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From Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz hosts a panel discussion on Lou Dobbs departure from CNN. I guess Howard thinks bringing in bullying, right wing, Rush Limbaugh wanna-be hack Chris Plante to concern troll for Dobbs somehow made this panel "balanced". All it did was make it ridiculous.

Plante uses an extremely broad brush to throw around accusations of "liberal" media bias. Anyone think Campbell Brown who's married to Dan Senor is a "liberal". Or that Larry King is an "opinion show"? Or that Chip Reid is any less of a Villager hack than the rest of them out there just because he worked for Joe Biden? Or George Stephanopoulos because he worked for Clinton but subjects us to endless interviews with McCain since he lost the election and George Will's sour mug every week? Liberal my ass. Plante also defends Dobbs for both his anti-immigrant rants and birther rhetoric.

Transcript via CNN.

KURTZ: Chris Plante, many liberals cheering Dobbs' sudden exit. A "New York Times" editorial called him close to a right wing ranter who distorts the facts. Is the media being fair to Lou Dobbs?

PLANTE: Well, of course not. Well the reason Lou Dobbs was in trouble is not because he has opinions, it's because of what his opinions were and his opinions are out of lockstep with the rest of the mainstream news media. "The New York Times" in their -- pretty much every report also say that he's a crusader against immigrants, or immigration and that's false. It's a misrepresentation and it speaks to their point of view. And maybe "The New York Times" should be taking a look at itself rather than Lou Dobbs.

KURTZ: Eric Deggans, Dobbs for years was a conventional business anchor, but do you believe in recent years that he became more of a crusader than a journalist?

DEGGANS: I think it's obvious and I could not disagree more with your previous panelist's assertions. It became obvious that Lou was pressing this world view about illegal immigration being at the root of a ton of evils in America, and I think a lot of his conclusions were debatable.

"60 Minutes" exposed that he had said things about illegal immigrants causing a rise in leprosy in the United States that just could not be backed up. And he's also made assertions of the criminality of illegal immigrants that statistics just don't bear out. So opinions are one thing, but to be unfair and to make assertions that are not true or to exaggerate using selective data, that is just not something that's very ethical and very fair or anything that helps anyone.

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Does anyone think that Howard Kurtz isn't fully aware of the documentation that Media Matters has done of the daily bigotry and racism that comes out of Limbaugh's mouth? Kurtz plays devil's advocate to ESPN's Mike Wilbon as to whether it was fair or not for the NFL to decide they didn't want Limbaugh owning a team and for black people to feel that he is racist.

Kurtz points to a single quote which Limbaugh claims he never said, and uses that as a reason to either ignore or pretend he doesn't know about all of the other racist things Rush has said on his radio show.

While I would not expect Mike Wilbon to be aware of the work Media Matters has done with documenting Rush Limbaugh's quotes, I don't know how Howard Kurtz can call himself a "media critic" and not be. Maybe he chooses to ignore them since he's been in their line of fire as well. Who knows.

I don't want Rush Limbaugh or anyone else having things they didn't say attributed to them. But Kurtz buying into Limbaugh's claim that he's some kind of victim and not actually a racist because one lousy quote out of hundreds might have been wrong looks like lazy journalism to me. One click here- Limbaugh Wire- and taking the time to read some of the work that's gone into that site and Kurtz wouldn't have to be asking his black guests what black people might have heard from Limbaugh on the radio that offended them. He'd already know.

KURTZ: Mike Wilbon, welcome.

WILBON: Thank you, Howie.

KURTZ: Let me play for you something you said on "Pardon the Interruption" soon after the news broke that Rush Limbaugh was part of a team trying to buy the St. Louis Rams.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

WILBON: I don't know whether Rush Limbaugh is a straight up bigot or he simply plays one on TV and radio, but he is universally reviled by black people in this country.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KURTZ: So, maybe a straight up bigot, universally reviled by black people. In retrospect, do you think you went a little too far?

WILBON: Universally reviled by African-Americans. That's no surprise. Anybody who wants to walk down any boulevard in predominantly African-American communities will find that out very, very quickly, Howie. No, that assessment is a very easy one to make.

