Online Reporters

At a conservative Web activist happy hour yesterday, I learned about a new Web site that's a great resource for press and public alike, although I doubt many in the liberal media will catch on quickly, if at all.

WashingtonWatch.com is a Web site "maintained by Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, in his spare time, as a public service." Harper puts a dollar figure on the bright (or frankly mostly not-so-bright) ideas that Congress toys with day in and day out.

Here's but a sample from today:

H.R. 3043
Making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes
Costs $5,868.73 per family

I have been a huge fan of Michael Yon for years. He risks life and limb as an embedded reporter to report the news in Iraq from the soldiers' point of view and he is honest in his assessment. That honesty has often been met with scorn and resistance by some decision makers in the military who in my assessment have been their own worst enemy when it comes to getting the word out about progress as well as the hardships endured by our fine fighting men and women overseas.

But Michael knows the importance of giving a voice to the voiceless heroes that protect our shores so that we at home may tuck our children in to sleep peacefully at night. For this reason Michael provides us an alternative, more rounded message; a beacon in the darkness of the mainstream media's one sided narrative.

In an April 25 post, CBS's "Public Eye" editor Brian Montopoli worries that the media are not doing enough reporting on gun control, lamenting that the media are waiting for political players to gin up the issue.

There were reasons not to take up larger issues and assign blame in the immediate wake of the shootings – those first few days needed to be about how people were dealing with the horror of what had taken place. But some time has now passed, and I'm hard pressed to think of a better time for the media to focus on a huge issue that isn't going away anytime soon.

Where has Montopoli been? Not only have the media been focusing on the gun control angle to the story, they've heavily leaned in favor of more gun control, including featurin gun control advocates in both broadcast and print coverage. While there were a few exceptions, most media coverage has cheerleaded the notion of enacting new gun control laws. Here's a refresher for Montopoli, a list of some of our coverage over the past nine days:

Update at bottom of post: other bloggers reactions.

In a column this afternoon, Politico's Roger Simon took a swipe at Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) for giving a public prayer for the victims of the Virginia Tech gunman "in Christ's name.":

Does John Edwards include Jews in his prayers? Or Muslims? Or Hindus? Or any other non-Christians?

He didn’t the other day. The other day, in order to commemorate those killed at Virginia Tech, Edwards led a prayer “in Christ’s name” at Ryman Auditorium, which bills itself as “Nashville’s Premier Performance Hall.”

Edwards has a perfect right to pray publicly or privately any way he wants to. But people who are not Christians often feel left out of prayers like his.

Arutz Sheva, an Internet based news outlet in Israel, reported on Friday the existence of anti-Semitic content at the liberal website Daily Kos (h/t Little Green Footballs, emphasis added throughout):

The Daily Kos blog, one of the most popular American political websites, is featuring anti-Semitic graphic content since Thursday. The Daily Kos reportedly receives 600,000 visits a day, and between 14 million and 24 million visits per month. It is often used by politicians – including Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and many others – for dissemination of their materials.

The article continued:

Looks like "Couric & Co." are looking for summer interns for CBS's "Springboard" program. And college journalism students are in luck, they can write up an original story on global warming to get the job:

Here is how it works. First, create an original story based on one of three topics: climate change; the American Spirit; or Iraq war veterans. These are issues that have all received extensive coverage on the CBS Evening News and at CBSNews.com – but we want to hear YOUR take.

But wait, there's more. The "best submissions will be posted online." I'm curious just how balanced those "best submissions" will be. I for one am relishing the possibility of MRC summer interns dissecting the bias of CBS summer interns. [continued...]

When is a newspaper unable to determine the political ideology of someone despite an overwhelming body of evidence that clearly shows what his politics are? It happens when the person in question is a deranged Leftwing stalker whose antics are so embarrassing that liberals are anxious to not be identified with him.

Such was the case with Andrew Stone (pictured), a Leftwing stalker whose home invasion of a Republican was chronicled by Michelle Malkin. As reported by Malkin, Stone stalked University of Mary Washington student, Richard Reed Pannell, whose "high crime" as stated in his Facebook account, was being a College Republican. After finding Pannell's home address in Facebook, Stone showed up at the address pretending to be a military recruiter. Here is what happened next as posted by Malkin:

The New York Times generally keeps conservative blogs at arms length, treating them with either how-dare-you criticism, pat-on-the-head condescension or, most notoriously, accusations of CIA stoogery. But when it comes to liberal bloggers like the ones covering the Lewis Libby trial, The Times embraces them as they struggle side by side with the MSM, as shown in Scott Shane's front page story today, "For Liberal Bloggers, Libby Trial Is Fun and Fodder." (By contrast, Shane has written two condescending pieces on conservative bloggers.)

Firedoglake is one group blog covering the trial of Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney accused of lying to prosecutors during the investigation of who leaked CIA worker Valerie Plame's name to the press.

It's a convoluted trial in which everyone, government officials and journalists alike, seems to have a faulty memory -- no surprise, since it involves who may or may not have said what to whom in the summer of 2003. Tom Maguire, a must-read on all matters Plame-related who knows the ins and outs better than virtually any journalist, wonders if the Times is watching the same trial he is.

Hey, I'm just the messenger.

Newsweek's Jessica Bennett, Sarah Childress, and Susanna Schrobsdorff offered lucky Web site readers a gem unavailable to grocery aisle readers of Newsweek-on-dead-tree.

In a February 8 Web exclusive, the trio of writers explore "Why Skinny Models Could be Making Us Fat" *

The answer, in part, photoshopped models. And no, I'm not referring to Katie.

...thanks to technology, often not even the models themselves can compare to their portfolios. Increasingly, photos for print are enhanced and perfected to an astonishing degree. Not only are moles, acne and subtle facial hair erased from already pretty faces, but retouchers are routinely asked by editors and advertisers to enlarge eyes, trim normal-size ears, fill in hairlines, straighten teeth and lengthen the already-narrow necks, waists and legs of 18-year-old beauties. "We're always stretching the models' legs and slimming their thighs," says a photo retoucher who works for a high-end Manhattan agency. In some cases, hands, feet or even legs are replaced in photos when the subject’s parts don’t add up to a perfect whole.

But the bigger danger, the Newsweek reporters insist, is that twiggy models are actually leading American women to bulk up:

...both shall fall into the Deitch.

You gotta love network blogs, if for nothing more they bring out those hidden gems of bias you otherwise wouldn't get from the people behind the camera. Like Ed Deitch, one of the men behind the curtain as it were.

Deitch, a senior producer for the NBC "Nightly News" expressed bemusement recently on the NBC News "Daily Nightly" blog at the notion that there's opposition to a Bangor, Maine, ban on smoking in cars with children.

I wrote more about that here at MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site. Deitch also expressed concern about the so-called obesity epidemic in a prior blog posting.

Two media tidbits today. Broadcasting & Cable magazine reports: "Count Larry King among Katie Couric’s fans. The venerable CNN host watches the new anchor of the CBS Evening News and thinks her ratings struggles have more to do with gender than with journalism. "It might still be hard for a woman to anchor the evening news," King says. "And that’s sad."

King also said it may take a major news event to help the former Today host shed her perky image: "Hurricane Katrina made Anderson Cooper. It could happen to Katie that way." (Larry slammed O'Reilly and Nancy Grace here.)

On Howard Kurtz's chat at washingtonpost.com, Kurtz was asked about the MSNBC v. Fox fight, specifically mentioning that O'Reilly has some liberals on his show (as foils, usually, he claimed), and Olbermann doesn't generally have conservatives on his show. A questioner asked: