1. CBS's Regan Repeatedly Labels Bush-Lieberman 'Kiss' as 'Infamous'
Twice on Tuesday, CBS News correspondent Trish Regan labeled as "infamous" the embrace, derided as "The Kiss" by supporters of Connecticut Senate hopeful Ned Lamont, between President George W. Bush and incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in the well of the House after Bush's 2005 State of the Union address. Regan didn't attribute the characterization to Lieberman's opponents. She stated it as fact. On the Early Show she explained over brief video of the event: "Ned Lamont has used this now infamous kiss to his advantage on campaign buttons and television ads, suggesting Lieberman is just too cozy with the President." Then on the CBS Evening News, Regan asserted over the same video: "His campaign has used images like this now infamous kiss."

2. NBC's Today Broods: 'License To Kill, Self-Defense Gone Too Far?'
As more and more states recognize the basic right to defend yourself, NBC's Today, not surprisingly, took a dim view. On Tuesday's Today, Ron Mott in a segment headlined by the graphic: "License To Kill, Self-Defense Gone Too Far?", slanted his story with alarmist rhetoric and unbalanced talking heads. Matt Lauer introduced the story: "Now a debate. How far can you go in the name of self-defense? In a growing number of states people have much more leeway to use deadly force. Supporters say that's a good thing but critics argue it's a case of shoot first and ask questions later. We have more on this now from NBC's Ron Mott." Mott then began the segment portraying the right-to-self-defense laws as a path to anarchy: "Has the 'Wild, Wild West,' gone South?"

3. Most Think Media 'Hurt' America by Revealing Terrorist Tracking
A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey released Tuesday discovered, by "by a margin of 50 percent to 34 percent, Americans think that news organizations have hurt rather than helped the interests of the American people" with "news reports that the government has been secretly examining the bank records of American citizens who may have ties to terrorist groups." However, "an even larger 65 percent to 28 percent majority believes that these news accounts told citizens something that they should know about." Republicans are much more upset with the media than Democrats, the poll, conducted July 6-19, found: "While nearly seven in ten Republicans (69 percent) believe the press reports have hurt the interests of the American people," with a piddling 17 percent of Republicans contending it helped, "relatively few Democrats agree (38 percent). Instead, a 46 percent plurality of Democrats regards the press reporting as beneficial to the public's interest."

4. Gallup: Dems Hold More Favorable Views of Rather, Couric, Vieira
A week after a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey determined that a much higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans prefer to get their news from the broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC and NPR, a new Gallup Poll released Tuesday provides additional evidence that Democrats look more favorably upon the "mainstream media" as Gallup showed how "Democrats are more favorable than Republicans in their views" of eleven of 17 news personalities respondents were asked to assess. Dan Rather had the greatest net difference -- 38 percent -- with 86 percent of Democrats viewing him favorably, compared to just 48 percent of Republicans. Only two of the 17 news personalities (Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera) got more favorable evaluations from Republicans than Democrats. Others with a significant Democratic versus Republican approval gap include the incoming CBS Evening News anchor and the new co-host of NBC's Today: 17 points for Katie Couric (68% vs. 51%) and 15 points for Meredith Vieira (45% vs. 30%).

5. PBS Slams 'Market' Slavery, Bush's Dictatorial Wishes for Press
Friday night's edition of Now with David Brancaccio on PBS followed the old Bill Moyers formula of two leftists having an echo-chamber conversation. Brancaccio and Berkeley journalism dean Orville Schell agreed and agreed about how the press aren't liberal enough, the people don't want another Watergate/Vietnam era enough, and the free market can't be counted on to provide "independent" (read: thoroughly ultraliberal) journalism. "We're all [a] slave to the market," Brancaccio suggested. Since Schell was a China scholar, Brancaccio even suggested the current administration might be inspired in their devotion to squelching the press by the Chinese communists. "I'm not sure I want to give government ideas on this particular point, but maybe our government could look to China, which has really raised this notion of, of censorship of their news media to almost a scientific level."

