Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Washington Times commentary section editor Mary Lou Forbes passed away last Saturday.

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell has issued the following statement:

Mary Lou Forbes made an imprint on the conservative movement that will last for generations. In her more than 50 years in the world of journalism, she served as an unshakable role model especially for conservative women and beginning at a time before females were recognized for their influence.

Mary Lou was also a brilliant mentor. She shared the wisdom gained in her stunning career by instilling the nuts and bolts of good journalism in the countless reporters who excelled under her tutelage. There was seldom a writer she ran across that she couldn't improve.

But even beyond her work, Mary Lou was loved and admired for her kindness and encouragement that touched each person who was blessed to know her. The Media Research Center will miss her and all the support she gave us so generously over the years. May she rest peacefully.

Burger King’s slogan is “have it your way,” but if most parents could truly have it their way, the fast food chain wouldn’t have released its latest vulgar advertisement. Burger King’s new sandwich, the BK Super Seven Incher, is featured in an extremely crude advertisement that is obviously suggestive, and begs the question, Why is Burger King bringing in sex to sell sandwiches?

The advertisement, “Blow Your Mind Away,” features a woman in bright red lipstick, looking shocked. Her mouth is wide open, with the sandwich extending from the edge of picture. The caption boldly states: IT’LL BLOW your mind away. Just in case viewers don’t get the sexual reference, there is another picture of the sandwich with the caption: “BK Super Seven Incher.” Even the fine print is suggestive: “Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the New BK Super Seven Incher. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty…”

In today's "Truly Delicious Irony" segment, the Federal Trade Commission, just months after so-called journalists decided who should win a presidential primary and subsequent election, is going to begin going after bloggers who make false claims about products and/or don't fully disclose conflicts of interest.

Imagine that.

As reported by the Associated Press Sunday:

Calling it an "all-day home field advantage play for Obama and his position on health care," MRC's Seton Motley noted on the June 17 Fox News Channel program "America's Newsroom" that an upcoming ABC network special hosted at the White House will fail to include the other side of the complex policy argument. [audio available here]

Although there will also be a question and answer section with participants picked by ABC News, the planned special will not include a response from Republicans or government-run health care critics.

ABC "has a history of going as far left as possible with these specials and yielding time to Democrats when they won't yield to Republicans," Motley argued. The MRC Director of Communications pointed out that Linda Douglass, White House Director of Communications, served as an ABC News correspondent from 1998 to 2006.

Here we go again. 

During his opening monologue on ‘Real Time’ Friday night, Bill Maher, couldn’t resist piling on to the David Letterman controversy and the sex jokes made by him earlier in the week regarding Sarah Palin’s daughter.

In defending his friend, Maher thought Republicans had over reacted and this was just a case of ‘fake’ outrage. Much ado about nothing. He then went on talking about how Letterman had invited Sarah Palin and her young daughter, Willow, to appear as guests on his show but the Governor declined because she thought it would be wise to keep her daughter away from him. Said Maher, “…that’s right, he’s 62 years old, he’s gonna f*** her right there on stage…it would be very wise to keep her, very wise, yes. You know, I’d worry a little more about the 18-year old hockey players who knock up your daughters.” To which his audience of trained seals laughed and clapped and had a good old time. 

I sat there stunned. Much like his pal Letterman, as far as I was concerned, Maher had crossed the line. Big Time. What is it with these guys? 

Megan Fox recently stated that her solution to a real life evil Transformer invasion would be to negotiate and ask, “instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?”

I also found these quotes from Ms. Fox:

“I don’t want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single S.A.T. word I’ve ever learned, to prove, like, ‘Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.’ I don’t want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I’m not a retard.”

And…

“Women are expected to be conformist automatons in L.A. but in Britain you can be more yourself and people will take you on face value.”

Far be it from me to point out that the base audience for “Transformers” is young males in Middle America, the same men that Fox condemns to a robot apocalypse.  I doubt the bi-coastal elites from Beverly Hills to the Upper West Side will be waiting in line for the midnight showing of Michael Bay’s latest opus. 

