Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid created quite a stir in the blogosphere yesterday with their dispatch from Baghdad, "Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost." NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard accurately called it a "stop the presses" story, and ended his post with an important perspective that you really must read if you haven't already.

Now that the story has had one overnight news cycle since its appearance at about 9 AM yesterday, I looked around to see how much coverage Burns's and Reid's work received.

I looked at what the three "newspapers of record" did (if anything) with the AP item; searched Google News for other coverage; and reviewed headline revisions made by outlets that carried it.

Results are below the fold.

Families USA is at it again and as usual the liberal media are dutifully parroting their rhetoric. The liberal, pro-universal healthcare advocacy group recently released a report attacking President Bush’s budget proposal for Medicaid. In the report, Families USA Director Ron Pollack asserted that Bush’s proposed budget decreases funding for Medicaid. Like last time, Families USA has released state-specific studies showing that Bush’s supposed Medicaid cuts would cause the individual state to lose so many jobs and so much money. Local newspapers took the bait. There’s just one problem: President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal does not cut funding for Medicaid. In fact it calls for an increase in Medicaid spending by $12 to $13 million as compared to the expected spending for 2008. The decrease in the president’s budget proposal is not really a decrease at all. What the president is proposing amounts to a slightly smaller annual average growth rate for Medicaid spending (7.1 percent) than the projected annual average growth rate of 7.4 percent over the next five years. (More information here).

On Feb 8, 2007 Channel 2 News Chicago had a little puff piece on Senator Barack Obama discussing his soon to be launched presidential campaign. It happened to air just before Barack's "60 Minutes" TV interview and it focused on Barack's attendance at the Trinity United Church of Christ. The interesting thing about this video is that Barack is seen sitting side by side with Rev. Wright as they sign copies of Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope." This chumminess seems to make the lie to the claim that Barack was in any way upset at his "spiritual mentor," Rev. Wright.

It is curious why the CBS 2 video showing a beaming Barack and Wright has not been more widely played by the media, but it does prove that Barack only recently, in the middle of scrutiny and only in the last month, has found himself trying to claim he disagrees with the racist Rev. After all, he was still quite friendly with the ranting Rev. Wright in the CBS video of but a year ago.

The story of an Illinois high school making a gay pornographic play required reading for seniors has been reported since March 7th, but it has been ignored for the most part with only a handful of news outlets having taken on this issue. The fact that a public high school that requires such reading doesn't raise a fuss in the media shows how the media supports the gay agenda, of course. It also shows the arrogance of the Deefield, Illinois school administrators that tried to slip this advocacy for homosexuality into the curriculum without bothering to sponsor a discussion on including it among the community that pays the taxes for the school district.

The book, "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," has numerous passages that describes gay sexual encounters in exacting, sometimes violent, detail.

In another example of the belt-tightening of the old media, NBC has announced that they will be closing two of their long standing news bureaus. Gone will be the Chicago and Dallas bureaus to be replaced by "regional hubs."

TVNewser gives us the scoop: