Media Bias Examples

[kernel crash]

Maybe its time to collect some of these in one location for public viewing and discussion.

"So what do you do if you're reporting on an MSNBC interview with McCain adviser Carly Fiorina in which she states that neither of the major party presidential candidates nor their vice presidential running mates qualify to run a major corporation? If you're the folks at CNNPolitics.com, you headline the story "McCain adviser Fiorina: Palin not ready to run a corporation.""


http://newsbusters.org/blogs/michael-m-bates/2008/09/17/cnnpolitics-com-mccain-adviser-fiorina-palin-not-ready-run-corporat

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Here's another from Olbermann. Actually this may be less about bias and just outright stupidity on Olbermans part.

"the MSNBC host charged that it was "sick" for Palin to tout herself as an advocate for special needs children after she had, in Olbermann’s words, "gutted" funding for the Alaska Special Olympics. But Olbermann ignored the recent finding by FactCheck.org that, as governor, Palin secured a substantial increase in state spending for special needs children in the education system, thus strengthening her credentials as a advocate for special needs children."

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html

"It's not true, as widely reported in mass e-mails, Web postings and at least one mainstream news source, that Palin slashed the special education budget in Alaska by 62 percent. CNN's Soledad O'Brien made the claim on Sept. 4 in an interview with Nicolle Wallace, a senior adviser to the McCain campaign:

O'Brien, Sept. 4: One are that has gotten certainly people sending to me a lot of e-mails is the question about as governor what she did with the special needs budget, which I'm sure you're aware, she cut significantly, 62 percent I think is the number from when she came into office. As a woman who is now a mother to a special needs child, and I think she actually has a nephew which is autistic as well. How much of a problem is this going to be as she tries to navigate both sides of that issue?

Such a move might have made Palin look heartless or hypocritical in view of her convention-speech pledge to be an advocate for special needs children and their families. But in fact, she increased special needs funding so dramatically that a representative of local school boards described the jump as "historic."

According to an April 2008 article in Education Week, Palin signed legislation in March 2008 that would increase public school funding considerably, including special needs funding. In particular, it would increase spending for certain special needs students that Alaska calls "intensive needs" (students with high-cost special requirements) from $26,900 per student in 2008 to $73,840 per student in 2011. That almost triples the per-student spending in three fiscal years. Palin's original proposal, according to the Anchorage Daily News, would have increased funds slightly more, giving intensive needs students a $77,740 allotment by 2011.

Education Week: A second part of the measure raises spending for students with special needs [the intensive needs group] to $73,840 in fiscal 2011, from the current $26,900 per student in fiscal 2008, according to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development."

[BG]

"Maybe its time to collect some of these in one location for public viewing and discussion."

Oh good grief....WHY???

[Slider]

I'm with you. The media are biased. This is some sort of revelation?

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[Mr_Cheeze]

"Maybe its time to collect some of these in one location for public viewing and discussion."

Oh good grief....WHY???

This is why...

Agenda (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rG0P_FONlg)

Goal Assole (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SBs9eEaX_c)

[BG]

Now you've gone and made me smile...

[Slider]

Here's media bias for ya. McCain: The NYTimes is "150 percent in the tank for Obama" and he cited the story that a McCain aide was paid by a firm representing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as an example of false reporting. Um, the Times was right.

Claims of bias are just more GOP BS to deflect appropriate, critical stories. Sarah Palin has had an easy ride if anything. I am looking forward to the results of the investigation of the Monegan termination. Oh yeah, more bias in that one too, right? Stonewalling - that trick sure sounds familiar.

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McCain Aide’s Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac
By JACKIE CALMES and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON — One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a remark by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the two people said.

They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than to speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of his close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.

Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis Manafort for the presidential campaign, but as an equity holder continues to benefit from its income. No one at Davis Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said.

A Freddie Mac spokeswoman said the company would not comment.

Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for the McCain campaign, did not dispute the payments to Mr. Davis’s firm. But she said that Mr. Davis had stopped taking a salary from the firm by the end of 2006 and that his work did not affect Mr. McCain.

“Senator McCain’s positions on policy matters are based upon what he believes to be in the public interest,” Ms. Hazelbaker said in a written statement.

The disclosure comes at a time when Mr. McCain and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, are sparring over ties to lobbyists and special interests, seeking political advantage in a campaign being reshaped by the financial crisis and the plan to bail out investment firms.

