Poor Katie Couric. She's been stuck in a ratings rut since taking over the "CBS Evening News" anchor slot and has been rumored to be departing the Eye network. Now comes more bad news for the former morning star: Barack Obama has begged off on CBS's North Carolina debate.

That leaves Couric as the sole broadcast news anchor who hasn't moderated a debate this cycle. That isn't likely to change either since general election debates are usually Jim Lehrer's province. Couric isn't the only CBSer who's disappointed:

"It's a shame because the debates have been interesting and appealing to the audience, and because I think Katie would have done a really good job," CBS senior vice president Paul Friedman told the New York Times.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, though. After Obama's dreadful performance in the most recent ABC debate it's no wonder he canceled. Still, you have to wonder how this makes Couric feel about her position at CBS. Will I have to make a CBS-Couric breakup image sometime soon?

On Thursday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann seemed worried by Hillary Clinton's pledge during Wednesday's debate that "if Iran attacks Israel, apparently Senator Clinton is going to order massive retaliation." Olbermann suggested Clinton had "set herself up as an imperial President waiting to happen." After the MSNBC host contended that Clinton's pledge "may be further to the right than the Bush administration," liberal talk radio host/MSNBC analyst Rachel Maddow further charged that an "immediate threat by Iran" was merely "invented by neo-cons." Maddow: "Hillary Clinton, of course, put an exclamation point on it by talking about poleaxing our entire approach to foreign policy in order to counteract this immediate threat by Iran, which has been invented by the neo-cons." (Transcript follows)

Referring to the debate, Olbermann teased the April 17 Countdown show: "The only real news, if Iran attacks Israel, apparently Senator Clinton is going to order massive retaliation. Did she set herself up as an imperial President waiting to happen?"

The Press doesn't care about these things, why should you?

This originally appeared in the April 21st edition of Human Events.

The Media's Reaction to George and Charlie

ABC's Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos slipped and let a bit of actual reporting seep into their Democrat Presidential debate moderation efforts on April 16. They mistakenly engaged in fifty minutes worth of pertinent inquiry, largely regarding the patriotic perspectives and numerous troubling relationships of Illinois Senator Barack Obama -- and to a lesser extent examining the fact that New York Senator Hillary Clinton has a Herculean ability to create her Living History out of whole cloth.

The response from the Left has been withering and unremitting.

When it comes to news, much as comedy, timing is everything -- and it's clear the good folks at the New York Times don't have it.

On Saturday, the Times published an op-ed by graphics director Charles M. Blow carping and whining about the now infamous Democrat presidential debate broadcast on ABC Wednesday, and, in particular, that no time was spent talking about climate change.

Well, Charles, maybe that's because in an ABC poll that was embargoed until 11:35 PM Thursday, exactly ZERO respondents felt global warming was the single most important issue in their choice for president.

Zero!

Alas, that didn't prevent Blow from blowing his top concerning the matter (emphasis added, h/t Chris Horner):

The left-wing blogosphere's outrage against ABC ["Boycott Fig Newtons!"] over its allegedly unfair questioning of Obama during Wednesday's debate has seeped over into the MSM in the form of Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column of this morning. While the headline moots the matter in the interrogative "Tough questions or just plain bias?", there's no doubt as to the answer in Jackson's mind. Just two paragraphs in, the columnist unleashes [emphasis added]:

In some 1,600 words of transcript, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos tried to eviscerate Obama in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

The liberal outrage over Wednesday's Democrat presidential debate on ABC continues to mount.

On Friday, billionaire George Soros's MoveOn.org published a petition at its website, along with a video (embedded right), asking Americans to protest "[debate] moderators [that] abuse the public trust every time they ask trivial questions about gaffes and 'gotchas' that only political insiders care about."

The following text hysterically accompanies the petition:

Despite the liberal media’s outrage over ABC’s handling of the Democratic debate, ABC’s "The View" had no criticism. On the April 17 edition, Barbara Walters actually praised Gibson and Stephanopoulos for the tough questions. She also noted the candidates made "some very important points...that we have not heard before." Even reliably left wing partisan Joy Behar, also an ABC employee, had no criticisms.

Discussing Charlie Gibson’s question if the winner of the nomination will pick the runner up as a running mate, Joy Behar finally discovered that the Constitution originally awarded the second place finisher to the vice presidency. Did Behar learn this through extensive research or just simply reading the Constitution? Nope. She acquired this knowledge from watching HBO.

BEHAR: I’ve been watching the "John Adams" miniseries on HBO I believe, or Showtime. And in those days, the president, who was elected by the Electoral College, got to be the president. And the second, who got the second most votes, was automatically the vice president.

GOLDBERG: Which is what I said months ago.

BEHAR: So that really is very American from the founding fathers to the-

The continuing left-wing furor over George Stephanopoulos's perfectly valid question about Barack Obama's associations with a known terrorist reminded me of something I wanted to blog earlier in the week before it erupted: an admission of a leftward bias on the part of the media from BET founder Bob Johnson.

Interviewed by the Charlotte Observer Tuesday, Johnson said that the "liberal media" want Obama to win, partly out of racial pandering but also because he is more liberal than Hillary Clinton (whom Johnson supports).

"They sort of dislike Hillary for her vote on the war. They don't want to see Bill and Hillary in power again," Johnson is quoted as saying. "So Obama comes in and runs a smart campaign. But that's not the Second Coming, in my opinion, of John F. Kennedy, FDR or the world's greatest leaders."

Reporting that “ABC News is getting hammered by the mainstream and liberal media,” as if they aren't the same, FNC's Brit Hume led his Thursday “Grapevine” segment with examples of the left-wing outrage over Barack Obama being pressed at Wednesday's debate on subjects the media consider off limits. Hume highlighted how “the left-leaning Washington Post TV writer Tom Shales said anchors, quote 'Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos turned in shoddy, despicable performances,'” (Noel Sheppard's earlier post on Shales).

Hume proceeded to note how Greg Mitchell, Editor of the Editor & Publisher trade magazine, “said it was quote, 'perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.'” Naturally, Keith Olbermann brought him aboard Thursday's Countdown to expound further.

Recycle videos, buy used cars, eat non-Nabisco cookies, and drink microbrewery beer. These are among the highly laughable suggestions promoted at the Daily Kos as part of their proposed boycott of ABC and Disney because Barack Obama was finally asked some tough questions at Wednesday's Democrat debate in Philadelphia. It was only 23 minutes into the debate before the boycott thread was posted at the Daily Kos with the outraged title of Tomorrow We Take On ABC, and Disney. It is hard to figure out which is funnier, the boiling outrage over the fact that their blessed messiah was asked challenging questions or the incredibly lame ideas for the proposed boycott. Here is a sampling of the Kossack inadvertent comedy act:

keep watching the videos you already have. SHARE them with other parents who would otherwise buy the Disney DVD, and don't buy Disney in the future. And talk to your kids about the power of the corporate media and the RESPONSIBILITY of the consumer to use their power as a balance. Spoken as a mom of a 7, 10 and 11 yr old. Yes, I do have these crazy, nerdy conversations with my children.

In a bunch of presidential debates this season the Republicans have come under tougher scrutiny than the Democrats, but the mainstream media didn't care. However, when Barack Obama and some left-wing journalists complained about questions to him during Wednesday's debate on ABC, the network evening newscasts found the kvetching newsworthy. CBS plastered “Debate Backlash” on screen as Katie Couric touted an upcoming Thursday night story.

CBS reporter Dean Reynolds explained: “He was even grilled about his flag pin, or lack thereof. A series of questions that aides say left him dispirited. But the debate, hosted by ABC News, came in for scathing criticism. Its own Web site logged more than 15,000 hits, most of them negative.” Reynolds concluded by feeling Obama's pain: “Obama said today that what you saw during the debate was the rollout for the Republican campaign against him in the fall. So it must have been painful for him to have it come out during a debate with a fellow Democrat.”

ABC hardly stood by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. David Wright cited “a grueling round of questions focused on issues such as Obama's patriotism, and his more controversial friends” -- though Wright only highlighted Jeremiah Wright and ignored William Ayers. After a clip of Obama complaining about how it was “45 minutes before we heard about health care. 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq. 45 minutes before we heard about jobs,” Wright ran four comments, three of the four critical of ABC: “Today, in Philadelphia's Redding market, we met plenty of others who shared those views.” A man declared: “I felt they wasted a whole hour, a good hour, talking about nothing.” Wright then read this e-mail: “This so-called debate will be shown to my communications students as an example of what shoddy journalism looks like.”

If the anger from the left over Wednesday night's debate on ABC continues to manifest itself this way, an old phrase concerning women will have to be altered to "Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned."

Having been bludgeoned by the Washington Post's Tom Shales, and all manner of Netroots denizen, moderator George Stephanopoulos is now the subject of a YouTube video depicting him as dead and "In Memoriam."

For those not getting the so-called joke, "In Memoriam" is a segment near the end of each installment of "This Week" when folks that have died the previous week, including military members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, are memorialized.

In this video (embedded upper right), it is Stephanopoulos himself being so "honored," as the text rolls across the screen:

Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos actually asked some tough questions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during Wednesday's Democrat presidential debate on ABC.

Yet, the Washington Post's television critic Tom Shales wasn't happy about this, and actually felt the event represented "another step downward for network news" wherein the moderators "turned in shoddy, despicable performances."

Ouch.

What follows are some of Shales' key criticisms (emphasis added throughout, picture courtesy NYT):

The Democrat presidential candidates are squaring off against one another Wednesday in Philadelphia, and, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, co-moderator George Stephanopoulos thinks this could decide the nomination:

"There hasn't been a debate in weeks and the stakes couldn't be higher, there's no question about that," he said. "That's especially true for Sen. Clinton. Pennsylvania is a must-win state. It's the first debate since Texas and Ohio and a lot has happened since then."

With this in mind, Stephanopoulos was interviewed Tuesday by WOR radio's Steve Malzberg who had some marvelous questions he'd like asked of the two candidates (seven minute audio available here, picture courtesy ABC):

While it is currently conventional wisdom in the media that there was no Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, as evidenced by the media's failure to correct Barack Obama's recent claim that "there was no such thing as Al-Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq," for several years dating back before the Iraq invasion, there have been media reports of former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's connections to Osama bin Laden, and his use of Iraq as a base to plot terror attacks against other countries before the war. In fact, four years ago, the NBC Nightly News claimed not only that there was an Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the invasion, busy plotting attacks against Europe, but that the Bush administration intentionally "passed up several opportunities" to attack terrorist bases in Iraq "long before the war" in 2002 because of fear it would "undercut its case" for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. (Transcripts follow)

If one image can illustrate why Barack Obama is on the verge of winning the Dem presidential nomination, this one from last night's debate could be it.

View video here.

Not only does it represent the epitome of good-natured cool, it comes in stark contrast to the patented glare that Hillary aims at those who draw her ire. We've often illustrated the death-ray genre here at NB; you'll find a representative image after the jump from last night's debate.

Obama's gesture speaks largely for itself, but let's don our amateur body-language expert hat:

Tuesday night's Democratic debate brought an unexpected political analogy to mind: Hillary Clinton has become Bob Dole.

That point became eminently clear in the debate multiple times but especially during her attempt to rebuke NBC debate moderators Tim Russert and Brian Williams by evoking a recent "Saturday Night Live" episode which accused the press of being "in the tank" for Barack Obama.

"In the last several debates I seem to get the first question all the time," Clinton said. "I don't mind. I'll be happy to field it. I just find it curious if anybody saw 'Saturday Night Live,' maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow."

Those remarks, while slightly better phrased, are strikingly similar to Bob Dole's "where is the outrage" lament while running against Bill Clinton in 1996. Both candidates:

After a lengthy hiatus due to the Hollywood writers' strike, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" returned to the airwaves last evening, and began with a skit deliciously mocking CNN's recent debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

SNLer Kristen Wiig I believe, apparently impersonating CNN's Campbell Brown who hosted the debate -- although looking much more like Suzanne Malveaux -- introduced the festivities by comically and quite accurately stating (h/t Tim Graham):

Like nearly everyone in the news media, the three of us are totally in the tank for Senator Obama. Now let's meet the candidates. Just four years ago, Barack Obama was known only as a brilliant, charismatic and universally admired member of the Illinois State Senate. Today he is one of our nation's truly visionary leaders. And soon, knock on wood, the first black president of the United States.