Scarborough called CNN on its moral relativism.

JOE SCARBOROUGH [Note: speaking very much tongue-in-cheek]: I'm sure we're going to find that there are Jewish and Christian organizations, international terror networks, that are set on the destruction of entire civilizations as we find in the Muslim world.

That's when Hall began to rise to CNN's defense.

View video here

Update with video posted below fold.

File this one under the rubric "Unintentionally Revealing Moments of MSM Bias." ABC publishes an article about media watchdog groups and singles out two for mention: NewsBusters and Media Matters. But the article goes on to cite the work of and publish comments by a representative of only one of those groups. Which one do you think it was?

Yesterday, ABC posted an article by its Samantha Wenders entitled The Camera Is Always Watching: The Internet Has Helped Citizens Play 'Gotcha' With the Press; Is That a Good Thing?"

Wrote Wenders: "Media watchdog groups like the conservative Newsbusters and the liberal Media Matters regularly post examples of what they see as bias in the media."

The Chicago Sun-Times is blaming the Bush administration for what they claim is sure to be a rise in unplanned pregnancies at colleges and universities across the country. It hasn't happened yet, mind you, but they are sure it's gonna! Naturally, the paper cannot imagine we should place any blame on the stupid students who are getting themselves pregnant. I mean, it HAS to be Bush's fault, you see, with personal responsibility being so last century and all. No, the Sun-Times is sure that a cut in the amount of Federal money doled out to our institutions of higher learning for cheap birth control is going to wreak havoc with the student body. Our kids are obviously too stupid to get by without that government spending.

The Sun-Times, worrying that the cost of birth control available to students in colleges is going to rise, imagines a law reducing Federal spending is somehow forcing students to have unprotected sex. "Birth-control costs soaring at colleges -- Pregnancies could rise now that law limits drugmaker incentives", they proclaim. This calamity is all being blamed on the "Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year" according to the Sun-Times.

“We're going to take 'A Closer Look' now at how a brutal triple murder in New Jersey is fueling the outcry across the country against illegal immigrants,” fill-in ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas announced Tuesday night in setting up a look at a problem largely avoided by the mainstream media. Reminding viewers of “the senseless shootings of three college students in the city of Newark,” Vargas related how “two of the suspects were in this country illegally. And some are saying it's a crime that would never have occurred if immigration laws were enforced.”

Reporter Jake Tapper explained in his World News piece that “their presence in Newark, a city hospitable to illegal immigrants, what conservatives are calling a 'sanctuary city,' is now part of the debate over illegal immigration.” After soundbites from Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo and Newt Gingrich castigating the city for not enforcing immigration laws, Tapper noted how there's “a rising hostility to illegal immigrants, not just among conservatives, but in the inner city.” To illustrate, Tapper ran soundbites from three people on the street who all argued for a crackdown on illegals, before he concluded with a nod to the other side and why that view doesn't matter: “Liberal immigration activists argue that illegal immigrants do not commit violent crimes more than any other group. But for many in mourning here in Newark, two illegal immigrants may have been two too many.”

Modern politics sure is entertaining sometimes, especially when one politically correct cause threatens another one as in Norway where that country's moose population is being blamed for contributing to global warming:

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.

Citing recent peer-reviewed studies, Brit Hume informed viewers of his Fox News Channel program on Tuesday night that though “many media outlets...portray man-made global warming as a certified fact and those who deny it as conspirators,” several “skeptics are increasingly certain that the scare is vastly overblown.” In his “Grapevine” segment, Hume pointed to a study by a Brookhaven National Lab scientist who “contends that the Earth's climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the UN's recent climate study claims,” a Belgian Weather Institute report “that carbon dioxide does not have a decisive role in global warming,” a “study by two Chinese scientists” that discovered “CO2's role in warming is 'vastly exaggerated'” and “new research by University of Washington mathematicians” that “shows a correlation between high solar activity and periods of global warming.”

Journalist Kirk Leech at GoldenMyths.com rips apart the PBS broadcast "Gold Futures," exposing a myriad of lies within the documentary by Hungarian filmmaker Tibor Kocsis.

