Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday became emotional over the passing of John Murtha, named by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of Congress’ most corrupt politicians. He lauded the Democrat as "one of those guys who make the [House of Representatives] work." [Audio available here.]

Neither Stephanopoulos, nor Juju Chang, who filed a news brief on Murtha, mentioned his 2006 smear that U.S. Marines killed Iraqi civilians "in cold blood." Stephanopoulos, a former Democratic operative, reminisced as he tried to maintain control: "I’m going to get a little choked up. I miss him already. You know, I went to Capitol Hill as an aide almost 30 years ago."

He cooed, "And he did it with such a sense of joy and fun and he taught me an awful lot." Stephanopoulos skipped the following quote from Murtha in May of 2006 about a supposed massacre in Haditha, Iraq: "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Since Tea Party protests became an influential movement on the national scene last year, the left in general and the liberal media in particular have tried (unsuccessfully) to render it irrelevant in the eyes of the American people. By throwing around accusations of racism and dire warnings of impending violence, these pundits have tried, unsuccessfully to undermine the movement.

University of Virginia Professor Gerard Alexander explored this trend more generally in yesterday's Washington Post poses the question, pondering, "Why Are Liberals So Condescending?" In his column, Alexander details four types of condescension widespread among the far-left and omnipresent in its talking points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all four have been employed by left-leaning journalists to bash the Tea Party movement.

"American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives," Alexander writes, "appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration."

Over the weekend, poor and biased media reporting, dysfunctional politics, blindly ambitious activism, and economic ignorance fed on each other to produce a phenomenally false narrative that went out to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. The result not only doesn't pass the smell test; it fails the stench test from a mile away.

The first origins of the activist narrative burst forth during Friday's PBS News Hour, when the network's Betty Ann Bowser opened her report on health care costs with two sentences that belong in the Sloppy Statement Hall of Shame (bold is mine):

Health care spending devoured 17 percent of the entire economy last year, about $2.5 trillion. That's the biggest one-year growth since record-keeping began in 1960, according to projections from the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, this week.

Huh?

If you don't mind my asking -- What exactly is the "that" to which Ms. Bowser referred?

It's the central question of the health care debate to liberty-loving Americans: Where in the Constitution does our charter of government grant the federal government the power to make us buy health care (or make us buy anything, for that matter)?

 

But to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it's an illegitimate question. "Are you serious?!" she shot back at a CNSNews.com correspondent Matt Cover. Pelosi is not alone. Her friends in the liberal media also find the question ludicrous.

So Media Research Center video producer Bob Parks worked up a brief video that showcased how many in the liberal media see no constitutional problem with federal mandatory health care insurance.You can watch the video in the embed at right.

In stories currently carrying Friday afternoon and early Saturday time stamps, the Associated Press weighed in with supportive articles about Illinois Democrats who are desperately trying to convince Scott Lee Cohen (pictured at right; image is captured from his web site), who won the party's nomination for Lieutenant Governor, to step aside.

In the Friday afternoon's report ("Embattled Dem Ill. candidate won't step down"), AP reporter Karen Hawkins swallowed the line that "details had emerged" about Cohen's 2005 arrest on domestic battery charges, despite the fact that Cohen himself preemptively disclosed many of those details to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Mark Brown in March 2009 (link is to a cached copy of Brown's article that was posted at Cohen's campaign site). Brown apparently chose not to relay much of what Cohen revealed, but he clearly had a lot of it.

In an early Saturday item ("IL Gov. might want to run from his running mate"), the wire service's Deanna Bellandi owned up to the existence of the Sun-Times story and relayed the demands of several Illinois Democrats that Cohen withdraw.

Each reporter seemed to go out of her way to avoid mentioning the remaining candidates for the Republican Party's gubernatorial nomination, Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard, who are currently locked in a razor-thin, currently undecided race.

On Thursday, MSNBC continued its quest to link conservatives with the birther movement- people who don't believe Barack Obama is constitutionally eligible to serve as President. Previewing an unrelated segment on this weekend's tea party convention, Norah O'Donnell played a clip of Obama criticizing those who raise the issue. She then compared, "President Obama sends a message to those who question his citizenship, this as the tea party movement gets ready for its first big convention."