Mr. McCain’s campaign has been attacking Mr. Obama for ties to former officials of the mortgage giants, both of which have a long history of cultivating Democratic and Republican allies alike to fend off efforts to restrict their activities. Mr. McCain has been running a television advertisement suggesting that Mr. Obama takes advice on housing issues from Franklin D. Raines, former chief executive of Fannie Mae, a contention denied by Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign.

Freddie Mac’s payments of roughly $500,000 to Davis Manafort, the people familiar with the arrangement said, began in late 2005, immediately after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae disbanded an advocacy coalition that they had set up and hired Mr. Davis to run.

From 2000 to the end of 2005, Mr. Davis received nearly $2 million as president of the coalition, the Homeownership Alliance, which the companies created to help them oppose new regulations and protect their status as federally chartered companies with implicit government backing. That status let them borrow cheaply, helping to fuel rapid growth but also their increased purchases of the risky mortgage securities that proved to be their downfall.

The payments that Mr. Davis received for leading the Homeownership Alliance were reported in Monday’s issue of The New York Times. On Sunday, in an interview with CNBC and The Times, Mr. McCain responded to a question about that tie between Mr. Davis and the two mortgage companies by saying that he “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”

Such assertions, along with McCain campaign television advertisements tying Mr. Obama to former Fannie Mae chiefs, have riled current and former officials of the two companies and provoked them to volunteer rebuttals.

The two people with direct knowledge of Freddie Mac’s post-2005 contract with Mr. Davis spoke on condition of anonymity. Four outside consultants — three Democrats and a Republican, also speaking on condition of anonymity — said the arrangement was widely known among people involved in Freddie Mac’s efforts to influence policy makers.

As president of the Homeownership Alliance, Mr. Davis received $30,000 to $35,000 a month. He, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have characterized the alliance as a coalition of many housing industry and consumer groups to promote homeownership, but numerous current and former officials at both companies say the companies created and bankrolled the operation to combat efforts by competitors to rein in their business. The companies dissolved the group at the end of 2005 as part of cost-cutting in the wake of accounting scandals and, at Freddie Mac, a lobbying scandal that forced out its top Republican lobbyist.

On Monday, the McCain campaign attacked The Times for its account of those payments to Mr. Davis, saying the paper was “150 percent in the tank” for Mr. Obama. Mr. Davis said that he had worked not for the two companies but for the advocacy group, which included other organizations as well and, he said, was focused only on promoting homeownership.

After the Homeownership Alliance was dissolved, Mr. Davis asked to stay on a retainer, the people familiar with the deal said. Hollis McLoughlin, who was chief of staff to Richard F. Syron, Freddie Mac’s chief executive, arranged for a new contract with Davis Manafort at the reduced rate of $15,000 a month, they said.

Mr. Syron lost his job in the government takeover this month. Mr. McLoughlin, who through a spokeswoman declined to comment, was a chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady in the administration of the first President Bush and has longstanding Republican ties.

Mr. Davis’s firm was hired as a consultant, not a lobbyist. Davis Manafort in recent years has filed federal lobbying reports for a number of companies, but not Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae.

The only thing that Freddie Mac officials could recall Mr. Davis’s doing for the company was speaking at the October 2006 pre-election forum, attended by midlevel and senior executives who contributed to Freddie PAC, the company’s political action committee.

An electronic invitation to those employees, read to The Times by a Freddie Mac official, said, “Please join us for political food for thought” with Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic consultant, “and Rick Davis, former 2000 presidential campaign manager and current adviser to Senator John McCain.” Mr. Begala, who was also a paid consultant to Freddie Mac until this month, confirmed that the event had taken place.

Several top McCain campaign officials have ties to either Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. So do at least two McCain advisers outside the campaign. The lobbying firm of William E. Timmons Sr., the Republican whom Mr. McCain has enlisted to plan his transition to the White House, earned nearly $3 million from Freddie Mac from 2000 until its seizure, federal lobbying records show. Mr. Timmons is the founder of Timmons & Company, one of Washington’s best-known lobbying shops. The payments to the firm were first reported Tuesday by Bloomberg News.

And Mark Buse, chief of staff at Mr. McCain’s Senate office, is also a Freddie Mac alumnus. He and his former lobbying employer, ML Strategies, registered to lobby for the company in July 2003, and had received $460,000 by the time the association ended after 2004.

Mr. McCain and his advisers have argued that whatever connections Mr. Davis and other campaign officials have had to the mortgage giants, the senator has been an advocate of reforming them.

