Numerous Fox News hosts have highlighted negative comments about President Obama from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of recently deceased Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Despite his comments about Obama, the book also notes that Jobs offered to help create advertising for the president’s re-election campaign.

What Fox has failed to report or comment on so far are Steve Jobs’ thoughts about Fox News, which he described as “an incredibly destructive force in our society,”

Abramson, asked whether the Times has a liberal bias, says, “I think we try hard not to” be biased, but she adds that the Times, as its public editor argued in a column seven years ago, has an insular urban bias that is sometimes apparent in social stories. She fervently believes that the Times is an equal-opportunity prober of Democrats as well as of Republicans. Asked about her own upbringing, she responds, “I’m often the one who raises the point in page-one meetings that our mix of stories is too urban in outlook, too parochial. All my years in Washington, and in some ways being attacked by conservatives, made me more conscious of how a story might be seen in the rest of America.”

Here, Abramson tells us that she has in fact internalized the decades of conservative attacks on the media – led by Washington-based institutions that quite frankly have a very poor idea of how stories are really seen “in the rest of America.”

You’ll remember Nancy Pfotenhauer, a DC-based Republican who, while working for the McCain campaign, lectured on what regions of Virginia were “real” (the more conservative, rural areas) versus unreal (the more liberal, urban areas), an argument echoed nationally by Sarah Palin. These artificial, false distinctions are part of the conservative’s false construct of our world.

This is the kind of internalized criticism that led Abramson to be part of the team at the Times that put Judith Miller’s false WMD misinformation on the front page of the paper. As an institution, it’s also the brand of internalized criticism that caused the Times to be in front of the crowd demanding investigations of President Clinton for Whitewater, suspicions of guilt the independent counsel later dismissed after millions of taxpayer dollars had been spent.

The press should, above all, be fair. The Times believes as an institution that this means they should be unbiased in their approach (I would personally argue a news outlet can have a point of view while still reporting honestly, but that’s another discussion), but all the way at the top of the masthead, they overcompensate for what often turns out to be false allegations of bias (the MRC and its tentacles have a less than honest relationship with the truth).

That’s why your news is screwed up.

That said, they’re still going to try and work the media refs in his favor. Case in point: Conservative blogger/writer (and Confederate apologist) Robert Stacy McCain reaching for the fainting couch because David Gregory asked Cain a few basic questions that he flubbed (in the post-Palin lexicon this is described as some sort of grilling).

Specifically McCain whines “When Democrats go on Meet the Press, it’s like Justin Bieber sitting down for a hard-hitting interview with Tiger Beat.”

So I decided to do what conservatives hope liberals never do, and they doubly hope the mainstream media doesnt: I checked.

I went back to May of 2008, and then-candidate Barack Obama’s appearance on Meet The Press with the late Tim Russert. What did I find? Did Russert annoint Obama the next President? Did he crown him? Did he ask him about puppies, or even kittens?

No, Russert did what Russert often did: He asked Obama a bunch of questions that sounded as if they were hot off the presses from the RNC. Specifically, Russert asked Obama about that most relevant of issues, Jeremiah Wright. A sampling:

* What has the controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright done to your campaign?

* You’re still a member of the church?

* Why do you think he re-emerged?

* What happened in those five weeks? Because you already knew, prior to the March speech, that he had suggested the U.S. government created the AIDS virus; you knew he went to Libya with Louis Farrakhan; you knew about his hate speech on September 11th, about the chickens coming home to roost and other things. What did you learn in those five weeks that you didn’t know in March?

* The critics have said he can attack the United States of America, he can do all sorts of things that divide the country, but only when he made it politically uncomfortable for you did you finally separate himself from him.

* Why didn’t you just say then, “You know, Reverend, we’re going on different paths because this country does not believe in white supremacy and black inferiority.”

* He said in a letter to The New York Times, he suggested that you apologized for not letting him do the invocation. Is that true?

* Is it fair for people to raise questions about your judgment for misjudging Reverend Wright?

* You’re done with him? If you’re elected president, you won’t seek his counsel?

* Could you have handled this better, differently, by severing your ties earlier? And what’s the most important thing you’ve learned from this?

These were the first questions Russert asked Obama on the supposedly softball Meet The Press: A litany of right-wing fed scarebait directly out of the school of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck. It doesn’t matter how far to the right the questions tilt, conservatives will be wailing about liberal media bias until the sun swallows the entire solar system.

Now, look, Herman Cain is a joke. He can’t answer basic 101 level questions, his economic plan is dumb — even for a conservative. But even for a Trivial Pursuit-bound candidate like Cain, conservatives are willing to pervert, twist, and distort history and act under the pretense that the big bad mean liberal media beat up on their poor widdle candidate.

It’s what they do, it’s how they operate. It’s dishonest, pathetic, moronic, and sadly it works.

