NB reader Steven Parker sends along this mangled caption of a Fort Hood photo from AP on Yahoo! News:

U.S. Army soldiers lower the flag following Revile in front of the III Corp Headquarters building at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, Friday, Nov. 6, 2009.

We're guessing the caption writer meant "Reveille," which is often the bugle call.....when the flag goes up, not down. Ouch. Buglers often play "Retreat" for the retirement of the colors.

This might inspire some Army people to want the draft reinstated -- just so the journalists aren't so ignorant.

When it comes to slurring Rush Limbaugh in his quest to obtain an interest in the NFL's St. Louis Rams, someone's going to have to work hard to top Adrian Wojnarowski.  The Yahoo Sports reporter today called Rush a "racist" and a "bigot" and implied he would never hire a black coach.

Wojnarowski spouted his slurs on Jim Rome's "Rome Is Burning" show on ESPN this afternoon.

ADRIAN WOJNAROWSKI: People do not want a bigot as an owner.  He's a racist. He's a bigot. He's shown it for years. He's made his career off in a large way off marginalizing black culture and African-Americans, and now he wants to buy into an industry where 70% of the players, the talent, the work-force is African-American and make money off of it? He doesn't get to do that.

In response, Rome didn't exactly leap to Rush's defense, but did pose this question.

Ill will against former Vice President Dick Cheney still runs high in some circles.

So high, in fact, that when the University of Wyoming decided to name an international student center after him, Suzanne Pelican began circulating a petition against it last year. One year later, that petition has earned 150 signatures and an Associated Press story.

In a story titled “Protest brews over Cheney center at Univ. of Wyo.” AP reporter Mead Gruver writes:

The university's decision to name the center after Cheney, a former Wyoming congressman, prompted a petition that collected more than 150 signatures.

The petition said polices of the Bush administration were "very controversial" and the name will affect how people perceive the center.

What could have been a fairly apolitical "Career Do's and Don'ts from 2008" retrospective has become an exhibit of how liberal media bias is ubiquitous in digital media. E-mail tipster John Genin informed us of how Yahoo! HotJobs writer Tom Musbach cited liberal heros Barack Obama and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow as worthy of emulation while citing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's wardrobe non-scandal as a warning against corporate expense accounts.:

With the U.S. presidential election and the Olympics as major highlights of 2008, politicians and athletes had a major influence on this year's list of career lessons from high-profile figures.

As demonstrated in the examples below, everyone has career highs and lows, with some more public than others. But learning from them is the key to success. Below are six do's and don'ts that can help your career advancement in the coming year.

1. DO stay focused on achieving your goals, despite adversity or distractions. President-elect Barack Obama succeeded in one of the most lengthy and public of all hiring processes, in part because he kept his cool and kept his eyes on the prize. Another great example of this principle is Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals in Beijing.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) is intimidated by Oprah Winfrey's intellect and political acumen, writer Joanna Douglas hinted in her December 5 article for Shine.Yahoo.com entitled "Sarah Palin blows off Oprah Winfrey."

While Douglas conceded that the Obama-endorsing daytime talk host refused to book Palin during the campaign, she neglected to mention that the decision at the time offended many a Republican Oprah fan, not to mention reports that roughly half her own staff disagreed with Winfrey's pre-election Palin blackout.

Instead Douglas portrayed Winfrey as the aggrieved party, "snubbed" by a vindictive Palin. Douglas went as far as to suggest that Palin may be avoiding an Oprah appearance because she's "intimidated" by Winfrey:

Taking a dig at outgoing President George W. Bush while lauding President-elect Obama as a man of letters, Associated Press writer Hillel Italie suggested that well-respected writers are welcoming the arrival of a "literary president-elect." Italie suggested that it was admiration of Obama's writing style and intelligence, not his liberal ideology, that pushed authors Toni Morrison, Ayelet Waldman, and novelist Michael Chabon into the Illinois Democrat's cheering section.

Yet Italie left out of his November 6 story how Morrison, Waldman and Chabon are reliable donors to the Democratic Party and left-wing groups and candidates like MoveOn.org and former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.):

If Michelle Obama gets tired of merely entertaining dignitaries as first lady, she might try her hand at editing for the Associated Press. After all, according to the AP, her husband has made it "cool" to be an American again. Yahoo.com is giving play to the story by featuring it as a top headline in the "World" section of its news page (see image at right).

From AP writer William J. Kole:

VIENNA, Austria – She was a stranger, and she kissed me. Just for being an American.

It happened on the bus on my way to work Wednesday morning, a few hours after compatriots clamoring for change swept Barack Obama to his historic victory. I was on the phone, and the 20-something Austrian woman seated in front of me overheard me speaking English.

Without a word, she turned, pecked me on the cheek and stepped off at the next stop.

Nothing was said, but the message was clear: Today, we are all Americans.

Visitors to the home page for the Yahoo! search engine today are greeted with a photo of President-elect Barack Obama from his election night victory speech from Chicago's Grant Park last night and the caption: "First truly global U.S. president."

Beneath the exultant headline and photo, visitors were teased with a link to an article on how the "world" is reacting: "Barack Obama's historic victory inspires global goodwill and celebration."

Ah, yes, the reign of messianic peace and justice has begun! Other election-related links featured below the front-page main story:

On September 20, Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters posted on a misleading Associated Press/Yahoo poll on racism. The poll asserted that if Barack Obama loses, it will be because of "[d]eep-seated racial misgivings" held by "one-third of white Democrats."

Later that day, NB's Michael Bates criticized the AP's report on the poll for its historically inaccurate claim that the US "enshrined slavery into its constitution."

NB's Lyndsi Thomas got into the neighborhood of the concern I'm about to note on Sunday, when she noted that the pollsters tried to ferret out racism by asking questions that could be seen as purely political and having nothing to do with race.

But it seems to me that the pollsters engaged in a bit of hocus pocus. These three paragraphs from a story explaining AP's methodology carried at the Minneapolis Star Tribune gave me that impression:

The feds are zeroing in on David Kernell, the suspected hacker of GOP veep nominee's Yahoo email account:

The FBI searched the residence of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend looking for evidence linking the young man to the hacking of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

David Kernell, 20, has not returned repeated phone calls or e-mails from the AP since last week. He is the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat and chairman of Tennessee's House Government Operations Committee. The father declined last week to discuss the possibility his son might be involved in the case.

UPDATE at end of post: Polling agency VIPs have contributed to Democrats including Obama.

Are you getting tired of the mainstream media meme that if you're white and you don't vote for Barack Obama it's because you're a racist? Or that if John McCain wins, it's because he's white and Obama isn't?

Well, on Saturday, the Associated Press and Yahoo News released results of a new poll, and the major take by AP writers Ron Fournier and Trevor Thompson was that if Obama loses, it's because of "[d]eep-seated racial misgivings" held by "one-third of white Democrats."

Sadly, like most polls this year claiming to deal with how racism is impacting this campaign, no questions were asked to determine how deep-seated racial misgivings of black Democrats are guiding their choice for president (emphasis added, h/t Hot Air headlines, photo courtesy CBSTV):

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.

The folks at Yahoo News Photos section must have been greatly amused by their web page titled "Anthropology & Archaeology." The first four pictures in the slide show are various archaeological discoveries... well, except for the third one. THAT one happens to be a photo of John McCain. Yes, Yahoo seems to be saying that John McCain is an archaeological artifact! Nice ageist slap, eh?

Here's a screen shot of the original page...

Democrats (including Democrats in the media) are unhappy the presidential race is within five points, so they're eager to find wider polling margins than that. Yahoo! readers saw this headline at the top of the news on Saturday morning: "Obama widens lead over McCain by 15 points in latest poll."

It was Reuters reporting on a Newsweek poll. As the reader should suspect, the poll questioned more Democrats than Republicans: 231 Republicans to 324 Democrats, plus 307 independents. But that wasn't in this web article, which began:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has opened up a double-digit lead over Republican John McCain two weeks after he clinched the nomination, a new poll published on Friday showed.

The nationwide poll conducted by Newsweek showed Obama leading McCain by a margin of 51-36 percent, indicating that he might have got a bounce from his recent primary victory over Hillary Clinton.

Leave it to the mainstream media to highlight the latest "accomplishment" of the Castros’ oppressive regime.

One of Yahoo.com’s front page news items Monday morning linked to a story from the Associated Press about Elian Gonzalez’s entrance into Cuba’s Young Communist Union. The short uncredited story put the news this way:

The Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle eight years ago has joined Cuba's Young Communist Union.

Communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde quotes Elian Gonzalez as saying he will never let down ex-President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro, who succeeded Fidel earlier this year.

The AP's Alisa Tang wrote a horrifying account of the oppression and misogyny that women face in Afghanistan. The April 30 article bucks the post-9/11 trend of the media turning a blind eye to women's issues in Muslim countries.

What's missing are two words—Islam and Sharia.

The AP article was about a country that uses religion to oppress women but which didn't mention that religion or the system of religious laws based on that religion.

The anti-American bias at Al Jazeera English became “so stereotypical, so reflexive” that former “Nightline” reporter David Marash quit his job with the Qatar-based channel, in part over that attitude. What was even more interesting was Marash's assertion that the anti-American attitude came more from the British administrators than the Arabs at AJE.

In a March 27 article, AP television writer David Bauder reported the situation that made the award-winning reporter quit (all bold mine):

Former "Nightline" reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in this country.

Marash said he felt that attitude more from British administrators than Arabs at the Qatar-based network.

Marash was the highest-profile American TV personality hired when the English language affiliate to Al-Jazeera was started two years ago in an attempt to compete with CNN and the BBC. He said there was a "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.

"Given the global feelings about the Bush administration, it's not surprising," Marash said.

But he found it "became so stereotypical, so reflexive" that he got angry.

From the ridiculous to the absurd

Contemplating the Switch

Those of us who have been participating in the Eliot Spitzer Media Waiting Game -- halting our respitory activity in anticipation of the Jurassic Press actually ascribing Party affiliation to the recently resigned Big Apple Governor -- can finally breathe easy.

The Agence-France Presse and Yahoo! have teamed up to finally do what's right.

Only they do it so VERY wrong.

A Yahoo photo slideshow of Ground Zero perfectly demonstrates the bias news agencies frequently insert into captions. Instead of just describing the photo, Yahoo included captions with partisan cheap shots unrelated to the image to score typical anti-War On Terror points (h/t NB reader Larry Jordan).

Out-of-place comments about waterboarding, the downturn in the economy and a criticism of Rudy Giuliani were captioned under photos of a smoking World Trade Center and Ground Zero rubble (bold mine throughout):

Slide 1: Early morning light illuminates the wreckage of the World Trade Center on September 25, 2001 in New York. The head of the CIA said Thursday it is uncertain whether the use of waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning widely condemned as torture, would be lawful if used today against Al-Qaeda detainees.