KURTZ: But when you say he may be a straight up bigot, you're saying he doesn't like black folks.

WILBON: He may be. I mean, if you listen to what he says on his show -- and I stopped a long time ago, and I can't tell you specifics of what he said. Meeting him in person is one thing. I have. Communicating with him one-on-one is one thing.

His radio persona, which is all that most people have of Rush Limbaugh, particularly black people in this country, that's a different perception. And I would not back away from that comment at all.

KURTZ: All right. Let's talk a little bit about this alleged "slavery" comment.

Now, this was purported to have been said some years ago by Limbaugh: "Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back, I'm just saying it had its merits."

Let me briefly run through the chronology here. This was published in a book about three years ago. It made it on to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and then it was picked up once the Rams story broke by Bryan Burrwell and "The St. Louis Post-Dispatch," Drew Sharp in "USA Today," CNN's Rick Sanchez, and then you mentioned it on your ESPN program.

What happened then?

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CNN's "media critic" Howard Kurtz brought on Air America's Ana Maria Cox and the Washington Examiner's Chris Stirewalt to discuss the statement by the White House Communications director Anita Dunn that "Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party".

The topic turns to ACORN and Cox points out that the story Fox was pushing on ACORN was really not a story and notes that the problem was not voter fraud but in problems with some voter registrations and before Kurtz can change the subject says this about Fox’s attacks on Kevin Jennings.

Cox: And I’m sorry, I have to say something about this Jennings story because I think it’s really offensive. They’re persecuting someone because he’s gay.

Kurtz: We don’t have time to go through each controversy right now, but did Fox have the same appetite for stories that reflected poorly on the Bush administration?

Somehow Kurtz then found the time to talk about the reaction to President Obama being given the Nobel and later the David Letterman sex scandal.

Media Matters has much more on Fox’s attacks on Kevin Jennings.

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(h/t Heather)

Why is it so hard for the media to discuss the obvious racial overtones of so much of President Obama's opposition? The right-wing fanatics are not even trying to cover it up and still the media try to avoid the obvious by framing it as a pundit problem.

Howard Kurtz wonders why the media is having problems these days with Americans in terms of perceptions about their accuracy. (Pew: Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low)

I understand that calling someone a racist is no small thing, but facts are facts, and I can't deny what I see with my own two eyes. Can you? Can the media? (John Aravosis had a great post last week with plenty of visual examples.)

Instead of Howard Kurtz really taking a look at the racist underbelly that has risen to new heights at the town halls, he frames it like this:

Kurtz: So are the pundits and the press inflaming this debate about race?

To the media, the debate isn't about the racism that is actually happening on the ground and in front of our eyes, but whether it's the media's fault for actually covering the racist a-holes that have taken over the Republican Party.

When a Michael Steele tries to say that it's only one in a hundred who carry around racist signs about Obama at the psycho town halls, that's a LIE. All you had to do is look at the teabagger protests in DC. Even Andrea Mitchell was stunned.

CNN's Reliable Sources:

Kurtz: Eric Deggans, should the media be devoting all of this time and energy to explaining or examining or exploring whether some of Obama's critics are, in fact, motivated by racism?

ERIC DEGGANS, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES: I think it's an appropriate subject just because for a long time people who have been covering these rallies, covering these protests, have an sense that there's an undercurrent of something that goes beyond just opposing the president politically.

And there's been an effort to try and explain that. Why is there such visceral hatred for what Obama's trying to do among the certain core, a certain percentage of people who are at these rallies and then we found that these weird e-mails pop up of photos of Obama looking like a tribesman, you know, weird racial jokes that seem to be passed along by e-mail by some people who oppose him. So we're trying to explain that, and I think it makes sense to try.

KURTZ: Some of that, of course, may come from the fringes. Amy Holmes, is there a danger that journalists are perhaps insinuating or suggesting or implying that many of Obama's critics must be motivated by racism?

