Contrary to how most of the President's sycophants saw his interview with Bret Baier Wednesday, a media critic from the Baltimore Sun felt it was "a textbook encounter of how the press should engage the executive branch of government."

"As much credit as I give Obama for taking his healthcare message to Fox News and staying on point, I also praise Baier for being thoroughly prepared and hitting a very difficult tone of being appropriately aggressive without being hectoring or rude," wrote David Zurawik Wednesday.

"Think of it as the antidote to NBC anchorman Brian Williams' bow to Obama in his prime-time White House special last year" (video of part one of the interview embedded below the fold, h/t TVNewser):

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, on Wednesday's Today, advanced the NBC company line on the results of a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Obamacare as she reported "Americans are evenly divided." O'Donnell, of course, was merely following the lead of her NBC News colleague Brian Williams, who on Tuesday's Nightly News, ignored the most negative news from the survey, as the MRC's Brent Baker noted:

"By a 12 point margin, those asked, in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, called 'Barack Obama's health care plan' a 'bad idea' (48 percent) over a 'good idea' (36 percent.) Yet, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Tuesday evening skipped that verdict as he declared 'people are evenly split' on 'the President's health care reform plan.'"

Fast forward to this morning's Today show and O'Donnell also bypassed that interesting tidbit as seen in the following excerpt from the March 17 Today show:

In the media's eyes, the Boy Scouts of America are on par with bubble wrap - unimportant, disposable and something largely ignored unless someone wants to stomp on them.

The Boy Scouts celebrated its 100^th anniversary last month. And as an organization in which over 110 million Americans have participated, including film director Steven Spielberg, 211 current members of Congress and Presidents John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama - and given the positive characteristics often associated with Scouts - hard-working respectful and loyal - it's logical to think the media would love to celebrate along with them.

But for the media, the gay agenda trumps everything else. As the Boy Scouts do not allow open homosexuals to serve in leadership roles within the organization, the Scouts will have to look elsewhere for commemoration.

ABC was the sole broadcast network to air anything about the Boy Scouts in the five weeks since the organization's anniversary. Two other segments aired on NPR. But while NBC and CBS could highlight the 50^th birthday of bubble wrap and the Etch-A-Sketch, the 80^th birthday of Nancy Drew, and the 60^th birthday of the FBI's Most Wanted List, they couldn't muster even a mention for the Boy Scouts.

By a 12 point margin, those asked, in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, called “Barack Obama’s health care plan” a “bad idea” (48 percent) over a “good idea” (36 percent.) Yet, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Tuesday evening skipped that verdict as he declared “people are evenly split” on “the President’s health care reform plan.” From the accompanying graphic, viewers could learn Williams was referring to what people say about enacting it: “pass” (46 percent) vs “don’t pass” (45 percent).

The actual question presented a stark alternative of endorsing the status quo: “Do you think it would be better to pass Barack Obama’s health care plan and make its changes to the health care system or to not pass this plan and keep the current health care system?” Yet the one-point gap was the closest-ever in the poll as “better to not pass this plan, keep current system” grew to 45 percent from 39 percent last September, a trend neither Williams nor Chuck Todd pointed out.

Williams did highlight how “most people tell us they don’t approve of the way President Obama has handled the health care issue, but,” he couldn’t resist adding, “they disapprove of how Republicans in Congress have handled it by an even wider margin.” (This post updated below with response from Todd.)

While ABC and CBS on Monday night focused on President Barack Obama's “final push” for his health care bill and the plight of Ohioan Natoma Canfield, Obama's poster woman for victims of rising health insurance premiums, NBC anchor Brian Williams touted how at “one last campaign-style rally,” in suburban Cleveland, “a shout-out from the audience gave him a chance to road test a new catch phrase: 'We need courage.'”

Viewers saw a clip of Obama bemoaning “a lot of hand-wringing going on” in Washington, DC, interrupted by a woman's voice from the audience at the Walter F. Ehrnfelt Recreation and Senior Center in Strongsville: “We need courage!” To cheers, a delighted Obama picked up on her prompt: “We need courage. That's why I came here today. We need courage!”

