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Even as the words were leaving his mouth, Joe Scarborough acknowledged that he was going to get "killed by conservative bloggers." And being the obliging sorts we are here at NewsBusters . . .

Interviewing Hillary Clinton on today's "Morning Joe," Scarborough's performance was one long paean to her perfection, coupled with a mea culpa for the wrongs that he and other Republicans visited on the Clintons during the '90s.

View video here.

Excerpts:

The mainstream media’s coverage of the antiwar march in Washington, DC did its best to ignore the extreme Left views that were on display at the protest. A split-second image at the very beginning of Saturday evening’s NBC Nightly News showed some of the extreme views that were on display on signs, which included a call for the impeachment of President Bush for "war crimes," and a sign that cried "9/11 Truth Now!" The full NBC Nightly News report on the march devoted almost a minute to footage of the antiwar marchers, and only 15 seconds to comments from one of the pro-Iraq war counter-protesters who lined the march route. Anyone who tuned in would have to look carefully for any sign of radical views.

Video: Real (1.6 MB) or Windows (1.3 MB), plus MP3 (618 KB)

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post covered the march in their Sunday editions. However, they ignored some of the radical statements that were made from the stage at the antiwar rally before the march. The photos that accompanied both the print edition and online versions of the articles also glossed over the extreme views that were expressed on signs and banners at the march.

Somebody arrest the CEO of Bank of America. The knave is forcing poor Amy Robach to use his bank's ATM machines. At least, so it would seem from Amy's statement on this morning's "Today."

The NBC show ran a segment this morning about the fact that BoA has raised its ATM fees for non-customers to $3. When things were kicked back to co-anchor Robach in the studio, she unloaded.

View video here.

Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis for the Media Research Center and Senior Editor of the MRC's NewsBusters, appeared Friday night on the Fox News Channel’s "The O’Reilly Factor" to discuss the MRC's Special Report, "Huffington’s House of Horrors: A Compendium of Far-Left Flame-Throwing, Name-Calling, and Attack-Dogging."

After the jump: The full text of Alec Baldwin's fantasy about killing Dick Cheney by dropping Osama bin Laden's corpse on him and John Cusack's Bush is “human scum” supported by “flag-sucking half wits” quote, both of which Bill O'Reilly and Graham recited on the September 14 program.

Video clip (5:10): Real (3.9 MB) or Windows Media (3.3 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.8 MB)

MRC’s Times Watch guru Clay Waters sat on the couch in the New York studios of Fox & Friends this morning in the 8 am EST hour to discuss the New York Times offering cut-rate ad space to MoveOn.org to bash General Petraeus. FNC’s Gretchen Carlson told Waters that the Times now claims they offer this discount rate for advocacy groups and for ads that float without a scheduled publication date.

Video: Real (2 MB) or WMV (1.5MB), plus MP3 (753 KB)

Clay countered: "Right, right. Some wag suggested this was the family discount. The floating ad, this sounds plausible, but the thing is the ad itself, you read the ad itself, it says, ‘Today will General Petraeus will become General Betray Us?' which indicates it’s a pretty specific time frame. And generally, there’s a pretty strict wall of separation between your business side and your editorial side. As someone pointed out, if anyone is going to breach that wall, it would be the publisher of the Times, ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger. He’s made, he’s a proud liberal. He’s made his anti-war statements pretty publicly. The Times would be a logical choice for MoveOn.org. That’s where their fans are."

The second episode of “NewsBusted” has arrived!

Topics covered include: Congressional Democrats, ice cream, Home Depot, Barack Obama's blackness, Sean Penn, Jenna Jameson, Ricky Martin & more!

Watch the video in the NB sidebar and post your comments here. Note: You can subscribe to “NewsBusted” if you click the little takeboard icon. That way, you'll be automatically notified via email any time we post new shows.

Damn the NewsBusters, full speed ahead!

Look for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to be pinning a DNC medal for heroism on Mika Brzezinski. The MSNBC newsreader opened today's "Morning Joe" with an intrepid assault on President Bush, undaunted by the rhetorical fire she knew it would draw from NewsBusters.

View video here.