At no point did O'Donnell explain or justify the connection, other than her apparent assumption that tea partiers equal birthers. The MSNBC host interviewed author Rick Scarborough, one of the speakers at the convention in Nashville. During the piece, this MSNBC graphic appeared in large font at the bottom of the screen: "Obama: Okay to Question My Policy, Not My Citizenship."

Rick Santelli is the star of perhaps the most politically consequential online video, viral to the extreme, of the past year (right). On February 19, 2009 he let loose on the Obama administration's economic policies on CNBC's "Squawk Box", calling for a "tea party", and inspiring millions of Americans to speak out against what he and many others see as collectivist economics policies pursued by the President and Congress..

“That was spontaneous, absolutely,” he said in an interview with the Daily Caller. “It was also from the heart, and I had no idea of the direction it would take or the response it would get.”

Almost a year later, Santelli is widely seen as the godfather of a large political coalition that, according to some polls, rivals the two major parties in popularity. The Tea Party protesters staged 48 simultaneous protests on tax day last year, a rally on the lawn of the Capitol with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of attendees, and will hold its own convention this week, with Sarah Palin giving the keynote address.

The left is up in arms over the Supreme Court's recent decision in "Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission". But few voices have been louder than those emanating from the echo chamber at MSNBC. It seems that the cable network's talking heads feel that their parent company, General Electric, deserves a special exemption to what should be a blanket ban on unrestricted corporate speech.

First a bit of background for those unfamiliar with the Supreme Court decision. The court struck down in a 5-4 ruling a ban on corporate (or union) spending on political speech specifically endorsing or attacking a candidate for office within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. It ruled that the ban violated the First Amendment.

Few liberals seemed to notice that in attacking corporate speech they were also effectively undermining their own employers, media corporations who employs them for the express purpose of engaging in political speech. Surely Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow would defend MSNBC's right to speak (and spend) freely without interference from the federal government--especially in the run-up to an election when free speech is most important and must be protected.

[Originally posted January 28; reposted Feb. 2, 2010. Visit TVTownhall.com to register]

At 8 p.m. Eastern next Tuesday, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell will unite with seven of the nation's top conservative organizations - collectively representing more than 15 million Americans - to hold their own State of the Union Address in a live webcast expected to draw one of the largest viewerships in webcast history.

The February 2 "Voice of the People" event -- to be hosted by Herman Cain at http://www.tvtownhall.com -- is designed to give the American people a chance to respond to the President's address and declare their views and concerns of where the country is headed.

"The President made it clear last night that he is not interested in the will of the people, who are sick and tired of being ignored by their elected officials and lied to by the ‘news' media," Bozell argued in a statement released today.

For more information, click here or read more after the page break:

ABC on Tuesday devoted a fourth day of interviews to the John Edwards sex scandal and still failed to identify the ex-vice presidential nominee as a Democrat. After 67 minutes of coverage on two programs, the network has highlighted most of the salacious details of the Senator’s story, all while avoiding the D-word.

Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday talked to former Edwards aide Andrew Young and his wife, Cheri. Interviews with Mr. Young, who falsely claimed to be the father of what turned out to be Edwards’ love child, also appeared on Monday and Saturday.

On Monday, former Democratic operative turned journalist Stephanopoulos did not react well to Young's assertion that the campaign believed "all of the viable candidates had some type of skeleton in their closet." Stephanopoulos fretted, "That is a very serious charge." When Young tried to backpedal, the host complained, "You just said it."

Verne Lundquist, closet Republican?  The sports announcer got in a bit of good-natured trash talking while interviewing Pres. Obama during this afternoon's game between Duke and Georgetown in DC that PBO attended.  In a basketball-politics double entendre, Lundquist asked the left-handed Obama "do you have any problems at all going to your right?"

When the president made his way to the announcers table during the second half, he, Lundquist and Clark Kellogg engaged in some b-ball banter. At the very end, an obviously nervous Lundquist hit PBO with his cheeky question. 

