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PBS’s Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill provided a tag team of Obama idolatry in their interview with President Barack Obama at the White House following Wednesday’s March on Washington anniversary event, gently pressing him from the left and treating him as a victim of racist opposition as Gwen Ifill forwarded the theory “you are a victim of partisan racial gridlock.” When, in the session…

Anyone who’s actually seen the cartoonish Sarah Palin as a mentally imbalanced fruitcake in the HBO movie “Game Change” would laugh (or throw their remote-control) at the sound of the movie’s Jay Roach appearing on the PBS NewsHour on Tuesday night. PBS assembled a panel of political-entertainment makers.   Anchor Jeffrey Brown asked Roach, “How do you fictionalize what you see, you said you…

During Monday's debut of Keith Olbermann's new weeknight program on the ESPN2 sports channel -- unsurprisingly called Olbermann -- it took him only 48 seconds to stray from sports reporting into his former role as political commentator while slamming a reporter with the New York Daily News for “making up” a story on whether New York Jets coach Rex Ryan would be fired. “Reporting is dead;…

It would appear that Politico would prefer to see a Democrat win the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Saxby Chambliss. Otherwise, why would its Elizabeth Titus, in her coverage of Michelle Nunn on Monday, reference a statement by that party's candidate, Michelle Nunn, which articulates a position on abortion that is at odds with EMILY's List, the entity which gave her the reason to do a story…

At Slate, Mark Lynas tells the story of activist-orchestrated media deception — although one sometimes wonders whether the press even minds being deceived in these instances, and in certain cases whether some journalists are in on the scam. The deception involves activists who are against any form of biotechnology advances laying waste to a field of genetically modified "golden rice" in the…

There are two key words missing from the report Bloomberg's Kasia Klimasinska & Shobhana Chandra published Tuesday morning — a writeup that is so incredibly sunny and over-the-top that is probably would have embarrassed the Old Soviet Union's Pravda in its heyday. One is "income." The reason is obvious. Real median household income is still way below where it was when the recession ended…

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, Washington Post political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson complained that former President Reagan left Americans with a negative image of poor people on welfare "taking advantage of the system." She also suggested that Democrats have not spent enough time talking about poverty in recent years and praised Democrats California Rep. Karen…

"Fifty years after Martin Luther King delivered his landmark 'I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial, which will be celebrated at a public ceremony Wednesday in Washington, African-American progress in the political arena has been spotty," Peter Nicholas and Neil King Jr. of the Wall Street Journal noted in a page A4 article on Wednesday headlined "Uneven Election Success for Black…

Douglas Brinkley predictably fawned over President Obama's apparently "very beautifully written" address marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, mere moments after he finished delivering it: "I think it's one of the great speeches that Barack Obama's ever delivered." [audio available here; video below the jump] Scott Pelley turned to Brinkley during CBS'…

CNN's Fredricka Whitfield was incredibly generous to former Democratic D.C. Mayor Marion Barry on Saturday over his past drug arrest and jail time. Barry was convicted on drug charges and served six months in jail in the 1990s, in between his two terms as D.C. Mayor. Yet Whitfield first praised his "incredible tenure." Then she brought up his arrest but framed him as a victim of his past: "…

ABC provided immediate and enthusiastic praise for Barack Obama's speech, Wednesday, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" address. Anchoring live coverage, he praised, "President Barack Obama, playing the role of teacher and preacher and president today." Stephanopoulos then began to link Obama and King. He allowed that Obama insisted in his speech, "No…

Ashton Kutcher, the 35-year-old actor and ex-husband of actress Demi Moore, has never been considered a poster child for the "family values crowd," but at the Teen Choice Awards two weeks ago, he could have easily passed for one. Following screams from young female fans in the audience, Kutcher silenced them with a motivational message that bordered on inspiration. He told them: "I believe…

While honoring Bradley Manning's wish to be identified as a woman and called "Chelsea," Time magazine writer James Poniewozik wants to know exactly when did Bradley become Chelsea, posing various grammatical issues raised by journalists accepting Manning's self-delusion about his gender. "Since she’s a longtime figure in the news, in a case involving her actions years previous, how do you…