ABC’s Good Morning America finally picked up on the deep bow President Obama performed for the Emperor of Japan over the weekend. Co-host Diane Sawyer ran through how other U.S. Presidents have greeted either Emperor Akhito or his father, the late Emperor Hirohito over the years — some bowing, some not. Sawyer claimed that Americans are “not trained to greet royalty” and “it’s just too confusing.”

Actually, the government employs lots of experts on culture and protocol to make sure that our presidents are fully “trained” on what to do when they represent our government overseas — which is not to say that all of our presidents perform these duties flawlessly.

Missing from Sawyer’s run-down is a tidbit that ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper posted on his “Political Punch” blog Sunday afternoon. Tapper said he received a note from an old friend whom he described as “an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire, and in general a supporter of President Obama.” According to this expert, it wasn’t necessarily incorrect for Obama to bow, but the President’s “forward lurch” was “jarring and inappropriate.”

Former Democratic aide turned journalist George Stephanopoulos appeared on Wednesday’s Good Morning America to spin the loss of a Conservative Party congressional candidate in New York as a "big loss for Sarah Palin." He enthused, "A big win for the Democrats who poured it on in the final days especially Vice President Biden who came in the final day."

Stephanopoulos seemed much more animated in discussing the New York race than he did the Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia. He extolled, "The bottom line, when there is a civil war inside the Republican Party, a Democrat can squeak through in a district that has not gone to the Democrats since about the Civil War."

Referencing the ramifications the GOP victories could have on the health care debate, Stephanopoulos began, "Well, I actually asked a White House official about that this morning." Could this be White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel? (Early this year, it was revealed that Stephanopoulos has daily phone conversations and strategy sessions with Emanuel.)

And you thought President Obama just didn’t like Glenn Beck. According to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, the administration’s repeated attacks on Fox News are an attempt to send a message to the rest of the news media: “Fox isn’t a real news organization, so the stories it generates aren’t real news.”

The Oct. 21 “Morning Joe” reported on an exchange yesterday (noted on Newsbusters by Noel Sheppard) between ABC Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper and White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs, in which Tapper asked whether it was “appropriate” for the administration to be deciding what news organizations are legitimate.

“I think Jake Tapper was onto what we got onto yesterday morning, because we’ve been having this debate: ‘Does this make sense for them to shoot down at Fox News?’” said host Joe Scarborough. “No it doesn’t if your target’s Fox News.”

On Tuesday, another prominent media member challenged the White House strategy of attacking the Fox News Channel.

This time up at the plate was ABC's Jake Tapper who asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs during today's gaggle:

It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one?

Tapper posted the full exchange with Gibbs at his Political Punch blog (emphases his, file photo):

ABC, CBS and NBC all led Wednesday night with President Barack Obama's address at the United Nations, but Katie Couric was the most effusive in trumpeting how Obama marked the end of the Bush era as she teased the CBS Evening News: “Tonight, the President tells the world America's 'go it alone' policy is over.” Her glowing lead:

Good evening, everyone. President Obama says we have reached a “pivotal moment.” In his UN debut today, he challenged the world to work together to solve the problems facing all of us. And in a break with the “go it alone policies” of his predecessor, he said the United States is ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation.

On NBC, Andrea Mitchell followed a similar script: “It was the President's first speech to the United Nations and it marked a very stark departure from the policies of George W. Bush, as the President called for a new era of engagement with the rest of the world, reaching out to new friends and old foes.”

A lover's quarrel emerged Tuesday night in the media's love affair with President Barack Obama. He disappointed NBC by failing, at the UN's “Summit on Climate Change,” to go far enough on global warming. “President Obama's being accused of falling short on the environment today with the whole world watching,” Brian Williams teased NBC Nightly News. Williams framed his lead story through the prism of the left as he fretted that, “in the eyes of a lot of environmentalists,” Obama “fell short.” Worse, while other nations are “ready to change, ready to get cleaner, President Obama's speech left a lot of people wanting more.”
 
Reporter Anne Thompson wistfully recalled that “when Barack Obama became President, many in the world hoped the U.S. would take a leadership role in stopping climate change” and so “that led to big expectations for today's speech -- expectations that were quickly dashed.” Thompson asserted “the world wanted to hear President Obama make a commitment to specific cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. Instead of action, it got talk” and, in the ultimate insult a journalist can deliver, she rued how Obama had “one line that sounded a lot like his predecessor, George W. Bush, who refused to agree to emission cuts without similar actions from India and China.”

As the Obama-loving media continue to abdicate their journalistic responsibilities in order to blindly support the President's agenda, the conservative blogosphere has for the third time in as many weeks uncovered dirty little secrets that have precipitated immediate action from the White House or entities close to it.

In response to revelations published Monday by Big Hollywood, the Obama administration on Tuesday issued new guidelines for conference calls held by the National Endowment for the Arts.

This comes in the same month that investigative efforts by the rightosphere led to the resignation of Obama green jobs czar Van Jones as well as the federal defunding of the controversial organization ACORN.

