On the heels of accusations that the media exploited the death of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, now there are cries that NBC didn't spend enough time on Eight Belles' death. After her second-place finish in Saturday's Derby, the three-year-old filly snapped both ankles and was euthanized by a vet on the track.

Ruth Hochberger is one of the voices criticizing NBC for their “abysmal” coverage, but her May 4 Huffington Post article misrepresented the broadcast, claiming there was a “complete failure to tell the story.” She scolded NBC because, “Its nearly three hours of coverage of yesterday's Kentucky Derby just about completely ignored the news. “

Since Eight Belles' death was near the end of the “nearly three hours of coverage,” why is Hochberger penalizing NBC for not having a time machine and ignoring it earlier?

It didn't satisfy Hochberger that NBC refused to speculate and reported only when they knew the facts. She seemed to want the wall-to-wall guesswork reporting one finds with the “baby stuck in a well” crisis journalism where a network trains the camera on “breaking news” and continuously chatters about what might be happening, regardless of how much they know (all bold mine):

The leftist British newspaper The Guardian carried the headline of the weekend:

Surge in fatal shark attacks blamed on global warming

Four recent fatal shark attacks pushed the media to contact the shark-bite gurus to find out what could be causing the phenomenon, and it must be the humans' fault for being too active at the beach and too willing to drive SUVs, apparently:

'The one thing that's affecting shark attacks more than anything else is human activity,' said Dr George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert who maintains the database. 'As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites.'

Some experts suggest that an abundance of seals has attracted high numbers of sharks, while others believe that overfishing has hit their food chain. 'I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's a convenient excuse,' Burgess said. Another contributory factor to the location of shark attacks could be global warming and rising sea temperatures. 'You'll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn't in the past with some regularity,' he said.

UPDATE Below: Hoax confirmed.

The Yale Daily News breathlessly informed us of a female student, art major Aliza Shvarts, who claimed that her senior art project was a documentation of nine months of self-induced miscarriages. Her goal, of course, was to "spark conversation" about "the relationship between art and the human body." What is really the truth with this so-called "art" project, though, is that Shvarts has pulled the wool over the eyes of the Yale Daily News, the willing dupes who claim to be her professors, and anyone reading this story on Drudge and believing she really induced her own miscarriages. It's all a hoax. Or if not an outright hoax, it’s a misleading tale of a girl who hasn't a clue about how one becomes pregnant, what the fake drugs she took are really capable of doing, and the psychological pain of a real miscarriage.

It's also proof that our sources of news rarely if ever employ any common sense in how they write up the news. A tiny bit of logic put to this story of "self-induced miscarriages" would reveal it to be all stuff and nonsense. But, no, what we get instead is the story reported as if it is fact and not the cynical efforts of a kid that just wants her 15 minutes of fame. It is also proof that the liberal side of the abortion debate leads the ideological mindset of the news.

The front of Sunday's Week in Review featured "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler" by food writer Mark Bittman, which considered the (by his lights) welcome possibility that Americans might be eating far less meat in the near future.

There might be more than a pinch of liberal ideology in Bittman's recipe. Back in May 2004, Bittman expounded on the joys of vegetarianism in phrases that sounded straight out of a PETA pamphlet.

On Sunday he wrote:

I found a surprising article in the New York Times, one that probably shocked its liberal-leaning base.  

The headline was slanted, but  this January 11 article was a thoughtful assessment of the unintended, but predicted, consequences of the state laws banning US horse slaughter.

With the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act that would ban the export of US horses for slaughter before Congress, the Times dove right into this activist Thunderdome. The NYT revealed after the state bans, unwanted horses face “more grueling travel” and are shipped to Canada or worse, “gruesome deaths” in Mexico, where their spinal cords are severed with knives (bold mine).

The American slaughterhouses killed horses quickly by driving steel pins into their brains, a method the American Veterinary Medical Association considers humane. Workers in some Mexican plants, by contrast, disable them by stabbing them with knives to sever their spinal cords, said Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University..

At what point, exactly, did we come to hate humans for having the arrogance to assume they are wiser than beasts?

The "we" in that equation belongs squarely to the camp of the loony radical left, which now broadcasts that hatred for humans on the Air America radio network. How low can this disgraceful failure of a radio venture go? One of their newest hosts goes by the radio name "Lionel." (His real name is Michael LeBron.) "Lionel" unfurled a rather unique take on the tragic incident at the San Francisco Zoo, where a tiger mauled a teenager to death.

