During an interview by "GQ" magazine's Wil Hylton posted on the magazine's blog on September 20, CNN founder Ted Turner blamed Fox News for pushing America into the Iraq war, tagging the conflict as "Rupert's war," and contended that he is more afraid of America's possession of nuclear weapons than he is of rogue states like Iran obtaining such weapons. Turner: "I'm much more worried about our nuclear arsenal than theirs. Iran, at best, can get a few nuclear weapons. We have tens of thousands. We have to get rid of them." The CNN founder, who has a history of defending North Korea, ignoring the country's problem of starvation, complimented its "thin" citizens as "healthy," and suggested the despotic regime is of no more danger to America than Cleveland, Ohio. Turner: "They were nice to me. There weren't a lot of fat people walking around. They were all thin. And being thin is healthier than being fat. ...

More headline editorializing, this time on Yahoo. A June 5 Reuters article titled, “Bush bashes Putin on democracy on eve of G8 summit” sounds like Bush attacked Russian president Vladimir Putin, but the body of the article clearly did not support that view.

The headline told a very different story than the article. Editors not reporters are generally responsible for headlines, and they can greatly influence opinions about the news. The importance of a bias-free headline is that most people don’t read every word of every article; they often just skim the headlines. That meant the people who read just the headline got a very different impression from those who read the entire article (emphasis mine throughout):

"Russia is not our enemy," Bush said after meeting Czech leaders on a visit aimed at highlighting the country's emergence from Soviet domination.

He said he would urge Putin at the summit to cooperate with the U.S. plan to deploy a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, but later in a speech took a dig at Moscow's record on democracy.

"In Russia reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," Bush said.

On Thursday’s “Good Morning America,” reporter Claire Shipman portrayed the simmering tensions between Russia and the United States as a replay of the Cold War and also took President Bush, who is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at this week’s G8 summit, to task for missing a “critical diplomatic opportunity” to cooperate with the Russians over the placing of a proposed missile defense system in Poland.

Additionally, Shipman, while noting Putin’s rollback of democracy, contended that Russia’s president is “wildly popular at home” and hyperbolically claimed that “everybody is very happy with Vladimir Putin there.” While it’s true that Putin’s autocratic nature appears to have done him no harm in the polls, it’s quite silly to say that “everybody” is happy in a country where journalists and spies continue to die mysteriously.

On Wednesday's The Situation Room on CNN, during his regular "Cafferty File" segment, Jack Cafferty quoted Mikhail Gorbachev's recent attack on the Bush Administration in which the former Soviet leader accused the U.S. of "arrogance" and of having "lost credibility" in response to President Bush's plans to deploy a missile defense system in Europe. Cafferty asked viewers to email him with a response to the question of whether Bush was "reigniting the Cold War with Russia." Cafferty: "This is just swell, don't you think? We've got trouble with Russia now, which we haven't had for a number of years. The question is this: Is President Bush reigniting the Cold War with Russia?" (Transcript follows)

Discussing the G-8 summit with CBS's Jim Axelrod, Katie Couric on Wednesday night portrayed an “adamant” President George Bush as the antagonist causing Russian President Vladimir Putin to be “annoyed” about NATO plans to install a missile shield in Poland, a controversy, she fretted, that is distracting attention from global warming. “Economic issues and climate change were supposed to be the main topics,” Couric asserted on the CBS Evening News, “but they're being overshadowed by the dispute between President Bush and Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, over NATO plans to install a defensive missile shield in Eastern Europe,” a shield designed to protect Europe from missiles launched by rogue states.

Referring to Putin's threat to aim missiles at Europe, Couric pressed Axelrod, who was on scene in Rostock, Germany: “Putin is annoyed about this missile defense system. Why is President Bush so adamant about this?” Couric's next question displayed concern about the impact on an agreement on global warming: “I know that global warming was at the top of the agenda. Has that fallen off the radar screen, given all this chatter?”

Update at bottom with video link- 18:10 EST:

Why should a country go to the effort of spying on America when all they have to do is follow the US media? USA Today reported a database of phone calls and the New York Times publically exposed the SWIFT banking transaction database; both were used to combat terrorism.  Now on the May 22 edition of ABC News’ the Blotter, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito revealed another national security-related secret (my emphasis throughout):

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Cato the Elder famously dragged Carthage into every speech, calling for it to be destroyed. Like a modern-day Cato who has played the DVD of "An Inconvenient Truth" way too many times, The Boston Globe manages to drag global warming into an editorial this morning about, of all things, the baby that Mary Cheney is expecting. In doing so, the Globe hypocritically invades the very Cheney privacy it claims to want to champion.

Writing of the decision of Cheney and Heather Poe to bring a child into the world, the Globe claims that:

"Like any couple choosing to become parents, they must have concluded that the joy of raising a child outweighs the uncertainties of introducing it to a planet threatened by global warming, nuclear proliferation, and other terrors of the modern world."

On his show yesterday, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson congratulated Diane Sawyer of ABC for leaving the comforts of home to report from North Korea. Judging by her report this morning, you'd have to say the rigors have been worth it. Sawyer has been on a week-long stay in Dear-Leader Land, and this morning she scored an important story. A top N. Korean general flatly told her that his country has the means to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Sawyer: "We asked him what the words of North Korea meant when they said there would be a 'merciless blow' in response to any sanctions? He said he couldn't say specifically but pointed out they have short- and long-range missiles. He said 'President Bush wants us to kneel down. We cannot agree on that. If it continues, I think it will be natural to have war.'"

Looking at the headlines for the September 1 test of the missile defense system, I decided to look at how two reliably biased and un-American news outlets covered the news: the BBC and al-Jazeera.

While the former nudged viewers with a bit of bias in the headline "US missile defence test 'success,'" al-Jazeera conceded the test went off without a hitch.

"U.S. successfully tests missile shield," it read.

Oddly enough it was the BBC that noted in its write-up that the test did more than Missile Defense Agency planners hoped it would, albeit towards the end of its story:

Give the Ragin' Cajun credit: the man works fast.  In a Today show appearance lasting only six minutes, and shared with former Bush administration official Dan Senor, Carville managed to work variations on the word 'failure' into his comments no fewer than six times.

At the same time, I defy anyone to read the transcript or watch a replay of Carville's comments on Pres. Bush''s foreign policy and find one solitary instance in which he proposes an alternative or even offers constructive criticism.  His rap was utterly bereft of any notion of what the Democrats would do, and do better, if they regained power.

Twice in less than 24 hours, Jim Pinkerton, conservative columnist at Newsday and Tech Central Station, left liberal talking-head rivals at a loss for words on the issue of missile defense.

Pinkerton's first victim was Neal Gabler, on last evening's Fox News Watch. In the context of the North Korean missile tests, liberal Gabler flatly stated: "Missile defense does not work. That is what we have learned." Shot back Pinkerton: "The Japanese believe in it. That's why they're building it right now." Gabler's silence was golden.

Sometimes, NBC’s Today show bombards a viewer with bias. Other days, the spin is sprinkled throughout the show; July 7 fell into the latter catagory. In a segment on the North Korean nuclear standoff that aired at 7:05AM EDT, NBC reporter Jim Miklaszewski discussed that country’s recent missile launches. The piece featured a quote from Joseph Cirincione, who, as an NBC graphic identified, is a "nuclear weapons expert."

Cirincione: "[Kim Jong Il] is demanding that the U.S. negotiate with him, not that we surrender, that we come to the table and cut a deal."

Cirincione isn’t simply a "nuclear weapons expert." For eight years, he was the Director for Non-Proliferation at the liberal Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As the MRC’s Brent Baker reported in a CyberAlert dated October 5th, 2004, he was also a generous donor to the John Kerry campaign. So, in this light, his comments calling for negotiations and reasonable dialogue with the North Korean dictator can be seen in a more honest context. Does anyone believe that Pat Toomey, President of the right-leaning Club for Growth, would ever be labeled as simply an "economics expert" and not have the phrase "conservative" tacked on? It should also be noted that during this segment, NBC, like CBS, didn’t find the time to mention the recent report that the missile North Korea recently launched was aimed at Hawaii.

To those of us who see the Castro regime as an ugly dictatorship whose people are mired in poverty due to the communism it has imposed, little is more annoying than to hear the MSM tout the glories, as reported here by MRC, of Cuba's 'free health care,' and low illiteracy and infant mortality rates. Beyond the dubiousness of the statistics cited, are the media suggesting that trading freedom for a bowl of government porridge is a good deal?

In any case, judging by this morning's Today show, it looks as if the MSM have finally found a communist dictatorship they will not extol. The media have drawn the line at, well, the DMZ line separating South from North Korea.

Ouch! Norah O'Donnell knows how to get a guy where it hurts. And Kim Jong Il might be feeling 'ronrier' than ever.

On this evening's Hardball, Norah, guest-hosting for Chris Matthews, discussed the failed North Korean missile tests with three separate panels. In each case, she used the same Freudian-fraught metaphor for failure:

To her first panel, composed of congressmen Dan Burton [R-IN] and Bill Pascrell [D-NJ], Norah noted:

"We saw the Taepodong missile essentially exploded and went limp into the sea of Japan after 45 seconds."

Next, with guests Michael Scheuer and Tyler Drumheller - both former CIA officials - she mentioned:

On the 7pm hour of CNN's The Situation Room on Tuesday afternoon, Jack Cafferty admitted President Bush "might have been on to something" when discussing the Axis of Evil in his 2002 State of the Union address (video link from Expose the Left to follow). The topic of the hour was North Korea's long-range missile "testing". North Korea is a country in Bush's Axis of Evil.

CAFFERTY: That was January 2002, the president referring, of course, to Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Fast forward four years. The U.S. has now been involved in the war in Iraq for well over three years with no end in site. Iran continues its efforts to enrich uranium, insisting it's just for peaceful purposes while many around the world fear they are actually embarking on a nuclear weapons program. And now we have North Korea going ahead today with test missile launches, including the failed launch of at least one long- range missile today. Looks like President Bush might have been on to something, doesn't it. Here's the question, which country from President Bush's axis of evil, Iraq, Iran, or North Korea poses the greatest threat to the United States. E-mail your thoughts to caffertyfile@cnn.com or go to cnn.com/caffertyfile. John?

Full transcript and a video link follows.

Norah loves Larry. At least, she loves the way Larry Eagleburger phrased things about North Korea. At the same time, Eagleburger made clear there's no love lost between himself and Dick Cheney, taking some surprisingly acerbic shots at the Veep.

The former Bush, Sr. Secretary of State appeared on this evening's Hardball. Guest host Norah O'Donnell interviewed him along with former Clinton defense official Ashton Carter. Carter had in turn written an op-ed in today's Washington Post, which as indicated by its title, If Necessary, Strike and Destroy, advocates blowing the North Korean ICBM off its launch pad if N. Korea persists in its launch preparations.

There ought to be a Pulizter for the Headline Most Disconnected From the Attached Story. Then again, maybe there was, and the AP simply retired it years ago.

U.S. says missile-defense system limited

By TERENCE HUNT
AP White House Correspondent

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) -- The United States said Thursday that a U.S. missile-defense system under development has "limited operational capability" to protect against weapons such as the long-range missile North Korea is said to be near firing.