On PBS's Web site today, ombudsman Michael Getler writes of complaints over an incident during last Sunday's pledge drive.  He describes the cheap shot taken by actor Mike Farrell against vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

According to Joseph Campbell, vice president of fundraising programs, here's what happened:

 On CNN's American Morning today, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported on Barack Obama's campaigning in Virginia.  Afterwards, anchor Kiran Chetry had a question:

CHETRY: All right. And Suzanne, what's on tap for the campaign today? And please tell me it's not lipstick again.

MALVEAUX: Let's hope not. He's going to be in Norfolk, Virginia. That is in southeast Virginia, and it's home to the world's largest Naval base. It's one of the most competitive areas that the Democrats and Republicans are fighting over. It's a critical piece of property, piece of land there with folks in Virginia, and they want those voters.

For the fourth straight weekday as Barack Obama vacations, he received better coverage on the broadcast network evening shows than the non-vacationing John McCain. Without fresh video of Obama, the CBS Evening News came up with a new way to tout Obama's campaign as they compared the Web sites of the two candidates and declared Obama's far superior. Reporter Daniel Sieberg asserted “McCain's Web site is still playing catch up to Obama's use of cyberspace.” Turning to “Web design expert Doug Jaeger,” Sieberg echoed Joe Biden in applying the term “clean” to Obama as he highlighted how “Jaeger describes Obama's site as clean; and McCain's as cluttered.” Jaeger complained about JohnMcCain.com: “He's using lots of different typefaces at all different sizes which gives you a feeling of chaos.”

Sieberg soon trumpeted how on BarackObama.com “kids have their own special area, including a logo to color,” while the dour McCain “offers a game called Pork Invaders on his Facebook page,” but if you do well, Sieberg sarcastically noted, “you're rewarded [pause] with a statement about pork-barrel politics.” Withe the contrasting numbers on screen, the CBS reporter also championed Obama's transcendence on social networks which are largely only used by younger people:

The Obama campaign may hope the Internet will do for Obama what television did for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Just compare the candidate's popularity on the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. While both campaigns hope their supporters spread the word, Obama is "friended" almost seven times more than McCain.

As the popularity of personal web profiles continues to skyrocket, their utility as a demographic research tool has increased dramatically, both as a means of studying the general public but also to study the ideological bent of the self-described mainstream media.

On the second point (see below for a discussion of the first) a recent study of Facebook profiles of BBC employees finds, surprise surprise, that Britain's taxpayer-funded network is utterly dominated by socialists:

A survey of BBC employees with profiles on the site [Facebook] showed that 11 times more of them class themselves as "liberal" than "conservative."

Critics seized on the figures as evidence that the supposedly impartial corporation, paid for by the licence fee, is dominated by liberals. [...]

Viacom-owned MTV has recently rolled out "Think MTV," a new community interaction site oriented toward student activism. Imagine "Facebook" with a social-activist theme. Exploring the site quickly reveals that MTV's notion of social activism has a decided liberal tint.

The home page lists a dozen major areas for potential activism. Click on "Politics" and -- what do you know! -- the first photo that pops up is one of John Edwards looking pensively toward the future. Three videos on political themes are displayed. The only one from a named author is by . . . Kanye West [the rapper who during the 2004 election famously claimed that "Bush doesn't care about black people."] Other celebrities involved with Think MTV: Bono, Jay-Z, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Chris Rock. Do you detect a trend?

On August 1, I wrote about how Time.com's "Swampland" blog was soliciting suggestions for guest bloggers on its 39-member Facebook group home page. I gave NewsBusters readers the address and sure enough some of you left suggestions in the topic thread.

[For NewsBusters' home on Facebook, check here.]

As of publication of this blog post, there were but a few liberal suggestions (such as strategist James Carville) from members of the "Swampland" Facebook group, but the vast majority of suggestions leaned rightward and included such names as Ace, Mary Katharine Ham of TownHall, independent Iraq-based journalist Michael Yon, Patterico, and libertarian writer P.J. O'Rourke.

So given two weeks to digest input from Facebook, who have the editors at Time.com chosen as a guest blogger? None other than liberal activist Ralph Neas of the People for the American Way (PFAW), who is guesting on the site from August 13-17.

While looking at a friend's profile on Facebook today shortly after 10 a.m., I spotted her "Election '08" application which proudly lists her support for the Republican Party in 2008. Immediately below are three of the "latest politics headlines" on Newsvine.com, the Web site that created and manages the Facebook application. Yet the headlines were hardly the "latest" and had nothing to do with the 2008 race or its principals. What's more, all three headlines carried downbeat news:

Slate magazine found out that Rudy Giuliani's daughter Caroline has a crush on Obama.

