It probably won't come as any surprise, but coverage of the ClimateGate scandal, which involved the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia in Britain suffering a breach of data, was nowhere to be found.

Allegedly a hacker broke into the University's computer system and posted thousands of emails and documents showing an effort by scientists, some on the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose research has had a profound impact in shaping U.S. policy proposal on efforts to curb so-called anthropogenic climate change. Those emails and documents revealed an effort by some the scientists to manipulate data to exaggerate the threat of global warming and that has even prompted Sen. James Inhofe, Okla., the ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works committee to call for an investigation.

Such a story would seem to be a no-brainer for the ABC, CBS and NBC to pick up on, but their Nov. 24 broadcasts failed to do so. What did they opt for instead? A sea lion glut in San Francisco, an orphaned moose in Vermont and the meal selection on the President's State Dinner. 

Monday’s NBC Nightly News took up the story of liberal Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s public feud with the Catholic Church, and NBC’s Ron Allen implied something improper in how "the Catholic Church is flexing its religious and political muscle."

When Catholic officials endorse liberal initiatives like immigration reform or oppose an execution, the networks don’t worry about the separation of church and state. But with traditional stands against abortion and gay marriage in the crossfire, NBC’s screen graphic asked if the church was "Crossing the Line?" A secular-left lobbyist accused the church of being "not above spiritual and political blackmail."

NBC even used footage from Nicholas Ballasy’s video interview with Kennedy for Cybercast News Service, a news outlet affiliated with the MRC. But the brief snippet took out some of Kennedy’s hostility against the church for "fanning the flames of dissent and discord" over the "absolute red herring" of abortion. Here’s how NBC portrayed it:

NBC's Chuck Todd and CBS's Chip Reid both concluded their interviews with President Obama conducted in Beijing by worrying about the “stress” of his job. “He laughed off the speculation about his reported weight loss,” Todd relayed on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, “but admitted the burden of the office does weigh on him.” The MSNBC.com online video of the entire interview disclosed Todd's obsequious inquiry:

I've had a couple people ask me this at NBC, are you losing weight, do you feel the stress? Where is this coming from? Or at the one-year point, do you feel like, “Oh my God, I look in the mirror, boy, they're right, this job does age you?”

Echoing the same concern, on the CBS Evening News Chip Reid related: “Asked about the stress of the job, the President denied reports that he's skipping meals and losing weight, but he admitted it's taking a toll.” As viewers heard Obama's reply -- “You have a convergence of factors that have made this a difficult year not so much for me but for the American people. Absolutely that weighs on me” -- CBS displayed a photo of a solemn Obama, head bowed, gazing out of an Oval Office window.

Leftists including those in the White House who presumptively and obsessively attack Fox News will not be pleased with this.

At Forbes (HT Hot Air Headlines), S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, asks the question, "Fox News: Fair And Balanced?" -- and answers in the affirmative. In the process, the GMU Professor of Communications also makes a number of interesting points about Fox's competitors, discusses the convergence of news and analysis, and provides useful historical context.

Using a methodology that would be difficult to refute, Lichter's work relating to campaign 2008 is in sync with what CMPA found in late 2007 (noted at the time at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) during the opening stages of the presidential campaign.

Here are key paragraphs from Lichter's commentary (bolds are mine):

On any other day, NBC "Nightly News" would be attacking coal for being a dirty pollutant and advocating reliance on other forms of energy.

But on Nov. 15, as it began the first of its "Our Planet" segments for green week, the network used coal power as part of the argument in favor of destroying manmade dams.

"This is what the dams harness: the power of the Elwha to generate electricity. Impressive, even vital 100 years ago. But today the dams are no longer needed. Now with coal, wind and solar power, repairing the dams is just too expensive," said chief environmental correspondent Anne Thompson.

Thompson has often attacked coal power on NBC. On Feb. 21, 2009 she offered viewers plenty of reasons why building a much needed coal plant in Nevada was a bad idea. She has also supported the idea of capping carbon emissions, which would increase the cost of coal power.

But in this segment, Thompson presented the destruction of hydroelectric dams as a positive thing, bringing rivers back "to their natural state" for the sake of fish.

Looking at Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, NBC's Andrea Mitchell caught a passage about herself in which Palin recalled that when she invited some reporters to go fishing with her this past July that “I wanted to see Andrea and her colleagues sporting fish-slimed waders, banging around in a skiff, stuck in the mud,” but, she regretted, the weather was too good so “dang it -- none of them got slimed.”

On Sunday's NBC Nightly News, Mitchell recounted, over video (with the book text over-layed) of Mitchell and Palin on a boat:

Former Congressman William Jefferson, the New Orleans Democrat with bribery cash hidden in his freezer, was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison, the longest-ever for a Member of Congress on a corruption charge -- yet the CBS Evening News didn't utter a word about it, just as that newscast ignored his August conviction, while ABC's World News didn't bother to mention his party affiliation.  

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams noted Jefferson's party in this short item: “Former Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson made headlines a while back when the FBI found $90,000 in cash hidden in his freezer. Today, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for taking bribes.”

ABC's Charles Gibson, however, the MRC's Brad Wilmouth noticed, failed to identify Jefferson as a Democrat: “Former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for his conviction on federal bribery charges. Authorities found $90,000 wrapped in foil in Jefferson’s freezer, part of the half million dollars prosecutors say he received for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.”

News that President Barack Obama is demanding new Afghanistan options and answers, after months and eight meetings with top officials on General Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops, led ABC anchor Charles Gibson to express exasperation Thursday night: “What new questions are there to be asked after all this time?”

CBS and NBC, however, weren't so dubious. Though Katie Couric painted “a long, drawn out process,” Chip Reid assigned gravitas to Obama as he asserted Obama “has been agonizing over this decision” and “recently immersed himself in the agony of war.” Reid touted: “That the President is so thoroughly researching such a critical decision is a good thing, according to CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate.” Reid acknowledged that “there's great danger, he [Zarate] says, if it looks like uncertainty.”

Journalists, though, are making Obama look more deliberative than uncertain. ABC's Martha Raddatz assured Gibson that Obama “has four options in front of him” and “he wants to combine those options...to find the best option.”

• Networks Decide Attack Wasn't Terror: 85 percent of the broadcast stories didn't mention the word "terror." ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news referenced terrorism connections to the Fort Hood attack just seven times in 48 reports.
• ABC, CBS, NBC Follow White House Line: Before Obama's Nov. 10 speech, 93 percent of the stories had ignored any terror connection. But after Obama hinted at what ABC called "Islamic extremist views," all three networks mentioned terrorism.
• Alleged Attacker's Muslim Faith Not Important Either: Slightly more than one-fourth (29 percent) of evening news reports mentioned that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim. Of those, half (7 out of 14) defended the religion or included experts to do so.

Last week, Fort Hood, Texas was the site of the worst mass shooting in history on a U.S. military base. At 2:34 p.m. local time on Nov. 5, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan - one of the military's own - reportedly attacked fellow soldiers, yelling, "Allah Akbar." He then allegedly fired more than 100 rounds into Fort Hood's crowded processing center, killing 13 and wounding 29. This heinous act stunned the nation and captivated the news media.

Tuesday night ABC's Brian Ross highlighted how in a 2007 presentation mass-murdering Army Major Nidal Hasan exposed his radicalism and adherence to Islam over the U.S. Army as he charged “it's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” and declared: “We love death more than you love life.”

But neither CBS nor NBC cited those quotes for their viewers as they gave short-shrift to Hasan's remarks in “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military,” a slide show disclosed by Dana Priest in Tuesday's Washington Post (click on “Launch Photo Gallery” for Hasan's entire presentation at Walter Reed in June of 2007).

On the NBC Nightly News, Pete Williams just briefly noted how Hasan asserted that “releasing Muslim soldiers as conscientious objectors would increase troop morale and, quote, 'decrease adverse events.'” Bob Orr, on CBS, at least characterized it as “a shocking presentation to colleagues,” and related only how “Hasan argued forcing Muslim soldiers to fight wars in Muslim countries puts them 'at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly' and he ominously warned of 'adverse events.'”  

On Sunday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Chris Jansing filed an unusual report which took a sympathetic look at California taxpayers who are having trouble affording a recent increase in the amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks, as she described the situation as taxpayers "footing the government an interest-free loan, and a lot of people aren't happy about it."

The NBC correspondent used several soundbites of average Californians -- one man even earning minimum wage -- who complained about the situation, with one man comparing the government to a "mafia," and another seeing the government as being like children who think their parents are an endless source of money.

Despite the mass shooting at Fort Hood, the ABC, CBS and NBC newscasts Thursday night squeezed in full stories pegged to a “kill the bill” anti-Pelosi/ObamaCare rally outside the U.S. Capitol attended by “angry protesters” as all the stories also stressed how President Obama got a “boost” from “big,” “powerful” “key” and “major” endorsements from the AARP and AMA.

NBC's Brian Williams contrasted “big endorsements by two influential groups” with “a big, noisy rally urging lawmakers to just say no,” while reporter Kelly O'Donnell minimized the conservative event as “a few thousand protesters.” ABC's Jonathan Karl, however, recognized how “the hastily-planned protest drew one of the largest crowds in memory for a congressional event. The crowd extends all the way up around to the House side of the building, across to the Senate side, literally surrounding the western front of the Capitol.”

NBC's Kelly recounted how the House bill would “expand health coverage to 96 percent of Americans, and create government-backed insurance called a public option. Today that plan won a powerful endorsement. AARP, the lobby group for Americans over 50, signed on and showed off boxes of supportive petitions” and that was “followed by another boost, the doctors' lobby, the American Medical Association.”

Neither the CBS Evening News nor NBC Nightly News, in their East coast feeds Thursday night, noted the Muslim religious beliefs of the mass killer at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, but ABC anchor Charles Gibson wasn't cowed by political correctness as he teased World News, “Fort Hood tragedy: An Army officer, a Muslim convert, is the suspect in a shooting spree...” Introducing his first story, Gibson referred to how Major Nidal Malik Hasan “an army officer, a Muslim, opened fire with handguns...” (With a range of frequency, during late afternoon/early evening coverage, CNN, FNC and MSNBC all identified Hasan as a Muslim.)

Cryptically, ABC's senior foreign affairs correspondent, Martha Raddatz, concluded a story on reaction at Fort Hood: “As for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.'” So, a concern this will lead to groundless fear of Muslims?

The CBS Evening News avoided any mention of Islam or Muslim faith as Katie Couric provided this benign description: “Today, according to the Army, a soldier opened fire....He's identified tonight as Army Major Nadal Malik Hasan, a licensed psychiatrist and drug and rehab specialist from Bethesda, Maryland.” NBC anchor Brian Williams: “The soldier, identified as the initial gunman here, is an Army psychiatrist, Nadal Malik Hasan. He's an officer, a Major, and he was apparently armed with two handguns.” NBC's Pete Williams insisted, the MRC's Brad Wilmouth noticed, “everything about his background is rock solid, and nothing extraordinary stands out about his background.”

After President George W. Bush employed the words, "You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists," addressing a joint session of Congress in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks – as the President prepared for the impending war in Afghanistan – liberals eventually treated those words with consternation as if the blunt declaration reflected poorly on America. But pro-democracy activists in Iran seem to like a similar message, as a group of protesters in Iran called on President Barack Obama to support their cause, chanting, "Obama, Obama, either you’re with them or you’re with us!"

Uniquely among the broadcast network evening newscasts, NBC Nightly News correspondent Ali Arouzi – stationed in Tehran – showed a clip of anti-government demonstrators chanting their message to President Obama, as he translated their words into English. During a report that focused mainly on the government-orchestrated anti-America protest organized to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Arouzi also passed on the activities of anti-government activists: "On a day when anti-American sentiment runs high, the opposition was looking for support from President Obama, chanting, "Obama, Obama, either you're with them or you’re with us."

CBS's Bob Schieffer on Wednesday night offered the hindsight that everyone knew the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey would lose, they did lose and so the losses mean nothing. “I think what we saw last night were snap shots. I don't think we saw predictors,” Schieffer declared on the CBS Evening News in absolving President Obama of any culpability. “I don't think they told us much except that people are very frustrated out in the country.” And that, apparently, has nothing to do with Obama.

Schieffer recited what happened with remarkable prescience: In Virginia, “they run someone for Governor [Creigh Deeds] who is a rural candidate who's little-known in Northern Virginia and who could not seem to connect with the African-American voters. So he got beat and he got beat bad. Most people thought that was going to happen and it did.” Up Interstate 95 in New Jersey, Governor Jon Corzine “was just so unpopular that I think he just didn't have a chance from the get-go.”

For some mysterious reason, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams augmented his tour of Afghanistan with an interview with The Huffington Post, where most bloggers think of the American presence as comparable to cancer, or maggots. One spot in his interview with Danny Shea suggested that the Americans weren't so welcome in Afghanistan:

SHEA: There's all this talk of making the cities more secure. Is there any sense that the people in the cities want the foreign troops there?

