Hey, be fair. Everyone at Mother Jones and AdBusters was too busy to take on the job...

Perhaps CJR should hire a McCarthyite ombudsman, as CPB has done.

i know mccarthyites (cause i are one)

the cpb ombudsmen are freaking patsies. practically rinos.

i know what i would do if i was running cpb. then you'd see mccarthyism. remember, there really were lots of communist spies all over (especially the state department).

remember also that no account has been made for their crimes in the USSR, and none of their accomplices have been dealt with in the US.

you really have no idea about what real anti-communists would do.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...

Well, for drooling morons you guys do pretty good work. Keep it up. BTW, did anyone catch the vacuous stupid seventh grader giggling Dean indulged in during his on-air grilling. My God Amigos, THAT was a drooling moron.

Full Auto, when was that grilling and what (subject, program) was he getting grilled on?

*Anyone find it sorta wierd how Dean is dissing the people he is trying to court? Can anyone tell me the rationale of someone lambasting the GOP as a club of "mean" "white Christians" and then turning around on CSPAN and saying that in order to reach people of faith the democratic party must address them in "humility" and recognize their "faith and values" ? How will Evangelicals who consistently voted republican be appealed to by a negative characterization of what they and most of this country, is, "white" and "Christian"?

talk about one step forward and a moveon.org bus ride back. Makes me wish I had grilled his ass when I heard him speak in class last semester...

By now, nobody with sense enough to breath takes anything that the MSM, the democrats or other misc. leftists in general say, at face value. (Not that I take anybody at face value anymore, but these groups are especially bankrupt.)

This is becoming so typical it's beginning to border on farce. The funny thing is that they never learn and make corrections, from past mistakes. It's like the kid who's caught with his hand in the cookie jar stealing cookies and swearing, swearing that he's not stealing anything and that he'll never steal again.

What should have happened at CBS News:

Transmission from an Alternate Universe: http://www.neolibertarian.net/articles/alternate.aspx

Re: "Steve Lovelady assures us" I actually saw the Terrence Smith interview with the NYT and WaP "ombudsmen."

Lovelady says: "The best segment we've seen lately on the 'Jim Lehrer News Hour' was an interview with Michael Getler, the Washington Post's about-to-retire ombudsman."

The interview was outrageous. I felt I was in an alternate universe. According to the ombudsmen, news has become more political now not because of the mendacious obliteration of the line between opinion and factual reporting in the NYT and WaP or in the broadcast media -- that subject wasn't even SUGGESTED -- but because of how "political" media like Rush Limbaugh, "talk radio" and Fox News have become. What's a poor ink-stained wretch at the NYT to do?

If Terence Smith had had an ounce of integrity, he would have asked about the kinds of things that timeswatch.org points out daily. Maybe he didn't because he doesn't have internet access, and is still trying to figure out what that mysterious acronym "LGF" means.

Anyway, the ombusdmen were most upset about how the media had given Bush a pass on the events leading up to the Iraq war. One got the feeling that the more crazed anti-Bush reporting now (as if they needed an excuse) was payback for their earlier omissions.

Finally, the most pious, hypocritical and clueless comments came on the subject of "single anonymous sources." To cut to the chase, the consensus was that it was still OK to use these if it was a really important story (read anti-Bush administration) and there was a need to get the truth out.

I had expected more from the retired NYT ombudsman, given some of his public comments about NYT "columnists" but Terrence Smith didn't touch the subject. I guess it would have been in bad taste.

Prior to this I was of the view that the Newshour with Jim Lehrer was relatively balanced. Not any more.

So what if the media is blatantly leftist? You know where they stand. That allows those of us who actually have something important to do to go about our business. Media is left. Compass needle points north. Points of reference.

I still think the NewsHour folks mostly do a surprisingly good job of failing to meet my expectations of the usual tilt. The worst exception is dotty old Terence Smith, who after Rathergate interviewed only apologists for CBS: The New Yorker's Ken Auletta and someone from one of the big broadcast networks, IIRC. No disclosure that the interviewer used to work for CBS's 48 Hours.

hey: Isn't being an anti-communist sort of like being a buggy whip manufacturer?

It's a bit of a niche market.

Not while Fidel, Kim Jong-Il, and to some extent Hugo Chavez and the Heirs of Mao are still with us.