To the extent that it is being reported, actor Jon Voight's remarks to last night's Republican House-Senate fundraising dinner are being selectively chosen to fit the media's talking points about conservatives and the GOP.

Robert Dougherty of Associated Content News, for example, has latched onto some red meat lines to portray the actor as a thorn in the side of some Republicans who don't want to rock the proverbial boat:

Though the Republicans tried in vein [sic] to heal the recent divides in the party, Jon Voight had no such words of reconciliation in regards to the President. As host of the dinner, Voight spoke against the "Obama oppression" and called the President a "false prophet" among other things.

But that doesn't do justice to Voight's 10-minute speech -- which I've embedded above at right -- wherein the veteran actor noted how Democrats and the media were content to wear down public opinion of George W. Bush with a never-ending flood of negativity while building up Barack Obama as a near-messianic savior who dare not be questioned:

Updated below

It was wrong of Playboy to publish a top ten list of conservative women its writer Guy Cimbalo would like to "hate-f***" but, c'mon, we all know Michelle Malkin had it coming. That's the gist of PBS "To the Contrary" host and U.S. News contributing editor Bonnie Erbe's June 3 blog post, "Playboy Mix of Sex, Hate, and Politics Demeans Conservative Women" (emphasis mine):

Yesterday, I was contacted by the executive director of SmartGirlPolitics.org, a conservative women's website, to stand up for conservative women treated despicably by the media. Here I am, doing just that.... A couple of caveats are in order. First, I probably disagree politically with much of SmartGirlPolitics.org's agenda--I know I disagree completely with the group's position on abortion rights. But as a nonpartisan, I'm also a firm believer in supporting all members of my gender when attacked due to their gender. I am supporting these women herewith.

Why is the fact-checking operation PolitiFact.com carrying water for the radical left-wing activist group ACORN and attacking Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for trying to warn the public about the group?

A project of the St. Petersburg Times, the website's "Truth-O-Meter" purports to check and rate "the accuracy of statements by candidates, elected officials, political parties, interest groups, pundits, talk show hosts." After PolitiFact writers research a statement, it then receives one of six ratings on a continuum of truthfulness: True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True, False and Pants on Fire.

It turns out that those who serve the Truth-O-Meter often have strange ideas about what constitutes truth.

A case in point is how PolitiFact handled Rep. Bachmann's recent claim that the much investigated activist group ACORN was eligible for up to $8.5 billion in federal funding this year.

Like everything having to do with ACORN, it's very complicated.

While the liberal Democratic mayor of Los Angeles has a thing for news babes, it seems his hometown paper has a penchant for leaving out the mayor's party affiliation from reporting on his liaisons.

"A Los Angeles television reporter is dating Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, about two years after his extramarital affair with another local newscaster led to the breakup of his 20-year marriage," Phil Willon of the Los Angeles Times informed readers in a June 2 article devoid of the mayor's Democratic party affiliation:

KTLA-TV Channel 5 reporter Lu Parker, a former Miss U.S.A., has been dating Villaraigosa since March, station officials confirmed Monday. On Sunday, while working as a weekend anchor, Parker announced a story about the likelihood of Villaraigosa running for governor in 2010.

The LAT is no stranger to omitting Villaraigosa's party affiliation from readers, as we at NewsBusters have noted. The omissions are all the more glaring when contrasted to the paper's treatment of scandal-plagued California Republican politicians. As I noted in NewsBusters back in October 2007:

On March 26, I was watching the Kids’ Choice Awards with my 8-year-old twins on Viacom’s Nickelodeon, which for 30 years has been the No. 1 entertainment brand for kids. It was dedicated to the Big Green Help environmental campaign and “going green” for Earth Day awareness. Leonardo DiCaprio was honored for his green work. Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson was the host, and my fellow Hollywood stars and musicians came out in full force.