And they have suggested that Mr. Obama is linked to the companies through donations from their employees and ties to former officials there. Those officials include James A. Johnson, another former chief executive of Fannie Mae, who headed Mr. Obama’s vice-presidential search team until stepping aside after coming under criticism for having received a mortgage on preferential terms from the Countrywide Financial Corporation.

Since his campaign for the Senate, in 2004, Mr. Obama has received about $126,000 in contributions from employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while Mr. McCain has received about $22,000 over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

[Mr_Cheeze]

Except that he's right about the NYTimes being in the talk for any Democrat. Unless you can tell me the last time they endorsed a Republican for anything Federal.

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I wouldn't disagree that the Times editorial policy is liberal. That's obvious. McCain was talking about their reporting, not their editoral policy.

His whine was pretty transparent, along the lines of 'He doth protest too much", since he was citing a 100% accurate news story to prove bias. Misdirection all the way, and he was caught red-handed.

Unless, of couse, he simply didn't know, like with Palin, because he never bothered to investigate. That would be a lot more scary.

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[Mr_Cheeze]

I wouldn't disagree that the Times editorial policy is liberal. That's obvious. McCain was talking about their reporting, not their editoral policy.

His whine was pretty transparent, along the lines of 'He doth protest too much", since he was citing a 100% accurate news story to prove bias. Misdirection all the way, and he was caught red-handed.

Unless, of couse, he simply didn't know, like with Palin, because he never bothered to investigate. That would be a lot more scary.

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Well, he did state that he believes "the fundamentals of this economy are strong."

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Thanks to all that deregulation he's managed to implement...

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[kernel crash]

Maybe this is why Katie Couric or Brian Williams would rather keep the conversation on Sarah Palin...

Fannie and Freddie were where big-time Washington Democrats went to work and pocketed millions. Franklin Raines, Clinton's White House Budget Director, ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick, an official in Clinton's Justice Department -- the woman who built the "wall" that prevented the FBI from targeting terrorists before 9/11 -- worked for Fannie Mae and took home $26 million. Big-time Democrat Jim Johnson, who headed Obama's VP search committee, also hauled in millions from running Fannie Mae. The top three U.S. Senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats, and No. 2 was Sen. Barack Obama.

Oh where's the outrage from Slider. Can you imagine if these guys were Republicans?

New York Times
September 30, 1999

"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits...

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F9582 60&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

[Scott O]

Keith Oberman is impartial, isn't he?

[Slider]

Oh where's the outrage from Slider. Can you imagine if these guys were Republicans?



Outrage over what? Lobbyist money flows freely thoughout Washington. No secret there, and it sure isn't specific to the Dems. To make your point, you'd have to show legislation that resulted from that money, otherwise it's just smoke.

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[kernel crash]

Show legislation? That's funny even from you. That's not the way this paper trail works. The payoff to the Democrats running Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac is to PREVENT legislation from being written to force them to clean up there act. Remember Barney Frank was quoted just a few years ago saying that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were on solid ground and that the critizism was unfounded. Here's the quote:

"These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Rep. Barney Frank, then ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Nice job Barney. But don't worry. I'm sure your re-election is not in doubt.

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McCain is among the biggest backers of banking deregulation in the Senate. I am completely missing your point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUJ_Qn0AHTU

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[BG]

I prefer to belive this...



The Real Culprits In This Meltdown
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 15, 2008
Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.


Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.
But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Reinvestment Act*, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."
Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.
And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.
As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.
Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.
Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.
In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.
But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.
At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.
The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying for Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a whole new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact, the social experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great Society and New Deal in size and scope.
There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our peril. If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons. And taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the road.
But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if misguided, acts.
Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government solutions.
While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.
Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government's fingerprints all over it.

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I am completely missing your point.
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Your missing more than that. (I'm sure you know how to google this)


On May 25, 2006, McCain spoke on behalf of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, and warned against the debacle we are now facing if it failed to pass.
He told the Senate that a report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight charged that "Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives."
McCain warned, "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o

[Slider]

Your missing more than that. (I'm sure you know how to google this)

On May 25, 2006, McCain spoke on behalf of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, and warned against the debacle we are now facing if it failed to pass.
He told the Senate that a report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight charged that "Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives."
McCain warned, "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o

You do recall who ran both houses in lockstep at that time, right? It was the GOP that failed to rein them in.