In the 7pm EDT hour of Tuesday's The Situation Room on CNN, Jack Cafferty expressed disappointment in Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd for rejecting efforts to impeach President Bush because of how it would hurt Democratic chances in 2008. “So, Senator Dodd is putting the election prospects of the Democratic Party next year ahead of whether or not President Bush might be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors of a kind which would mandate his removal from office,” Cafferty lamented. He noted that “Congress's job is oversight of the executive branch” and then, he sniffed, with a disapproving shake of his head: “Unless, of course, that oversight interferes with getting elected.” Cafferty soon reiterated his displeasure with the liberal Connecticut Senator: “It's a pretty amazing statement to come out of Senator Dodd's mouth.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is refusing to run the photos of two men the FBI is seeking to question in connection with suspicious behavior aboard a Puget Sound ferry - behavior that could be a precursor to a terror plot, or could be nothing nefarious at all.

The Seattle PI reports the story here and explains its rationalization for not publishing the photos here. And - in a steller example of complete touchy-feely uselessness - the paper is holding a haiku-writing contest for readers to write about how they feel about the FBI alert and the way the paper handled it.

From the report:

All you global warming skeptics, deniers, and court jesters better stow your potables, combustibles, and sharp objects safely from proximity of electronic equipment, because it was absolutely a frigid August day in the Big Apple Tuesday.

HOW COLD WAS IT?

Well, as reported by WCBSTV.com, this is the coldest August day in New York City in almost a century (h/t NBer Dave in Texas, emphasis added throughout):

In the appropriately-titled "Media Backtalk" chat on August 21, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz defended a fellow reporter's self-described "smart-assed" remark to President Bush about adviser Karl Rove's political acumen.

Kurtz defended CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante's August 13 question as "the Sam Donaldson technique of trying to get the president and top aides to say something, anything at a scripted event where they are determined not to respond to reporters."

"If he's so smart, how come you lost Congress?" Plante shouted to President Bush at an August 13 White House news gaggle. Three days later, Plante defended his question in a CBSNews.com interview saying:

So, did you know that climate change is the biggest security challenge since the Cold War?

Hadn't heard that?

Well, you're just not reading the finer alarmist wire services!

As extraordinarily reported by Reuters Tuesday (emphasis added):

Liberals around the country are smiling today at an Associated Press poll and story circulating on the web claiming that conservatives read less than liberals, none more so than former Colorado Democratic congresswoman Pat Schroeder who despite being president of the American Association of Publishers decided she felt like insulting half of her potential reading audience by dusting off an old liberal refrain:

"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,' [...] It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page. [...] She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who "can't say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion."

It's all too familiar and really kind of sad since this poll is hardly conclusive (more on that in a minute). For all their talk about being "regular people," the left sure loves calling their fellow citizens stupid and moronic. You'd think that after employing this method for so long—think Reagan-as-idiot-savant, rationalizing the radio failure of Mario Cuomo, Air America, etc.—that the left would realize their elitist and snobbish attitude and either drop it or drop the whole "party of the people" nonsense. After all, how can you be for the common man if you regard him as an ignorant dolt?

On Tuesday’s "Morning Joe," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough mocked the very concept of CNN’s upcoming specials on Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremism. Anticipating the possible moral relativism that the Christiane Amanpour-hosted series may take, Scarborough sarcastically observed, "They’re going to study Muslim extremism, then Christian extremism, because we know Christians have, have slaughtered thousands of people across the globe in bombings..."

Comparing the CNN anchor to a liberal talk show host, an incredulous Scarborough added, "Is this Rosie O'Donnell or is this Christine Amanpour?" (In 2006, O’Donnell famously claimed that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam...") Returning to the subject later in the 7am hour, Scarborough derided the cable network again. He complained, "But to say, as CNN appears to be saying, that Muslim extremism and Jewish extremism and Christian extremism, sort of, is equal, that there is moral equivalence...between those three, that’s just ridiculous."

There’s been plenty of blame placed on home lenders, and that’s led to a call for more regulation by many politicos.

But what about the borrowers who agreed to the loans’ terms and the cost of any regulatory action enacted to protect these borrowers?

Barbara Kiviat disregarded those key points in her article “Ground Zero of the Real Estate Bust,” published in the August 27 issue of Time. She suggested there was a predatory element involved meant to lure the unsuspecting “addictive” borrower to get in over his head.

“Still, the EZ Credit addiction is tough to cure,” wrote Kiviat. “Drive through Green Valley Ranch, and you still see signs for 0 DOWN PAYMENT, 100% FINANCING.”

For a long time, the San Antonio Express-News was unique, not in its predictably liberal editorial page or in its port-skewing news coverage. No, instead, it was one of the few American newspapers to have two editorial cartoonists, one liberal and one conservative.

