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In the day after Republican Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that pregnancy from rape “is something that God intended to happen," the Fox News Channel only covered the scandal for about 2 minutes, even though Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney refused to rescind his endorsement of Mourdock.

“I believe life begins at conception,” Mourdock explained during a debate Tuesday night. “The only exception I have for to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”

The liberal watch dog group Media Matters reviewed coverage on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel and found that Mourdock's comments were almost completely ignored by the conservative network.

"Fox News mentioned the comment twice, devoting just over two minutes of coverage to it," Media Matters' Todd Gregory wrote. "Meanwhile, CNN gave the topic an hour and 20 minutes of coverage and MSNBC covered the topic for 2 hours and 7 minutes."

On the Fox News marquee "straight-news" program Special Report, anchor Bret Baier briefly mentioned Mourdock in a 37-second segment about the presidential race in general. The Fox Report later devoted one minute and 37 seconds to the subject.

By contrast, Raw Story calculated that Special Report alone spent about 23 minutes on the Obama administration's response to September attacks in Libya.

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While discussing whether the "war on terror" is over or not and some of the documents that were newly released that were acquired in the raid on Osama bin Laden's complex, The National Review's Rich Lowry decided to take a cheap shot at Media Matters. Apparently if a spokesman for a terrorist organization says something bad about Fox, that means the watchdog site Media Matters that also does not like Fox are exactly the same.

Here's the offending quote by the al Qaeda spokesman:

Adam Gadahn: In general, and not matter what material we send, I suggest that we should distribute it to more than one channel, so that there will be a healthy competition between the channels in broadcasting the material, so that no other channel takes the lead. It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN and maybe PBS and VOA. As for Fox News, let her die in anger.

Fox News Watch, which this segment is from, is supposed to be Fox's sorry excuse for a media watchdog site, that calls out biases in the "mainstream" evil liberal media, as opposed to all that "fair and balanced" reporting we get from Fox.

The show's equivalent we have from CNN is Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources. It's usually a toss up from week to week on which one is worse with failing completely to be any sort of check on whether we're getting any honest reporting from our corporate media, and instead of adding to making their so-called "reporting" worse.

The right absolutely hates Media Matters because they dare to record and often just post without comment, what comes out of their mouths on a daily basis. But that's the equivalent of siding with terrorists in Rich Lowry's world. I'm sure if anyone actually asks him about this later, he'll write it off as another sorry attempt at right wing humor and claim that he was just joking, because everyone knows that it's completely hilarious when you call people you disagree with terrorist sympathizers.

And h/t to Media Matters for flagging this clip.

After Pat Robertson's statement last week that homosexuality is "related to demonic possession," Media Matters put together a mash up of some of the other things Robertson has called demonic over the years.

Pat Robertson, Demon Hunter:

Televangelist Pat Robertson recently made headlines for suggesting that homosexuality may be driven by "demonic possession." In recent years, Robertson has labeled a wide (and frequently bizarre) range of things as demonic, including: feng shui, yoga, karate, horoscopes, Twilight, paintings of Buddha, television shows about ghosts, Halloween, psychics, young girls levitating their friends at sleepovers, and (sometimes) adopted children from other countries.

More details and transcripts of some of the original clips at the link above. I got a kick out of the first comment in response to their post and thought I'd share it here:

Seriously Pat, it's more effective if you hold snakes while you do this. Big poisonous ones (with the sacs removed of course).

Some might argue that it's demonic to fleece the old, the scared, and the stupid - not me, but some might. . .

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After first taking up for Rush Limbaugh and calling the campaign to go after his advertisers “fascist” Bill O'Reilly, with the help of Laura Ingraham decided to attack Media Matters as well for supposedly taking out of context what he said after his trip to Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem.

O'Reilly and Ingraham apparently are unaware that there are these things called recording devices where there's a record of what you actually said which can be played back later to prove you're lying.

O'REILLY: They did to me on this ahhh... I don't even remember but... I went to Sylvia's restaurant with Al Sharpton, I don't know, five or six years ago and we did the thing on the radio...

INGRAHAM: Ah... yeah.

O'REILLY: Where I said I was talking about my grandmother and how fearful she was of African Americans, because she never met one.

INGRAHAM: Right.

O'REILLY: My grandmother literally, not knowing African Americans... and I said no, I can take my grandmother into Sylvia's restaurant, where you see a top flight restaurant...

INGRAHAM: Right.

O'REILLY: …that's no different than any other restaurant, my grandmother might have been swayed if she did not have these very narrow opinions.

INGRAHAM: I remember.

O'REILLY: So I was trying to do a good thing.

INGRAHAM: Yeah.

O'REILLY: And at Media Matters, absolutely took it out of context, twisted it around and then tried to get me fired... tried to get the black community... but thank god they didn't rally, but tried to get me off the air, because of that!