But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac never wrote subprime mortgages. Their problems arose partly from mismanagement and partly from the broader credit crunch that the housing collapse brought about. Those problems stem from banking deregulation, and McCain was a prime proponent.

Clinton had a heathy economy to work with. The GOP never understood the difference and screwed us all. Even now Republicans in the House are trying to tack on tax cuts to the bailout bill. Tax cuts! Insane.

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[Mr_Cheeze]

I don't know how anybody can honestly come to the conclusion that any specific party is to blame. Of course it's easy to blame the people under whose watch a problem arises, but this banking crisis indeed has plenty of blame to pass around. Greed, corruption and politics on both sides contributed. I'm not sure what is proved by saying "not my party's fault". Besides being disingenuous, or at best ignorant, it threatens to make any progress less than productive.

Slider, you shouldn't be complaining about the GOP's usual attempt at adding in tax breaks when the Democrats are just as complicit with adding more needless education and social spending.

[Slider]

The big change came with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999. It set in motion the meltdown we see now. It was a Republican bill, but the Dems in the Senate did support it after some negotiation. But there is really no denying that the general idea of deregulation is a major plank in almost any GOP platform. Sometimes it makes sense; this time it might have sent the world into a depression.

I can't quite put spending on education or social issues on a par with tax breaks for the wealthy, sorry. But, again, it all depends on the specifics. Right now, no tax breaks make sense. We are taking a $700billion dollar hit, or at least some major part of it, on the expenditure side now. We need all the revenue we can amass. Pulling out of Iraq would help lots.

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Liberal bias in the media? This story shows exactly the opposite. CBS was trying to suck up to those in power when they hung Rather out to dry and stacked the deck when they 'investigated' the Bush military story, which turned out to be factual.

CBS wanted to be in a better position to sell more ads, the real corrupter of fairness in the media. Looks like Rather will get to call them on it in court.

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NY Times
November 17, 2008
Rather’s Lawsuit Shows Role of G.O.P. in Inquiry
By JACQUES STEINBERG
When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago — claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation into his work on a “60 Minutes” segment about President Bush’s National Guard service — the network predicted the quick and favorable dismissal of the case, which it derided as “old news.”

So far, Mr. Rather has spent more than $2 million of his own money on the suit. And according to documents filed recently in court, he may be getting something for his money.

Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including the power of subpoena and the threat of punishment against witnesses who lie under oath — he has unearthed evidence that would seem to support his assertion that CBS intended its investigation, at least in part, to quell Republican criticism of the network.

Among the materials that money has shaken free for Mr. Rather are internal CBS memorandums turned over to his lawyers, showing that network executives used Republican operatives to vet the names of potential members of a panel that had been billed as independent and charged with investigating the “60 Minutes” segment.

Mr. Rather attracted the ire of Republican bloggers and talk radio in particular after the segment, which was broadcast on a weekday edition of “60 Minutes” in September 2004. It purported to have unearthed evidence about favorable treatment extended to President Bush during his Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard.

The network eventually responded to its critics by saying it could no longer vouch for the authenticity of the documents on which the report had been based. The network also commissioned an investigation led by Dick Thornburgh, a prominent Republican and former United States attorney general, and Louis D. Boccardi, a former chief executive of The Associated Press, not so much to verify the documents, but to determine how the segment got on the air.

In its final report, which was issued in January 2005, the panel cited a breakdown in standards by CBS in rushing the Bush segment onto the air but found no evidence of liberal bias in CBS’s preparation of the segment.

By the time the panel’s report was issued, Mr. Rather had already announced that, under pressure, he would step down as anchor of “CBS Evening News.” But he did not leave the network until more than a year later.

In September 2007, he filed the $70 million lawsuit charging that CBS had violated his contract and that the investigation was compromised. A New York State Supreme Court judge has since jettisoned parts of the suit, including Mr. Rather’s contention that CBS had engaged in fraud.

But the judge has permitted Mr. Rather to go forward with the core of his case, including his argument that CBS had limited his work as a correspondent after he left the anchor desk and, in the process, damaged his reputation. The case is on track to go to trial soon, possibly early in the new year.

Those who have worked on the case with Mr. Rather, 77, say he has approached it with the zeal of a correspondent trying to report out a “60 Minutes” segment about himself, burying himself in deposition transcripts late into the night and providing his lawyers with road maps of leads he thinks they should pursue. He rarely misses a court hearing on the case.

“I want to go the distance,” Mr. Rather said recently over a lunch of chili and cornbread at a barbecue restaurant. “Like any good reporter, I want to get as many as facts as possible; I want to get to the bottom of the story.”

Some of the documents unearthed by his investigation include notes taken at the time by Linda Mason, a vice president of CBS News. According to her notes, one potential panel member, Warren Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, was deemed a less-than-ideal candidate over fears by some that he would not “mollify the right.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Thornburgh, who served as attorney general for both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, was named a panelist by CBS, but only after a CBS lobbyist “did some other testing,” in which she was told, according to Ms. Mason’s notes, “T comes back with high marks from G.O.P.”

Another memorandum turned over to Mr. Rather’s lawyers by CBS was a long typed list of conservative commentators apparently receiving some preliminary consideration as panel members, including Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan. At the bottom of that list, someone had scribbled “Roger Ailes,” the founder of Fox News.

Asked about the assembly of the panel in a sworn deposition, Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News, acknowledged that he had wanted at least one member to sit well with conservatives: “CBS News, fairly or unfairly, had a reputation for liberal bias,” and “the harshest scrutiny was obviously going to come from the right.”

Other documents, meanwhile, suggest that Ms. Mason, who reported to Mr. Heyward, was getting updates from panel investigators on some of their findings, at a point when CBS News was telling outsiders that the network was staying out of the investigation.

Jim Quinn, a lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who is representing CBS, said in an interview that whatever Mr. Rather had learned in the discovery process would not help his case. He said it was the network that had gained the most ground, especially in persuading the judge to dismiss five of the seven original claims by Mr. Rather, as well any claims against individual CBS executives. CBS is believed to be spending about as much on its defense as Mr. Rather is spending.

Mr. Quinn also said CBS would consider asking for a summary dismissal of the case, once the process of discovery had concluded. “Either on summary judgment or at trial, we feel very comfortable we’ll succeed,” he said. “We feel the case is meritless.”

Still, Chaim B. Book, a Manhattan employment lawyer who is not connected to the case, said that Mr. Rather and his team had already reached something of a milestone.

“Getting through discovery and getting a case significantly closer to trial, in and of itself, is an achievement,” Mr. Book said. “Discovery, besides being expensive and time-consuming, can lead to embarrassing disclosures.”

One of Mr. Rather’s initial goals was to compel depositions of many of his former bosses and colleagues under oath. Thus far, in addition to Mr. Heyward and Ms. Mason, his lawyers have questioned Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS; Gil Schwartz, executive vice president of communications for CBS; Sandra Genelius, a former CBS News spokeswoman; and Michael J. Missal, who helped oversee the panel report on behalf of Mr. Thornburgh.

Each could conceivably be called to testify in open court, as could Sumner M. Redstone, executive chairman of CBS. (Mr. Rather’s lawyers have expressed interest in deposing Mr. Redstone, a request the judge, Ira Gammerman, has neither granted nor ruled out.)

The day after Election Day, the two sides squared off in Judge Gammerman’s courtroom in State Supreme Court in Manhattan over a request by Mr. Rather’s lawyers, led by Martin R. Gold of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, to gain access to several thousand documents that were used by the investigative panel to compile its report, including notes from interviews and e-mail messages from top executives.

Lawyers representing the panel have resisted Mr. Rather’s request for documents, citing attorney-client privilege. At the same time, CBS suggested in its latest filing that Mr. Rather was engaging “in nothing more than an intrusive and expensive fishing expedition.”

In court in July, Judge Gammerman spoke openly about the extraordinary attention that a Rather-versus-CBS trial would attract and reassured the lawyers that, having previously tried cases involving Woody Allen and Rosie O’Donnell, he could promise both sides a fair hearing.

“And I tried a case involving Joan Collins,” he said, adding that, despite intense publicity, “the jury was able to reach what was a reasonable decision.”

[kernel crash]

Please. If you think this one example tilts the scale towards an un-bias free press, well your all alone on that island. Besides until this gets hashed out in the courtroom all this is just fluff.

[Slider]

Hashed out in court? It isn't a criminal trial. There is no gag order. With the addition of those in this story, most of the facts are pretty well known, other than the notes that the panel used that Rather is chasing.

I think it is a great example of the corporate goals undermining the principles of journalism. I think that profitability is the underlying goal of all media outlets. I think liberal media bias is a complete fabrication cooked up by the GOP to ward off the impact of any story they don't happen to like.