Based on the two pictures seen at the right, it doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the people at the Associated Press who decide on what pictures to use to tease the wire service's assorted video clips are not all favorably inclined towards Tony Blair.

Rather than show a picture of the former UK Prime Minister, the AP chose pics of a demonstrator outside where the inquiry was held.

As of about 8 PM ET, the "Raw Video" feed was still in the rotation and easily accessible at many hosted.ap.org pages carrying an international story. An accessible link to that vid is here at YouTube.

The "Blair Unrepentant" story is no longer in the rotation, but can be found here.

Here is a transcript of that "Unrepentant" video:

In 2008, she achieved a 100% liberal rating by the group Americans for Democratic Action. The same year she voted with conservatives just 4 percent of the time, according to the American Conservative Union. Her lifetime ACU rating is also in the single digits at a mere 9.06.

So let's not tell Chris Matthews, shall we. [audio available here]

The "Hardball" host today described the California Democratic senator as a "level-headed" "centrist," indeed the "true north of American politics" in a segment in which he showed Feinstein saying that President Obama reconsider the arrangements for the federal criminal trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan:

All three morning shows on Wednesday highlighted the revelation that a conservative activist had been arrested in connection to an attempt to tamper with the phones of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. Despite jumping on the "Louisiana Watergate" story only 17 hours after it was first reported, the networks took five days to file full reports on the same James O’Keefe and his undercover footage exposing corruption at ACORN.

On ABC’s Good Morning America, reporter Pierre Thomas recounted O’Keefe’s previous expose, charitably describing ACORN as "an advocacy group which helps the poor." On NBC’s Today, Pete Williams found sinister motives in right-wing outrage at the organization. He sneered, "Because ACORN helped register thousands of low income voters, Republicans pounced." (Could the illegal activities and voter fraud associated with the group have been another reason for GOP attacks?)

Yesterday, Media Research Center (MRC) President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell sat down in the MRC studio for a Skype interview with Breitbart.tv's "B-cast." [see video embed below the page break]

The topic: the latest MRC special report, "Omitting for Obama," which is a study of four stories --- Van Jones, Anita Dunn, ACORN, and ClimateGate -- "highlighted by the New Media in 2009 that were damaging to the Obama 'brand'" but were avoided like the plague by the old guard mainstream media.

 

The story behind Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow's arrival into this world is remarkable.

So-called "women's groups" would seem to prefer that as many Americans as possible not know the story about the courageous and faith-based decision Tebow's mother made to carry her pregnancy to term. That's the only plausible reason why they are opposing a 30-second Focus on the Family (FOTF) ad scheduled to air during the Super Bowl. So far, it seems that CBS, which will air the Super Bowl on February 7, seems disinclined to buckle.

David Crary's coverage of the story at the Associated Press (from which the photo at the top right was obtained) labels FOTF "conservative," but does not apply any descriptive label to the "women's groups" objecting to the ad.

As you'll see in the final excerpted paragraph, Crary's coverage included an over-the-top statement from the objectors:

I don't know why I'm relaying this to readers. After all, according to former White House Communications Director Anita "Mao Inspires Me" Dunn, it's not coming from a real news organization. Her successor, Dan Pfeiffer, agrees. So does David Axelrod.

But on the off chance that what follows might actually mean something, here is an excerpt from a lengthy piece of investigative journalism from Fox News's James Rosen (HT to an e-mailer):

Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor

Despite President Obama's long history of criticizing the Bush administration for "sweetheart deals" with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.

Newsweek's Jerry Adler often waxes poetic on the magazine's The Gaggle blog in a feature called "newsverse."

His most recent entry published yesterday evening deals with Tuesday's historic special election in Massachusetts, where Ted Kennedy's old seat went Republican for the first time in 58 years.

But in the midst of his poorly-metered albeit rhymed verse, Adler set about labeling Scott Brown voters and/or Bruins hockey fans who attended the January 1 game at Fenway Park, as "shmucks":

Teasing coverage on tomorrow's Massachusetts special election to fill its vacant Senate seat, MSNBC's David Shuster avoided any pretense of objectivity as he opened the 10 a.m. EST hour of the network's news coverage with the question: "Has Democratic-leaning Massachusetts lost its mind?!"