CBS's Regan Repeatedly Labels Bush-Lieberman
'Kiss' as 'Infamous'

     Twice on Tuesday, CBS News correspondent Trish Regan labeled as "infamous" the embrace, derided as "The Kiss" by supporters of Connecticut Senate hopeful Ned Lamont, between President George W. Bush and incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in the well of the House after Bush's 2005 State of the Union address. Regan didn't attribute the characterization to Lieberman's opponents. She stated it as fact. On the Early Show she explained over brief video of the event: "Ned Lamont has used this now infamous kiss to his advantage on campaign buttons and television ads, suggesting Lieberman is just too cozy with the President." Then on the CBS Evening News, Regan asserted over the same video: "His campaign has used images like this now infamous kiss."

     ABC's Jake Tapper, in contrast, managed to avoid such loaded terminology on Tuesday's World News when he delivered this sentence over video of Bush and Lieberman followed by a "The Kiss" button and a look at a truck carrying check-to-cheek Bush and Lieberman figures: "Liberals perceive Lieberman as too close to Bush, especially on the war, encapsulated with this presidential embrace, an image Lamont supporters have made iconic."

     [This item was posted Tuesday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The Oxford Dictionary, built-in to the WordPerfect I'm using to write this, defines "infamous" as "well known for some bad quality or deed" and "morally bad; shocking." Dictionary.com defines "infamous" as "Having an exceedingly bad reputation; notorious." and "Causing or deserving infamy; heinous: an infamous deed." See: dictionary.reference.com

     The MRC's Michael Rule caught Regan's "infamous" reference on Tuesday's The Early Show.

     A partial transcript of Regan's August 8 CBS Evening News story from Hartford:

     Trish Regan: "...Businessman Ned Lamont went from political obscurity to front-runner with a one-issue campaign: Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq."
     Lamont: "I think George Bush rushed us into this war. I think Joe Lieberman cheered him on every step of the way and that those that got us into this mess should be held accountable."
     Regan: "That message has propelled Lamont to a six-point lead in the polls. His campaign has used images like this now infamous kiss and television ads-"
     Announcer of ad with video transforming Lieberman's face into Bush's: "He talks like George W. Bush and acts like George W. Bush-"
     Regan: "-to portray the President and Lieberman as one in the same..."

NBC's Today Broods: 'License To Kill,
Self-Defense Gone Too Far?'

     As more and more states recognize the basic right to defend yourself, NBC's Today, not surprisingly, took a dim view. On Tuesday's Today, Ron Mott in a segment headlined by the graphic: "License To Kill, Self-Defense Gone Too Far?", slanted his story with alarmist rhetoric and unbalanced talking heads.

     Matt Lauer introduced the story: "Now a debate. How far can you go in the name of self-defense? In a growing number of states people have much more leeway to use deadly force. Supporters say that's a good thing but critics argue it's a case of shoot first and ask questions later. We have more on this now from NBC's Ron Mott."

     Mott then began the segment portraying the right-to-self-defense laws as a path to anarchy: "Has the 'Wild, Wild West,' gone South?" Mott went on to air three talking heads opposed to the laws including two supposed "victims" of the self-defense to just one talking head from the NRA. Mott could've interviewed any number of ordinary men and women that have protected themselves and/or property against criminals but didn't, thereby humanizing the anti-self-defense law side. Mott then continued to scaremonger: "Many opponents fear the laws could actually encourage some people to settle minor disputes with deadly force, allowing claims of self-defense to over power what some critics say could be criminal intent."

     [This item, by Geoff Dickens, was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The following is the full transcript of the August 8 segment:

     Matt Lauer: "Now a debate. How far can you go in the name of self-defense? In a growing number of states people have much more leeway to use deadly force. Supporters say that's a good thing but critics argue it's a case of shoot first and ask questions later. We have more on this now from NBC's Ron Mott."
     Graphic: License To Kill, Self-Defense Gone Too Far?
     Ron Mott: "Has the wild, wild west gone south? Rather than run away this Florida prostitute shot and killed a 72-year-old customer with his gun when he got up to answer the phone. Self-defense, no charges. In West Palm Beach."
     Woman: "I never dreamed it was gonna be my son."
     Mott: "This woman's son was killed by a cab driver."
     Woman: "'If you don't get out of my cab I'm gonna kill you.'"
     Mott: "The cabbie says he killed Jimmy Morningstar in self-defense but he still faces murder charges. That's because the shooting happened before the passage of a new state law saying force can be met with force whether at home or in public."
     Chris Cox, National Rifle Association: "You can either run or if you think the best way to survive the attack is to defend yourself you have that option."
     Mott: "14 states, nearly half in the traditional South, followed Florida's lead last October expanding self-defense laws, most offering immunity from prosecution. Many opponents fear the laws could actually encourage some people to settle minor disputes with deadly force, allowing claims of self-defense to over power what some critics say could be criminal intent. Like this case in Kentucky where a man was beaten to death with a lamp. He'd been invited in thinking he was collecting a drug debt."
     Cara Newberg, victim's sister: "Is basically saying anybody can come in your home and if you feel like killing them, if you have a grudge against them or anything you can do this and get a way with it."
     Mott: "The prosecutor settled for a plea bargain to a lesser charge, fearing a jury acquittal."
     Bob McCulloch, prosecutor: "You have an absolute right to defend yourself and your property and others from aggression using whatever force is necessary up to and including deadly force but there has to be a review of those circumstances to make sure that, that is appropriate."
     Mott: "Self-defense under review and in the line of fire. For Today, Ron Mott, NBC News, Fayetteville, Georgia."

Most Think Media 'Hurt' America by Revealing
Terrorist Tracking

     A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey released Tuesday discovered, by "by a margin of 50 percent to 34 percent, Americans think that news organizations have hurt rather than helped the interests of the American people" with "news reports that the government has been secretly examining the bank records of American citizens who may have ties to terrorist groups." However, "an even larger 65 percent to 28 percent majority believes that these news accounts told citizens something that they should know about."

     Republicans are much more upset with the media than Democrats, the poll, conducted July 6-19, found: "While nearly seven in ten Republicans (69 percent) believe the press reports have hurt the interests of the American people," with a piddling 17 percent of Republicans contending it helped, "relatively few Democrats agree (38 percent). Instead, a 46 percent plurality of Democrats regards the press reporting as beneficial to the public's interest."

     Further, "Democrats are almost unanimous (82 percent) in believing that the public needed to know about the government's bank monitoring program. Republicans are evenly divided on this question -- 45 percent say it was something the public should know about, 47 percent say the public did not need to know."

     [This item was posted Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     Pew titled its August 8 summary: "Public Holds Conflicting Views of Press Reports About Government Monitoring Bank Records." See: people-press.org

     The PDF of the questionnaire (part of a larger survey), provides this text for the key question:
     "In reporting that the federal government has been secretly examining the bank records of American citizens who might have ties to terrorist groups, do you believe that news organizations have helped or hurt the interests of the American people?"

     The PDF: people-press.org

     The program targeted the financial transactions of those connected to terrorism whose activities were processed by a European clearinghouse, not just "American citizens," so Pew's wording probably lowered the percent who otherwise would have said they believe the news media "hurt the interests of the American people."

Gallup: Dems Hold More Favorable Views
of Rather, Couric, Vieira

     A week after a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey determined that a much higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans prefer to get their news from the broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC and NPR, a new Gallup Poll released Tuesday provides additional evidence that Democrats look more favorably upon the "mainstream media" as Gallup showed how "Democrats are more favorable than Republicans in their views" of eleven of 17 news personalities respondents were asked to assess. Dan Rather had the greatest net difference -- 38 percent -- with 86 percent of Democrats viewing him favorably, compared to just 48 percent of Republicans. Only two of the 17 news personalities (Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera) got more favorable evaluations from Republicans than Democrats.