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[Mr_Cheeze]

I think liberal media bias is a complete fabrication cooked up by the GOP to ward off the impact of any story they don't happen to like.

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Why is it that those who hold the most obvious political bias are the last to recognize a particular media bias or the first to deny its presence, when it happens to lean their way?

Rather got ousted because he let his personal politics get in the way of his journalism. Of course, they all do it to some degree. Fox gets away with it because of the corporate entity that governs it. Explain how NBC get away with it. Or ABC, to a lesser degree. It's there, whether or not you care to recognize it. Perhaps not as overt as FOX, but it's there. Cripes, MSNBC has positioned itself as the direct competitor to FOX News, only without the sensationalism.

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I am not saying there isn't bias, but it isn't liberal versus conservative. It is whatever the target market the company in question focuses on is versus all the other target markets. There is just as much money to be made selling ad space to both sides of the aisle, so the market dictates that they are both equally represented among media companies. This is simple supply and demand, one of the foundations for conservative economics. Kind of ironic that the right would try to say it doesn't apply, don't you think?

Rather didn't do anything like what you suggest. He thought the documents were real when he cited them, and retracted, along with CBS when they found out otherwise. It was a mistake, not an ambition-driven fraud. CBS's blame and firing of Rather goes a lot deeper, and that's what the suit is about.

Retraction - that's something Fox never heard of. Still awaiting the admission of error on the reports that Obama voted against condemnation in the Petraeus/'betray us' thing. Ain't gonna happen.

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Notice a trend here from the liberal side of the aisle?

"Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled "Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story." Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama's campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue -- "Obama's American Dream" -- filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

"The Obamas' New Life!" blares People's cover, with a shot of the family. "New home, new friends, new puppy!" Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: "I Think I'm a Pretty Cool Dad." The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle "is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- combined!" for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed "Generation O"?

But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/16/AR2008111602374_pf.html

[Mr_Cheeze]

Rather didn't do anything like what you suggest. He thought the documents were real when he cited them, and retracted, along with CBS when they found out otherwise. It was a mistake, not an ambition-driven fraud. CBS's blame and firing of Rather goes a lot deeper, and that's what the suit is about.

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Wow, talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. Dude, Dan Rather is an avowed and loyal Democrat. His "mistake" may have been just that, but it was most certainly driven by an ambition that clouded his judgment. And it gave CBS an opening to do what corporations do all the time, oust the old and make way for the lesser paid new. I grant you that. But let's not make believe that Dan Rather was just an honest journalist trying to uncover the truth. He was a John Kerry shill.

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Did you read the story? What facts do you have that aren't there? Or, what interpretation are you bringing that I missed?

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[Mr_Cheeze]

What facts? Um, the fact that Rather was an obvious Kerry shill motivated to push a story, at all costs, that would hurt a Republican's chance at reelection. That part of the story seems conspicuously absent. Or maybe you just conveniently would like to forget that part.

Oh, wait. This is the New York Times. And here I was expecting unbiased journalism.

You want to harp on CBS ousting Rather. Fine. He was unfairly fired. Whatever. It doesn't change the fact that he basically worked for the Democratic party.

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Wikipedia has a good recap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents

Seems that he bought the validity of the docs to me.

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[Mr_Cheeze]

Why are you so unwilling to acknowledge Rather's personal m.o.? Nevermind CBS for the moment.

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I don't care if he has/had a bias. I've said many times that everyone has. I'm saying he believed the docs to be true at the time he referenced them.

Remember, the story was substantially true. Bush got preferred treatment to get into the program and went AWOL with no consequences. It was the specific docs in question that were suspect, and Rather didn't go as deep in confirmation as he should have. But that transgression is so minor compared to what passes for journalism these days as to be inconsequential. Both CBS and Rather retracted, remember.

You want bias - see the internal 'investigation' at CBS that followed, when they considered a Who's Who of righties to run things. Since the topic at hand is media bias, it seems the only bias here is tilted right, contrary to, but maybe as a result of, the "Liberal Media" label the GOP has manufactured. CBS had no balls and caved to the power.

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[Mr_Cheeze]

Ok, but you wanted to gloss over the reason why Rather was so willing to believe the veracity of those documents. He had Fox Mulder syndrome. He wanted to believe. Just like all of those morons who continue to want to believe that there were WMD and that Iraq was somehow connected to al Qaeda. That's all I was saying. Rather wanted to take Bush down. Nevermind journalistic integrity. It took a back seat to his personal bias. I have a hard time feeling sorry for Dan Rather.

