ABCNews.com

Today Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama issued a statement that he will forego the public financing system for the general election. His announcement goes back on a pledge to use public financing if the Republican candidate would do the same.

All three broadcast networks' Web sites have the story, but only ABCNews.com noted in its front page tease that Obama is going back on a previous campaign promise.

Screen captures are posted below the page break.

ABCNews.com, reporting on the Catholic Diocese of Rome refusing permission to Ron Howard’s plans to film the movie prequel to Dan Brown’s "The DaVinci Code" in two historic churches, used loaded wording in the headline: "Church Cracks Down on New ‘Da Vinci’ Film."

The lead for the report, written by Phoebe Natanson and Luchina Fisher, also used similar imagery to describe the Catholic Church’s refusal: "Once again, the Catholic Church is coming down hard on writer Dan Brown, the author of ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ The producers of Brown's latest thriller to be made into a film, ‘Angels and Demons,’ have been banned from filming key scenes inside any church in Rome, on the grounds that the book is "an offense against God," according to a church spokesman.

Speaking of "coming down hard," wasn’t Brown doing just that in "The Da Vinci Code" by depicting the Catholic Church as a nefarious organization?

ABC's Marcus Baram is reporting that Democratic Senators Chris Dodd (Conn.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.) "had their home loans handled by [Countrywide Financial's] VIP desk, where a team of loan officers would work out favorable terms in conjunction with [CEO Angelo] Mozilo, according to two former Countrywide executives."

Only their party affiliations are nowhere to be found in the ABCNews.com story.

Conrad is Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and chairs a subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee, according to his official Web page. Dodd serves as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. These committee chair assignments were also missing from Baram's story.

Picking up on the media's meme that a vast right-wing hate machine is going at full-tilt against Michelle Obama, ABCNews.com wants readers to know that the Illinois senator's wife is "more Jackie O Than Teresa [Heinz Kerry]."

The story made the "top headlines" lineup for the afternoon of June 13, along with a headline tease for recent video from Fox News Channel where an onscreen graphic labeled the mother of two as Sen. Obama's "baby mama." Online slang lexicon urbandictionary.com defines a baby mama as "The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved."

The "Michelle Obama 2.0" article begins by regaling readers with a look at life in the Obama household as given by Barack and Michelle on a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio. The Illinois senator joked about his wife speaking more endearingly of him on the campaign trail than she does behind closed doors:

"She never says such nice things about me at home!" he smiles. "I really enjoy listening to her praise me like that because when I get home she'll remind me that I didn't make the bed."

The article then continued by contrasting the domestic bliss of the young Obamas with those mean ol' conservatives dead-set on stopping the presumptive Democratic nominee by gunning for Mrs. O.:

On Thursday, ABC News took global warming hysteria to a new level.

After Chris Cuomo and Bob Woodruff previewed an upcoming environmental scare piece on "Good Morning America" as previously reported by my colleague Scott Whitlock, an article was posted at the network's website asking (emphasis added throughout):

Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse?

Following this irresponsibly alarmist opening paragraph, the article continued:

This September, in Earth 2100, a dramatic ABC News 2-hour broadcast, the greatest minds across the globe will join together in a countdown to the year 2100 to tell us what we must do to survive the next century … And what may happen if we don't.

As Whitlock transcribed for your review Thursday, here were some of the key moments of hysteria on that morning's "GMA" (video available here):

Months ago, Obama Girl seductively sang about her love for the junior senator from Illinois. Now, a satirical video, loaded with sexual content, depicts young McCain supporters as inept, clumsy, and not worthy of dating.

Making matters worse, ABCNews.com not only reviewed the video, but also embedded it at its website despite the soundtrack including a vulgarity beginning with the letter "F".

I kid you not.