     Others with a significant Democratic versus Republican approval gap include the incoming CBS Evening News anchor and the new co-host of NBC's Today: 17 points for Katie Couric (68% vs. 51%) and 15 points for Meredith Vieira (45% vs. 30%). Some others: Anderson Cooper (49% vs. 36%); Matt Lauer (65% vs. 53%), Barbara Walters (71% vs. 59%), Diane Sawyer (86% vs. 74%), Larry King (62% vs. 53%) and Bob Schieffer (54% vs. 47%).

     Gallup reported: "Republicans are more likely than Democrats to rate Fox News personality [Bill] O'Reilly more favorably (65% vs. 31%), while [Geraldo] Rivera has a slightly -- but not statistically significant -- more positive rating among Republicans (37% vs. 31%). All other personalities are either rated equally by partisans of both parties, or more favorably among Democrats." The Gallup summary noted: "There are essentially no partisan differences in views of [Regis] Philbin, [Lou] Dobbs, [Charles] Gibson, and [Brian] Williams."

     [This item was posted early Tuesday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     For a rundown of the partisan results for all 17 news personalities in the summary titled, "Americans Rate Television News and Talk Personalities: ABC's Diane Sawyer tops the list," scroll down to the last section of the August 8 rundown of poll results: "Opinion of Television Personalities by Party Affiliation." Go to: poll.gallup.com

     An August 1 CyberAlert posting, "Pew: More Dems Than Repubs Get News from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC...", recited:
     Liberal media critics dismiss FNC as biased to the right, pointing to how Republicans prefer to watch it, but a new poll completed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that by the same margin that Republicans choose to get their news from FNC, Democrats prefer to learn their news from the broadcast networks and, to a somewhat lesser extent, CNN and NPR. In the survey released Sunday, 34 percent of Republicans reported they watch FNC regularly, compared to 20 percent of Democrats -- a 14 point spread. As for the broadcast networks, Pew reported: "The gap between Republicans and Democrats in regular viewership of the nightly network news on ABC, CBS, or NBC is now 14 points, nearly three times as large as it was in 2004; currently, 38 percent of Democrats regularly watch compared with 24 percent of Republicans. There is a slightly smaller gap in the regular audience for NPR -- 22 percent of Democrats listen regularly, compared with 13 percent of Republicans." A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans watch CNN, MSNBC, network morning shows, Sunday morning interview programs and TV news magazine shows....

     For the CyberAlert item in full: www.mrc.org

PBS Slams 'Market' Slavery, Bush's Dictatorial
Wishes for Press

     Friday night's edition of Now with David Brancaccio on PBS followed the old Bill Moyers formula of two leftists having an echo-chamber conversation. Brancaccio and Berkeley journalism dean Orville Schell agreed and agreed about how the press aren't liberal enough, the people don't want another Watergate/Vietnam era enough, and the free market can't be counted on to provide "independent" (read: thoroughly ultraliberal) journalism. "We're all [a] slave to the market," Brancaccio suggested.

     Since Schell was a China scholar, Brancaccio even suggested the current administration might be inspired in their devotion to squelching the press by the Chinese communists. "I'm not sure I want to give government ideas on this particular point, but maybe our government could look to China, which has really raised this notion of, of censorship of their news media to almost a scientific level."

     [This item, by Tim Graham, was posted Tuesday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     (MRC intern Chadd Clark transcribed the August 4 program on Monday, and explained with animated exasperation that it's "the worst thing I've seen all summer. The whole thing is outrageous." Welcome to your taxpayer-funded television, Chadd.)

     The interview was taped at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few weeks ago. Brancaccio quickly put the supposedly timid liberal media and the censorious Bush administration in the hero and villain roles: "Tell you what, you can make enormous political headway by bashing the press in America these days. The White House Spokesman, Tony Snow, after the New York Times published details of efforts to sift through bank accounts in the War on Terror, his construction was something like, 'the New York Times in this case has put the public's right to know above people's right to live.'"

