On Monday, ABC's World News with Charles Gibson highlighted and seemed to glorify anti-America comments made by a young Egyptian woman, whom the show interviewed as part of a regular series about young people in other countries, who compared the States to a dumb "jock" that in a few years will "die down and burn out, and what's left is a totally useless nation."

The young woman, named Ro'ya, charged: "In the past, if the States was a strong country, it was because it had thinkers, but right now, it's kind of like, it's kind of like a jock, okay -- very powerful, very athletic, in a couple of years, die down and burn out, and what's left is a totally useless nation." Without challenge, Weir added: "Ro'ya says she would only live in America if it would help Americans understand the Arab world. She'd much rather move to Italy..." (An online version of the story can be found at ABCNews.com.) (Transcript follows)

On the House floor, yesterday, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) relayed this news, as reported by the Catholic News Agency (CNA):

"No generalized HIV epidemic has ever been rolled back by a prevention strategy primarily based on condoms.”

No major Old Media outlet has, as far as I can tell, reported Smith's relay of that powerful finding.

But the Washington Post's David Brown did find space in his coverage of the 2008 bill that would renew the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to call abstinence initiatives "controversial."

Here is the relevant text from CNA (bolds are mine):

We better hope there are some big-time technological advances in the science of home air conditioning by the year 2040. According to the outlook offered by Dr. James Lovelock in the March 22 issue of The Daily Mail (U.K.), we're in for some dire consequences.

Sarah Sands of The Daily Mail (U.K.) (h/t Marc Morano of The Inhofe EPW Press Blog) reported Lovelock is forecasting the end of humanity due to global warming ... again.

"By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine," Sands wrote. "The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain. We will, he says, have to set up encampments in this country, like those established for the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in East Africa. Lovelock believes the subsequent ethnic tensions could lead to civil war."

"Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts interviewed Bill Clinton for nine minutes over two segments on Monday and somehow managed to avoid discussing the disgraced Eliot Spitzer and controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Instead, GMA again featured another positive look at the Clinton Global initiative and its plan to fight poverty and get young people involved. Roberts gushed, "It's got to warm your heart 'cause this is something that's very-- has always been very dear to you about getting them involved."

Roberts found no time to ask the ex-president, who was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in relation to a sex scandal, for his thoughts on former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's entanglement with a prostitution ring and his eventual resignation. The segment, which was highly edited, featured the ABC journalist making only a glancing reference to Wright, Senator Barack Obama's incendiary former preacher and the man responsible for racially charged statements. She mildly added, "...Geraldine Ferraro, Reverend Wright. I mean, both sides-- things that are being said by surrogates." Roberts then shifted the conversation back to a much older topic, Clinton's South Carolina comments linking Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama.

New NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard took up a flurry of complaints when veteran news anchor Jean Cochran told listeners President Bush was traveling to Africa, the "dark continent." They insisted NPR was sounding racist:

"I thought that we had wrested that comment along with 'colored' and other euphemisms for Africans or Afro-Americans," wrote one listener, summing up how others felt. "Could you please report my comments to NPR management? I almost drove off the side of the road to start a protest!!!"

"This is simply an outdated reference as well as being outrageously offensive," wrote another listener, Karrye Y. Braxton.

The copy, which had been approved by an editor, was pulled and Cochran agreed to never use the expression again.

As NB's Matthew Sheffield wrote last week, rocker/activist Bob Geldof praised President Bush for doing more for poor Africans "than any other president so far." Geldof also chided the American press for not reporting enough on the efforts by the President to deliver billions in aid to fight disease and poverty in the ailing continent.

Now look at this awful cartoon by syndicated cartoonist Joel Pett from this past week. Apparently in the eyes of Pett, the President's unwavering commitment to Africa is no more significant than a small bouquet of flowers. Ugh.

President Bush is off in Africa this week enjoying plaudits from numerous African political leaders for his efforts to modernize and improve health and human rights situations there.

Just as they've done with positive Iraq news, however, the Western press is burying the story when it comes to the Bush administration's achievements in Africa. Irish rock star and human rights activist Bob Geldof chided the media today for the situation:

Mr. Geldof praised Mr. Bush for his work in delivering billions to fight disease and poverty in Africa, and blasted the U.S. press for ignoring the achievement.

Mr. Bush, said Mr. Geldof, "has done more than any other president so far."

Or lack thereof

Puckering Up for the Press

Illinois Democrat Senator Barrack Hussein Obama is, of course, the Media Darling for President this next go ‘round, at least du jour and for the moment.