That is no longer the case. Under pressure to cut jobs and staff in the midst of the overall decline of print media, Express-News editorial page editor Bruce Davidson decided that the paper should drop conservative cartoonist Leo Garza, a fixture at the paper for over 20 years. Liberal cartoonist John Branch will remain on the staff.

You'd think that given the Express-News's posture of demanding accountability from government and (other) businesses, that it would be consistent and respect the "public's right to know" what prompted this politically charged decision. Alas, no such explanation seems in the offing for us plebs.

On Monday evening, CNN began a three-part special entitled "God, Sex and Greed." At issue: in a supposedly religious country like ours, why are sex and greed so prominent?

With that as the premise, who do you think CNN chose as one of the examples of greed in our country?

Disgracefully, a 24-year-old Jewish hedge fund manager who took his Bar Mitzvah money and turned it into millions.

Nice stereotype of a greedy Jew, wouldn't you agree?

Anchor Roland Martin introduced the segment (h/t Steve Malzberg):

A Kansas court of appeals has ruled that it's illegal for an illegal alien to enter the country, but not illegal for an illegal alien to be in the country if the illegal alien can illegally make it past the Border Patrol without getting caught.

Huh? What? I like to think I can wield the mighty power of semantics with the best of them - but, huh? What? I thought the "illegal" in illegal alien spoke for itself. Apparently not.

Ruling that it is illegal to enter the country without the proper documents and permissions, but it is not necessarily illegal to be in the country if you don't get caught upon entry, the court threw out the sentence of an illegal immigrant who pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and endangering a child.

Times Watch hasn't dealt with arts editor-liberal columnist Frank Rich in a while (especially since the Times Select pay to read program walled him and other columnists out of view).

Folks, you haven't been missing a thing. Rich's anti-Republican frippery simply lights on different targets each week. This week it's retiring Bush advisor Karl Rove ("He Got Out While the Getting Was Good").

Rich introduced the main villain, Rove, through the side character ex-Virginia Sen. George Allen and his overblown "macaca moment":

Try to imagine what the New York Times did with the following data:

Go ahead. Then go to the full post to find out.

Rather than attack the government for its inability to manage air traffic, the August 20 “NBC Nightly News” shifted the blame to the airlines – specifically attacking American Airlines.

“So far this summer, Flightstats.com has reported American Airlines has had the lowest on-time arrival rate at 65 percent. But yet another Dallas-based carrier, Southwest, has had the highest on-time rate at 78 percent,” said correspondent Tom Costello making the case against American.

However, Costello’s comparison was faulty because it ignored major differences between the two airlines.

It's not a scientific survey, but a recent poll of Chicago Tribune readers showed an overwhelming majority of readers support the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrant and Social Security fraudster Elvira Arellano. You'll recall I wrote about the Trib's bias on Monday.

The results of the four poll questions were published in an August 21 post at Eric Zorn's "Change of Subject" blog:

We asked chicagotribune.com readers for their views on the Elvira Arellano case. Here are the results after approximately 23,900 votes were registered:

The Hollywood Reporter has the news that actress-comedian and former Air America talk show host Janeane Garofalo will be joining the cast of Fox's "24" next season:

The political left and the political right are going to meet on Fox's "24" this coming season.

Actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo, an outspoken liberal, is set to co-star on the conservative-leaning real-time drama, whose co-creator/executive producer Joel Surnow jokingly describes himself as a "right-wing nut job."

On the Imagine TV/20th Century Fox TV series, Garofalo will play a government agent who is part of the team investigating the crisis befalling Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and company in the upcoming season.

Charges of bias leveled at PBS yesterday in this post here at Newsbusters about PBS's airing nationwide tonight of "Gold Futures," documentary regarding a proposed gold mine in Romania, are backed up today with new information revealed by John Fund in the Wall Street Journal.

"Gold Futures," by Hungarian filmmaker Tibor Kocsis, apparently is based on Kocsis' 2004-released documentary titled "New Eldorado," which had the subtitle "Gold. The Curse of Rosia Montana," and is clearly biased against the mining project.

Fund writes:

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:

CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer responded on his August 20 program to the August 20 Barron’s article that showed how his stock picks lag gains in the Dow, NASDAQ and Standard & Poor’s 500.

“In the face of what I … what we all think was a baseless, ugly article about me by a partner, which I found insulting to my audience and to your intelligence, I’ve been overwhelmed the past two days by words of kindness and support from you guys,” said Cramer.

Cramer referred to Barron’s as “a partner,” possibly referring to the agreement between Dow Jones & Co., which publishes Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. The deal allows CNBC to use Wall Street Journal content through 2012.