Scott Whitlock

President Obama exploited the dead in Connecticut this morning in a last ditch effort to shame Congress into supporting his anti-gun agenda.  He had some help too. As my NewsBusters colleague Scott Whitlock posted today, all three networks – ABC, NBC, and CBS – fawned over the president’s gun control agenda, with ABC News’ Jon Karl describing it as a “moral imperative.”  Yet, it seems that none of the networks took notice of a recent survey in which 15,000 law enforcement officers said they oppose more gun control, even as they portray the president having the vast majority of police officers behind him on the matter.

The poll, conducted by the law-enforcement site PoliceOne, asked 15,000 police officers thirty questions on measures related to the Obama administration’s push for more control.  In all, the survey found that:

On the November 25 broadcast of ABC's This Week, former Bush advisor Matthew Dowd continued his shift away from the Republican Party by bashing conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, saying he’s a impediment to good government. For good measure he childishly drew the connection to the name of a Muppet character on Sesame Street.

"Grover Norquist is an impediment to good governing…and the only good thing about Grover Norquist is he’s named after a character from Sesame Street…and that’s the last I hope we hear of him,” according to Dowd.  It’s sad that some on the Right feel that fighting for the American taxpayer is “an impediment to good governing.”

As our readers know, to celebrate the 5th anniversary of NewsBusters, we have started a weekly Five for Five feature to countdown the blog's top twenty five posts. Last week we began with the top five media flubs caught by NewsBusters and on Friday we continue with the top five posts embarrassing the media.

As part of the anniversary celebration, we have picked out a couple posts from each of the five categories and asked the authors to reflect back on writing them up. They share their thoughts on how they caught the particular media moment and describe the impact their post had.

We begin with a look back at two of the top media flubs: "Up a Creek: Accusing Bush of Video Stunt, 'Today' Gets Caught in Stunt of Its Own" by Mark Finkelstein and "Dog Urinates on Katie Couric Ice Scultpture" by Scott Whitlock.