During a heated interview over the Iraq war on Thursday’s "The Situation Room" with substitute host Suzanne Malveaux, White House press secretary Tony Snow went on the offensive against the mainstream media. In response to a question from Malveaux about how President Bush could "regain credibility" with the American people about the success of the troop surge in Iraq, Snow replied, "Well, you know what Suzanne, your credibility rating -- journalists’ credibility ratings are lower than the President’s."

The most heated exchange came in the last three minutes of the 5pm EDT hour interview. Malveaux brought up the results of a recent New York Times/CBS News poll that found that 71% of those polled disapproved of the way President Bush is handling the situation with Iraq.

Video clip (1:35): Real (2.8 MB) or Windows Media (3.1 MB), plus MP3 audio (550 KB).

Appearing on the September 13 edition of "Fox News Live," MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell questioned the deep 60 percent discount that liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org received for its infamous "Betray Us" ad attacking the honor of Gen. David Petraeus.

Bozell noted that "unless the New York Times can explain itself away and show how this was some incredible coincidence" that the paper is in effect "a co-sponsor of that despicable ad."

Video (2:10): Real and Windows, plus MP3 audio.

Below is a transcript of the interview:

It's a flip-flop that would be the envy of John Kerry in good windsurfing weather off Nantucket. For the last two days, Chris Matthews had been excoriating General David Petraeus for his reluctance to opine on the effect of the Iraq war on America's safety at home. Suddenly this morning, Matthews has decided that -- guess what? -- it's not Petraeus's job to make pronouncements of that sort.

View video here.

As far as MSNBC's Chris Matthews is concerned, David Petraeus, four-star general, commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, someone who has devoted his life to serving our country, is no better than Charlie McCarthy, a ventriloquist's dummy.

View video here.

Iraqi ethnic cleansing, a "positive thing"? That's what Barack Obama seemed to say on this morning's "Today." The Dem presidential contender spoke with substitute co-anchor David Gregory on the heels of Meredith Vieira's ill-tempered interview of Condoleezza Rice.

View video here.

Here at NewsBusters, we try to stay on the cutting edge of both media and technology, which is why I'm pleased to announce the addition of “NewsBusted,” a comedy show we're releasing today. You can watch the video now over on the top right of this page.

The idea for the show is really quite simple. Politics is absurd, so is the news. Why not have some laughs from it all?

“NewsBusted” will air twice weekly and be available on every NB page as well as on YouTube. We also are taking joke submissions from readers. If we like your joke, we'll pay you $50 and use it in a future show. Send jokes along with name, email, and phone number to rightstuffcomedy@yahoo.com.

PS: If you are trying to get into the NB live chat, click the "chats" link at the top of this page.

Warning to Bush administration officials: when being interviewed by Meredith Vieira, be prepared to make your point in 7-10 seconds, or risk being rudely caught off by the "Today" co-anchor.

Twice in the course of her interview of Condoleezza Rice this morning, Vieira distemperately interrupted just seconds after the Secretary of State began responding to her host's question.

View video here.

Reporting comedian Kathy Griffin's offensive remarks at an award show set to air on Saturday, MSNBC anchor Norah O'Donnell left out the harshest line. The effect was to make it sound like the liberal former "View" guest host was being unfairly "censored" by TV producers for making a mild joke about award recipients who thank Jesus for their success, rather than blaspheming Jesus Christ directly.

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As I noted in an earlier NewsBusters post, Griffin's speech included an exclamation of, "Suck it, Jesus. This award is my God now."

See UPDATE at foot: Gen. Petraeus subsequently testified to the importance of Iraq to national security.

In the wake of the odious MoveOn.org ad calling our commander in Iraq "General Betray Us," [read Dean Barnett's excellent take here] you might have thought the last thing a responsible member of the media would do would be to accuse other senior officials of "betrayal."

I did say "responsible." On this afternoon's "Hardball," Chris Matthews accused President Bush of "betrayal" for his handling of Iraq.

The "Hardball" host was fuming over Gen. Petraeus's reluctance to state whether the war in Iraq would make America safer.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: He couldn't say whether what we're doing in Iraq makes America safer or not. He couldn't say whether the lost lives, the misery, the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent are worth the effort in terms of our national security.

View video here

Stop the presses! ABC's got a scoop: the situation in Iraq isn't ideal.

Trying to pave the way for the rejection of the Petraeus report, today's "Good Morning America" took the tack that the lack of complete calm is proof of the surge's failure.

Co-anchor Kate Snow set the negative tone by displaying a poll finding to the effect a majority of Americans believe the Petraeus report "will try to make things look better" in Iraq rather than portraying the situation "honestly."

Then it was on to a report from Iraq by ABC's Terry McCarthy. Don't miss the video of Snow and co-anchor Bill Weir walking in unison across the GMA stage, crossing a floor-map of Iraq to a video screen displaying McCarthy's report. Their studied maneuver reminded me of a bridesmaid and groom attendant doing their earnest best at a wedding rehearsal.

The leitmotif of McCarthy's report: yeah, things might be better in Iraq, but darn it, they're not perfect.

In what he no doubt considered cutting edge humor, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Friday night contended that Sean Hannity, just like Osama bin Laden, “rants without making a specific threat or point,” and MRC President/NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell, also just like bin Laden, “makes vague threats, is cranky and has a bad dye job on his beard.”

“So he's Sean Hannity?” Olbermann asked rhetorically immediately after he teased Countdown by describing how in the new Osama bin Laden video “he criticizes congressional Democrats and just rants without making a specific threat or point.” As Olbermann uttered Hannity's name, MSNBC inserted a picture of Hannity over the image of bin Laden in the new video. A half hour later, with “Finding Bin Laden” on screen under the bin Laden image, Olbermann plugged the upcoming segment by comparing the physical appearance and attitude of the terrorist with Bozell: “And he criticizes the Democrats, makes vague threats, is cranky and has a bad dye job on his beard. Brent Bozell? No, there's another Osama bin Laden tape. Wasn't the President going to catch him dead or alive six years ago?” Bozell has a beard, but it's not dyed.

Video of Olbermann on Hannity (14 secs): Real (500 KB) or Windows Media (600 KB), plus MP3 audio (80 KB)

Video of Olbermann on Bozell (15 secs): Real (500 KB) or Windows Media (550 KB), plus MP3 audio (85 KB)

"Some new economic reports are raising fears that we are headed for a recession," MSNBC's Alex Witt warned at 1:10 p.m. Eastern on Friday's "MSNBC Live" program. (h/t NB contributor Lynn Davidson)

The monitor behind Witt displayed a more pessimistic picture reading "U.S ECONOMY COLLAPSE?"

Video (0:29): Real (796 kB) and Windows (905 kB), plus MP3 audio  (221 kB).

A recession is classically defined as two back-to-back quarters of negative growth in gross domestic product (GDP), something that last happened six years ago with the 2001 recession. So what did Witt see that portended an imminent collapse?

Well, "[f]inancial experts were blindsided by a new report today that found 4,000 jobs were cut last month. That is the first time that's happened in four years. These numbers follow another report that finds home foreclosures have hit a record high," Witt explained.

Voilà! Two scary negative statistics and there you have it, the economy teetering of the brink of utter ruin. Only, we've heard the media hype about pending recessions before. From our friends at the MRC's Business & Media Institute:

Darn it, when will Osama Bin Laden's jack-in-the-box moments start hurting Republicans, as they should? That was the prevailing sentiment on today's "Morning Joe." At 6:40 a.m. EDT, reacting to the news that OBL is planning to release a new video to mark the sixth anniversary of 9-11, Host Joe Scarborough expressed his perplexity to NBC News political director Chuck Todd.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hey Chuck, we see Osama Bin Laden is appearing again, coming to a computer somewhere near you soon. Of course Republicans wish he would show up two days before the election cause the guy certainly helped George Bush beat John Kerry back in 2004. But how does the re-emergence of Osama Bin Laden impact this race? Do we assume that it's going to help the Republican party again like it did in 2004?

CHUCK TODD: I don't know. You keep wondering when is the double-edged part of this sword [going to] show up? Does him popping up on TV screens serve as a reminder, you know on Iraq, the public might think that Iraq is a diversion, and hey you Bush took his eye off of the ball. This guy is still out there. But let's see if it is him. I guess he's using Hair Club for Men now, Just for Men [earlier Joe had joked that OBL was using "For Terrorists Only."] . . . Where do you get hair color in the mountains of Pakistan? I didn't realize you could do that. Knee jerk, it seems to still help Republicans, even Hillary Clinton said that. She probably shouldn't have done that, but she did say that. But at some point, the more Osama pops up, it's may end up eventually hurting the Republicans.