We know some of the racism is coming from the fringes, but now it's bubbling up and overflowing from the fringes to the mainstream. Even CNN's Jon Spellman reported that a dark undercurrent has overtaken the tea-baggers: CNN's Jim Spellman on the teabaggers: There really is a dark undercurrent running through them

Spellman:...we saw handguns from time to time, but running through this subculture that's developed around these tea parties is a bit of a dark undercurrent. The bulk of the people are for lower taxes and less government control, but there really is an element that's got these kind of outlandish conspiracy theories about death camps and about this take over, people comparing President Obama to Hitler. It really is a sizable...It's not just a couple of people around the edges. One of the big questions will be if this movement go forward while maintaining this kind of element on the edges...

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Howard Kurtz asks his panel of the editor of The New York Times Week in Review and The New York Times Book Review Sam Tanenhaus, the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly what they think of the right wing's preemptive freak out over President Obama's speech to school children last week.

Tanenhaus says it is an indication of what he calls "the death of conservatism" which is the theme and name of his book.

Brody thinks the President has a "perception problem". Hmmmm.... I wonder what might have contributed to that. The media overplaying the right wing screechers that should otherwise be dismissed couldn't have possibly contributed to that, could it David?

And Ceci Connolly says the "media are addicted to conflict". And don't blame them for feeding us crap on a daily basis since that 24 hour news cycle is so hard to fill up. Well here's a thought. Why not fill it with something besides crap? Somehow Amy Goodman manages to find an hours worth of news every day that you guys can't find the time to report on in that 24 hour cycle. Imagine that. I would imagine that a good deal of our readers here at Crooks and Liars could recommend more stories that are worth reporting on than there would be time for in the 24 hour news cycle, even on a "slow day".

I'd like to think that Sam Tanenhaus' observation is the correct one and that this over the top rhetoric does mean the death of the conservative movement, but our "mainstream media" along with a lot of other powerful forces are going to do their best to make sure it doesn't happen any time soon.

Transcript below the fold.

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Howard Kurtz is still playing water carrier for the Bush administration and their WMD lies used to justify invading Iraq and when called out for it by Daniel Ellsberg who says he'll name names as to who in the Bush administration knew better what does he do? Why try to change the subject of course!

Ellsberg is the subject of a new documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers which debuts this week in New York, Los Angeles and at the Toronto Film Festival.

KURTZ: Do you think that the Obama administration is getting as much pressure from the press as it should, particularly compared to previous administrations, say the Bush administration?

ELLSBERG: None. No administration has gotten the pressure that it should from the press on this point. We got into Iraq with as much deceptions as occurred in Vietnam, a generation earlier. A performance by the press no better than we saw of pressing behind the lies of the administration than we got during the Johnson administration when I was in; nor did we get a single person within the administration, the Bush administration now, who saw that the adventure into Iraq was going to hurt our counter-terrorism efforts, hurt our security, and was violating the Constitution in terms of treaties. Another example would be treaties on torture and our domestic laws on torture. People who saw that clearly, not one of them leaked to Congress, or to the press.

(CROSS TALK)

KURTZ: Obviously, there were conflicting opinions and conflicting evidence, for example on WMDs. But let me come back to this.

ELLSBERG: No, pardon me.

KURTZ: Go ahead.

ELLSBERG: When it came to lying -- when it came to lying about the nature of the evidence that the evidence was unequivocal, that was as much of a lie as saying that evidence of the attack on August 4th, on our destroyers, was unequivocal. Yes, there was --

KURTZ: You're comparing the Bush's building of the case to go to war in Iraq, with Lyndon Johnson's Tonkin Gulf war incident, just to be clear.

ELLSBERG: I am, indeed. It's exactly the same in the performance not only by the president, but by all of the people who knew that it was a disaster. And I could name names there, if you want.

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Howard Kurtz admits that the media "has fun" covering the pissed off Republicans at the town hall protests. Hey Howard, I didn't think having fun was supposed to be something the media considered when deciding what "news" stories to cover. And no, the coverage has not been fair. There's been very little coverage of these Remote Area Medical events with people lined up for miles and hours on end to get treatments they can't afford.

KURTZ: Jeff Zeleny, is Robert Gibbs right and Obama right that the media are providing a distorted picture of these town halls by focusing on the most confrontational moments?

ZELENY: Well, I think in a sense they are, but in a sense they're not. First, I think, I mean, the images and the passions that were shown this week from town hall meetings show real Americans having real concerns about this. I think that's one of the things that has been left out of this.