Here's our original post when this first happened back in 2007 -- Bill O'Reilly Surprised At Civility Of Black Restaurant Patrons.

And here's the Media Matters post he was complaining about -- O'Reilly surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurant and other New York restaurants. I don't see any mention of his grandmother in the transcript and O'Reilly conveniently left out any references to m-f-ing iced tea during this segment with Ingraham.

Here's the audio of O'Reilly's show where he claimed he was being taken out of context for anyone that didn't follow the link back to our post from '07.

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The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur speaks with Media Matters' Eric Boehlert about their recent report on our news networks all but ignoring the awful pending legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. Here's more from their report:

REPORT: News Networks Ignore Controversial SOPA Legislation:

Controversial legislation that the co-founder of Google has warned "would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world" has received virtually no coverage from major American television news outlets during their evening newscasts and opinion programming. The parent companies of most of these networks, as well as two of the networks themselves, are listed as official "supporters" of this legislation on the U.S. House of Representatives' website.

As the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) makes its way through Congress, most major television news outlets -- MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have ignored the bill during their evening broadcasts. One network, CNN, devoted a single evening segment to it. (The data on lack of coverage is based on a search of the Lexis-Nexis database since October 1, 2011. The Nexis database does not include comprehensive daytime coverage, and also does not include Shep Smith's 7pm nightly Fox News program, so both are excluded from the study.) [...]

The legislation also has powerful supporters. As Carr laid out in his article, "Virtually every traditional media company in the United States loudly and enthusiastically supports SOPA." This includes the parent companies of the TV news outlets now ignoring the fury over the bill during their primetime broadcasts, as well as two of the channels themselves.

ABC and CBS are listed as supporters of the bill on the House Judiciary Committee website, along with Comcast/NBCUniversal (which owns MSNBC and NBC News), Viacom (CBS), News Corporation (Fox News), and Time Warner (CNN). Disney Publishing Worldwide, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation, which owns ABC, is also listed as a supporter, as are other Disney properties such as ESPN and Hyperion publishing.

To their credit, the online arms of most of these news outlets have posted regular articles about the fight over the legislation, but their primetime TV broadcasts remain mostly silent. Read on...

Good for Current TV for not ignoring the story as well. Here's more on the action being considered to protest the legislation -- Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter considering “nuclear option” to protest SOPA.

And in an update, this legislation is so bad, it looks like even Paul Ryan is going to oppose it -- Paul Ryan Drops His Support Of SOPA.

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Dave already wrote about this last week where the crew at Fox & Friends were attacking the Girl Scouts, claiming they were conspiring to "promote a clear liberal ideology" because they included Media Matters in one of their publications:

Fifteen-year-old Sydney Volankski, who left the Girl Scouts in 2010 to write about their "pro-abortion mindset" on her blog, has now discovered that a guide published by Girl Scouts of the USA (GUSA) advises scouts to check media facts through a number of sites including Media Matters, which Fox News host Steve Doocy called "clearly a lefty blog."

Glenn Beck's website The Blaze first hyped the latest claims against the Girl Scouts after they were contacted by Volankski's mother.

"Perhaps the Girl Scouts staffers were too busy to respond to us, but considering the fact that the Media Matters reference is, in itself, a form of misinformation, bias — potentially even indoctrination — we assumed that the book would no longer be on the market," The Blaze's Billy Hallowell wrote. "We were wrong."

As their one liberal (and always outnumbered) panelist, Jehmu Greene pointed out on Fox News Watch this week and as Dave did last week, the other larger story here is that this girl that Fox had on as a guest last week on Fox & Friends is trying to take down the Girl Scouts, claiming that they're a "pro-abortion" organization for wanting to give their members accurate information about women's reproductive rights. Here's more on that from Dave's post last week:

The former scout has also written that "role models GSUSA encourages girls to emulate include pro-abortion champions, Marxists, Socialists and advocates of same sex lifestyle."

While the national Girl Scouts organization does maintain a neutral position on reproductive rights, local and regional chapters have the autonomy to partner with groups like Planned Parenthood for educational purposes.

"In some areas of the country, Girl Scout troops or groups may choose to hold discussions about human sexuality and may choose to collaborate with a local organization that specializes in these areas," GSUSA said in a statement earlier this year. "The topic is discussed from a factual, informative point of view and does not include advocacy or promotion of any social or religious perspective."

For his part, the National Review's Rich Lowry continued to beat that drum during this segment. And panelist Jim Pinkerton chimed in that if the Girl Scouts had just included Brent Bozell's right wing rag, The Media Research Center, which is just as much of a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the right wing as Fox "News" he would have been just fine with the publication including Media Matters as well.

The only proof anyone on the panel offered up as to why Media Matters should not have been included in the publication is because they're a "far left" organization that receives money from George Soros, so of course the Fox panelists claimed they therefore can't be trusted. Never mind that the real reason they hate them is they've got a laser focus on the misinformation that's being spread over at Fox.