According to ABC's Jake Tapper, just hours after the release of Patrick Courrielche's stunning exposé about the Administration using the NEA to help drive the President's agenda via the art community, new guidelines have been mandated by the White House to prevent it from happening again:

Perez Hilton has proved that demonstrable talent or skill is no longer a prerequisite for fame. These days, all that's needed is a proclivity for peddling the sleaziest material imaginable.

Hilton created a career for himself out of enhancing paparazzi shots of celebrities with crude white drawings of genitalia and bodily fluids and posting them on his blog, PerezHilton.com. He regularly described young actresses in the most misogynistic terms imaginable, relentlessly attempted to bring gay celebrities out of the closet and reserved a special brand of hate for conservative women, such as referring to "The View's" Elisabeth Hasselbeck as "Elisab----" or re-posting lesbian comedian Margaret Cho's graphic oral sex fantasy about Sarah Palin. As a reward, his Web site reportedly receives 24 - 30 million views per month.

The mainstream media aided Hilton's rise to the top of culture corrupters. Since 2006, he has been the focus of 49 television news reports. He has been cited as an "expert" on all things related to Hollywood in 32 news stories. The Los Angeles Times recently labeled the blogger a "tastemaker."

Jake Tapper has distinguished himself within the White House press corps as someone consistently willing to pose probing questions to the president and his aides.  But on today's Good Morning America, ABC's chief White House correspondent used a particularly unflattering metaphor for Rep. Joe Wilson and his decision to go on Fox News to defend himself.  As a clip of Rep. Wilson on last night's Sean Hannity show rolled  . . .

JAKE TAPPER:  Although Wilson apologized to the White House for his lack of civility, he quickly took to the limelight of conservative media like a moth to a flame.

Media minds think alike. ABC: “It was the shout heard 'round the world.” CBS: “It was the shout heard 'round the world.” NBC, slightly creative: “The outburst heard 'round the world” and the “heckle heard 'round the world.” Congressman Joe Wilson's “you lie” shout during President Obama's Wednesday address to Congress on health care animated the Thursday evening newscasts, though it at least prompted ABC and NBC, but not CBS, to grudgingly take up, briefly, Wilson's contention illegal immigrants would receive health benefits.

“As the President spoke last night, there was a stunning moment. As the President tried to refute criticisms of his health care reform, a Republican Congressman from South Carolina yelled out 'you lie,'” ABC anchor Charles Gibson announced. On CBS, Katie Couric maintained “Presidents appearing there as respected guests have been interrupted before by boos and hisses, but this was different. A Congressman last night calling a President an outright liar to his face. Just the latest indication of how ugly the debate over reforming health care has gotten.”

Brian Williams teased the NBC Nightly News: “On our broadcast tonight, the speech on health care and the outburst heard 'round the world.” In the subsequent story Kelly O'Donnell portrayed “a stunning outburst. South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson accused the President of lying in a fit of anger that reverberated today.”

ABC correspondent Jake Tapper on Thursday condescendingly described Barack Obama’s address to Congress this way: "At times, it was almost like the President were a principal and Congress a bunch of unruly school kids." The usually restrained reporter announced, "He [Obama] made outreach to his conservative opponents, while also refuting many of their ideas."

Refuted? Wouldn’t challenged or attacked have been the neutral description? Tapper also repeated that Obama "blames misinformation for why many Americans are nervous about reform." Good Morning America on Thursday ignored the AP’s fact check from the previous night that debunked some of the things the President supposedly "refuted:"  

What's 16-17 million uninsured among 300 million Americans?

Apparently not much to President Barack Obama, who slipped a not-so-subtle change to a statistic he had cited previously different during his Sept. 9 address to a joint session of Congress. The president pointed out there are "more than 30 million American citizens" who are having difficulty obtaining health insurance (emphasis added).

"We are the only advanced democracy on Earth - the only wealthy nation - that allows such hardships for millions of its people," Obama said. "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone."

ABC and NBC on Friday night, even after White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was forced to address the topic, continued their blackout of the radical and America-hating conspiracy views of Van Jones, the “Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation” on the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.

Instead of taking up how five years ago Jones signed the 911truth.org petition calling for an “immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur,” a revelation to which FNC's Special Report devoted a full story on Thursday, on ABC's World News fill-in anchor George Stephanopoulos trumpeted the Obama White House “transparency” in the “unprecedented” decision to release visitor logs, which Jake Tapper described as an “historic” move before Stephanopoulos fretted over how Obama “is facing this liberal revolt over the public health insurance option, and the President decided to take it head-on today.”

Over on NBC, Brian Williams bemoaned: “A back to school speech by the President. How did it get branded as an attempt to brainwash America's children?” He also conveyed liberal disappointment Obama-defenders aren't tough enough: “Some are asking how the White House message got hijacked before the speech was delivered and why more people aren't pushing back.” Andrea Mitchell asserted that “it's only the latest example of what the White House calls the silly season -- town halls where disabled speakers are shouted down....From charges of death panels to the birthers...”