Well, maybe not a crush, but she had joined a pro-Obama Facebook group and describes herself as "liberal" (but then that's also how many Republican voters would describe Caroline's father).

The article, complete with evidentiary screen grab, was written this morning by Lucy Morrow Caldwell, like Caroline Giuliani also a student at Harvard University. Caldwell has a profile on Facebook in the Harvard and Washington, DC networks, and has poor taste in sunglasses, as the screencap below shows:

On the online networking site Facebook, Time Inc. employee Betsy Burton asks "Who would you like to see as a guest blogger on Swampland," the Washington/Campaign 2008 blog on the magazine's Web site. "Self nominations [are] not accepted," Burton added.

I've already left my suggestions. If you're on Facebook, you can join their group and place yours. With its solidly liberal blogger bullpen and wildly liberal fan base (read the comments threads on an empty stomach), the blog could use a conservative voice to bring in balance in reporting and analysis of the '08 race and the Democratic Congress.

While you're at it, join NB's home on Facebook and say "hi" on our wall.

I got this in my Facebook inbox a few minutes ago from FreedomWorks staffer Brendan Steinhauser. The YouTube video (slight content warning for coarse language) is appended below the fold:

We were protesting Gore's appearance at George Washington University when one of his supporters decided he didn't like what we were saying. What did he do? Watch!

Joshua Levy and Micah L. Sifry have a June 4 article at techPresident noting that among the major presidential candidates, only Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has taken advantage of new software on the Facebook social networking site to broaden his Web presence. (Portions in bold are my emphasis):

TechPresident’s Alan Rosenblatt took an early look at the new feature and the Obama application, which allows Facebook members to see new videos and messages from the campaign and share them with their Facebook friends, on the day it went public, and he was impressed. As Rick Klau of Feedburner pointed out in a contemporaneous post, the app adds a significant amount of value to the Obama campaign. “If you’re interested in exposing your network of friends to info about Barack, the campaign is making it a one-click affair that greatly simplifies the redistribution of campaign info,” he wrote.

But when Platform launched, Obama was the only candidate with an application. Why didn’t John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Ron Paul, or anyone else get in on the possibility of reaching 20 million or more Facebook users and potential voters? [...]

In the spirit of Noel Sheppard's earlier D-Day remembrance post, I thought I'd share with you some kind words a Marine stationed in Iraq sent me via Facebook*:

I've really enjoyed NB over the last couple of months while stuck in Iraq. I've gotten a couple of laughs at the idiots in the MSM and those laughs go a long way to make the time behind this desk pass quickly. Pass my thanks along to the rest of the NB crew? God bless and Semper Fi.

I should also mention the writer, Cpl. Marcus Penn, blogs over at A Soldier's Perspective.

Check out his blog when you get the chance, his byline is "Cpl M."

*Corporal Penn is also a member of our Facebook group, "NewsBusters.org Readers."

CBS News producer/blogger Greg Kandra opened the e-mailbag today to relay to "Couric & Co." readers some negative reaction to the network's coverage of Rev. Jerry Falwell's death. In particular, Kandra quoted from a female Liberty University graduate and vascular surgeon who took issue with historian/guest pundit Douglas Brinkley's assessment of Falwell's views on women.

In an appearance on the May 15 "Evening News," Brinkley dismissed Falwell as a reactionary who (emphasis mine) was "opposed to some of the progressive liberal high watermarks of the 1960s, and certainly he wanted--his returning to family values was returning to women being in the kitchen, in many ways."

That unfair assessment is shared by CBS ombudsblogger Brian Montopoli, who in a May 16 "PublicEye" post agreed that Brinkley's statement was "a pretty fair characterization."

[A quick aside, Montopoli has previously described himself as a "secular humanist" in the online networking forum, Facebook.com]

The only trouble is its an unfair, inaccurate cheap shot against Falwell. Noted Dr. Amy Lipscomb in a letter to CBS News (emphasis mine):

I've not seen this in searches on Google News or on their respective Web sites yet, but I got this today in my Facebook inbox (click here to look at the NewsBusters Facebook group):

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 19, 2007 - The Politico and www.politico.com today announced a new content-sharing partnership with www.USATODAY.com, the web site of the nation’s largest national newspaper.

Under the new partnership, Politico’s coverage of the presidential campaign, Congress and special interests will be featured prominently on USATODAY.com's redesigned political page. Some Politico coverage will also appear in the print edition of the USA TODAY.

“It has always been our goal to grow The Politico audience by introducing our coverage and website to readers around the world,” said Robert Allbritton, CEO of Politico’s parent company, Allbritton Communications. “This is the perfect marriage: our comprehensive coverage of politics with USATODAY.com’s cutting edge, widely read web platform.”

The partnership will also feature USATODAY.com political coverage on POLITICO.com.