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Fox News on Thursday teamed up with a former Girl Scout to warn that the organization was conspiring to "promote a clear liberal ideology."

Fifteen-year-old Sydney Volankski, who left the Girl Scouts in 2010 to write about their "pro-abortion mindset" on her blog, has now discovered that a guide published by Girl Scouts of the USA (GUSA) advises scouts to check media facts through a number of sites including Media Matters, which Fox News host Steve Doocy called "clearly a lefty blog."

Glenn Beck's website The Blaze first hyped the latest claims against the Girl Scouts after they were contacted by Volankski's mother.

"Perhaps the Girl Scouts staffers were too busy to respond to us, but considering the fact that the Media Matters reference is, in itself, a form of misinformation, bias — potentially even indoctrination — we assumed that the book would no longer be on the market," The Blaze's Billy Hallowell wrote. "We were wrong."

Following that, Volankski was invited to appear on the Fox & Friends morning show.

"We were just trying to spread awareness to families," Volankski said of her blog. "We were so deceived. For eight years, we were in Girl Scouts and we didn't realize that Girl Scouts was promoting such a liberal ideology like with the Media Matters site."

"Uh-huh," Doocy agreed.

For their part, Girl Scouts has caved under the pressure and promised to to remove all references to Media Matters from future printings of their media guide, but Volankski wasn't satisfied.

"Obviously, Girl Scouts is not concerned enough to pull these books off the shelf," Volankski complained.

The former scout has also written that "role models GSUSA encourages girls to emulate include pro-abortion champions, Marxists, Socialists and advocates of same sex lifestyle."

While the national Girl Scouts organization does maintain a neutral position on reproductive rights, local and regional chapters have the autonomy to partner with groups like Planned Parenthood for educational purposes.

"In some areas of the country, Girl Scout troops or groups may choose to hold discussions about human sexuality and may choose to collaborate with a local organization that specializes in these areas," GSUSA said in a statement earlier this year. "The topic is discussed from a factual, informative point of view and does not include advocacy or promotion of any social or religious perspective."

(H/T: Talking Points Memo, News Hounds)

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If anyone thought Bill O'Reilly's carping about having his taxes raised was bad, just get a load of these three Fox contributors who I'm fairly sure are all making a boatload of money just like O'Reilly for propagandizing the American public day after day for Fox. Sean Hannity decided to have himself a little whine-fest with his panel members, former Bush spokesperson Dana Perino and Fox's sorry excuse for a business channel host, Stuart Varney.

Par for the course Hannity and his friends threw out the usual distortions about what the rich compared to everyone else actually pays in taxes.

As I linked to in my post back in April on Joshua Holland and his appearance on C-SPAN's Book TV, Holland laid out some much more realistic stats than Hannity and his crew did here on who's paying what and how much in taxes these days. And as to their argument that the rich are paying a bigger percentage in taxes than anyone else, well, that might just be because the rich are controlling more of that wealth as well, so of course they're going to be paying more.

And as Media Matters noted -- Right-Wing Media Defend The Rich Unless The Rich Person Is Named Warren Buffett.

Here's more from Holland's column at AlterNet that it would really be nice if Hannity's viewers had a chance to read, but I figure that will happen when hell warms over -- Tax Day Question: Who's Paying What?:

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Karoli already brought attention to this the other day when the crew over at Fox & Friends was complaining about Media Matters and their Drop-Fox campaign and the network's recent attempts to have Media Matters stripped of their tax-exempt status in her post here -- Fox & Friends Whines About Media Matters and "Your Tax Dollars".

This Saturday on Fox's sorry excuse for a media watchdog program, Fox News Watch, they carried on about Media Matters in not just one, but two segments on their show, continuing their harping about the group going after Fox and their new "boot camp" which The Washington Post wrote about here -- Media Matters boot camp readies liberal policy wonks for the camera’s close-up.

Thankfully the panel on Fox News Watch included their one token liberal, Jehmu Greene, who actually did a very good job of making a lot of the same points that Karoli did in her post linked above. If Fox wants to complain about Media Matters tax-exempt status, then they'd better be careful what they wish for or organizations like Brent Bozell's Media Research Center along with a lot of other organizations they both named should be losing theirs as well. I imagine she'll be relegated back to being the one token liberal with five of them screaming over her on their business shows they air on Saturday mornings after this appearance.

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News Corpse has a very good post on this same issue and made some excellent points on why Fox's complaints are ridiculous as well -- When Fox News Attacks: The Assault On Media Matters [Updated]:

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As John already noted, Glenn Beck's going to be leaving Fox. Our friends over at Media Matters posted this mash up in case anyone needed a reminder of why his advertisers were dropping him left and right.

And congrats to the folks over at StopBeck.com for their good work in holding Beck accountable and making his advertisers aware of his hate filled rhetoric.