What follows are highlights of this article (sexual content below the fold, emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer Jeff Williams, picture courtesy ABCNews.com):

I've ripped ABCNews.com recently for some of their stories and story selection -- 'pregnant man' photos, need I say more? -- but I have to give the site kudos today for putting in its top headlines rotation a story about Georgia mother Cindi Cook, convicted of forging a signature on a parental consent form for her son's pregnant girlfriend.

What's more, rather than resorting to the more clinical term "fetus" which subtly denies the sanctity of the unborn life taken by abortion, ABCNews.com editors used the term baby in the headline, "Mom Broke Law to Abort Teen Son's Baby."

Reporter David Schoetz noted that the Northside Women's Clinic may soon be the target of a lawsuit, and quoted from the teenage girl's lawyer who alleged the clinic may well be actively counseling teenage clients on how to circumvent the parental notification law (emphasis mine):

Blame do-nothing Republicans for high gas prices. That was the impression visitors to ABCNews.com got this afternoon.

Among the "top headlines" lineup Web site editors included a story on "Fueling Anger" with the teaser headline: "Rejected! Big Oil Tax Gets Shelved." [see related post about CBSNews.com's bias here]

The accompanying caption to the ABC photo illustration read, "With prices soaring, GOP halts Democrats' wide-ranging energy plan."

The article itself, by writer Z. Byron Wolf, was front-loaded with bias, slamming Republicans for their filibuster of a new windfall profits tax measure while dismissing the GOP's energy plan as ineffective in the short term (emphases mine):

Mark this date, June 10, 2008, on your calendars as the day someone in the Obama-loving media finally asked the Democrat presidential nominee a tough question.

Potentially even more surprising, the question and answer were posted at ABC News's website.

Is this a rare moment of clarity for a press member, or is this a sign the kid gloves are coming off now that Obama has won the nomination?

While you ponder, take a gander at what ABC's Jake Tapper posted at his blog Tuesday (emphasis added):

I mean really, that must be the only explanation why ABCNews.com keeps showing us pictures of the so-called pregnant man. It must be a way for us to save gas. Why drive to the carnival in town to see the Bearded Lady when she's just a few clicks away on your computer?

This isn't the first time the Disney-owned network thought fit to put pictures of transsexual woman Thomas Beatie on its "top headlines" lineup. Back on May 21 the Web site teased pictures of Beatie as she "Labors... In Yard."

Perhaps as a peace offering or palette-cleanser, ABCNews.com is also featuring in its "top headlines" pictures of attractive Hollywood starlets in so-called Band-Aid dresses.

What say you? Slow news day, or is ABC just following the maxim that "sex sells"?

I've been noticing lately that Disney-owned ABCNews.com has a penchant for putting somewhat sexually-charged items in its top stories lineup.

Today is no exception with a story on a shocking, shocking double standard in one of the country's most progressive industries.

Ready for the outrage? Here goes:

Bisexual in H'wood: OK for Girls, Not Guys. While the industry welcomes bisexual starlets, bi men are all but unmarketable.

Clearly televised congressional hearings are called for!

Just as a quick follow-up to both Terry Trippany and Warner Todd Huston's posts, at least one major political reporter is chagrined by the MSM's penchant for selecting photographs of Sen. Barack Obama that make him appear rather, um, messianic.

From Jake Tapper's Political Punch blog at ABCNews.com:

There is Born to You This Day in the City of Chicago a Savior

June 02, 2008 10:19 AM

And His name is Barack the Democrat.

General election project for Political Punch readers: Let's keep track of how many Holy images of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, make their way into print.

That sleazy yet hallowed HBO television series "Sex and the City" is now in theaters as a feature film, and the cultural elites are having a religious experience. Newsweek previewed the movie by reporting how an estimated 50,000 people, some from far-away lands like Australia and Japan, "make the pilgrimage each year to the shrine," the fictional New York City home of "Sex" protagonist Carrie Bradshaw. The magazine chronicled a tour group standing silently, some weeping.

Am I the only one who thinks that those estimated 50,000 people out there make the Trekkies look sane by comparison? But Newsweek seems to lament how the movie isn’t outrageous enough. The headline is "Girls Gone Mild," and the trailer is all about our protagonist getting married – maybe. Writer Julia Baird was amazed at "how many people speak of it in hyperbolic terms: as a revolution, a phenomenon, a cataclysm, almost an insurgency."

The media has been unfair to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D- N.Y.) is the new argument former President Bill Clinton made for his wife to continue on for the Democratic nomination. He's also hitting hard on the issue of seating Florida and Michigan: "I thought it was the Republican Party that disenfranchised voters in Florida, not the Democrats." View CNN video here.

The former president is also sounding conspiratorial these days. According to this ABC News report, he told a crowd in South Dakota he has, "never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running," and that, "she will win the general election if you nominate her. They're just trying to make sure you don't."

Everyone is out to get THEM!

Guess Which Party, and What Label?

Here are Old Media excerpts relating to recent presidential contenders you might find interesting.

First, here's the Associated Press from May 15 (fourth short item at link):

The United Steelworkers union endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president Thursday, giving the Illinois senator a powerful advocate in attracting blue-collar voters.

The endorsement comes one day after former presidential candidate and Steelworker ally John Edwards endorsed Obama, a key component in the union's decision to go with the Democratic front-runner.

Edwards won only one primary, his home state of South Carolina, in two presidential runs.

Here's ABC's "Political Radar Blog" on that same day:

Cindy McCain, the wife of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, released a summary of her 2006 income tax return Friday prompting media members to quickly make negative comparisons between what she revealed and what Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) wife disclosed to the public in October 2004.

Most notable was the New York Times which in characterizing Teresa Heinz Kerry's 2003 income as being less than Cindy's in 2006 completely ignored its own October 16, 2004, article revealing as much as $50 million Teresa made in "trusts of which she is the beneficiary" not included in her personal tax filing.

Isn't that convenient?

Let's begin our examination with Saturday's Times piece (emphasis added, h/t Redstate, picture courtesy AP):

Over the years I've noticed ABCNews.com likes to have fun with Photoshop. They seem to have very lenient rules when it comes to the photos that accompany their stories. Today I spotted a picture of Laura Bush's head placed on the body of Godzilla on their front page. Here's the blog posting the picture links to over at ABCNews.com. On my blog I've previously discussed my frustration with ABCNews.com.

Update: The picture is no longer featured on the ABCNews.com Web site as of 2:25 p.m. CST.

ABC stole the Left's mojo on a McCain-slamming "pastor problem" story.

Why am I not surprised?

Here's the complaint of David Corn at Mother Jones magazine's MoJo blog yesterday (h/t Romenesko):

I'm glad that Good Morning America covered the connection between John McCain and Rod Parsley, the Ohio megachurch pastor who has said it is the United States' historic mission to see the "false religion" of Islam "destroyed."

But did ABC News' top investigative reporter, Brian Ross, have to swipe the story from us?

Admit it. You just can't get enough of the world's first "pregnant man," transsexual Thomas Beatie. At least, ABC News thinks so.

Yeah, I know ABC's covered the story ad nauseum already, but you just can't beat pictures of a pregnant transsexual working on his/her lawn.

As featured in the Top Headlines section for ABCNews.com this afternoon:

"PHOTOS: Pregmant Man Labors... in Yard"

"Thomas Beatie, the world's first pregnant man, tends to his lawn," reads the caption of Beatie grasping a weed whacker.

Clicking on the link brings up a photo montage bearing the following warning:

WARNING: Some of the following pictures are of a graphic nature. Viewer discretion is advised.
(ABC)

ABCNews.com did it last week, CNN.com in April. Today, it's USAToday.com's turn.

"Average gas prices set record at $3.72 a gallon" reads the teaser headline on the USAToday.com Web site. Yet the photo (by Justin Sullivan, Getty Images) accompanying the teaser on the front page shows a gas marquee with gasoline at $4.09-a-gallon.

