Media Bias

Un-fucking-believable. This is the poll CNN ran on their front page:

I have a couple suggested polls:

• Is John King to attracted to John McCain to cover the Presidential race impartially.
• Does Wolf Blitzer get on your nerves?

If you have any ideas, let's hear them.

Ben Smith has more on this.

Yesterday the news broke of Giuliani and his possible funneling of funds to support some nice vacations. So how does that Washington Post respond? By this front page hit on Obama:

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

So rumors are front page stories? I head a rumor that Perry Bacon, the author of this article, got caught fucking a goat. Maybe the NYTimes can run that on the front page tomorrow.

BarbinMD has more.

Check out this headline from the AP:

So what is that? Could it be troop cuts or defunding the war? NO! This article is about the Republicans filibustering Jim Webb's amendment to give the troops as much time home as they are at war. Anti-war? Fuck you AP - this was a pro-troop bill. It was a pro-military bill, by providing our troops with the rest they need to counter any problem that might face our nation.

AND IT'S CALLED A FILIBUSTER!!!!

You pandering pussies that are destroying the fourth estate. When the Democrats talked of blocking John Roberts confirmation to the Supreme Court all we heard from you was "filibuster". The Republicans have been on a roll obstructing Senate, yet you never mention the word filibuster. Don't believe me? Well here is another example just today:

Senate Rejects Expanding Detainee Rights

Makes it sounds like both these measures failed by a straight up/down vote - don't it? I mean saying "senate rejects" implies that a majority of Senators voted against it. Do your fact checking ASSociated Press. Both these measures were blocked with a filibuster. A majority of Senators wanted to vote on the issues, but the Republicans don't think our troops our Habeas Corpus deserve an up/down vote. And apparently neither does the AP.

This is the man who was exhibiting his outrage over the Don Imus comments tonight on Scarborough Country. He said that these comments get into schools and get kids suspended. Here is the clip of it.

The only problem is that a little over a month ago, Kohn was defending Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" on the same show. What was his defense? Here it is:

KOHN:  Well, that word—the place is in a schoolyard.  I mean, when I was in junior high school, we were using that word all of the time.

So it is bad to say "hoe" in schools, but ok to call someone a faggot? I guess insulting gays is good, but insulting blacks is bad?

Here is an idea. Why don't we make it so that any hate speech is not tolerated and results in the same outcome. That means Ann Coulter is now in the same boat as Don Imus and Bob Kohn was defending her.

Via Atrios:

For much of the past week, CNN and its White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux have offered a steady stream of inaccurate and incomplete coverage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) trip to the Middle East and her April 3 meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Please join Media Matters for America in demanding that CNN and Malveaux stop misinforming viewers about Pelosi's trip and present all the facts. CNN's contact information can be found in our "Take Action!" sidebar on the right.

Since April 2, Malveaux has wrongly and repeatedly claimed that Pelosi had no "standing" and was not acting in an "official capacity," has attacked the trip as "political theater" and a "political stunt," and has parroted the Bush administration's attacks on Pelosi for going to Syria while ignoring the fact that a Republican-led delegation met with Assad on April 1. Most recently, Malveaux asked whether Pelosi's trip was a "big wet kiss to President Al-Assad."

Other CNN personalities have joined in as well. Lou Dobbs devoted an entire segment to "Pelosi's bad trip," while the April 3 edition of Anderson Cooper 360 featured a segment on Pelosi's trip titled "Talking to Terrorists."

After several days of inaccurate, one-sided coverage, it's time to tell CNN enough is enough. It's time to take action.

Use the contact information in our "Take Action!" sidebar to contact CNN, Malveaux, and Dobbs -- and be sure to tell your friends.

Take Action!

Contact information:

CNN
CNN
One CNN Center, Box 105366, Atlanta, GA 30303-5366
Phone: 404-827-1500
Fax: 404-827-1906

When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.

You can take action at Media Matters' website by clicking here.

This is a very interesting development that I am sure Bush is working on blocking:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Gonzales got a morale boost with a phone call from President George W. Bush, their first conversation since a week ago, when the president said he was unhappy with how the Justice Department handled the firings.

Also, the Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists. The administration denied the charge.

(emphasis mine)

Of course Tom Delay is trying to spin this into some sort of "manufactured" scandal:

Former House Republican Leader Tom DeLay had said earlier Tuesday that the scandal "is just a taste of what's going to be like for the next two years."

"And the Bush administration sort of showed their weakness when they got rid of Don Rumsfeld," the Texan said on NBC television's "Today" show. "... This is a made up scandal. There is no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. ... They ought to be fighting back."

Right Tom. Because Congress' time and taxpayers money is better off spent investigating serious items such as blow jobs and Christmas card lists. Interesting that a man under indictment is the person the media wants to turn to for political opinion on this issue. Why don't they just ask Duke Cunningham about Carol Lam or Scooter Libby about Patrick Fitzgerald?

Joe Klein writes this:

Then again, the Republicans are fielding a motley crew right now: if you count Newt Gingrich, who'll probably join the fray in the fall, the four leading candidates have had nine marriages among them: Giuliani three, Gingrich three, McCain two and Romney one. The Republican faithful are left with a devil of a choice: moderate candidates who live like liberals, or religious conservatives who talk like liberals.

But as TPM points out none of the Democratic front-runners have been divorced AT ALL! Perhaps someone should tell Klein that these are Republicans acting like - well Republicans. They are the typical hypocrites.

The flack between Sharpton and Obama is nothing more than that - flack. Kos posted earlier about Sharpton's criticism of Obama and I have to agree. Obama is out talking about his anti-war stance, so why did he support Joe Lieberman? Lieberman has been out blasting Democrats for trying to stop the war and even voted with Republicans in the Senate to filibuster last month's legislation. In other words Sharpton is brining up an extremely valid point.

So why do we have the media placing such attention on this? McCain and Guiliani disagree on issues and it doesn't garner this amount of attention. Same thing can go with any two candidates - they have different views. If every one agreed on everything then we would not need primaries.

Now we have the media showing their racism. We have two African-American candidates who disagree on an issue, and it is the hot story. So what? Aren't African-American's allowed to disagree with other African-Americans? White people disagree with each other all the time, but the media is in shock because Sharpton and Obama aren't in lockstep? I don't know how we will ever get an African-American President in this country if our own media has such a race bias.