View video here.

If part of NewsBusters' mission is keeping the MSM on its toes, it looks like we're succeeding when it comes to the MSNBC show "Morning Joe." For two days running, host Joe Scarborough has mentioned our site, conscious that we're on the prowl for evidence of liberal bias. Yesterday at about 6:30 A.M. EDT, Joe and newsreader Mika Brzezinski were discussing the fact that President Bush had mentioned to Robert Draper, author of the new Bush biography "Dead Certain," that he was expecting to replenish his financial coffers upon leaving office.

Said Scarborough “I hope NewsBusters heard that cause you said [it was only] a little [untoward on Bush's part].’ I say ‘a lot.’ Let them make me the poster boy today.”

Joe had NewsBusters on the noggin again today. At about 7:07 A.M. EDT Mika injected her opinion into the reading of a news item about Fred Thompson's "Tonight Show" appearance.

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MIKA BRZEZINSKI: In true Hollywood fashion, the former actor made his long-awaited announcement on last night's "Tonight Show." It was sort of underwhelming, but . . . it's done.

When Mika made to move along after taking her potshot, Joe stopped her short.

JOE SCARBOROUGH [presumably speaking to producer Chris Licht]: Hey, can you call NewsBusters?

Honeymoon? Forget about it. The morning after his announcement, "Today" wasted no time in going after Fred Thompson. Like a Las Vegas bride with a bad hangover, Meredith Vieira seemed particularly grumpy. At 7:05 a.m. EDT, the "Today" co-anchor interviewed Tim Russert.

MEREDITH VIEIRA: The other candidates are out debating last night, and he's on Leno, he's yukking it up announcing that he's running for president as if it is a punch line. Was that a smart thing for him to do?

Vieira's vitriolic tone left no doubt that, in her mind, it wasn't. Russert suggested that Thompson needs to establish "real credibility" that he is the consistent conservative in the race, and raise money.

View video here.

Meredith riffed off Russert's "credibility" line to take her next shot.

CNN, in their day-long reporting on Tuesday about the opening day for a controversial publicly-funded Arabic-language school in New York City, sympathized with the school and its supporters, and helped denigrate its opponents. On "American Morning" and throughout the day on Tuesday on their "Newsroom" program, CNN aired a report from correspondent Richard Roth on the Khalil Gibran International Academy, whose curriculum will focus on teaching "Arabic language and culture" (as detailed in a CNSNews.com report last week). The report focused on Carmen Colon, a mother and "community activist" in Brooklyn (a detail not mentioned in Roth’s report) who pulled her son from the school before its opening. The report closed with a clip from Colon, who said, "The people who are so against this school who, for me, seem more like the terrorists by terrorizing the community and making us feel that it's unsafe for our children to be there. They're the ones who are terrorizing us, not the school, not the principal, and not the administration."

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On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," anchor Chris Cuomo talked to the authors of a new book about how liberals in the media allowed their politically correct biases to color coverage of the accused students in the Duke lacrosse rape case. Critiquing the media, Cuomo acknowledged, "It was difficult to report on this story fairly because there was so much pressure about pushing the angle that something had to happen. Something had to happen. It couldn't be nothing." He even proclaimed a lesson of the case to be "what people have always suspected, which is be careful what you hear from the media."

Video (1:35): Real (2.61 MB) or Windows (2.95 MB) or MP3 audio (739kB).

Stuart Taylor, co-author of "Until Proven Innocent," indicted liberal journalists who hold an obsession with race and sex. He derided the media’s gleeful handing of the case, saying, "The New York Times loved it, or a lot of people at the New York Times loved it. USA Today loved it. Nancy Grace on CNN loved it." However, while Cuomo did engage Taylor and his co-author K.C. Johnson on the subject of the media’s failing, the GMA anchor ignored an example from his own network. In April of 2007, ABC reporter Terry Moran blogged on the network’s official site that Americans shouldn’t feel too bad for the Duke students because of their wealth. He also claimed that the women of Rutgers basketball team suffered more from Don Imus:

Actor and commentator Ben Stein strongly defended Larry Craig on Friday's "Your World with Neil Cavuto," arguing that the police officer who arrested the Idaho Republican senator used "Gestapo tactics" to "browbeat" him into pleading guilty when, in fact, Craig had not committed any illegal act.

"He didn't do anything. He tapped his foot," Stein said. "And I don't like the idea that people are sitting in the next stall from you at a public bathroom listening to whether or not you tap your foot. This is, as I said, Gestapo tactics, Gestapo, Gestapo, Gestapo. It's not America."

Video: Windows Media (5.6 MB) Real (5.1 MB) Audio: MP3

Transcript follows:

Thanks to a Wednesday night AP story by David Bauder (Breitbart, WashPost.com) CNN's Jack Cafferty and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Thursday highlighted the Media Research Center's new study, “Rise and Shine on Democrats: How the ABC, CBS and NBC Morning Shows Are Promoting Democrats on the Road to the White House” (Executive Summary). It found that, from January through July, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning shows devoted nearly twice the time to stories about, and interviews with, Democratic over Republican presidential candidates, avoided placing liberal labels on Democrats and also overwhelmingly posed questions which pressed candidates of both parties from the left.

NewsBusters and the MRC's CyberAlert regularly criticize Cafferty for his left-wing rants and attacks on conservatives, but we can't complain about his straight-forward summary Thursday night of the MRC's study: “The network morning news shows have given a lot more air time to the Democratic presidential candidates than to the Republican ones. That's according to a conservative media watchdog outfit called the Media Research Center.” Reading replies later in the hour, Cafferty included one which asserted “the media are overwhelmingly biased in favor of the Democrats. 90 percent of the media voted for Kerry.” But Cafferty couldn't resist ending with this one: “All are being fair except for the F-word network!”

Video clip of the August 30 “Cafferty File” segment in the 7pm EDT hour (1:10): Real (2 MB) or Windows Media (2.4 MB), plus MP3 audio (400 KB)

Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center which runs NewsBusters, appeared Thursday night (August 30) on FNC's Hannity & Colmes to discuss the MRC's study, “Rise and Shine on Democrats: How the ABC, CBS and NBC Morning Shows Are Promoting Democrats on the Road to the White House” (Executive Summary). It found that, from January through July, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning shows devoted nearly twice the time to stories about, and interviews with, Democratic over Republican presidential candidates, avoided placing liberal labels on Democrats and also pushed candidates of both parties from the left: “Of the substantive questions that could be categorized as reflecting a political agenda, more than two-thirds (69%) of the questions to Democrats reflected a liberal premise, and more than four-fifths (82%) of the questions to Republicans came from the same perspective.”

Alan Colmes naturally nitpicked the study, but Sean Hannity praised it as “exhaustive.”

Video clip (5:33): Real (4.2 MB) or Windows Media (3.5 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.9 MB)

This could be something of a first: a major MSM player admits there's a case to be made that the media is incredibly biased against Republicans.

As I noted here, when Tom DeLay accused the media of bias on this morning's "Today," Matt Lauer stonewalled: "I'm not going to let it, you know, end with that assumption, congressman, because I clearly don't agree with it."

But appearing on this afternoon's Harball, DeLay successfully wangled an admission from host Chris Matthews.

TOM DELAY: If [Craig] has been found guilty of what he's been accused of, then yeah. But I do know that the Republicans will do something about it. I do know that if he were a Democrat they would rally around him and they would not do something about it. I do know that the national media is incredibly biased against Republicans that find themselves [in trouble] --

CHRIS MATTHEWS: That's a charge which I've heard before and I can understand why you make it. You make it a lot. Sometimes you have a case to make. Sometimes.

View video here.

MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the August 29 "Glenn Beck Live" on CNN Headline News. He discussed the Washington Post's decision to censor the August 26 edition of Berkeley Breathed's "Opus" cartoon mocking radical Islamists.

Earlier that day, Bozell appeared on FNC's "Fox & Friends" to discuss the Post's double standards on religious sensitivity. You can find video of that at this NB post.

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It's rare to see a leading MSM light directly confronted over the liberal media's bias. But it happened in spades this morning as Tom DeLay (R-Texas) called out Matt Lauer on the MSM's double-standard in handling Republican, versus Democrat, scandals.

Video (3:29): Real and Windows, plus MP3 audio.

The "Today" co-anchor opened his interview of the former Republican congressman and Majority Leader with a laundry-list of GOP scandals.