I spent most of the week in Iowa going to several town halls. There are real, patriotic voting Americans, some who voted for President Obama, who don't like what they see shaping up as a plan. But...

KURTZ: But is that the whole story?

ZELENY: But it's not the whole story. And I think we have been missing the context of all this

YouTube is fantastic. It takes us everywhere, into town meetings that we couldn't go, but it doesn't give us any context. And that has been a problem this week.

KURTZ: And when I watch cable, Amy Holmes, it almost seem like this endless loop of these loud moments. I mean, there's one woman in a blue dress, Katy Abram, we're going to play later. I've seen her 50 times.

HOLMES: Indeed. And it's perfect for television. You've got the audio, you've got the visuals, you've got the heat and the passion. But there are some loops that have not been played endlessly.

Kenneth Gladney, an African-American gentleman who was at one of these town halls, was beaten up. And yet, he has not been splashed on the front pages. He has gotten less attention than Professor Gates and his arrest at Harvard.

So, I think if you look at conservatives, the context that they are concerned about is the context that this is supposed to marginalize and characterize the entire opposition to health care plan as being fringe and hysterical. And the same treatment is not given to the other side when their folks come out to protest.

KURTZ: And Ruth Marcus, Obama keeps repeating this line about how TV loves a ruckus. And here we just heard Gibbs say the media was disappointed that no one yelled at the president after his first town hall meeting in New Hampshire.

Is there a grain of truth there?

MARCUS: Sure. Look, conflict is more interesting than lack of conflict. When flowers bloom and the sun is shining, it's not necessarily news. And so, we are all going to naturally gravitate to -- we, being the media -- naturally gravitate to the more exciting moments.

And it is more exciting if you're a journalist to have those exciting moments. And I think it's a little naive and a sign of some -- to some extent their -- the way they have been rocked back on their heels to hear the White House complaining about, you know, following the ruckus. They know that.

KURTZ: Right.

HOLMES: This White House complaining about media coverage after Obama being on the cover of "TIME" magazine how many times?

KURTZ: It's really striking though how often Robert Gibbs and the president have complained about the media coverage. And here's a funny note.

When Fox News was breaking away from that first Obama town hall, the anchor, Trace Gallagher, said, "Any contentious questions, anybody yelling, we'll bring it to you." In other words, that would cause them to go back.

Now, Jeff Zeleny, the other night, the "CBS Evening News" led off with a story about 1,500 people lined up in L.A. for a clinic that was providing free health care for a couple days. And it made me think, well, the reason the existing health care system -- we've all kind of gotten away from covering it -- I think news organizations have made an honest effort to try to unravel the complexities of this health care issue. But, let's face it, covering angry, shouting folks is a lot more fun.

ZELENY: No question about that. And that free clinic I think was one example of that. I think we had it on the cover of our paper as well, this week.

But I think if you look at the coverage, what I was struck by, talking to voters and seeing people this week, how well-informed people really were about this. Not necessarily -- all the information was not accurate.

MARCUS: They knew about the death panels?

ZELENY: Well, some, I think -- I think that was another thing that was taken a little bit -- perhaps given more attention than people actually thought. But without question, I think a lot of news organizations are devoting a lot of time to serious coverage of this. But it's a complicated issue. It's impossible to break it down in a long newspaper story, let alone a 60-second TV story.

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Howard Kurtz this weekend was only the latest media critic to pile on Lou Dobbs for his promotion of the Birthers' conspiracy theories on CNN. Like nearly everyone else, Kurtz dismissed the coverage of the story as "ludicrous," and his guests pointed out how profoundly irresponsible it was.

Indeed, Kurtz was a bit late to the story, as Jamison Foser observed:

Well, by the time Kurtz got around to addressing the issue on today's Reliable Sources, CNN President Jonathan Klein had weighed in, calling Dobbs' birtherism "legitimate" and denouncing Dobbs' critics as "people with a partisan point of view from one extreme." (Klein had earlier indicated that the story was dead and the birthers' claims baseless; his flip-flop raises the question of who is in charge -- Klein or Dobbs.)