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You want bias - see the internal 'investigation' at CBS that followed, when they considered a Who's Who of righties to run things. Since the topic at hand is media bias, it seems the only bias here is tilted right, contrary to, but maybe as a result of, the "Liberal Media" label the GOP has manufactured. CBS had no balls and caved to the power.

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I think CBS was so worried about the damage to their reputation that maybe they bent a bit too far in the other direction so they could try to create an air of objectivity. Either way it all comes back to one form or another of manipulation of the news and how the message gets out there. It's still bad news for the rest of us. Isn't it interesting how McCain is a portrayed as a "nice guy" again in the media. Meanwhile how well did the media "educate" the public on some very basic facts about the candidates.

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/223033.html

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You think considering Bill O'Reilly for ANYTHING is part of an effort for objectivity? I don't think that was the point at all. It was pure pandering, and it wasn't leftward.

The vid is just plain stupid. It says nothing about how informed any group is, just how easy it is to find idiots willing to talk on camera. You control bias like that with adequate sample size and methods to insure representative sampling. The producer of the vid could have as easily shown that McCain supporters believe in UFOs if he wanted.

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"The producer of the vid could have as easily shown that McCain supporters believe in UFOs if he wanted."

Maybe but Zogby stands behind this poll and besides, I've witness the same thing when I talked to Obama supporters.

"We stand by the results our survey work on behalf of John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to test the knowledge of voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 election. Push polls are a malicious effort to sway public opinion one way or the other, while message and knowledge testing is quite another effort of public opinion research that is legitimate inquiry and has value in the public square. In this case, the respondents were given a full range of responses and were not pressured or influenced to respond in one way or another. This poll was not designed to hurt anyone, which is obvious as it was conducted after the election. The client is free to draw his own conclusions about the research, as are bloggers and other members of society. But Zogby International is a neutral party in this matter. We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that's exactly what we did. We don't have to agree or disagree with the questions, we simply ask them and provide the client with a fair and accurate set of data reflecting public opinion." - John Zogby

"Zogby Poll: Almost No Obama Voters Ace Election Test

Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden"

"After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace," said Ziegler.

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1642

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And how did the McCain voters fare? We don't know, because they didn't ask. Info in a void that large means nothing.

Despite all the percentages and other info, they don't provide the questions themselves, the sampling methods, how many dials it took to find the included answers, or all the other things that determine the validity of a poll. It's crap even if you ignore the main skew - the focus on only part of the voting public.

It is really no secret that the American public is ill-informed. Pick any group and any topic and you'll get the same results. Take McCain voters and ask about Ayers, for example. People STILL think they have some sort of relationship, thanks to GOP propaganda. That's what marketing is for.

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Take McCain voters and ask about Ayers, for example. People STILL think they have some sort of relationship, ...
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But they do. If you invited me over your house to help me launch my campaign most would think that we had some sort of "relationship". If we sat on several boards together and passed money and influence back and forth, most would see that as having some kind of relationship. It's the nature and depth of that relationship that has not been vetted in the MSM.

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Lets see... Ayers says they barely crossed paths. Obama says they barely crossed paths. NO ONE who was there says otherwise.

What are you basing your opinion on, if not the classic smear that the McCain campaign fabricated?

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What are you basing your opinion on, if not the classic smear that the McCain campaign fabricated?

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No smear just Common Sense. (It goes back to being invited over to the house.) Would you expect a politician like Obama, during a run for the presidency, to admit to a friendship with somebody like Ayers? Don't worry if you don't see it now. You'll have 4 years to get a good look at it up close.

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Let's explore this 'common sense.' I read that some guy on a mountain bike did a drive by in New Haven and killed some kids. You ride a mountain bike. Prove it wasn't you.

The reasoning is the same. Obama served on a board many years ago. Also on that board was Ayers, who, BTW, was never charged with a crime. Later, when he ran for office in Chicago, Obama was in Ayers house, along with, most likely, anyone else involved in community politics. And he was in a lot more houses, too. In case you don't get it, that's how you campaign at the roots level.

Obama says that is the extent of the relationship. There's no way to prove otherwise, which is why something like this is used in a smear campaign. Those who can't see the inherent fallacy fall for it, mission accomplished.

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