If “courage” as a catch phrase sounds familiar, it's the one word with which Dan Rather ended his newscasts in the mid-1980s, an ending he resurrected on Wednesday, March 9, 2005 when he signed-off forever from the CBS Evening News. (MRC CyberAlert item)

The end of Congress’s long debate over ObamaCare could be near, as the President pushes for a final vote this week before his Asia trip, and House Democrats want a resolution before next week’s Easter break.

Yet whether or not liberals’ dreams are ultimately realized, they have had a huge advantage throughout the process. Over the past twelve months, journalists have continually stacked the deck in favor of a big government takeover of health care.

A review of the worst spin:

When conservatives take to the House floor to criticize the news media’s liberal distortions, that’s not newsworthy to NBC, but Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News made time to showcase an unhinged liberal Democrat, Representative Patrick Kennedy, screaming against the media during House floor remarks in favor of a Dennis Kucinich-backed resolution to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, a fringe proposition which was soundly defeated 356 to 65.

Left wing blogs, such as Huffington Post, also jumped to publicize Kennedy’s rant, with Talking Points Memo calling it “a must-see moment.”

Anchor Brian Williams characterized Kennedy’s yelling tirade as “a gripping moment,” describing how Kennedy railed against “U.S. strategy in the war, then he turned on the news media and how few have bothered to show up to cover the debate.” Williams’ embracing set up, with “Speaking Out” as the on-screen heading:

There was a gripping moment this afternoon here in Washington. It happened on the floor of the House of Representatives as the House was debating withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat who represents Rhode Island, the son of the late Ted Kennedy, got up and gave a loud, emotional and angry speech about U.S. losses in the war, U.S. strategy in the war, then he turned on the news media and how few have bothered to show up to cover the debate.

“During the presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama often used the phrase ‘fired up’ to do just that to the crowd. Democrats have been openly wondering when he was going to bring that campaign energy and fire to an issue like health care reform,” Brian Williams announced at the top of Monday’s NBC Nightly News,” and “today the President chose an event at a quiet Philadelphia suburb to get loud. He made his case and he rallied the troops and now readies to head into battle yet again on this topic.”

ABC’s Diane Sawyer noted “the President made a direct attack on the health insurance industry, accusing companies of putting profits before patient care” -- which means he was just catching up with Sawyer’s agenda. A couple of weeks ago, Sawyer demanded to know who will “keep insurance companies from jacking up premiums while making huge profits?” and touted “the growing outrage at insurance companies, the ones that raise premiums on ordinary Americans while racking up big profits.”

Jon Karl asserted Obama “hopes to tie into some of that Tea Party anger by focusing on a group that the White House believes is even more unpopular than Congress” as Karl championed a far-left group’s upcoming protest with “wanted” posters “that will highlight the CEOs of the health care companies making the argument that they are the ones to blame.”

The night before NBC’s Today show on Friday had an “exclusive” with Karl Rove to plug his new book, ‘Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight’ in which he assured readers President George W. Bush did not “lie us into war,” the NBC Nightly News led by giving him a brush back, regurgitating the arguments the Bush administration went to war in Iraq for illegitimate reasons. Anchor Brian Williams framed his top story:

It will go down in history among the events that shaped our times, the decision by President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq after the United States had been attacked on 9/11 with no direct connection between the two. The United States has paid a heavy price for the war, which will be seven years old later this month. That's a year longer than all of World War II....The Iraq war is back in the news tonight because of new violence there, just like the old days, and because of a new take on the war from an old hand in the Bush operation, Karl Rove.”

Andrea Mitchell recounted how Rove “says if not for the threat of weapons of mass destruction, there probably would have been no Iraq war,” but “since no such weapons existed, Rove asks, ‘So, then, did Bush lie us into war?’ His answer: ‘Absolutely not..”

But, she countered, “others say President Bush had decided to go to war long before the U.N. could evaluate the evidence. As early as July 2002, former State Department official Richard Haass writes, Condoleezza Rice ‘brushed away’ his ‘concerns’ about Iraq, ‘saying the President had made up his mind,’” and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair was told in a memo: “It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin.”