Of the three morning shows, only ABC’s Good Morning America on Wednesday highlighted just how quickly and severely Barack Obama’s approval ratings have fallen. In a report on the subject, correspondent Jake Tapper bluntly explained, "Since taking office, President Obama's approval ratings have fallen more steeply than any other newly-elected president in modern history."

In contrast, CBS’s Early Show charted the middle ground in a segment on the network’s new poll. Correspondent Bill Plante observed that Obama has lost some popularity over health care, but spun: "The latest CBS News poll shows that approval of the President’s handling of health care reform has slipped six points since July, even though his overall job rating for that period is down only slightly."

Of the three major networks, only CBS has managed, thus far, to ignore controversial comments from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that compared America’s disputed election in 2000 to political corruption in Nigeria. ABC, however, highlighted the August 12 remarks on Thursday’s Good Morning America. GMA news anchor Chris Cuomo challenged, "Now, did [the comments] cross the line?"

Co-host Robin Roberts chided, "Hillary Clinton in the hot seat. She compares Nigeria’s politics to the controversial Bush/Gore election here in the U.S. Did she go too far?" Clinton, who was in Nigeria at the time, said this: "Our democracy is still evolving. We had all kinds of problems in some of our past elections, as you might remember. In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state, so we have our problems, too."

In addition to GMA, ABC played the remark on the previous night's World News. CBS avoided the comments during Wednesday’s CBS Evening News and Thursday’s Early Show. Brian Williams briefly reported on the quote for the August 12 NBC Nightly News, featuring the remark and labeling it "another off-the-cuff comment" for the Secretary of State. NBC did not discuss the story during the four hours of Friday’s Today show.

As the Democrat leadership and their media minions dishonestly depict town hall meeting protesters as an angry mob ginned up by conservative organizations, the group that helped get Barack Obama elected president is urging its members to show up at such events to counter dissenting views.

Will this get much press attention in the next 48 hours?

We can only hope the Obama-loving media will take a long look at what ABC's Jake Tapper just reported at his Political Punch blog:

The Democratic National Committee has released a new video to push back against protests happening at town hall meetings across the country, and according to ABC's Jake Tapper, these demonstrators are being depicted as "irrational birthers who want to 'destroy' President Obama."

For those unfamiliar with the term, "birthers" are folks that question whether Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen.

Tapper also reported that the ad claims these protests are being staged by "desperate Republicans and their well funded allies [who are] organizing angry mobs -- just like they did during the election."

DNC video along with more of Tapper's report below the fold:

ABC framed its Tuesday night story, on citizens using town hall forums held by Members of Congress to express opposition to ObamaCare, around undermining their credibility by asserting the reaction “appears to be orchestrated” and “organized” and thus is forcing the victimized “White House to push back” by “fighting Internet fire with fire.”
 
After anchor Charles Gibson insisted “some of that criticism appears to be orchestrated, causing the White House to push back,” reporter Jake Tapper showed some instances of “people protesting health care reform with visceral anger” and relayed how “Texas Democrat Lloyd Doggett, who was shouted down before he could even speak, says there's nothing authentic about these protests.” Doggett charged: “This notion of a grassroots campaign is totally and completely phony. The Republican Party has coordinated this apparent outrage and stirred it up.” Tapper corroborated: “Clearly, some of it is organized.” He cited how “Bob MacGuffie, a grass roots conservative activist wrote a widely circulated memo advising others at town hall meetings to put the Congressman quote, 'on the defensive with your questions and follow up.'”

Washington Post TV reviewer Tom Shales offered yet another sappy A to President Obama after the latest prime-time press conference. He wrapped it up this way:

Though polls show his popularity in slight decline, Obama did nothing at the news conference -- other than preempt or delay some prime-time shows -- that would seem potentially harmful to his image. About the most justifiable criticism that could likely be made: "Barack Obama still seems too good to be true."

The headline was "Obama Goes Off-Topic, Clearly." That referred to Obama’s last answer saying the cops in Cambridge, Massachusetts acted "stupidly" in dealing with the screaming and yelling Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates. Shales thought it might require a little damage control, but he found it "refreshingly blunt."

For the second weekday in a row, Katie Couric teased the CBS Evening News on Monday night by delivering President Obama's aggressive retorts to critics of his health plan as reporter Chip Reid pitched in to help, discrediting critics by disparaging their perspectives as “harsh” and “incendiary” attacks -- all before Couric caught up with ABC and NBC from the night before and promoted Ted Kennedy's “We're Almost There” Newsweek cover story.

Couric teased: “The President takes on critics of his health care reform plan. He vows to move forward and says trying to fix a system that's breaking American families.” (Friday night she touted “a warning from the President,” leading into Obama's claim: “If we don't get health care reform done now, then no one's health insurance is going to be secure.”)

Reid declared that “in some of his harshest comments yet, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said the President's plan for a public insurance option is socialism.” But this is all Steele said in the clip Reid played: “This reckless approach is an ill-conceived attempt to push through an experiment and all of us should be scared to death.” Reid continued: “In one of the most incendiary comments, Republican Senator Jim DeMint, in a conference call with conservative activists, recently said:” Viewers then heard audio of DeMint making a tactical political point: “If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”