... Had Kurtz addressed the Dobbs issue last week, when he should have, he might have been able to get away with not coming back to it. But by waiting until today, he put himself in a position where he had to either address Klein's comments, or shy away from criticizing the boss. He chose to keep quiet about Klein. And so we learned from Kurtz's unwillingness to criticize Klein that he likes having the job of media critic more than he likes doing the job of media critic.

As Eric Boehlert observes, the whole dustup has been overall a good thing:

But there was some good news last week, and it came from watching Dobbs' slow motion train wreck unfold on the airwaves. It came from seeing how eagerly -- how convincingly -- the birther claims were debunked, not only online by progressives, but within the mainstream press as well -- the same mainstream press that's often reluctant to show up high-profile media players such as Dobbs, no matter how badly it has botched the facts. And let's not forget conservatives, who dismissed and ridiculed the birther claims.

In the case of the birthers, though, Dobbs' corporate media colleagues were utterly relentless in their fact-checking. I still don't think Dobbs knows what hit him. And frankly, I'm not sure I've ever seen such a well-deserved media pile-on. It's hard to see how Dobbs' career survives the humiliation.

Of course, it's always dangerous when hateful and cuckoo conspiracy theories are ushered into the mainstream and right-wing critics are given a platform to peddle their hateful whodunits about Obama's nationality the way Dobbs did. But, in this case, I almost think it was worth running that risk in order to watch the tidal wave of media disapproval that Dobbs' fearmongering unleashed.

This is all true. It certainly is a heartening sign that Dobbs is finally facing this tidal wave for attempting to present as mainstream absurd rhetoric from the fringes of the far right -- because he has been getting away with doing precisely that for years.

Most of the time, this has involved his rantings about immigration, including his false claims that immigrants were bringing leprosy across the border and that they intended to take back the American Southwest for Mexico. As Alex Koppelman noted at the time, there was a consistent pattern even back then of Dobbs drawing on beyond-dubious far-right fringe sources for his "reporting."

Meanwhile, Dobbs has been overly generous in his dealings with right-wing extremists on his show. He's hosted Glenn Spencer of American Border Patrol without explaining to his audience that ABP is a longtime SPLC-designated hate group, and for good reason: they are unmistakably racist and white supremacist. He also hosted many leaders of the Minutemen movement (most notably Chris Simcox) on his programs over the years while hailing them as "a neighborhood watch" -- though he noticeably has failed to report it when the evidence becomes violently manifest that it is not anyone's idea of a civic-minded organization. More recently, Dobbs was one of the many right-wing pundits who attacked the Department of Homeland Security for its warnings about right-wing extremists.

That Dobbs has been permitted to operate in this fashion without facing the consequences among his fellow journalists has been one of the real ongoing media scandals that no one in the media wants to write about. So now it's out in the open -- and about time.

MM has put together a page where you can chime in on CNN's Lou Dobbs problem. Go make yourself heard.

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On Reliable Sources this morning, Howard Kurtz brings on Huffington Post's Nico Pitney to deal with two naysayers eager to scream "collusion!" over Nico's question to President Obama this week regarding the Iranian election: WaPo's Dana Milbank and TownHall's Amanda Carpenter. The fact that hyper-partisan Carpenter is even asked her opinion shows how little interest Kurtz had in an honest dialog. Seriously, Amanda, the video shows Nico in the back of the room behind other reporters--your complaining about Nico being "pushed to the front of the room" is discredited just like all your other "facts"--who you gonna believe? Amanda or your lyin' eyes?

But it's Dana Milbank who really gets his bitchy little knickers in a twist. He starts the segment incredibly defensive. It's hard to tell whether Dana is just miffed that he didn't get called on or that some upstart blogger who doesn't get the same Beltway cocktail party invitations asked a better question than he ever has.

This whole media-created "scandal" is ridiculously inane and smacks of a willful short memory which would be comical if it wasn't supplanting much more important discussions. Um, Howie, Dana, Amanda....does the name "Jeff Gannon" ring a bell? Jamison Foser:

Here's the thing: Nobody is actually claiming that Obama knew what question Pitney was going to ask. The allegations of "coordination" and "staging" are premised on the idea that the Obama folks knew what topic Pitney would ask about - Iran.

Well, it isn't all that unusual for a president to have a pretty good idea what topic a reporter is going to ask about. If you call on a reporter from Stars & Stripes or Army Times, you'll probably get a question relating to the military. Call on a Washington Post reporter, and you'll likely get a question about steroids in baseball or haircuts. Call on a New York Times reporter, and there's a pretty good chance he'll ask what enchants you about the White House. Call on a Huffington Post reporter, and they'll probably ask something a little more substantive.[..]

I'm pretty sure Dana Milbank knew what topic he was going to be asked about when he appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources opposite Pitney today. Ohmygod! Dana Milbank and Howard Kurtz coordinated! It was staged!

Oh, the stoopid hypocrisy. It hurts, doesn't it, Dana?

Just to put this into perspective, think about this. Nico Pitney has spent the last two weeks tirelessly developing sources from inside Iran, aggregating every relevant story available on the internet through every available form of the new communication technology and synthesizing one of the most most difficult and important foreign policy stories of the decade.

Dana Milbank has spent the same period bitching about the "low press" getting to ask questions at a press conference and filming snotty little gossip items for his little insider video embarrassment called "Mouthpiece Theatre."

And the newspapers wonder why they're dying. Let me remind all of you that WaPo decided to sack Froomkin, but kept Milbank. So goes the state of "journalism" at the Washington Post.

By the way, when I emailed Nico to congratulate him on a serious smackdown of the Very. Serious. Villager., he shared with me Milbank's comment to him as Kurtz was introducing the next segment: "You're such a dick." You stay classy, Dana.

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If you want an example of how "centrism" is its own specially blinkered ideology, check out the rant from David Zurawik, the Baltimore Sun's media critic, yesterday on CNN's Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz:

OLBERMANN: You saved no one, Mr. Cheney. All you did was help kill Americans.

In the name of God, go.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KURTZ: David Zurawik, what do you make of a cable culture where some of these anchors and hosts get really, really mad, or upset or emotional, and it seems to work for them?

ZURAWIK: Howie, they're speaking for a visceral response. And honestly -- I don't want to overstate this, Howie, and you know from time to time I do -- risk that. But it's really that path lies fascism.

I mean, what we need as a democracy is reliable information. This is the opposite of it.

And by the way, that clip of Olbermann just really, I think, encapsulates it. This is a bizarro world or cartoon version of Edward R. Murrow with the cadence and this arch rhetoric and all this, but he is saying madman stuff.

So, heated debate is the sign of fascism? Sounds like Zurawick has been reading Jonah Goldberg.

A clue for David Zurawick: Keith Olbermann may have been contentious and even tendentious, but there's a factual case behind his observations that Dick Cheney likely did not save any lives -- after all, 3,000 Americans died on his watch on 9/11, and there is simply no public evidence whatsoever that the measures he enacted afterward actually thwarted any serious terrorist acts -- and his actions in promoting the invasion of Iraq in fact cost thousands of American lives, and over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians' lives.

That's called robust debate. Fascism, on the other hand, entails the antithesis of debate -- it argues for the elimination of the opposition, not engagement. And it acts accordingly. When we see Keith Olbermann organizing or simply encouraging street thugs to go out and beat up Dick Cheney and his supporters, then he might have a legitimate concern about fascism.

Moreover, there's nothing quite as overheated, as contentious and tendentious, as calling people fascists, is there? -- particularly when you use the term as carelessly and thoughtlessly as Zurawick does here. Hello, pot, meet kettle.

But the really bizarre aspect of this is that Zurawick is really most upset about MSNBC in general, who he attacked throughout the segment (he doesn't like their weekend fill-in programming, but exactly what kind of media critic tries to claim that fill-in programming is evidence that MSNBC doesn't staff its national bureaus? Besides an utterly ignorant one, that is?).

Moreover, Zurawick seems to think the MSNBC invented the ideologically leaning opinion-news format that has him so worked up:

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From CNN's Realiable Sources. Joan Walsh tries to get through to David Frum and Chris Cillizza that public opinion polls and whether anyone can claim that torturing prisoners "worked" or not do not matter.