In your August 15 & 22 issue, in the article “Voicebox 360″, Tom Bissell claims that the Carmen Sandiego “cartoon series spawned a videogame spinoff.” This is incorrect. “Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?” the cartoon series debuted in 1994. It is based on the Carmen Sandiego series of video games. The Carmen Sandiego video games began with “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” which debuted in 1985 – almost a decade before the cartoon series. In between the game and cartoon, Carmen Sandiego was also a popular PBS game show for children.

I think this means they have to shut down the magazine.

Do it, Rockapella.

Tavis Smiley is ridiculously claiming that President Obama has frozen him out since being elected. As if the two of them were buddy buddy before.

Flashback to 2008:

Tavis Smiley said yesterday he will resign in June as a twice-weekly commentator on the syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show” after more than 11 years with the program. He cited fatigue and a busy schedule in a personal call to Joyner on Thursday night, but Joyner indicated otherwise on his program and in his blog yesterday, writing: “The real reason is that he can’t take the hate he’s been getting regarding the Barack issue — hate from the black people that he loves so much.”

The word has always been that Smiley was upset at Obama’s decision not to kiss his ring by endorsing his “Covenant With Black America.”

I just recently re-watched All The President’s Men (the book is great too). It’s a great movie, and it is in the tradition of smart movies that don’t hold your hand.

But the funniest part about the movie is looking at it from a research perspective. I do a considerable amount of research at Media Matters, using numerous public and private data sources. And I thank God I didn’t have to do this kind of work in the 1970s!

There’s a scene where Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) is looking for a phone number, and he’s pulling out the phone book for each state off of the shelf. Oh my. While I was watching, I yelled at the TV: “Just do a Google search! Google it!”

We take for granted the idea that we’ve got so much of the world’s information at the tip of our fingers 24-7. But we shouldn’t.

Journalists from across News International repeatedly targeted the former prime minister Gordon Brown, attempting to access his voicemail and obtaining information from his bank account, his legal file as well as his family’s medical records.

There is also evidence that a private investigator used a serving police officer to trawl the police national computer for information about him.

That investigator also targeted another Labour MP who was the subject of hostile inquiries by the News of the World, but it has not confirmed whether News International was specifically involved in trawling police computers for information on Brown.

Separately, Brown’s tax paperwork was taken from his accountant’s office apparently by hacking into the firm’s computer. This was passed to another newspaper.

Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Monday that News of the World journalists had offered to pay a New York police officer to retrieve the private phone records of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Citing an unidentified source, the newspaper said journalists had wanted the phone numbers of the dead as well as details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading to the attacks.

In a completely unrelated bit of trivia, the New York Times happens to be the most influential news organization in the world. On the left or right, the Times sets the agenda for the rest of the press. Whether its circulation is up or down for the year, the Times sets the tone.

So, a story lamenting a missing story is below the front page of the Times.

Imagine if the plight of the unemployed was on A1 of the Times. Imagine if they had done so for the last few years?

Then this story would probably not have made the cut because the plight of the unemployed would be national news, thanks to… The New York Times.

Case in point. Kent Conrad is a Democratic senator in North Dakota. By design, within the Democratic tent, he’s a moderate. So why did The Hill describe Conrad’s budget proposal, which is pretty middle of the road stuff, as “left-leaning?”

For an actual “left-leaning” budget proposal, you’d have to look to the offering from the House Progressive Caucus. But the mainstream media did give that proposal the sort of tongue-bath it’s given the Ryan plan to kill Medicare.

Why? It was out of bounds.

The phone-hacking crisis enveloping the News of the World intensified on Tuesday night after it emerged that Scotland Yard has started to contact the relatives of victims of the 7 July 2005 attacks to warn them they were targeted by the paper.

The revelation that bereaved family members may have had their mobile phone messages intercepted by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator employed by the paper, in the days following the 2005 London bombings will heap further pressure on the title’s owner, News International, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed in the attack at Edgware Road tube station, confirmed that he had been contacted by officers from Operation Weeting, the Met’s investigation into phone hacking. He said they had told him his mobile phone number, ex-directory landline number and address had been found in records made by Mulcaire that were recovered from the investigator’s office in south London.

Foulkes’s solicitor, Clifford Tibber, who represents several families who had relatives killed in the terrorist attack, said the news had “come as a terrible shock” to them as they prepared to mark the sixth anniversary of the bombings this week.

The News of the World illegally targeted the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family in March 2002, interfering with police inquiries into her disappearance, an investigation by the Guardian has established.

Scotland Yard is investigating the episode, which is likely to put new pressure on the then editor of the paper, Rebekah Brooks, now Rupert Murdoch’s chief executive in the UK; and the then deputy editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned in January as the prime minister’s media adviser.

The Dowlers’ family lawyer, Mark Lewis, this afternoon issued a statement describing the News of the World’s activities as “heinous” and “despicable”. He said this afternoon the Dowler family was now pursuing a damages claim against the News of the World.

Milly Dowler disappeared at the age of 13 on her way home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on 21 March 2002.

News Corp has no shame, but would the people who employed this jackal for years do otherwise?

CJR has a pretty superficial look at how journalism is portrayed in Superman: The Movie. The writer spends a lot of time writing about David Carradine’s monologue about how Clark Kent is just a front for Superman (a theory I think is a lot of bunk, especially in regards to post-Crisis Superman, where Clark is the main character and Superman is the outlet).

But even beyond that, the writer seems to have missed the role that the Daily Planet has in the world of Superman. First, Superman is at the planet because where better to be (in theory at least) than a major newspaper (the Planet is basically the New York Times of the DC Universe) to be at the nerve center of the world? If you’re Superman and you work at the Daily Planet, the world’s biggest most Superman-level stories come to you.

In Superman The Movie we see the major role of journalism in defining the world from the instance in which Lois Lane spends a night flying with Superman. As she lands and he flies away, she notes to herself about the stranger who has been nameless up until that point: “what a super man.” The next morning the lead story in the Daily Planet is “My Night With Superman” and that becomes his name. Furthermore, Superman chooses to speak only to the Planet because he knows they have respect and authority and will get the story right. In addition to his attraction to Lois, she is their best reporter. And while she begins falling in love with him, there she is with her notebook getting the answer to who he is (a visitor from a planet far, far away), why he’s there (to help), and what his vulnerabilities are (he can’t see through lead).

I concede that the movie does not have a lot of shoe leather reporting in it, but let’s not kid ourselves, Superman was a summertime action-adventure film, not a deep treatise on a reporter in the city.

That said, in the Superman comics, there have been instances where Superman has learned that he can best effect changes not as Superman, but as reporter Clark Kent. I remember an issue where he was able to expose the corruption behind a developer who wanted to tear down a home, not by using his fists as Superman but by digging into the company as reporter Clark Kent.

The comics have also dealt with the various outside influences on newspapers that we see in the real world. For a time in the late ’70s, Clark Kent wasn’t a print reporter but was a tv reporter for WGBS. A couple times, corporate conglomerates have purchased the Daily Planet in order to subvert its influence. Lex Luthor once bought the paper which eventually prompted Editor In Chief Perry White to quit in protest.

These outside forces want to subvert the Daily Planet because to the average every day citizen in the DC Universe, it is the news source they trust to give them the story in a fair, detailed manner. It’s a pretty good standard for news organizations in the real world.

Did I mention that this is stupid?

Oh, also, the “under God” was not an original part of the pledge, and based on current conservative fashion should be seen as a bastardization of the words. But these people have shown us that their ideology is best described as malleable, or probably just amazingly disingenuous and dishonest.

Ed Henry is reportedly moving from CNN to Fox News to become the network’s Chief White House correspondent. When asked by Media Matters, Henry declined to comment on Bill Sammon, Fox News’ Washington managing editor.

Last year, CNN came under criticism for hiring conservative blogger Erick Erickson, who described Michelle Obama as a “Marxist harpy wife and Supreme Court justice David Souter a “goat fucking child molester.” Henry defended the hiring.

That’s a little like former FEMA head Michael Brown running against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 and thinking anybody would vote for him.

But that doesn’t deter the media, and especially not professional center-mush cheerleader Matt Bai who has a column on why we ought to take Huntsman seriously you guys.

As Bai almost always does, he gets in a dig at Democrats:

Democrats and some commentators tend to see the Republican Party right now as a kind of wild, barren land where nothing thoughtful ever grows.

Yeah, where would we get an idea like that? It isn’t as if there is a Republican electorate seriously pondering the end of Medicare, Palin/Bachmann as legitimate candidates, or that the President is a secret Muslim bent on subjugating America to global government. Right?

If you wonder why the coverage of the right from outlets like the Times has such a poor connection to reality, it is because writers like Bai refuse to acknowledge the movement and its party for the extremist beast it is.

In their world, because Lindsey Graham chats them up real nice at a dinner party, there’s no way they could be the reality-denying luddites those mean old Democrats make them out to be. For the mainstream press, the thought is unthinkable.

And that’s why a writer like Bai pretends this away and pens silly columns about how the primary electorate in the Republican party unlike every other election year is really this time going to be sweet and moderate and not crazy at all so they will vote for a moderate-ish Mormon former Obama administration member.

If you think otherwise, you’re one of those mean old Democrats.

Gee, I wonder why so many mainstream media writers and commentators aren’t pontificating about what the impact of depleted confidence in the economy will be on our president’s reelection potential?

At 3:22pm EST on Tuesday, June 14th, I searched Google News with the following 2 words: “economy obama” and got some of the following results:

Analysis: Obama 2012 — it’s all about jobs [Reuters]

Obama seeks ways around Congress to boost economy [LA Times]

Obama rejects notion that he’s out of touch on the economy [The Hill]

Obama Defends Economic Policies, Need for Tax Increases In ‘Today’ Interview [National Journal]

GOP’s economic focus may make Obama vulnerable [CBS]

This is why conservatism is crap. This is why conservative whining about the liberal media is crap. Their claims do not survive the scrutiny of basic fact checking.

This is mostly because they are lying.