Obama's Street Cred

"Today, the New York Times criticized President Bush for failing to generate headlines for his visit to Novadebt counseling center in Freehold, N.J. to meet with mortgage counselors and discuss the housing market, asserting 'the papers were awash with the news that Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania had endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president.' The 'newspaper of record' further claims 'Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch.' (Sheryl Gay Stolberg, 'In Economic Drama, Bush Is Largely Offstage,' The New York Times, 4/3/08).

"The New York Times neglects to mention that it failed to send a reporter to cover the President's housing event in Freehold, N.J. -- a town inside its own circulation area."

Rupert Murdoch spoke at Georgetown the other day, and provided a good bit of fodder. His own WSJ: "News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said Wednesday that acquiring Long Island's Newsday newspaper would benefit his New York Post, but acknowledged that U.S. antitrust officials might seek to block the acquisition."

Slate's Jack Shafer, a vociferous critic: "While talking about political bias and the news, he said: 'The Washington Post [company] has a site called Slate, and the guy who runs that calls me the Antichrist.'

"Jacob Weisberg, the guy who runs Slate, has never called Murdoch the Antichrist, according to Nexis. Nor have I. Perhaps he was confusing Weisberg with the guy who runs the New York Times? A September 2007 Vanity Fair piece by Michael Wolff reported that Times Executive Editor Bill Keller once 'angrily confronted' Murdoch lieutenant Gary Ginsberg and said, 'How can you work for the Antichrist?'

"Keller says he didn't 'confront' the Murdoch employee, whom he had known for a while. And he wasn't angry. 'I greeted Gary, smilingly, with something like, 'So I gather you've gone to work for the Antichrist.' It was a joke,' Keller writes via e-mail. 'Maybe it's true, as someone said, that there's no such thing as a joke. But it was a joke.' "

Fishbowl DC:

"It's very hard to be neutral. People laugh at us because we call ourselves 'Fair and Balanced.' Fact is, CNN, who's always been extremely liberal, never had a Republican or conservative voice on it. The only difference is that we have equal voices on both sides but that seems to have upset a lot of liberals . . . The more voices the better."

Without getting drawn into a big Fox vs. CNN debate, what does Rupert mean, never had a conservative voice? Wasn't Robert Novak a mainstay at CNN for 25 years? How about Pat Buchanan? Weren't shows like "Crossfire" predicated on left-right pairings? (Mary Matalin, John Sununu or Tucker Carlson vs. Mike Kinsley, Bill Press and other liberals?) Of course, Murdoch excels at sticking it to the competition.

As for his longtime rival, CNN founder Ted Turner, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution heats things up with some comments he made to Charlie Rose:

"Failure to address global warming will have us all dead or eating each other by mid-century.

"So says Ted Turner, the restaurateur, environmentalist and former media mogul whose controversial comments have earned him the nickname 'Mouth of the South.' " Sample comment: "Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals."

An uplifting guy, that Ted.