That's a media markup of 9.9 percent.

Does the media treat hypocrites of differing political preferences similarly? The evidence would suggest not. When noted Christian televangelist Jim Bakker was found to have committed adultery and mail fraud back in 1986, the national media were beside themselves with glee, running hundreds of stories about Bakker's hypocrisy. The same pattern repeated itself with other Christian evangelists, including George W. Bush supporter Ted Haggard in 2006, a case that Wikipedia admits "may have affected voting patterns in the 2006 elections". The media made sure to feature the haggard case as a front-page story during the run-up[ to the election, probably hoping (correctly as it turned out) that it would help the Democrats take control of Congress. However, the shoe is now on the other foot.

Famed left-wing radio personality Bernie Ward of San Francisco, a former priest who had one of the loudest and most consistently anti-George W. Bush voices in the entire nation, was found guilty of possessing and distributing child pornography on Friday and will serve at least five years in prison. ward tried to argue that he was "doing research" on child pornography, but as the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

In today's report on the disastrous cyclone that swept through the small Asian country of Myanmar (formerly Burma) it looks like ABC News is trying to start a new meme: The cyclone "was Asia's answer to Hurricane Katrina." How long do you think it will be before the idea takes hold and all manner of comparisons will be made between Katrina and the cyclone in Myanmar? If this idea takes hold it won't be long before the media's Bush Derangement Syndrome starts claiming that the military junta that is preventing relief supplies from reaching the Myanmarian people are just like Bush and FEMA's failures in New Orleans.

Entertainment Weekly interviewed professional conspiracy theorist and filmmaker Oliver Stone about “W,” his upcoming George W. Bush movie. Stone told EW, “I'm tired of defending the accuracy of my movies. I'm past that now.”

While he told EW “he had to speculate” about dialogue, “Stone insist[ed] that every scene in 'W' will be rooted in truth.” Instead, the movie is a hodge podge of supposed eyewitness accounts, third-hand gossip and fantastical guesswork mixed with “awkward and goofy” caricatures. EW pointed out that “some accounts” “may have come from disgruntled former staffers.”

If the left frothed over ABC's “Path to 9/11” and the media criticized “its invented scenes, fabricated dialogue and unsubstantiated accounts,” then surely they'll immediately knock Stone for these scenes that could come directly from Will Farrell's old “Saturday Night Live”  Bush skits (all bold mine):

There's a scene of 26-year-old Bush peeling his car to a stop on his parents' front lawn and drunkenly hurling insults at his father (''Thank you, Mr. Perfect. Mr. War Hero. Mr. F---ing-God-Almighty!''), while another scene set a few years later finds Bush nearly crashing a small plane while flying under the influence.

Are "Totally in the Tank for Obama" media members focusing on Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" in order to force Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton out of the race?

Consider if you will all of the attention Limbaugh's months-old plan to keep the Democrat nomination process going as long as possible got Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning following Hillary's tough night in North Carolina and Indiana.

Critical update at end of post: El Rushbo sends NewsBusters German article on this subject!

For instance, ABC's Jake Tapper reported the following at his blog late Tuesday evening in a piece called "Is Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos Working?" (emphasis added, picture courtesy Rush Limbaugh.com):

Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and media hype about gasoline prices. On television that third item often takes place not just in your usual standup at a gas station interviewing outraged motorists. In Web-based media, however, the still shot is worth 1,000 barrels.

We've noted how CNN.com has done it. Today, it's ABCNews.com with its front-page teaser headline "Oil: Another Day, Another Record."