An impressive commitment was shown to keeping the message of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” as a battle cry for our youths’ participation in protecting Mother Earth from global warming and pollution. My children were enthusiastic. I was confused. Something bothered me, and I could not put my finger on why - until Memorial Day weekend.

It started on Saturday morning, when I took my 8-year-old son, Nicholas, who is a Cub Scout, to the Los Angeles National Cemetery. About 2,700 Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, from Cub to Eagle, convened to place flags on more than 84,000 gravesites of America’s finest. It was a moving, profound experience.

Back in the 2006 nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court , Barack Obama criticized the philosphy on confirming Supreme Court Justices stating the Senate should "only examine whether or not the Justice is intellectually capable and is nice to his wife."  He further objected that, "once you get beyond intellect and personal character there shouldn't be further question to whether the justice should be confirmed.  Meaningful advice and consent includes an examination of a judge's philosophy, ideology, and record."

With all the news aggregator style websites around-the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Stimulist, and True/Slant just to name a few-why does Tucker Carlson think he can have success with a new one?

It's true that none of the news aggregator sites have a conservative slant to them, so this site may attract a crowd of conservatives, but it will require a lot of work on Carlson's part, time that he may not have with his move to Fox News. Carlson told the Wall Street Journal, "One thing feeds the other. I wouldn't do something that wasn't too integrated into my life."

The site is going to emphasis constant updates and original reporting on aspects of Obama's administration that have been ignored by the press.  "There just aren't enough people covering this administration and telling the people what's going on," Carlson said.

If the cheers of Columbia University's Class of 2009 are any indication, the future of journalism will be looking for a federal bailout.

Washington Times correspondent Christina Bellantoni live-tweeted today's event, noting the remarks from university president Lee Bollinger appealing for more government-owned media outlets. Bollinger also received "big cheers" for his call for increased spending on public broadcasting.

Here are the relevant tweets from Bellantoni's feed in reverse chronological order (emphasis mine):

Isn't this marvelous?

Americans are struggling to keep their jobs and pay their bills; the White House and a Democrat-controlled Congress want to impose a carbon cap-and-trade scheme along with universal healthcare, both destined to dramatically raise taxes from current levels, and; struggling newspapers in Washington state are getting a 40 percent reduction in business taxes!

I guess preserving liberal media is much more important than the best interest of citizens as reported by the Seattle Times Tuesday:

Maureen Dowd's Sunday column for the New York Times, datelined "The Final Frontier," beat to death the already tiresome conceit of comparing Barack Obama to the coolly rational Spock from Star Trek. In Dowd's version, Obama is going to beam down and save newspapers or something. The column is titled "Put Aside Logic," and it does.

The text box is even lamer: "Can we Kling On to our newspapers in the galactic age?" Some headline writer must have thought the play on words was clever enough to be worth the corniness. It wasn't.

Dowd did provide a few decent Obama tidbits amidst the silly premise: Not only is the Times the president's favorite paper (he gets "cranky" without it), he sold subscriptions briefly while attending Columbia University.

I dreamed that Spock saved our planet, The Daily Planet of journalism.

Is this the Democratic Party’s preferred Day of Prayer homage?

Barack Obama may not have attended a ceremony for the National Day of Prayer on Thursday. But the Democratic National Committee’s official blog "Kicking Ass" did celebrate reverence and worship on that day: it reposted a photo of Obama reverently looking up at a portrait of John F. Kennedy.

Surprise, surprise: the networks ignored the National Day of Prayer, too.

Contributing to Time Magazine's 2009 "Time 100" list, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. sucked up to Mexican media mogul Carlos Slim (who has coincidentally purchased 6% of NYT Co. shares and lent the company $250 million recently). After acknowledging Slim's investment in NYT Co., Sulzberger gushed:

Carlos, a very shrewd businessman with an appreciation for great brands, showed a deep understanding of the role that news, information and education play in our interconnected global society....As he spoke at our meeting, he conveyed the quiet but fierce confidence that has enabled him to have a profound and lasting effect on millions of individuals in Mexico and neighboring countries. Carlos knows very well how much one person with courage, determination and vision can achieve.

