Imagine for a moment that a Fox News reporter was arrested in Central Park early in the morning with a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals. Do you think this little nuance would be included in press coverage of this bizarre event?

Probably in the headline and the opening paragraph, right?

Well, for some reason, though news outlets did report the odd happenings in NYC Friday morning when CNN's Richard Quest was officially arrested for loitering and drug possession, from what I can tell, only the New York Post included the "kinky" elements in its article Saturday (emphasis added, h/t NBer Gat New York, picture courtesy CNN):

A federal judge on April 1 ordered Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a veteran liberal legislator and Saddam Hussein stooge, to pay Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) $1 million for an illegally-taped 1996 phone conversation. Even the Associated Press, which we've taken to task numerous times for dropping party labels, noted McDermott's party affiliation. Not so the Seattle Times, McDermott's hometown paper:

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., says Congressman Jim McDermott owes an Ohio congressman $1 million for leaking an illegally taped phone call to the media.

Today's decision may end the dispute that began in 1996 when John Boehner (BAY'-ner) was taped talking about an ethics case involving Newt Gingrich. The tape reached McDermott who gave it two newspapers. He says it's a free speech issue.

Boehner sued and the case has been in the courts for a decade. A federal court ruled McDermott had no right to release the call.

Just days after the Street of Dreams arsons suspected to be at the hands of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a federal jury found one Briana Waters guilty for her role in a 2001 ELF arson that destroyed the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture.

NewsBusters has noted that the Seattle Times has avoided calling ELF a terrorist or eco-terrorist organization, preferring to call the group simply a "radical environmentalist" organization. Today the paper made some progress as staff writer Mike Carter slapped Waters and her co-conspirators with the label "ecosaboteurs."

But the term sabotage, however, lends the impression of activity engaged in to thwart the military or any commercial enterprise essential to equipping national defense. UW academics studying urban agriculture are fundamentally civilian in nature. Here are some definitions of sabotage available at Answers.com.:

Is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer now backing off from labeling the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) an eco-terrorist outfit?

NewsBusters has noted that whereas the Seattle Times has avoided calling the Street of Dreams arsons as suspected eco-terrorist strikes, the P-I has used the term in headlines and in the text of articles themselves. But an article in today's paper by reporter Paul Shukovsky avoids calling ELF a terror group, although the final paragraph informs readers they can call the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force with tips for investigators.

Instead of labeling ELF an eco-terrorist group, Shukovsky opted for "clandestine cell of radical environmentalists."

As we noted yesterday, Seattle P-I "Big Blog" editor Mónica Guzmán found that most P-I readers approve of the paper tagging ELF as an eco-terror group.

Update below.

Neither the Seattle Times nor the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are high on your average conservative's daily to-read list, but at least the latter is not gun-shy about calling recent suspected Earth Liberation Front (ELF) arsons acts of eco-terrorism.

The Times opted for "radical environmentalists" to tag ELF even though it's pretty clear that investigators clearly think the Street of Dreams fires in Snohomish County, Wash., are terroristic in nature. As reporter Steve Miletich noted in paragraph seven of his March 4 article, "Hunt is on: Who torched the Street of Dreams?":

Working with few clues, federal investigators face a daunting task as they try to determine whether a shadowy group of radical environmentalists torched three multimillion-dollar homes along a Street of Dreams in Snohomish County on Monday.

[...]

A pricey Seattle suburb appears to be the recent target of arson at the hands of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a radical environmentalist group that destroys property in the name of protecting the earth. In other words, ELF is an eco-terrorist organization.

Yet when covering the story, Seattle Times reporter Peyton Whitely refused to use any such label for the ELF. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer did, at least in a photo caption and headline for a story running on the paper's Web site today:

Street of Dreams homes burned, eco-terrorists suspected

Photo caption: "Eco-terrorists are suspected in using explosive devises to destroy or damage several Street of Dreams show homes, which burned in Woodinville."

Last Sunday, from the pen of editorial page editor of the Seattle Times James Vesely, we got a pretty good indication of why the new media of the Internet is so swiftly taking over the traditional role of the old, dead tree media. One word describes it; arrogance. It is an arrogance of the assumed supremacy of the old media and the air of entitlement that it holds dear. It is the presumption that what they write is "truth," that newspapers are the arbiters of that truth, and that journalists are "democracy" personified and that without them we are naught but a "banana republic." And it is the sneering, discountenance with which they look upon the reading public as the great unwashed that has finally caught up with them. However, some are beginning to notice it and unless the dead tree media realizes this truth staring them in the face, they truly are a doomed industry.

The ultra-liberal Seattle Times Op-Ed's the usual 21st century media line; the world is going to hell, only journalists can save us, and everything would be fine if it weren't for that darn Craigslist.

"Media companies, especially newspapers, are by default nearly the lone agents of the democratic form of government."

That statement is actually true, if your version of the word "democratic" uses a big D as opposed to a small d. The mainstream media companies you see today is what's left of 50 years of unchallenged "Democratic" mindset. The reason these bastions of liberal thought are failing is that the Internet age has made their bias apparent to people who, thanks to the Internet age, now have other places to get the news.:

Still smarting from his Memogate spanking, disgraced former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather is trying to reclaim journalistic glory by trumpeting the claims of a supposed Boeing whistleblower. Paul at Wizbang sees an all-too-familiar scenario:

Stop me if you're heard this one....

A has-been anchorman, trying to reclaim past [false] glory tries to destroy a person or an institution by using accusations from a dubious source back-up by documents of dubious credibility. A big blogosphere welcome back to Dan Rather.

This time his target is Boeing but his reportage skills are about the same. Even without benefit of seeing the report (it airs tonight) there are already problems with it.

What problems? Well apparently the Seattle Times has found that the would-be whistleblower, Vince Weldon, has credibility issues:

You knew this was coming: the Seattle office of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has come out against the FBI's release of photos of two men observed acting suspiciously aboard as many as six different Seattle-area ferry routes in recent week.

The Seattle Times - which published the photos at the FBI's request - reported Thursday that CAIR-Washington "resented" the release of the photos, which the FBI released in order to enlist the public in helping identify and locate the men so the FBI could talk to them. (CAIR also has an excerpted version of the Seattle Times story on its website.)

The Seattle Times today has published the photos of two men the FBI wants to locate and talk to in regards to their suspicious behavior aboard several Puget Sound ferries in recent weeks, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer continues to refuse to do so - even though the photos have now been widely published in the Seattle area and nationally via other media outlets and the blogosphere. As we discussed yesterday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer offered a haiku contest related to the case, but refused to help the FBI locate the men by publishing their photos.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is refusing to run the photos of two men the FBI is seeking to question in connection with suspicious behavior aboard a Puget Sound ferry - behavior that could be a precursor to a terror plot, or could be nothing nefarious at all.

The Seattle PI reports the story here and explains its rationalization for not publishing the photos here. And - in a steller example of complete touchy-feely uselessness - the paper is holding a haiku-writing contest for readers to write about how they feel about the FBI alert and the way the paper handled it.

From the report:

As covered by NewsBusters managing editor Ken Shepherd in his post last Wednesday, Seattle Times executive editor David Boardman scolded his staffers for cheering when news of Karl Rove's resignation from the White House was announced. Now one of those cheering staffers has issued an apology...of sorts.  In a column reeking with self-righteousness while at the same time attacking bloggers for bringing down the level of  journalism,  staff columnist Nicole Brodeur writes:

That was me.

I was one of the people who cheered in The Seattle Times news meeting Monday when it was announced that presidential adviser Karl Rove had resigned.

Day Deux of the "MSNBC Booed Bush" controversy, and Joe Scarborough was looking to make up ground . . .

For those who missed the story, in a burst of candor "Morning Joe" host Scarborough mentioned on yesterday's show that members of the MSNBC newsroom had booed President Bush nearly continuously during the 2003 State of the Union.

Today, Scarborough asserted that most of the boo-birds were gone from the network, and claimed for good measure that rival Fox News Channel is "all Republicans." Joe was peeved that Bill O'Reilly had expounded on the booing incident on last evening's O'Reilly Factor.

