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Two anchors who have worked at Maine sister television stations, ABC affiliate WVII and Fox affiliate WFVX, for a combined 12 years cited "unbalanced news" after they surprised staff on Tuesday by tendering their resignations on the air.

At the end of the 6 p.m. newscast, Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio thanked viewers and said that departing together was the best alternative because of some "recent developments."

Consiglio told the Bangor Daily News that he quit because "I just wanted to know that I was doing the best job I could and was being honest and ethical as a journalist, and I thought there were times when I wasn’t able to do that."

Michaels, who also served as the station's news director, said that there was a "regular undoing of decisions" that she made.

"There was a constant disrespecting and belittling of staff and we both felt there was a lack of knowledge from ownership and upper management in running a newsroom to the extent that I was not allowed to structure and direct them professionally," she explained.

“It’s a culmination of ongoing occurrences that took place the last several years and basically involved upper management practices that we both strongly disagreed with,” Michaels continued. “It’s a little complicated, but we were expected to do somewhat unbalanced news, politically, in general.”

WVII/WFVX vice president and general manager Mike Palmer, however, insisted that management did not interfere with decisions in the news room.

"Upper management is not involved in the daily production of the news. Period," he told the paper. "We’ve made great changes over the last few months and are not slowing down."

While neither of the former anchors would go on record to detail how they were being pressured to slant the news, some bloggers have speculated that Fox affiliate WFVX had been moving to emulate conservative bias at Fox News.

The WFVX 10 p.m. newscast is simulcasted on talk radio station WNZS-AM 1340, which also airs shows hosted by conservative personalities Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher and Michael Medved.

(h/t: Mediaite)

Fox News' Megyn Kelly returns from maternity leave with a more liberal perspective on mandated benefits and entitlement programs.

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If there was any doubt that Michele Bachmann's formal entrance into the GOP 2012 presidential primary race might have just sucked up all the oxygen out of the room for the snow-billy Palin to still throw her hat in there, if she was ever going to run, this segment on Fox might be one example of why she likely won't.

Not only does she take her place with the Evangelical Christian and "tea party" crowd, she's also got the talking heads over at Fox immediately playing the victim card for her as well as we saw in this segment with Megyn Kelly fill-in Martha MacCallum and right wing flame thrower and radio host Mike Gallagher.

They've both apparently decided that since she gave a good showing after I'm sure being heavily coached for this week's GOP primary debate, that all of those terrible things those on the left have said about her are unwarranted or untrue.

What's sad is I don't think anyone on the left should actually discount her completely or any of the rest of them for that matter. This is after all, a country that managed to allow George W. Bush steal two elections because they were close enough that they could be stolen.

All we have to do is look to what's going on in Wisconsin and other states right now with voter disenfranchisement and the Republicans proving they're willing to continue to win at all costs no matter what it takes to see what we're going to be in for in 2012. They've quit pretending that they care what the public thinks about their willingness to steal elections openly and they've got their propaganda machine in the media willing to aid and abet them as well.

If we're unfortunate enough to see Bachmann start winning some primary races, expect more segments like this from not only Fox, but our other "news" networks as well.

I just hope they are countered equally by segments like Cenk ran this week as well on Bachmann, but I'm not holding my breath.

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While complaining about President Obama going to Brazil and encouraging them to do more offshore oil drilling, Fox’s Megyn Kelly allows right wing radio talk show host Mike Gallagher to get away with saying there’s no oil remaining in the Gulf after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

GALLAGHER: No, he’s worried about another one because one accident, which by the way, they still can’t find any remaining oil. That was supposed to be the catastrophe that ended our planet. We were all going to curl up and die from the BP oil spill. Remember how that was reported? And now they can’t even find any residue, any oil remaining. It was not the catastrophe that the do-gooders thought it was going to be.

Mike wants the Fox viewers to believe that just because the media refuses to report on the remaining oil, it must have magically disappeared. That wasn't the only ridiculous thing he said during this segment but it certainly was the most outrageous.

I guess no one bothered to show him this, not that it would matter. I imagine he'd still lie about it even if they did. --Oil Still Leaking New Deepwater Horizon Drill Site

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December 28, 2009 FOX and Friends

Dave N.: Well, that certainly didn't take long. And as usual, the chief turds -- in this case, the execrable Mike Gallagher -- have come floating to the surface of the punch bowl:

Gallagher: But guys, let's look at the inevitable, the 800-pound gorilla in the room. How about we scrutinize young Middle Eastern men to stop this.

What happens when El Al Airlines, the airline run and operated by the state of Israel, if a Palestinian tries to board that plane? Do you think he goes through an extra degree of security? Well, let's do that with Muslims, let's do that with anybody named Abdul or Mohammad or Ahmed, let's take them and put them in a room and make sure they don't have explosives sewn into their underwear.

...

Brian Kilmeade: Do you think we ought to profile any Muslim?

Gallagher: Yes! I think we ought to do what El Al does. Ask anybody who knows El Al what they do with Palestinians who attempt to board El Al. We should anybody who is a known Muslim and put them in a separate line. Call it the VIP line! Treat them with respect!

Christine Fair: That is so preposterous. One-third of the world's population is Muslim. Trying to treat every single Muslim as a terrorist is simply untenable, it's fearmongering.

Gallagher: Who are you afraid of offending Christine? Al Qaeda?

Memo to Gallagher: Nigeria is not in "the Middle East," and the suspect in this case was not "Middle Eastern" -- he was African.

If you want to profile every "known Muslim," you're going to have a hell of a time in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, considering that their populations are a mix of the world's religions, and any Muslim who wanted to pose as a member of, say, a Christian church in order to fool authorities could do so with ease.

This just underscores how foolish the whole notion of racial profiling actually is, because when you embark on such policies, they actually make you more vulnerable, not less.

That's because terrorists are not that stupid. If you begin profiling for Middle Eastern men, they will find Indonesian or African or European operatives to perform the same task. If you begin profiling for Muslims, they will find ways to conceal their religious preferences.

We know two things about profiling, especially ethnic, religious, or racial profiling: 1) These policies expose the profilers to being gamed by terrorists; and 2) They are always a tremendous waste of resources and inevitably are counter-productive.

Sounds like your classic conservative solution: Hey, let's just make matters worse!