WALSH: You know, I couldn't disagree more with my friend Chris. This is not a "he said/she said" situation. This is torture. Torture is illegal. We don't sit here, Howie, and say he said murder is illegal, but she said, well, sometimes murder's not so bad. These are clear matters of law.

Ronald Reagan signed the 1988 U.N. Convention Against Torture where we committed ourselves to prosecuting people who torture. It's the law. It's super clear. It's not a partisan witch hunt or a "she said/he said" situation.

KURTZ: David Frum.

FRUM: It's not super clear, because the key piece of information people need, most people need to make a decision, is missing. Look, there's a hard core of civil libertarians who will say, I don't care whether this contributed to the defense of the country. Forget it, we won't do it, even if it means Americans die. And then there are some people who say, I support the president no matter what.

But most people want to know, did this contribute to the nation's safety? If so, we'll come to one judgment. If it was wasteful, as it's sometimes alleged, and achieved nothing, then we all condemn it. That's the thing we need to know, and that's the thing we don't know. That's the missing piece in all the reportage.

(CROSSTALK)

WALSH: No, it's illegal, whether it works or not. It's illegal whether it works or not, David.

FRUM: Well, as I said, there's a small minority who would feel like Joan does.

WALSH: Oh, really?

FRUM: Most people want to know, did it -- and that is the missing or the contradicted piece. We don't have a clear answer to that question.

WALSH: It doesn't matter.

CILLIZZA: Howie, I just want to...

KURTZ: Chris.

CILLIZZA: Joan, just real quickly, I just want to point out, in our poll that came our this morning, 49 percent of people said no torture under any circumstances; 48 percent, in some special circumstances, depending on the information. That's not my opinion.

(CROSSTALK)

WALSH: But Chris, the point is it's illegal. In what instance does it matter that 80 percent of Americans would like to murder Dick Cheney? Does that -- would that make it legal? It's not a matter of opinion. It's law.

Full transcript below the fold.

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I pity Amanda Carpenter because it seems like the appearances on Bill O'Reilly's show are really affecting her, and that's too bad. She's a conservative and I'm a liberal, but I think we can both agree that the news is the news and her response to a segment on Reliable Sources was really a justification for the behavior of Fox during the teabagging parties.

SESNO: Because that's not our job. Our job is not to use our podium and our platform and our television camera to tell people what they should be thinking and doing. Our job should be to tell them what's happening out there and then they decide what to do.

KURTZ: You disagree with that?

CARPENTER: You know, this is -- I disagree with using words like "fascism" on the Fox Business Network, but we are entering a period, I think Ana Marie would agree -- I mean, we both cover things, we both have perspectives. I think this is becoming more acceptable in journalism as long as you're up front about it first.

No, it's never acceptable to do this. Never, ever. Journalists can have a point of view, but not when they are reporting on events. You can't say that Iraq is going to bomb us just because you want that war to take place, no matter what the evidence suggests. And then masquerading as a news entity is the worst form of deceit there is, especially when they turn into a propaganda enterprise. It is acceptable if you don't have the word "News" in your network.

While discussing whether gay marriage is a big issue or not and if there has been an appropriate amount of media coverage given to the subject, Dennis Prager ends the segment with this whopper:

Prager: I think we are more likely to survive economically than we are the redefinition of marriage.

Yeah that's it Dennis. Gay marriage is going to end life as we know it but a depression....meh. Or maybe he just meant we have a better chance of coming out of this bad economy than we do not seeing gay marriage become legal?? Maybe someone can explain it to me. Who knows but Dennis, when you use the word "survive" it sounds like you're trying to equate gay marriage with something that's going to kill us.

John Aravosis rightfully has a good chuckle at Prager's expense after he made the statement. These conservatives are getting more ridiculous by the day with their rhetoric. Of course Prager also doesn't understand why this is a civil rights issue and why he and his ilk are looked at as bigots for their stance.

I've got a question that either John or Howard should have asked Dennis. What do you think is a bigger threat to marriage? Gays being allowed to marry or someone like yourself being allowed to get divorced twice and married three times? Come on Dennis! If you can do it three times can't the gay people be allowed to get married even once? Conservative...hypocrisy is thy name.

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Seriously, is there anyone more annoying than Tucker Carlson? The least self-aware pundit on TV, still nursing his own bruised ego from the thorough spanking he received at the hands of a comedian that took down his show, cried that Jon Stewart is nothing more than a partisan hack in "attacking" Jim Cramer. Mr. "I'm an ideologue, not a partisan" repeats the favorite GOP meme that Cramer was only attacked because he dared to criticize Obama's budget. Hmm ... repeating GOP talking points ... but Carlson's not speaking on behalf of his party, no sirree.

Leave it to Carlson to completely miss the point. Despite Stephanie Miller's and Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik's multiple attempts to reason with the petulant, whiny man-child Carlson devolves into, Tucker can never grasp that the whole event was precipitated by Rick Santelli's rant on the trading floor and that Stewart's focus was not Cramer so much as the responsibility CNBC holds in informing the public rather than giving corporations carte blanche to propagandize on their channel. He's more concerned that Stewart, in his attempt to speak on behalf of the Democratic Party (huh?) is losing 'teh funny,' and will go the way of Lenny Bruce. Double huh?

The best part of the whole segment is after Carlson's plaintive wails (who needs a nap?), Howard Kurtz airs the Crossfire segment where Stewart calls Carlson a "partisan hack", a nice little STFU in not so many words. Perrspectives has more:

Prior to making his case this morning on CNN's Reliable Sources that Stewart is a "sanctimonious, partisan hack" and an operative for the Democratic Party, Carlson on Friday denounced him to the Politico:

Carlson, reached Friday, described Stewart as "a partisan demagogue."

"Jim Cramer may be sweaty and pathetic--he certainly was last night--but he's not responsible for the current recession," Carlson told POLITICO. "His real sin was attacking Obama's economic policies. If he hadn't done that, Stewart never would have gone after him. Stewart's doing Obama's bidding. It's that simple."

Of course, Jon Stewart's weeklong diatribe against CNBC was initially triggered by the network's Rick Santelli slandering troubled home mortgage owners as "losers." And as it turns out, it is Tucker Carlson who has made a career out of doing someone else's bidding. That someone else is the Republican Party - and his father Richard.

The scandal surrounding the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame and the subsequent conviction of Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby provides case in point. Few voices on television were more strident in Libby's defense than Tucker Carlson. But throughout, he remained silent on his father's leadership of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund.

From the beginning, Tucker Carlson aimed both barrels at Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In November 2005, he insisted Fitzgerald was "accusing Libby - falsely and in public - of undermining this country's security," adding, "Fitzgerald should apologize, though of course he never will." Reversing his past position in support of independent counsels, Carlson in February 2007 blasted "this lunatic Fitzgerald, running around destroying people's lives for no good reason."

Hey, Tucker "Pot" Carlson, guess what sanctimonious color you are!

John Amato:

At the end of the segment, Howard Kurtz give us his take and informs America that since Stewart is a comedian, he doesn't have to follow journalistic ethics for his humor and thinks Jon unfairly blamed CNBC for the entire economic meltdown. Using a wide brush to paint The Daily Show tries to diminish the impact Stewart had on CNBC because he didn't unfairly criticize them. Cramer's performance justified Stewart's concerns. That wasn't what Stewart was doing at all, but then Kurtz praises Stewart and says talking heads can learn a lot from him in their efforts to get at the truth from our politicians.

Kurtz: He has a way of cutting through the clutter and using clips to show when people were wrong. I think we need more of that.

Ya think?

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CNN's Howard Kurtz takes FOX News to task for trying to pass off RNC propaganda as actual reporting....and then refusing to admit the egregious error in their so-called "correction" after getting caught red-handed by MediaMatters.

FOX ANCHOR: In compiling that story, our producers and researchers did what they always do, we verified the accuracy of the material. But in double-checking the newspaper quotes referenced in that news release, we made the same mistake they did: we labelled the Wall Street Journal article as having run in 2009, when in fact it was 2008. That was our error and we apologize.

KURTZ: Come on. You shouldn't be apologizing for that, even if we were to buy that it was a coincidence that you happened to make the same mistake on the date of the article. You should be apologizing for using partisan propaganda from the GOP without telling your viewers where it came from. Talk about missing the point.