New York Daily News

Candidate Fred Thompson is the butt of media jokes, once again. This time it is due to the reporting by the New York Daily News of Thompson's comments in Sioux City, Iowa over the weekend. Thompson's claim that an al Qaeda enforced smoking ban in Iraq led to many Iraqi citizens joining the U.S. side in the attempt to rid the country of the foreign terror network was reported to the misinformed media's amusement, becoming an excuse to make fun of the candidate. But, as is the case with most "reporting" by the MSM, Thompson turns out to be right in his assertions and the MSM has egg on their faces, once again. It seems more and more that the media has decided to do their level best to destroy Fred Thompson's bid for the White House. I wonder what that says of their fear of him?

The NYDNews reported Thompson's comments on Saturday.

Rival newspapers are not calmly reporting the news that Rupert Murdoch has sealed the deal to buy The Wall Street Journal for a royal sum. The Washington Post front page headline today makes Rupert sound like he came in with tanks, not just cash: "Murdoch Seizes Wall St. Journal In $5 Billion Coup." Liberals must really see this tycoon as some sort of press-baron version of Pinochet.

In New York, competing papers made it sound more like Rupert won another prize, like he bought a new yacht. "Dow Jones Deal Gives Murdoch a Coveted Prize," wrote The New York Times on its front page. "Rupe takes the prize: Wall Street Journal owners selling out to peddler of Post" was a headline in the New York Daily News.

On Saturday, NewsBusters asked two important questions: “Will Media Report Palestinians Fleeing Gaza For Israel,” and will they address the theft of Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize by Hamas looters?

At this point, the answer to the latter is a resounding “No.” The answer to the former is “Not much.”

To be more specific, extensive searches of Google News and LexisNexis have identified that no major American media outlet with the exception of the New York Daily News bothered to report the theft of Yasser Arafat’s Noble Peace Prize:

A tipster reports that the New York Daily News has a style guide on its internal computer system with a very typical liberal-media template for its reporters on how to handle abortion labeling: Guidelines regarding stories and headlines on abortion: 1. Call those who oppose abortions abortion foes or abortion opponents or (in tight-count heads) abort foes. Avoid the phrases pro-life or pro-lifers, except in direct quotations. 2. Those who favor a woman's right to an abortion are abortion rights activists or pro-abortion rights or pro-choice. Avoid pro-abortion. 3. Also avoid the phrase "when the life of the mother is at stake." Make it "... life of the woman ..." Don't call the fetus an unborn child, and don't refer to the unborn in headlines. 4. You can use abortion clinic or abort clinic in tight-count headlines.

Apparently, hearing both sides of the global warming debate is too much for Hollywood heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio. Rush & Malloy of New York’s Daily News reported that Leo doesn’t like "contrary" views in his “documentary” about global warming, “The 11th Hour.” After being part of an ABC special about “threats to the Earth,” Leo decided that dissent ist verboten! So now he’s making a real documentary—minus all of that pesky questioning (emphasis mine throughout):

Leonardo DiCaprio has heard enough bilge from oil-company apologists. At last week's Natural Resources Defense Council gala here, the three-time Oscar nominee recalled taking part in an ABC film a few years ago that focused on threats to the Earth. "Unfortunately, the message was drowned out by the inclusion of the contrary viewpoint," said DiCaprio, who narrated and co-wrote the forthcoming environmental doc "The 11th Hour." DiCaprio said this film focuses only on those who acknowledge global warming, such as Stephen Hawking, Mikhail Gorbachev and Andrew Weil. "The message won't be diluted by our having to yell over oil-company-funded 'scientists,' " he said.

On the heels of last year's "documentary" by Gabriel Range concocting an assassination of President Bush in "Death of A President," Bill Hutchinson of the New York Daily News reported a new play in the Big Apple that also treads along the Bush-assassination theme. The playwright's thinly disguised Bush-resembling fictional president gets "whacked like Julius Caesar by a confidant."

A FAMED CITY theater group is inviting controversy by staging a play in which a character thinly veiled as President Bush gets assassinated. "President and Man" begins a five-day run at The Duke on 42nd St. tonight as one of eight one-act plays staged by the Naked Angels Theater Company, whose members include Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Conservatives are already panning it as another sick liberal jab at the President.

It was “Miller Time” again on the “O’Reilly Factor” Wednesday night, and though the boys got off to a slow start, they finished quite strong.

This increasingly popular Fox News segment featuring comedian Dennis Miller and host Bill O'Reilly focused on the Oscars, Al Gore, the New York Times, and the recent virtually unreported ACLU controversy.

With that in mind, here are some of the highlights for your viewing and entertainment pleasure (video available here courtesy of our friend Ms Underestimated):

On Wednesday, NewsBusters reported how MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann sent an e-mail message to a viewer in which he debased colleague Rita Cosby as well as his boss at the time. Lloyd Grove of the New York Daily News (hat tip to NB reader John in CA) reported Thursday that Olbermann has been responding to his likely voluminous hate mail with…hate mail:

“Keith Olbermann's vacation isn't going so well.

“He was forced to apologize yesterday after more of his E-mails found their way to my inbox and exposed the host of MSNBC's ‘Countdown With Keith Olbermann’ as insulting and frequently obscene in an acrimonious exchange with two viewers who taunted him.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

(Update: For those that are interested, the following link directs you to a website that has some of the actual e-mail messages in question. Be forewarned that these are much more vulgar and offensive than what has been presented here.)

After Grove forwarded the e-mail messages to an MSNBC executive, Olbermann wrote the following (fair warning to  not have food or drink in your mouth as you read this):

For a few days, it looked as though maybe MSNBC's First Read - written in part by NBC's political director Elizabeth Wilner - was being more careful with their poll numbers. Then, from today:

The New York Daily News says the same CNN poll showing Bush's approval at 32% also notes that 69% "said gas prices were causing them severe financial hardship."

Well, they quoted the Daily News accurately enough:

Sixty-nine percent of Americans in the CNN poll said gas prices were causing them severe financial hardship.

Take a look, though, at the actual poll. Forty-Six percent say gas prices have caused "moderate hardship," while only 23% say "severe hardship."

The shock waves on Katie Couric's attack on Ave Maria University and its dangerous Catholic culture with its "segregation," its "intolerance," its disrespect for "civil liberties" are spreading. Myrna Blyth picks it up today on National Review, noting the same Katie who whacked the founder of Domino's Pizza as a menace wrote get-cozy notes to the Unabomber to score an interview.

Here's another example of Katie picking on religiously centered towns only when they're Catholic. The town of New Square, New York (population 4,624) floated up to national attention in 2001, after it was discovered that this all-Hasidic Jewish community offered more than 99 percent of their votes for Hillary Clinton for Senate in 2000. On "Meet the Press," Tim Russert noted The New York Daily News reported President Clinton granted clemency to four men "convicted of swiping millions in federal education grants by establishing a fake Jewish school." The clemency came after Clinton held a White House meeting in December 2000 with Senator-elect Hillary Clinton and New Square Rabbi David Twersky. Guess how rough Katie Couric was on that exclusive community, with criminal convictions cleared in a political scandal?