In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Andrew Breitbart, founder of such center-right online powerhouses as Big Government and Big Hollywood, blasted what he dubs the "Democrat-media complex." He spoke of his most recent exposes on the administration's political malfeasance and the mainstream media's refusal to cover those scandals.

Breitbart rocketed into the national spotlight with his work with James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the young conservatives responsible for the ground-breaking ACORN sting operations that led to congressional votes to de-fund the community organizing group.

"I had a 20-year-old and a 25-year-old and my integrity on the line if we were going to launch this," Mr. Breitbart says. "It was so obvious that the mainstream media, given this information, would not cover it and would, in effect, attempt to cover it up." So he devised an intricate strategy of rolling out the videos one at a time, anticipating Acorn's defenses and rebutting each in turn with the next video...

NewsBusters under-covers media bias in the Butte, Montana media market, so when Best of the Web's James Taranto caught some in the Montana Standard, I decided to jump on it. On Tuesday, the newspaper, part of the Lee chain, announced it would carry Byron York's column each Tuesday and introduced York by explaining how he isn't the typical conservative ogre:

York, a staunch conservative, presents his arguments in a thoughtful, measured fashion, rather than resorting to cheap personal attacks on President Obama and others in the Democratic Party that seem to be the hallmark of the GOP these days, said Standard Editor Gerry O'Brien.

Taranto observed in his September 16 compilation: “We know and like Byron York and applaud the choice. O'Brien's editorializing, however, is odd for two reasons. First, does it not occur to him that he is doing exactly what he faults Republicans for, namely engaging in gratuitous insults? Second, isn't he worried about losing readers, some of whom likely are among the group he is insulting?”

In a report this morning  on the situation off the coast on Somalia, Associated Press reporters Elizabeth A. Kennedy and Paul Jelinek seemed oddly sympathetic to the cause of the terrorists in training the world insists on calling "pirates," almost to the point of grudging admiration.

Check out some of the words the AP pair used in their 9:15 a.m. dispatch (saved at host for fair use and discussion purposes, and for future reference if or when the text changes) following the "breaking news alert" at the link:

Undeterred Somali pirates hijack 4 more ships

Undeterred by U.S. and French hostage rescues that killed five bandits, Somali pirates brazenly hijacked three more ships in the Gulf of Aden, the waterway at the center of the world's fight against piracy.

..... The latest trophy for the pirates was the M.V. Irene E.M., a Greek-managed bulk carrier sailing from the Middle East to South Asia, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

The Irene was attacked and seized in the middle of the night Tuesday - a rare tactic for the pirates.

Pointing out how a Reuters photo caption described those burning an effigy of President George W. Bush as merely “demonstrators,” while in a caption a few days later those burning posters of President-elect Barack Obama were characterized as “hardline demonstrators,” OpinionJournal's James Taranto on Tuesday observed: “Reuters' pro-Obama bias seems to be tempering its usual anti-American bias.” Taranto wondered in his “Best of the Web Today” compilation for the Wall Street Journal's editorial page site: “It will be interesting to see whether this continues to be the case after Obama becomes President next week.”

The two Reuters photo captions on anti-Israel demonstrations, as posted by Yahoo News. From Friday, January 9:

Demonstrators burn an effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush during a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, in protest of Israeli aggression against Palestinians January 9, 2009. About 2,000 Muslim protesters gathered outside the U.S. embassy in the Malaysian capital on Friday holding placards and banners, and shouting anti-Israel slogans.