[See video embedded at right. Audio available here.]

Although he ratcheted down the bias a few notches later in the hour when he actually reported on the polling trends showing Republican candidate Scott Brown having a decent shot at upsetting Democratic candidate Martha Coakley tomorrow, Shuster's opening teaser speaks volumes about MSNBC's penchant for rooting for the Democrats.

Joe Scarborough has expressed serious doubts as to his Republican affiliation, and made clear that House GOP whip Eric Cantor "is not my friend."  But caution to those who assume Joe has gone left: he has clarified to this NewsBuster that his critique of the GOP comes from the Ron Paul-esque right . . .

Scarborough's stunning comments came on today's Morning Joe in response to Dem Bob Shrum's taunting of Joe over his ostensible GOP membership, in the context of Pres. Obama's attempt to rescue Martha Coakley from the rubble of her campaign.

Update: Michael Meehan has apologized for shoving McCormack. See the story here.

It's not too hard to imagine the media firestorm that would ensue if a New York Times or Newsweek reporter alleges that a PR aide affiliated with a Republican senatorial candidate shoved him while he was trying to do his job, particularly if the alleged assailant has been nominated by the president for a post requiring Senate confirmation.

But given that the incident in question is a Weekly Standard writer alleging an assault by an aide for Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley (Mass.), it's understandable, but not excusable, if you don't hear much about this from the broadcast or cable news networks.

For its part, the Associated Press --  in a story run on Boston.com -- all but dismissed the incident for the Coakley camp with a five-paragraph article blandly titled "Reporter takes stumble chasing Mass. candidate," wherein John McCormack of the Weekly Standard was said to have been "involved in a scuffle with one of [Coakley's] aides," a man by the name of Michael Meehan.

To its credit, however, the Boston Herald newspaper invested its own resources in covering the story. [See McCormack's account at the Standard here.]

Here's how the Herald's Laura Crimaldi opened her January 13 story, "Reporter roughed up outside Coakley fund-raiser":

Good grief. We're still talking about Palin's clothes? You'd think that with the latest Democratic scandals - like Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's racist comments and new revelations about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' affair - they'd be too busy beating out their own fires to revisit old fodder against Republicans. But apparently U.S. News & World Report's Bonnie Erbe has nothing better to do.

On Jan. 11, Erbe crowed on her blog, "So today Sarah Palin delivers some great news: She's becoming the TV star she's apparently always wanted to be and sparing us (for the moment, at least) the worry that she might run for national office."

Yesterday, Fox News Channel's Bret Baier picked up on a statement NewsBusters Publisher and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell made about "60 Minutes" failing to note Harry Reid's controversial "Negro dialect" remark, even as the news magazine program devoted plenty of time to other revelations from the just-published book "Game Change".

Said Bozell (audio excerpt available here):

It's utterly shameless for CBS to cover this book, and ignore the scoops about the racially charged comments of Harry Reid and Bill Clinton, but devote a very slanted 10 minutes to more of the same old McCain aides slashing Sarah Palin. 

"Harry Reid is no Trent Lott," argues Newsweek's Ben Adler in a January 11 The Gaggle blog post by the same name.

Of course, nowhere in his brief blog post does Adler acknowledge the media's role in why that double standard is in play.

Instead, Adler defends Reid, praising his "frank political assessment":

Hate-filled left-wing talker Mike Malloy was at it again last night (see our full archive on him here), hurling hateful invective against conservative talk radio host and author Michael Reagan.

The occasion? Malloy took perverse delight in 31-year-old Reagan son Cameron's recent arrest by Los Angeles police. The incident, Malloy declared, was sure fire proof of how "these right-wingers so pollute and destroy their own families."

Of course, Malloy had no evidence to back his claim, and even though he's never met the man nor does he "ever want to," Malloy lashed out at Michael Reagan as "an absolute ghoul" and "sick bastard."

But perhaps the most astonishing part of his screed is that Malloy was not just content to bash Reagan personally and politically, but that in doing so he threw in a gratuitous and mean-spirited attack on the institution of adoption (emphasis Malloy's):