The deficit for last year was 1.4 trillion dollars. The deficit rose as a share of the gross domestic product from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009, the highest deficit as a share of GDP since 1945. The projected deficit for the fiscal year that ends in September is another $1.3 trillion.

So much for all that fiscal sanity blather from Team Obama in ‘08. How dishonest. Even worse, there’s a good reason to stay pessimistic about deficits as far as the eye can see. It’s called the "news" media.

Legislators who want to get re-elected will clearly want to avoid any spending decision that will create bad national publicity, and our news media, the manufacturers of bad national publicity, will send crying victims down the assembly line at the slightest thought of a social spending cut or freeze.

Although the Canadian health care system may kind of work for its roughly 33 million people and still have a myriad of downsides, its hard to imagine it could be sustainable in the United States, with 304 million people. But looking at the Canadian system was how NBC News decided to handle its follow-up to the health care summit.

On the Feb. 25 broadcast of the "NBC Nightly News," anchor Brian Williams posed the question whether the Canadian system was better. Though the report pointed out some flaws, NBC made nationalized care seem nice.

"As Washington grapples with its seemingly irreconcilable differences over health care, here in Canada that question was settled decades ago," Williams said. "Canada has universal health insurance, what's known in the U.S. as a single-payer system. Who's to say it's a better way?"

After the Democrats regained control of the House in 2006, Nancy Pelosi promised NBC's Brian Williams that she would "drain the swamp" and "turn this Congress into the most honest and open Congress in history." So when news broke that a House Ethics committee found that long time New York Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel accepted corporate money for trips to the Carribean one would think Williams would be all over the story – he wasn't.

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News Williams completely ignored the charges, as did ABC's World News Tonight. Of the three broadcast network evening news shows, only Williams' competitors at CBS Evening News covered the Rangel scandal as Katie Couric reported Rangel "broke House rules," and Nancy Cordes told viewers he could be "censured," but didn't tell them that he was a Democrat.

[UPDATE, 7:30 PM EST Friday, February 26: ABC's World News caught up with Rangel on Friday night as anchor Diane Sawyer identified him as a Democrat and the Friday NBC Nightly News rolled Rangel into a “Democrats' Disarray” story with Desiree Rogers and David Paterson.]

Williams' NBC News colleague Amy Robach did mention the investigation into Rangel's wrongdoing, the next morning on the Today show, but omitted Rangel's party affiliation in the one and only story aired on the morning show:

On Monday’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams updated viewers on possibly the most decorated American war hero of the modern era, Colonel Robert Howard, as the Vietnam War veteran was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary. Williams had taken a moment on his show in December to commemorate his passing. On Monday, Williams recounted:

Uniquely among Friday’s broadcast network evening newscasts, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams gave his viewers a glimpse into the undignified exit from the White House endured by the Dalai Lama, who was made to walk past a number of trash bags as President Obama sought to keep the Chinese government from noticing the meeting. A photograph of Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader walking past the bags was shown as the NBC host read the piece.

Below is a transcript of the news item from the Friday, February 19, NBC Nightly News, as read by Brian Williams:

From Monday's broadcast network evening newscasts: CBS and NBC found hypocrisy in Sarah Palin scolding President Obama's incessant use of a Teleprompter while she had “crib notes” written on her hand during her Saturday Tea Party convention appearance, CBS followed by giving Obama two-straight minutes to explain why the public will come around to “connect” with him again and, meanwhile, ABC devoted a full story to “whether Republicans want action or are just the 'Party of No'?”

CBS's Nancy Cordes reported, over a helpful graphic showing the words written on Palin's hand, that while Palin “dismissed the President Saturday night as a 'charismatic guy with a Teleprompter,' she may have been relying on some crib notes of her own.” Cordes concluded: “Her supporters called it an endearing sign that Palin's a real person, while detractors argue it's proof she doesn't know her facts.” On NBC, Brian Williams led the Palin story with how “it happened after a speech where she criticized the President for relying too much on a Teleprompter.”  

Next on CBS, Katie Couric highlighted how, in her pre-SuperBowl sit-down with Obama, she had raised with him that “people are not sure who he is or what he stands for.” Viewers were then treated to a two-minute long answer from Obama, ending with his insistance that when the economy improves “we'll do just fine and everybody will be saying what a connection President Obama has with the American people. Which is what they were saying a year ago.” (“They” being journalists?)

On Sunday, I noted the U.S. Air Force Academy was making a public space for pagan worship, and wondered if the media would notice. Fox’s Special Report noted it on Monday, quoting a Catholic priest who disapproved. CNN and NBC noticed it briefly on Wednesday. CNN’s Rick Sanchez found its promoter "Today’s most intriguing" person. NBC’s Brian Williams relayed there had already been a "desecration incident."

To consult the dictionary, NBC was saying someone "violated the sacred character" of an object or place. What if the viewer at home doesn’t consider a pagan circle to be "sacred"? Here’s the entirety of the Williams brief on Nightly News:

The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has now set aside a new outdoor worship area for followers of earth-centered religions. That includes pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans. It's a double circle of stones on a hilltop. One of the chaplains there, a lieutenant colonel, calls it, quote, "Another example of celebrating the freedom we enjoy as well as the freedom we, as airmen, have pledged to defend." There has been one desecration incident since its opening, and officials are repeating that message of tolerance on campus.

Sanchez suggested paganism is somehow a brand new idea during his show Rick's List:

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz believes comedian Jon Stewart is an icon to many journalists.

"[E]specially those in television who sometimes copy his quick-cut editing techniques," wrote Kurtz in his column Monday.

But that's not all.

Kurtz sees the "Daily Show" host as "a pop-culture bellweather," and feels his recent attacks on Barack Obama are a significant sea change. Last week Stewart went after the President's use of a teleprompter at a Virginia elementary school.

As a result, the clearly left-leaning Comedy Central star's "barbs are generating partisan buzz" (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

The unencumbered ability to sway voters is great for the news media, but journalists are outraged others could re-acquire the same First Amendment rights. Instead of painting a victory for free speech in the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations, non-profit groups and unions can spend money to influence elections, the Thursday broadcast network evening newscasts feared a ruinous future:

“Opening floodgates” to “big money” with “corporate interests having even more of a say” by “attacking political candidates,” resulting in “the real danger...that the candidates are just going to get drowned out” as “special interests” may “take over political campaign advertising.”

“On that subject of big money and power,” ABC anchor Diane Sawyer intoned, “a blockbuster decision from the Supreme Court today opening floodgates for companies and unions to spend all the money they want attacking political candidates.” On NBC, anchor Brian Williams previewed “the news today that will result in big companies and corporate interests having even more of a say in American politics and campaigns.”

Nightly News anchor Brian Williams appeared on the Simpsons' 20^th anniversary special, Sunday, to pontificate on the cartoon’s own news host, Kent Brockman: "Kent Brockman has, in his own little world, got it going on. If you can fake the everyman thing, you have got it made. And that’s clearly what Kent has made his bones doing."

Discussing the nature of arrogant journalists, Williams continued, "He's got a little bit of that pomposity going, which we forgive, because television anchors do something special. We get to tell people what happened." Dan Rather also appeared to admit that Brockman’s portrayal of journalists isn’t far-fetched: "I don't know much, but I do know a few things about television news, and to get it bull's-eye, every time, well, a tip of the Stetson to them."

On Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams took a moment to remember Vietnam War veteran, retired Colonel Robert Howard, who was awarded many honors for his heroic service, including the Medal of Honor, eight Purple Hearts, four Bronze Stars, and two Dinstinguished Service Crosses. Williams began his tribute: "We have a brief special word tonight about a very special man whose story you should know about, in part because his story will be told for generations to come. Robert Howard might have been the toughest American alive while he was among us. Bob was the only man ever to be nominated for the Medal of Honor three times for three separate acts of staggering heroism in combat."

After recounting some of the honors bestowed upon Colonel Howard, Williams related: "It's believed Bob Howard was the most heavily-decorated American veteran of the modern era, period."

The NBC anchor further recounted: "In one 54-month period he was wounded 14 times. He served five tours of duty in Vietnam. And in recent years, he loved his trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit the men and women in uniform and in the fight there."