He cheered for the tiger.

Then he cheered the death of Steve Irwin, the beloved "Crocodile Hunter" of TV fame.

Are the two major political parties hosting primaries this winter? Or is it just the Democrats? Viewers who saw Monday's edition of "Good Morning America" might assume the latter. The ABC program devoted a lopsided 14 minutes and 56 seconds to breaking down the race between Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. A scant 31 seconds were given to the competitive Republican race.

Over the course of the two hour program, GMA featured four segments on the Democrats and only a solitary (and brief) piece on the GOP contest. This included co-host Diane Sawyer interviewing Barack Obama twice. ABC anchor and former Bill Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos talked to Senator Hillary Clinton. Kate Snow discussed the state of the New York senator's White House bid. Aside from mentioning the latest GOP polls in the show's intro, the only analysis of the Republicans resulted from Sawyer asking Stephanopoulos this banal question: "And what about the Republicans?" The conversation that followed lasted 31 seconds.

The talk-radio host known simply as "Lionel" joined the Air America team in May, and he has demonstrated he belongs on the exotic fringe with the rest of the network. Most people don’t take sides when a zoo tiger mauls a teenager to death. "Lionel" favored the tiger. His blog declared: "If you shoot a tiger with a sling-shot, you deserve to get mauled. That’s just how it works." The New York Post reported several teenagers that were victimized by the tiger had slingshots, but that has not been confirmed by San Francisco zoo officials. On his show Wednesday, "Lionel" was even more explicit:

Call me wacky, but hurray for the tiger that killed the kid who was...taunting him. Now, I know this is not right...but let's hear it for the wild...I loathe zoos. I'm still cheering the fact that some stingray whacked that Aussie pain-in-the-ass Steve Irwin.

You may have heard of "Hentish," the dog in The New York Times that was shot and killed by a Blackwater security guard earlier this week. However in the media's over zealous attempt to crucify Blackwater USA they left out a surprisingly telling piece about some of the dogs that were harbored at the Times compound in Baghdad.

The New York Post reported yesterday that these dogs had already attacked people before, including Eason Jordan who runs the blog IraqSlogger.com, and is a former CNN chief news executive.

"Eason's encounter, revealed on his blog yesterday, involved a dog named Scratch and left him with ‘three deep gashes in my right hand, sending blood spewing in all directions,'" the Post story said.

Eason's blog post also revealed other canine nightmares:

Modern politics sure is entertaining sometimes, especially when one politically correct cause threatens another one as in Norway where that country's moose population is being blamed for contributing to global warming:

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.

See incredible Roberts double-standard Update at foot.

Michael Vick, victim. That's how Selena Roberts's article in today's New York Times largely portrays the NFL QB accused of involvement with dogfighting. The article's headline sets the tone: Vick Is Trapped in His Circle of Friends.

Excerpts:

• The crooked circle Michael Vick drew around himself has tripped and squeezed him.
• The first to fail Vick was Davon Boddie, a cousin and personal chef. His marijuana possession charge in April led police to a white house with black buildings behind it on Moonlight Road in Surry County, Va. [Darn that Davon. If only he hadn't been busted on the pot charge, Vick might have been able to continue -- allegedly -- killing dogs that didn't make the grade.]

Yesterday I wrote a piece about reporter Mika Brzezinski's handling of a story that reflected a political double standard on her part. While hosting MSNBC's "Morning Joe" for the vacationing Joe Scarborough, Brzezinski aired a video of a female reporter chasing after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Before she could catch up with the mayor however, the reporter was intercepted by a very large security guard and sent barreling into the side of what appeared to be a nearby dumpster. At the time Brzezinski brushed off the incident as "not that pressing," in stark contrast to the seemingly endless attention the David Vitter scandal received on "Morning Joe" throughout July. This morning however, Brzezinski seems to have changed her mind and now believes "That story's important."

For a little context, Villaraigosa, a Democrat, has been under scrutiny since he confessed to an affair with Spanish language reporter, Mirthala Salinas. Not surprisingly, Salinas received special access to the mayor during their affair.

Yesterday, after airing the video, Brzezinski gave her opinion as to the newsworthiness of the story. Here is her quote from the August 7 show:

Here's something you don't read every day: force-feeding a hunger striker violates medical ethics.