After six months (years?) of their extended coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton, they chose to depose her after but one loss -- in Iowa, the Ethanol State.

The Queen is dead, long live the King.

Having won the Iowa caucuses, and having placed second in the New Hampshire primary, Obama is unquestionably a Top Two contender for the Democrat nomination, and is the media's new Donkey heartthrob.

"Should all have been forgiven or does the teacher's sentence send a fair message that foreigners sholud [sic] be more sensitive when it comes to religion?"

Thus concludes Manya Brachear's November 29 post to the Chicago Tribune's "The Seeker" religion news blog. Brachear was opening discussion up in her comments thread to the case of British subject Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old private school teacher in Sudan who faced the potential punishment of 40 lashes. Her crime: allowing her students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad.

The case had sparked international outrage and official protest by the British government. Perhaps in no small part from all the scrutiny, the Islamic clerics who have sentenced Ms. Gibbons handed down a relatively "light" sentence: 15 days in jail followed by deportation back to the United Kingdom.

Perhaps hoping to evince detached balance and objectivity, the Tribune's Brachear, a religion reporter and blogger, entitled her blog post, "Who's Insulting Islam?"

While Brachear did find moderate Muslims who decried charges ever having been filed against Gibbons in the first place, she failed to find anyone to insist that Sudan's government, or at least its judicial system, is held sway by a backwards, intolerant, theocratic imposition of Sharia law. What's more, Brachear found space to hint that the British government may be to blame for nearly causing Gibbons to face the lash:

As NewsBusters has been reporting for many months, one of the key elements to the advancement of global warming hysteria is money, in particular, taking it from those that have to give to those that don't.

Of course, during this time, the media have been less than forthcoming concerning this inconvenient truth.

A fine example of where all this alarm is heading was surprisingly reported by the Associated Press Tuesday.

In a piece hysterically titled "Poor in Need of Help From Global Warming," AP author John Heilprin exposed - with tugs at the heartstrings, of course - the real modus operandi behind the hysteria (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer DontFeedTheTrolls):

Since 2000, the mainstream media has conducted a war against the Bush Adminstration the likes of which have not been seen since their equally vitriolic campaign against Richard Nixon. They have refused to publish anything positive about Bush or his Administration, they have manufactured scandals out of nothing (Valerie Plame) while doing their best to expose secret operations that are protecting Americans and they have consistently refused to accurately report the good economic news.

Today comes even more evidence of just how badly the press has failed in their duty to report to the American public. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft corporation, spoke to a forum to discuss fighting malaria. As reported by Power Line, Gates said,

After Diane Sawyer’s fawning interview last Thursday morning hailing his work to "save a continent," ABC’s Good Morning America returned to praising the African philanthropy of former president Bill Clinton on Monday. Traveling with him, ABC’s Kate Snow sounded less like a reporter and more like an overnight infomercial spokeswoman: "In Africa, they seem to be on a first-name basis with the former president, shouting ‘Bill! Bill!’"

Every soundbite in the story was Clinton or Clinton’s supporters explaining all the wonderful things Clinton is trying to accomplish, how he’s impatient in his struggle to save lives. Without any skeptical note that his private foundation might create a thicket of conflicts of interest, Snow simply relayed without questioning that Clinton would continue his foundation activities if his wife won the White House. Snow could only coo: "He may redefine the role of first spouse in America."

Two Liberal Thumbs Up

Barbara Walters, who sometimes plays an objective journalist on TV, chose this week to endorse "Sicko," Michael Moore’s left-wing screed about the health care industry. The veteran news anchor enthused, "Everyone should see it." Conservatives shouldn’t be surprised by this type of propagandizing, however. Last year, Walters endorsed Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth." (See blog for link.)

NBC: Nobody’s Better (than) Clinton

Speaking of the "The View," an ex-host from that program, Meredith Vieira, gushed on Monday’s edition of "Today" that Hillary Clinton is "unbeatable" and a "teflon candidate." Later in the week, Matt Lauer, a co-anchor on the NBC program, touted Mrs. Clinton’s "Sopranos" parody. He declared it "a hit" and "clever." The other network morning shows were similarly impressed.

Considered?

This week, ABC continued a long standing tradition of referring to Hamas as a organization that is "considered" a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

Sam Zaramba, in a subscription-only op-ed column in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, gives the next Woodward or Bernstein a hot story to follow up on:

..... malaria ..... is the biggest killer of Ugandan and all African children. Yet it remains preventable and curable. Last week in Germany, G-8 leaders committed new resources to the fight against the mosquito-borne disease and promised to use every available tool.