View video here [that's MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski making sympathetic sounds in the background.]

UPDATE: Joe and Mika discuss this NB item. Video (0:57): Real (1.55 MB) or Windows (1.78 MB), plus MP3 (435 kB).

Joe Scarborough has pulled back the curtain on the liberal bias at MSNBC, describing an incident in which people in its newsroom ceaselessly booed President Bush during a State of the Union address.

The revelation came on "Morning Joe" today at 6:02 A.M. EDT. Joe was discussing a recent episode at the Seattle Times in which reporters and editors cheered the news that Karl Rove had resigned. Scarborough applauded Seattle Times Executive Editor Dave Boardman for issuing a memorandum reproving his colleagues. For more, read NB items by Brent Baker and Ken Shepherd.

Joe went on to describe a similar incident at MSNBC.

VIEW VIDEO OF JOE'S ACCOUNT OF THE NEWSROOM INCIDENT HERE. Note: that's newsreader Mika Brzezinksi heard murmuring in assent, though one has to wonder just how thrilled she was by Joe's candor in outing her fellow MSNBC liberals.

Seattle Times Executive Editor Dave Boardman, who in a Tuesday e-mail to his staff had scolded them for cheering Karl Rove's resignation (Ken Shepherd's NewsBusters item), wrote a follow-up e-mail on Wednesday in which he conceded the political display matched the “blue” perspective of the majority in his newsroom where, like most of journalism, reporters are driven by “activism.” Boardman acknowledged:

“If we wore our politics on our sleeves in here, I have no doubt that in this and in most other mainstream newsrooms in America, the majority of those sleeves would be of the same color: blue. Survey after survey over the years have demonstrated that most of the people who go into this business tend to vote Democratic, at least in national elections. That is not particularly surprising, given how people make career decisions and that social service and activism is a primary driver for many journalists.”

It seems that some folks at the Seattle Times got a bit giddy when they heard news of Karl Rove's resignation.

The paper's David Postman clarified in an August 14 "Postman on Politics" blog post that while it "sounds like a conservative's parody of how a news meeting would be run... It was only a couple of people who cheered [Rove's resignation] and they, thankfully, are not among the people who get a say in news play."

Nevertheless, Postman noted that executive editor David Boardman has issued a warning to Seattle Times staff:

As we head into a major political year, now's a good time to remember: Please keep your personal politics to yourself.

Kudos to Boardman for reminding his staffers to check their politics at the door.

See also Editor & Publisher's story and NewsBusters contributor Mithridate Ombud for a related post.

ACORN (The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has been busted again (video is available at the link; HT Michelle Malkin):

(AP) King County prosecutors filed felony charges Thursday against seven people in what a top official described as the worst case of voter-registration fraud in state history, while the organization they worked for agreed to keep a better eye on its employees and pay $25,000 to defray costs of the investigation.

The seven submitted about 1,800 registration cards last fall on behalf of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which had hired them at $8 an hour to sign people up to vote, according to charging documents filed in Superior Court.

The video buys into the whitewash that only low-level employees were involved. The national track record of ACORN would indicate otherwise.

Other than the AP article excerpted, there has been almost no national coverage of this story. A New York Times search on "Washington ACORN" shows nothing recent. The same keyword search at the Washington Post? Only the AP story, with no indication that it made the Post's print edition. This Google News search on the same keywords shows that the AP story received relatively little play, especially outside of Washington State.

Wait a minute ..... wasn't the Evergreen State the site of a hotly contested gubernatorial election with serious allegations of vote fraud in 2004?

Portland's NBC television affiliate, KGW, today carries on its Web site an Associated Press story about a county sheriff. It's now alleged he "knew of the child abuse problems that drove former Governor Neil Goldschmidt from an active public life in 2004."

The child abuse "problem" was detailed in the May 7, 2004 Seattle Times:

"Former Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt admitted yesterday he had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl when he was 35 and mayor of Portland, and said he is resigning all his public and private positions to 'rebuild my life.'"

The Times article noted Goldschmidt "became the nation's youngest big-city mayor, going on to become transportation secretary for the Carter administration and Oregon governor from 1986 to 1990."