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The media's attention on Rupert Murdoch and the British hacking scandal hit a new low Thursday. Filling in for MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Michael Smerconish finished "Hardball" with a segment floating the conspiracy theory that Rupert Murdoch staged Tuesday's Parliamentary pie throwing incident to distract everyone's attention from his testimony (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Not content with its front-page drumbeat of stories related to the “News of the World” hacking scandal, the New York Times keeps uncovering multiple angles of attack against Rupert Murdoch’s media empire News Corp. Media reporter Brian Stelter made the front of Wednesday’s Business Day by relaying threats from the hard left – or rather “progressive activists and public interest groups” – that…

  On Wednesday’s The Ed Show, MSNBC host Ed Schultz came to Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s defense against what he called a "right-wing hit job" from the Daily Caller in the form of an article alleging that the Minnesota Congresswoman suffers from severe migraines. But one may question whether Schultz waded into taking a side in the controversy as an excuse for bolstering…

Tucker Carlson on Tuesday said, "Very few people have done more to divide the country than Chris Matthews." Such occurred on Fox's "Hannity" show as the Great American Panel discussed the "Hardball" host's deplorable interview with Congressman Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) earlier in the day (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera has devoted his last two columns to the spreading scandal over News Corp., owned by Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who incurs the hatred of liberals. Nocera, not content to report on the woes afflicting News Corp. outlets overseas, insisted without evidence on Saturday that one of Murdoch’s American media properties, the Wall Street Journal, has succumbed…

Is this, sadly, going to be the second campaign in a row where the so-called mainstream media will make a fetish of fact-checking the Republican candidates while ignoring the misstatements and gaffes of the Democratic candidates — of which there is now just one, President Barack Obama? Last week, as both Newsbusters and the MRC documented, the New York Times (Kevin Sack) published a lengthy…

Greta Van Susteren on Sunday took issue with CNN's Howard Kurtz for a report he did on "Reliable Sources." In it, Kurtz falsely accused Fox News of going "out of its way to avoid a lot of reporting on its parent company's troubles" involving the British tabloid "News of the World" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While some leftist bloggers are positively delighted that the FBI has opened an investigation into NewsCorp regarding possible hacking of 9/11 victims' voicemail accounts -- dreaming of an existential threat to Fox News -- Time's Massimo Calabresi is perplexed as to what could justify the investigation other than political pressure (emphasis mine):

Bill O'Reilly and Bernie Goldberg took the White House to task on last night's O'Reilly Factor for their treatment of Fox News, and their difficulty with handling criticism. "They are not the first administration to go to war with the news media. But I don't think this administration wants to be compared to Richard Nixon. That's not a good PR move."

"You know, in Journalism 101, if you're going to ask a question of someone like the president, what you do is, you take, respectfully, you take the opposition's best argument and you play devil's advocate," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued on the July 14 edition of "Hannity." But instead of taking that approach -- which, Bozell noted, the famous liberal reporter Sam Donaldson took…

Vyan at Daily Kos is getting giddy in a post headlined “Could we soon see a world without Fox News?” It's apparently all over for FNC: "In less than a week the News of the World Wiretapping and Bribery Scandal has quickly metastasized into a Multi-Headed Dragon of Death for Murdoch Empire and simply lopping off one head, doesn't seem to be enough - the infection has already spread." Now that…

On Wednesday's NBC Today, correspondent Stephanie Gosk reported the latest details on the phone hacking scandal in Britain involving a Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid and declared: "Damage to the company [News Corporation] may have already been done. And some say it is about time." Gosk noted that included, "actor Hugh Grant, who in recent months has led his own campaign against the tabloids."…

The New York Times posted a surprising column by international columnist Roger Cohen that appeared in its international edition Tuesday, “In Defense of Murdoch.” That would be media mogul Rupert Murdoch (a name loathed by all good liberals)whose vast empire of newspapers and television news is under siege after allegations of phone hacking including missing teens, police officers, even a former…

 On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, as the panel discussed MSNBC’s double standard in suspending Time’s Mark Halperin for calling President Obama by a vulgar word on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, even after the network tolerated former host Keith Olbermann’s numerous examples of harsh language about President Bush, liberal FNC contributor Alan Colmes was obsessed with inserting Rush Limbaugh into the…