WILLIAMS: Whereas some of the locals in Iraq (depending on the circumstances) will often be comforted to see U.S. dismounted infantry patrols, (in ways they were not until fairly recently) and will ask them for help and to stay with them, the situation here in Afghanistan is different. The two societies are vastly different.

It is not helped by the fact that U.S. forces often take a very aggressive posture -- arriving in small towns in massive armored vehicles with machine gun turrets, each infantryman with his hands on his M-4 rifle in front of him...and often on the trigger with the safety off.

ABC anchor Charles Gibson on Wednesday night had time to convey President Barack Obama's praise of Edward Brooke for “breaking barriers” as the first popularly-elected black U.S. Senator, but not to inform viewers he broke that barrier as a Republican. On NBC, however, David Gregory noted Brooke's party affiliation: “The Massachusetts Republican urged the lawmakers who gathered to congratulate him to put aside partisan differences and work together.”

Neither Gibson nor Gregory pointed out that after two terms representing Massachusetts, in 1978 Brooke, a fairly liberal Republican, was challenged and beaten by one of the media's liberal heroes, the late Paul Tsongas -- a Democrat who was a white guy.

The CBS Evening News didn't mention the honor for Brooke, which was actually approved more than a year ago.

Hard to imagine that if George W. Bush were still in office journalists would hesitate a moment to invoke his name in identifying a culprit for the current shortage and delay in delivery, well beyond the schedule promised by HHS's Centers for Disease Control, of the vaccine for the H1N1 “swine flu” virus. Remember Katrina? Coverage Monday night matches what I've seen over the past several days with no mention of Obama or his administration, beyond reporting his issuance of a “national emergency” decree, as journalists instead cited “federal officials” and “the government.”

On the CBS Evening News, fill-in anchor Harry Smith reported: “Now to the H1N1 flu. Federal health officials admitted today their projected timetable for producing the vaccine was way off. They originally said there would be about 40 million doses by the end of the month. But as of today, there's less than half that number.” Subsituting on the NBC Nightly News, Ann Curry blandly announced: “President Obama declared the swine flu pandemic a national emergency over the weekend, but still the amount of vaccine to protect against it is running way behind what the government had promised.”

NBC's Brian Williams allocated a few seconds Thursday night to how a new Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey discovered the percent of Americans who, in his words, “believe there's solid evidence of global warming...has dropped off significantly” while “the number of people who say they don't believe in climate change at all has doubled in that time.” (If it's a scientific issue, what does “belief” have to do with it?)  

But instead of crediting Americans for recognizing the media-fueled case global warming is a threat has been undermined by reality since global temperatures have not risen an iota since 1998, Williams attributed the change to how “in a down economy, people are less sensitive to the environment.”

Or at least less sensitive to NBC's hysteria. Just a month ago, on the September 20 Nightly News, Lester Holt set up a typically panicked story on how “a new study warns rapidly melting ice in Greenland could result in a colossal rise in ocean levels.” Reporter Anne Thompson ominously warned: “For thousands of years...the Earth's climate has endured changes, but slowly enough to allow humans to adapt. Now, change is picking up speed.”

Tied to NBC's promotion of Maria Shriver's “A Woman's Nation” report, completed in conjunction with the left-wing Center for American Progress, Wednesday's NBC Nightly News showcased Savannah Guthrie's interview with President Barack Obama in which she trumpeted how he “has put women in high places in his administration and the Supreme Court. The first bill he signed, a pay discrimination law.” Plus, she assured viewers “the President says he gives a lot of thought to whether the women who work here in the White House feel they're being heard, whether there are those persistent subtle biases still around.”  

NBC gave air time for Obama to pander: “When I think about policy, I'm constantly thinking about how can we strengthen families, how can we provide more resources, greater flexibility so that women can thrive, because I think if women are thriving everybody's going to be thriving.” How profound.

But no more banal than Guthrie explaining Obama sat down with her “to talk about the Shriver Report and its finding that a workforce that's half women 'changes everything.'” As if that workforce composition is somehow new this week. Indeed, the title is just that silly, “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.”

Guthrie also touted: “For the President, that woman's nation starts at home.” And: “The President says he can relate to what the report calls the negotiation between the sexes.”