Hmmm. So, preventing someone from starving to death is medically unethical? Wouldn't it be more unethical to let someone starve to death, even if it is their wish?

After all, suicide is against the law in this country.

Regardless of the odd dichotomy, the Associated Press reported Tuesday (emphasis added, h/t NBer allanf):

The news:

Taylor to have plea agreement hearing on Monday
Posted: Friday July 27, 2007 9:02PM; Updated: Friday July 27, 2007 9:45PM

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- One of Michael Vick's co-defendants doesn't want to wait for trial.

Instead, a plea agreement hearing has been scheduled for Tony Taylor at 9 a.m. Monday in the federal dogfighting conspiracy case.

Taylor's hearing was added to U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson's docket Friday, a day after he and the other three defendants pleaded not guilty before the same judge. Vick and the others still are scheduled for trial Nov. 26.

Prosecutors claim Taylor, 34, found the Surry County property purchased by Vick and used it as the site of "Bad Newz Kennels," a dogfighting enterprise. The Hampton man also allegedly helped purchase pit bulls and killed at least two dogs that fared poorly in test fights.

Perhaps Taylor's impending plea will squelch the annoying Old Media comparisons of the Vick case to that of the innocent Duke lacrosse players wrongly indicted by Prosecutor Mike Nifong last year.

A week ago, in probably the most egregious example of Duke-Vick projection, Sports Illustrated writer Peter King appointed himself to be NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's translator:

With the same sentiment that originally brought the spotted owl to fame, Reuters is now concerned that the proposed border fence between the U.S. and Mexico will harm butterflies and other creatures (see also Joe Steigerwald's prior post).

Upon further examination of its July 25 article, Reuters has concentrated on a realtively small forest area in Texas - described as being a "few miles" along the border - which is the habitat for ocelots (wild cats), birds, and over 300 species of butterflies.

In the past four days, the New York Times published two reviews of "Arctic Tale," a new film about polar bears threatened by - wait for it! - global warming.

Makes one wonder whether the need for two reviews versus the normal one was due to the Times's desire to advance alarmism concerning the great, liberal bogeyman of climate change, or that the screenplay was co-written by soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore's daughter Kristin.

Whatever the reason, both articles were certainly chock-full of scary global warming references like the following from Andrew C. Revkin's piece from Sunday (emphasis added throughout):

Imagine if your stomach will let you the following: As the final contestants are about to give their bids during the Showcase Showdown, the host says, “So, did you know that President Bush was involved in bringing down the World Trade Center on 9/11?”

That’ll surely help ratings, won’t it?

Well, if game-show host Bob Barker gets his way, that’s what fans of “The Price is Right” could be seeing on a television near you weekday afternoons.

As reported by the Associated Press Saturday (emphasis added throughout):

The “Clueless” star and animal rights activist, Alicia Silverstone, was the guest directly following the Rosie/Elisabeth dust-up, and it looked like she snubbed Hasselbeck, or did she just make a mistake? When approaching from the token non-liberal’s side of the stage, Silverstone stepped up onto the platform with the couch to greet the hosts and instead of greeting the pregnant Republican in the brightly colored dress, the PETA activist walked right by Hasselbeck’s outstretched hands.  The Republican host actually touched the actress’ arms to welcome her, but Silverstone moved past Hasselbeck and clearly greeted Behar, who was standing directly beside Hasselbeck. She then hugged all of the hosts except Hasselbeck (YouTube video here).

Days after the liberal blogosphere was enraged by a Washington Post column by David Broder concerning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), it only seems fitting that an unnamed Democrat strategist would be quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle with negative things to say about the Netroots.

For those that have forgotten, in September, Broder wrote about “vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left.”

Months later, as California Democrats gathered in San Diego at their annual convention – with their presidential candidates present and accounted for – an anonymous strategist had rather unflattering things to say about bloggers on the left side of the political aisle (h/t Hot Air, emphasis added):

Can you imagine the Today show or other MSM program airing a segment offering advice to men on how to train their wives to display better behavior . . . by treating them like zoo animals? A segment illustrated with footage of hyenas, baboons and other members of the wild kingdom undergoing training? Don't bother to answer.

Yet, incredibly, that's just what the Today show did this morning. Oh, with one small difference. It was a how-to . . . for wives who want to train their husbands.

'Today' introduced the segment this way: "One woman discovered she could train her husband the way they train animals at the zoo. Does your husband act like a sea lion, or a baboon, or a hyena?"