Now they must honor this promise by supporting African independence in the realm of disease control. We must be able to use Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane -- DDT.

..... Today, every single Ugandan still remains at risk. Over 10 million Ugandans are infected each year, and up to 100,000 of our mothers and children die from the disease.

No one could possibly be conspiring to prevent the eradication of malaria, could they?

Well, yes they could. And they are, as Zaramba notes:

So, what is CNN?

THIS is CNN in 1998; the link is to a story debunking the network's Peter Arnett and April Oliver, who accused Vietnam soldiers of war crimes in Operation Tailwind.

This is from 2003. The network's Eason Jordan confessed that the network twisted the news out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, thereby giving false impressions of the regime to the world so that it could maintain its access to the country (the article is posted at the author's web host for fair use and discussion purposes).

Then there's this from 2005. Eason Jordan accused the US military in Iraq of targeting journalists, and ultimately resigned in the wake of the outcry. "Somehow" the actual video footage of Jordan's accusations, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, never surfaced.

Next, there's this incredible episode from 2006, where the network showed videos of enemy snipers killing American soldiers in Iraq. Even more incredibly, the videos were marketed on corporate affiliate Time Warner Cable as an On Demand offering.

Now there's this -- paying to have a story staged (bolds are mine):

John Tierney was once an iconoclast libertarian columnist for the New York Times who now writes for the Tuesday Science section every two weeks. But yesterday, Tierney stepped back into politics and made a powerful political point by taking on the sainted Rachel Carson, the author of the infamous proto-environmental book "Silent Spring," a book that has become required reading in school for the last generation, and was indirectly responsible for the banning of the pesticide DDT in poor countries, with deadly consequences.

"For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They’ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school -- and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it."

As gas prices are on a springtime upswing and the summer driving season is upon us, NewsBusters and the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute have documented the media's persistent hype about gas prices.

But if the media really want a story about an economy running on fumes, they need look no further than Zimbabwe, where socialistic thuggery has resulted in a starving nation bedeviled with 3,700 percent annual inflation and electricity rationing.

Oh, things weren't always this bad. This time last year it was only at 1,000 percent inflation in Zimbabwe, and that's over 100 times worse than the single-digit "stagflation" that then-CNN contributor Andy Serwer feared just five months before the 2006 midterms.

One of the claassic D.C. quotes quipped about “a billion here and a billion there.” It referred to money. We aren’t supposed to be so cavalier when we’re talking about a million here and a million there and we mean human lives.

But that was the way The Washington Post treated the 100th birthday story of environmentalist “icon” Rachel Carson. Carson wrote the book “Silent Spring” and set in motion the banning of DDT that cost millions of lives needlessly.

The Post celebrated Carson’s birthday by barely mentioning that her actions “have remained controversial” and ignoring that the World Health Organization now embraces using DDT.

An April 4 CNN.com article helped peddle the recent “Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond,”  written by acclaimed “Hotel Rwanda” star Don Cheadle and former Clinton administration official John Prendergast, who is now a “human rights activist” and an advisor to the Soros-financed International Crisis Group.

In this Aspen Steib article, there is no mention of the 22-year civil war that devastated Southern Sudan when Arab Muslims targeted black Christians and Animists or the Bush administration’s efforts to end the wars in both Southern Sudan and Darfur. Cheadle’s intentions are probably good, but this article ignored many issues. Darfur’s crisis is complex, and this article’s approach had one note: it's Bush's fault. 

Cheadle and Prendergast detail what they think what needs to be done (emphasis mine throughout):

"It is urgent that President Bush act ... to confront the Sudanese regime for the atrocities that it is committing and perpetuating to bring this genocide to an end once and for all," they write.

Imagine a conservative congressperson doing something this unhinged and not getting raked over the coals in the press (Wall Street Journal link requires subscription):

Tuesday was Africa Malaria Day, and Michigan Representative John Conyers marked the event by inviting something called the Pesticide Action Network to Capitol Hill to denounce DDT as an unsafe malaria intervention. What was he thinking?

Malaria, which is spread through mosquito bites, kills about a million people annually, mostly children and pregnant women in Africa. We're not sure where the House Judiciary Chairman got his medical expertise, but he won't reduce that death toll by promoting disinformation about DDT and malaria prevention. And at taxpayers' expense, no less.

PAN and a shrinking band of other activist know-nothings insist that employing DDT against malaria is "especially dangerous for developing infants and children," but there is no scientific basis to the claim. Zip.