Geez. That slobbering is quite a change from the paper's attitude toward Slim less than two years ago, when Eduardo Porter labeled the Mexican mogul a thief and robber baron in an August 2007 editorial:

Nobody wants to be mocked.  And if you’re a rock star, surrounded by sycophants for the better part of 35 years, it must be especially hard to deal with being mocked.  It makes sense, then, that Don Henley does not like the parody of his song “Boys of Summer,” penned by Chuck DeVore, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, and Justin Hart, his advisor.  But Henley’s copyright-infringement lawsuit is far bigger than one rock star or his feelings.  Henley’s lawsuit undermines the First Amendment right to speak freely. 

Don Henley makes no effort to hide his political leanings.  In addition to performing at scores of fundraisers, Henley has given about $750,000 to partisan, liberal causes, including $10,000 to Barack Obama and $9,000 to DeVore’s soon-to-be opponent, Barbara Boxer.  Henley also exploits his music to advance a liberal, political agenda. 

At the recent media celebration of Barack Obama's first 100 days as President, Barack Obama made the bold claim that he created or saved over 150,000 jobs. 

This budget builds on the steps we’ve taken over the last 100 days to move this economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity.
We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs and provided a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families.Source

This would be wonderful news, if it were true.  Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to figure out where he got these numbers from.  They just don't seem to add up to the facts.

So where do they get away with a number like that?

Watching “24” this week, I realized that our number one threat is multi-national corporations with battalions of hired killers on the payroll.  Similarly, “Michael Clayton,” “The International,” the new “State of Play” and many others have taught me that big companies assassinate their rivals, whistleblowers, policemen and random passersby with astonishing regularity.

I wish.  But then, I’m a trial lawyer and I could use a new house.

Sadly, the real world is much more esoteric than the portrait Hollywood paints, and the real threat is not quite so picturesque.  Instead of corporate death squads composed of hardboiled mercenaries with high tech assault rifles, the real killers are boring jihadi doofuses with dusty AKs, booby-trapped Fiats and the occasional boxcutter.   

Let’s stop and check the numbers.  Real terrorists, counting the victims of 9/11 and American losses in Iraq and Afghanistan: Over 7900 murdered. Victims of corporate murder: Zero. Nada. Zip. I would add in the number of Iraqis and Afghanis murdered by these folks, except that toll is beyond counting.  And to many liberals, their lives don’t seem to count anyway.

Remember the outrage over the compensation paid out to AIG executives earlier this year, after the federal government had to extend a lifeline to troubled insurance provider? Will the executives of a media company receive the same treatment - should they get their wish and receive help from the government for their company?

There's a little-publicized story that the parent company of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Newspapers LLC allegedly sought a $10-million bailout from the state of Pennsylvania according to lawsuit filed by a Chester County, Pa. charter school. However, the Associated Press reported on April 24 that the company's chief, Brian Tierney - received $1.175 million in salary and bonus compensation in 2008, despite being forced into bankruptcy protection in February for $395 million in debt.

"Recent court filings also show that Tierney collected $1.175 million in salary and bonuses last year, somewhat higher than previously disclosed," Maryclaire Dale wrote for the AP. "Tierney's compensation included $650,000 in salary, a $350,000 bonus for 2008, a $175,000 bonus for 2007 and $81,000 in transportation costs."

No bias here, just some fun at White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs's expense.

"White House Press Secretary began his daily briefing, even though Pres. Obama was speaking at the U.Conn event. Considered a no-no," CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller noted via his Twitter account just shortly after 2:30 p.m. EDT.

Education journalist Dakarai I. Aarons asked Knoller:

@markknoller any precedent for holding a briefing while the president is speaking elsewhere?

To which the veteran journalist answered:

@d_aarons In 30 years of covering the White House - it's just not done. the press secretary waits till the Pres is done, before starting...