     Schell replied that it was somehow dangerous for anyone to criticize the press, and stacked the deck by complaining that liberals are for truth and authenticity, while conservatives favor plastic public-relations cliches:
     "Well, I think that, you know, we've entered a very sort of dangerous and, and for me, troubling time when the press has come under great attack, and I think it grows out of an interesting set of different experiences and understandings of what the press and the media is all about. On the one hand, I think the Bush administration, and to a certain degree Republicans, come out of a tradition more of public relations in which communications tries to attain a goal. But in actuality, we as reporters and the press come out of an entirely different tradition, which is to follow things wherever they go and try to say things, explain things as we see them. And those are absolutely different traditions. So, I think sometimes when the current administration attacks the press, they're attacking it the way any corporation, any government, anybody with a good P.R. firm would attack anybody who is making them look other than they wish to look. But it's very important, I think, for Americans to remember that the tradition of the press as an independent watchdog, somewhat feisty, somewhat iconoclastic and always looking, looking, looking, prying, prying, prying. This was the notion that our founding fathers laid out, spelled out with utter clarity. And I think we've lost sight of it with this new tradition of public relations, which has gotten all lumped together with the press as just, you know, the media, mass communications. But, they're two very different rivers flowing into that stream of mass communications."

     Brancaccio didn't sit down to challenge Schell's comfortable left-wing assumptions, merely to endorse them: "Well, you're not kidding, lost sight of it. I mean, you've seen the poll research from just this year that says when the American public is told that journalists do what we do in the public interest to make the country or the world a better place, they completely don't buy that. They say that we reporters, when we say that, are either being delusional or are just lying."

     Remember a sentence like this when PBS boosters try to tell you it's not about "shout shows" and talk-radio hyperbole. Can anyone find a poll where the public calls reporters "delusional"? (It's not in the new Pew poll, for one: people-press.org )

     This is where Schell goes socialist, suggesting that capitalism and "independent" journalism don't mix well:
     "Well, you know, I think there's another sort of phenomenon that's wrapped up in this that insofar as the media -- that's radio, television and newspapers -- are commercial, there's a kind of underlying presumption that somehow there is another, there is a different purpose than just presenting the facts and getting to the truth."
     Brancaccio: "Well, that's not a crazy presumption, the idea that maybe-"
     Schell: "It isn't."
     Brancaccio: "You know, some anchorman on some show, in addition to trying to report the truth, may also be trying to provide a space for people to sell stuff."
     Schell: "Well, in fact, that's exactly what's going on. I mean, the media is supported by advertising, with the, with the exception of public broadcasting, and even public broadcasting is more and more reliant upon corporate sponsors. This everybody knows. You know, what, what's a business model that actually allows reports and editors and producers to do a good job and to be as independent as possible? And I think perhaps some trusts, some philanthropy, some other, other ways that would give our media a little bit of independence from the purely sort of commercial driven imperatives, which I think are, are more and more making us timid, cautious, incapable of standing up to criticisms against us, because we, we fear that our livelihood, our air hose will be cut off."

     The dynamic left-wing duo then worried about how a "business model" is ruining the press's image by making it look like it's driven by private interests or bias:

     Brancaccio: "So I hear you saying that this is not just an apparent conflict of interestâ€" the fact that journalists may report to a corporate master who have business reasons for doing what they do â€" but you're saying it actually may be affecting the journalism, worrying about the business model."
     Schell: "I think we're in a very grave crisis where the credibility of the press is at stake, where people perceive journalists as being somehow disingenuous or having some private interests or being biased. And I think it, it gets back to the fact that, you know, we, we do now in America live in the most market-driven society that human history has ever witnessed, and it's affected every aspect of our lives. And it makes notions of independent quite quaint and quite difficult to..."
     Brancaccio: "Notions of independence in journalism?"
     Schell: "Yes. Well, independence of any kind for that matter, independence in the arts."
     Brancaccio: "We're all [a] slave to the market at some level."
     Schell: "Well, we are. I mean, and, and whether you're a journalist or a dean at a university, such as I am, we, too, are out on the corner with our tin cup as mendicants. And we, too, are forced to be entrepreneurial, to fund raise, to beg for corporate sponsors. And, I mean, this is part of life that has crept up like a silently rising tide around all of us, and nowhere do I think the effects have been more profound than in the media."

     It's not a surprise that this kind of conversation would take place on public television, where liberals feel that the quality of their "independent" thought is so high that it shouldn't have to beg for support. It ought to be granted by a benevolent philanthropist or government with zero strings attached. How that leads to an absence of "bias" is absolutely puzzling.

     Then the conversation turned to Bush's dictatorial impulses toward the press, and how it was ironic that Bush claims to support building democracy abroad, while questioning the media at home:

     Brancaccio: "We expect the government to question our motives. It's sort of built into the tension. But when-"
     Schell: "Well, yes and no. I mean, I, I think no government loves a prying media that's investigating malfeasance or wrongdoing."
     Brancaccio: "Do you see ironies when, for instance, the present administration sets as a goal spreading American values overseas, ideas that include democracy? But, with democracy and theory, come a robust news media, yet, on the other hand, a government very uncomfortable with the role of the news media."
     Schell: "Well, you know, in the area that I've studied most sort of vigorously in my life, China, Chairman Mao Zedong once said that, you know, 'pure theory is no better than horse****.' [PBS, watching for the FCC, did bleep out this rather un-academic word.] And I think when we are exporting the theory of democracy and a free press, but not the practice of it, we don't become very credible, and I think our credibility around the world right now has suffered, you know, quite substantially because people do perceive that to be for something in theory, but not to be able to implement it in practice, does, does put you in a somewhat hypocritical cast."
     Brancaccio: "I'm not sure I want to give government ideas on this particular point, but maybe our government could look to China, which has really raised this notion of, of censorship of their news media to almost a scientific level."
     Schell: "Well, it's interesting. Of course, China is the master at censoring not only the media, now the internet. The media is the megaphone of the party and the state. That's an absolutely different notion of the media; closer, I might add, to the idea of public relations as a form of communications than of free press. Our notion is very different. We are not the mouthpiece of anybody. We are trying to be independent. In theory, fine. In practice, when we actually come up with some revelation that the state doesn't like, we see the effect."
     Brancaccio: "But you think this is just hyperbole, the idea of state censorship in America, but it's not that far a leap. I mean, when the New York Times went to press with that there was a, a suggestion from one congressman that maybe the paper had violated the Espionage Act, and what follows from that is maybe you throw an editor in jail, or a reporter in jail."
     Schell: "I think the effects of what the Bush administration has been doing are infinitely more chilling to the spirit of a free press than even they can imagine. You know, again, in China I've had a lot of experience with this, and I know what happens when people become fearful, when, because normally any human being, not just a reporter, would like to be considered a constructive, positive, patriotic citizen. And they actually believe that their reporting is a manifestation of that. But when something as powerful as the state or a president says that they're actually seditious, insubordinate and aiding and abetting terrorism, unpatriotic â€" I mean â€" this has a tremendously undermining effect. And, of course, this also makes corporations get weak knees when it comes to supporting this critical sort of extragovernmental watchdog function that America is the, has been the champion in, pioneered it back at the founding of this country, and ironically, it's to this that so many nations look as a kind of a beacon of good practice."

     Finally -- and there is more, but how much can be absorbed? -- Schell suggested that in the current political environment, the media merely shows political weakness when it evaluates its own biases or wonders if it's mangled the truth. That only softens you up to being run over by right-wingers:

     Brancaccio: "But would you say the Bush administration has been successful? The news media is now cowed?"
     Schell: "Yes. I think the Bush administration's been very successful. I read even Bill Keller, the editor of the New York Times remark, you know, remonstrations against the government, and in it, I mean, one sees all sorts of self-doubting, self-questioning ombudsman, self lacerations. I mean, it's the very healthy, actually liberal impulse to find whatever fault one can within oneself before blaming someone else. It's not a bad human instinct. In the world in which we presently live, that is a sign of weakness. And, you know, people like Bill O'Reilly or the administration, they'll just drive a truck right through there and mow you down."

-- Brent Baker