Earlier this month, my colleague Tim Graham wrote about "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams self-congratulatory five-year anniversary as the newscasts's anchor, followed hours later by actress Jane Krakowski of the network's "30 Rock" show heralding Williams as a "towering figure in the world of news" during the network's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting special.

Williams, who has had cameo appearances on "30 Rock" and the "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," doesn't seem to be stopping his forays into the network's entertainment division anytime soon.

TV Newser's Chris Ariens reported shortly before 5 p.m. EST:

NBC's Brian Williams took time Thursday night to show video a statue of President Barack Obama at age 10, then known as Barry, being unveiled in Jakarta, near where he attended school at that age. “The statue was put there to remind children in Indonesia to follow their dreams and remind them their future is without limits,” Williams helpfully explained.

The life-size bronze replica of Obama in a T-shirt and shorts is adorned with what Politico suggested “appears to be a Nobel medal around his neck” and what the AP described as “the young Obama smiling at a butterfly that has landed on his upheld left thumb.” The AP dispatch also reported: “The statue's pedestal carries an paraphrased quote from former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reading, 'The future belongs to those who believe in the power of their dreams.'”

This wasn't the first time the NBC Nightly News found inspiration in Obama's time in Indonesia. Back during the campaign in March of 2008, the newscast ran a celebratory piece about how excited Obama's childhood friends in Indonesia were about his candidacy in a story which began and ended with a picture of Obama's classmates in front of huge “Good Luck Barry!” lettering.

ABC and CBS discounted the scientific relevance of the admissions and obfuscations displayed in the ClimateGate e-mails, but on Wednesday night they finally devoted full stories to the controversy and quoted the “most-damning” of the e-mails, the ones referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a temperature measurement and in which a scientist fretted “we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.”

The two networks, however, painted the “stolen” e-mails not as laudatory whistle-blowing, but as an unwanted impediment to the left's global warming agenda. “Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal,” ABC's David Wright began in playing off the title of Al Gore's movie. He despaired that “as the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.”

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews relayed how “to many Republicans, ClimateGate proves that global warming is a deception,” before he countered: “But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, ClimateGate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:” Viewers then were treated to this declaration from the scientist with the “hide the decline” boast: “The last decade is the warmest decade on record.”

Nightly News host Brian Williams on Tuesday continued his self-congratulatory tour of NBC programs, touting his five years as a news anchor. He appeared on the tabloid program Access Hollywood to be lauded as "great" and "the man." Co-host Billy Bush oozed, "He only knows about winning. For five straight years, number one in the evening news, the great Brian Williams."

Is there any show silly enough that Williams would refuse to appear on? Or is the prospect of fawning praise enough? In a ridiculous segue, Maria Menounos teased, "Find out who the new Biggest Loser is tonight at eight on NBC. Now to Billy in New York with someone who could never be called a loser." To "celebrate this great accomplishment" the anchor then participated in a segment called "Top 5 Photos" and offered his thoughts on various stars.

Regarding a picture of actor Paul Reubens, who was arrested for masturbating in public in 1991, Williams lauded, "The Pee-ster is back!" After looking at a picture of a scruffy looking Johnny Depp, Williams pontificated, "The simple beauty that is Johnny Depp. I've always liked the skull and crossbones ring. He's got that little finger tattoo thing that none of the rest of us can pull off. He's got it going on in an Depp-ian way."

CBS and NBC on Tuesday nightly eagerly pounced on the latest UN pronouncement about a warming world, without any regard for ClimateGate disclosures about manipulation of past data and without mentioning, as the AP noted, “the United States and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average.” CBS anchor Katie Couric announced: “At the world climate conference in Copenhagen today, scientists said this decade is on track to become the warmest since records were first kept back in 1850.”

NBC anchor Brian Williams touted “a big headline from that climate meeting going on in Copenhagen. The United Nations weather experts reported today this decade is on track to become the warmest since it started keeping records back in 1850. And 2009, they say, could rank among the top five warmest years ever.” He proceeded to set up a piece about Peru: “Anne Thompson shows us a place where they say the climate crisis is right there for all the world to see, in the form of glaciers melting and threatening the supply of fresh water.”