The photo accompanying the AP story filed from Vienna -- yes, as in Austria -- by writer George Jahn depicts a gas marquee from an American gas station showing regular unleaded at $4.419-a-gallon. Here's how the caption for the AP photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez that accompanies Jahn's article reads (emphasis mine):

Former President Bill Clinton pinged ABCNews.com's Political Radar on a pulpit-pounding campaign swing through the Tarheel State just two days before the North Carolina primary. But it appears the alphabet network's Web site not only got the name of an Asheville, N.C., church wrong, but it misspelled, three times, the name of a denomination within Protestant Christianity (emphasis mine) in this May 4 blog post (screencap below fold):

ABC News' Sarah Amos reports: Former President Bill Clinton spent time in two western North Carolina churches this morning, speaking more from his heart than any sort of political handbook.

"I didn't come here to ask you to vote for my wife," said Clinton, addressing the congregation at Church of the Pentacostal in Asheville, N.C. "I came here to ask you to pray for her. And to vote. Do whatever you want. Show up. Our country is in dire distress.

Four, count them, four ABCNews.com reporters hacked out a three-page April 30 article for the alphabet network's Web site that dealt with new steamy text messages between Democratic Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his then-chief-of-staff Christine Beatty. Kilpatrick, indicted on twelve criminal counts including perjury and obstruction of justice, could see time in prison thanks to these text messages which would prove he lied under oath about his affair with Beatty.

Here's how the Kwame Quartet of Vicki Mabrey, David W. Scott, Mary-Claude Foster and Katie Escherich opened their story:

More steamy text messages sent between Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff reveal intimate details about their relationship, and further indicate the mayor played a part in the dismissal of a police officer whose lawsuit brought their affair to light.

If you are a major network and want to 'target' gun owners and gun dealers in a story, what would you do? Why you would write a story about a gun dealer offering a steep discount on firearms for college students, and then only interview the dealer and those who oppose his business and his special offer.

According to an ABC News story covering Eric Thompson, owner of TGSCOM Inc., Thompson is "targeting students" whose limited income doesn't always allow for such high-dollar purchases.

The owner of TGSCOM, Eric Thompson, announced today that for the next two weeks he will sell firearms at cost in the hopes of targeting students who may be on a tight budget. Customers will have over 5,400 different kinds of firearms from which to choose.

"This offer allows students and people who might not have otherwise been able to afford a weapon to purchase one at a hefty discount and at a significant expense to myself," Thompson told ABCNews.com.

Thompson unknowingly sold firearms to the shooters at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. Because of this, he has determined he needs to turn these tragedies around by offering steeply discounted firearms for a limited time so that citizens can afford to protect themselves and their loved ones. He plans to visit the Virginia Tech campus to speak to students who support his efforts.

"The next news story I want to be involved in is how I sold a firearm to someone who helped stop a mass murderer. By forgoing a profit, I hope to help give law-abiding citizens the tools to prevent tragedy," he said.

Sounds great, doesn't it? However, ABC News and those they interviewed for this story don't seem to think so.

It was just a matter of time I suppose. What with Sen. Barack Obama's popularity with college students and the economy being the number one issue for voters, the media finally have an excuse to put a more youthful spin on the classic food vs. prescription drugs meme. A changing media environment, after all, calls for new angles at the same old bias. Someone had to give it the old college try.

Somewhere out there some college co-ed is making an agonizing decision: textbooks or birth control.

Fortunately for America's college-aged voters, ABCNews.com is picking up the banner on this issue:

Erin McKenna, a junior at the University of Pittsburgh, admits that she sometimes has to choose between purchasing textbooks for school and paying for her birth-control prescription.

"I have two jobs and I still can't afford it," McKenna said.

Earlier this week we documented how ABCNews.com used a photo illustration in its top headlines lineup that pictured a Bible, a rosary, and a bare-shouldered woman apparently in the throes of passion.

Well, in this morning's ABCNews.com lineup of top stories: John and Cindy McCain's tax returns, Hillary Clinton bashing Barack Obama, Pope Benedict at the UN, and how a company plans to make a stripper game for use on the Nintendo Wii.

The graphic (pictured at right) features a young woman holding the traditional Wii controller against a silhouette of a woman grasping a stripper pole. The link takes readers to an ABCNews.com story by Ashley Phillips.