"The liberal media deserve the Tammy Wynette Award for their coverage of Obama’s radical agenda, as they continue to devotedly stand by their man," quipped Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell in an April 27 statement.[see bottom of post for full press release]

"For the pro-Obama liberal media, the Obama honeymoon is nowhere near over," Bozell argued, reacting to the results of a study in which MRC analysts looked at 852 stories on the Obama administration from January 20 through April 15 on ABC's World News, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News.

Among the key findings thus far, MRC analysts noticed that the media have actively worked to:

The New York Times Company is burning full blast towards oblivion and if they don't figure out a way to pull out of their death spiral soon it won't be pretty. In fact, in the first quarter of 2009 the Times lost an incredible $74.5 million which was far far beyond what analysts had predicted. Here's how the Times describes it's own deterioration:

The New York Times Company reported a first-quarter loss of $74.5 million on Tuesday, compared with a loss of $335,000 in the period a year ago, as it joined the roster of newspaper companies recording the steepest advertising declines in generations.

Advertising revenue at the company’s publishing segment fell 28.4 percent in the quarter, including an 8 percent decline in Internet advertising at the News Media Group.

[...]

The Times Company’s total revenue of $609 million, down 18.6 percent from $747.9 million in the first quarter a year ago, fell more than $20 million short of analysts’ projections.

Of course this abysmal performance is already being spun by the Times itself and the Associated Press as nothing more than a result of a shift in marketing and the poor economy:

NBC News has had its over-the-top Green Week and ABC has seriously chronicled the ludicrous exploits of "No Impact Man" and a Los Angeles man who composts his own garbage in his basement.

But rarely if ever do the mainstream media present green enthusiasts as, to put this delicately, difficult people with whom to live under the same roof.

So on behalf of NewsBusters, here's kudos to the Washington Posts's David Fahrenthold, for today's front-pager, "D.C. Area Families Take Green to the Extreme," in which he documents, among others, a man who harangues his sister to bathe with a bucket to catch the shower water for reuse for laundry loads:

The sour turn in the news business has inspired the website  AngryJournalist.com, where anonymous reporters vent their frustrations with the media business. "Angry Journalist #8521" sounds too ridiculously liberal to be real. Check out this rant about being fair to the "pirate community" in Africa:

I’m angry because I’m getting so much hate email today.

I have a buddy who’s a stringer in Africa. He hooks me up with some phone numbers of people in Somalia who know guys who know guys who know pirates. I make some calls, research the pirate community’s side of the situation.

Then I write an article. I mention that the pirates don’t really think of themselves as pirates, and that they try to be kind to their hostages. They’re just poor young guys in a bad situation trying to make a living.

We just received word that C-SPAN 2 is going to air a "slightly abbreviated version" of the Media Research Center's 2009 Gala and Dishonors Awards dinner.

It should start airing at 1:26 p.m. EDT.

Check here for more details, and your check local cable listings for the channel assignment.

You can also watch a Web stream of the program here at that time.

Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the Fox News Channel program, "America's Newsroom" shortly after 10 a.m. Eastern. [See video embed at the right; audio available here]

Mr. Bozell gave his thoughts on the media's coverage of the Tea Party protests, the good, the bad, and the Roesgen. Below is an excerpt:

MEGYN KELLY, co-host, to Brent Bozell: There's been a lot of outrage over this clip, online and other words [sic]. CNN has come out and said she [CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen] was doing her job and quote, "called it like she saw it." Do you see a problem with it?

BRENT BOZELL, MRC president: Well, you tell me where in that clip was a reporter reporting news. This was an activist debating with an activist, and calling herself a reporter in the process.

Is this really what it has come to - columnists lobbying the government for a bailout?

Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law school professor, wrote in her last column for the Los Angeles Times on April 9 that it is time for a government bailout for journalism because our way of society is reliant on that profession for its survival.

"If newspapers become mostly infotainment websites - if the number of well-trained investigative journalists dwindles still further - and if we're soon left with nothing but the yapping heads who dominate cable ‘news' and talk radio, how will we recognize, or hope to forestall, impending national and global crises?" Brooks wrote.