One of the most popular articles on the liberal website Slate right now is by former Newsweek legal reporter Dahlia Lithwick, denouncing the "mainstream media" which fail to understand the Occupy Wall Street movement. The article is titled "Occupy the No-Spin Zone." Lithwick speaks as a participant, since "I spent time this weekend at Occupy Wall Street and my husband spent much of last week adding his voice to the protesters there." (Her husband, Aaron Fein, is a sculptor, so he has the free time.)

Dahlia's not just denouncing Fox News (all liberals do), but denouncing the mainstream media for not being leftist enough, for devoting "four mind-numbing years" to chronicling the Kardashians and taking the Palin family seriously:

This would require the belief that this guy is a more serious news subject. Anyway, she writes:

For the past several years, while the mainstream media was dutifully reporting on all things Kardashian or (more recently) a wholly manufactured debt-ceiling crisis, ordinary people were losing their health care, their homes, their jobs, and their savings. Those people have taken that narrative to Facebook and Twitter—just as citizens took to those alternative forms of media throughout the Middle East as part of the Arab Spring. And just to be clear: They aren’t holding up signs that say “I want Bill O’Reilly’s stuff.” They aren’t holding up signs that say “I am animated by toxic levels of envy and entitlement.” They are holding up signs that are perfectly and intrinsically clear: They want accountability for the banks that took their money, they want to end corporate control of government. They want their jobs back. They would like to feed their children. They want—wait, no, we want—to be heard by a media that has devoted four mind-numbing years to channeling and interpreting every word uttered by a member of the Palin family while ignoring the voices of everyone else.

And there’s this. The mainstream media thrives on simple solutions. It has no idea whatsoever of how to report on a story that isn’t about easy fixes so much as it is about anguished human frustration and fear. The media prides itself on its ability to tell you how to clear your clutter, regrout your shower, or purge your closet of anything that makes you look fat—in 24 minutes or less. It is bound to be flummoxed by a protest that offers up no happy endings. Luckily for us, #OWS doesn’t seem to care.

Fox News will never succeed in ridiculing her pals on the hard left decrying the evils of capitalism:

It must be painful for the pundits at Fox News. The more they demand that OWS explain itself in simple, Fox-like terms, the more cheerfully they are ignored by the occupiers around the country. As efforts to ridicule the protesters fail, attempts to repurpose the good old days of enemies lists falter; and efforts to demonize the occupiers backfire, polls continue to show that Americans support the protesters and share their goals. The rest of us quickly cottoned on to the fact that the only people who are scared of the “violent mobs” at Occupy Wall Street are the people being paid to call them violent mobs.

But Dahlia's clearly indicting the "corporate media" as a whole. Er, Dahlia, you work for The Washington Post Company. If they've died, aren't you out of a paycheck? Aren't you declaring your bosses are clueless dinosaurs? Or are they merely clueless corporate dinosaurs who aren't yet smart enough to realize they're really backing OWS sympathizers who are one of those rare people who truly understand the world?

Mark your calendars: The corporate media died when it announced it was too sophisticated to understand simple declarative sentences. While the mainstream media expresses puzzlement and fear at these incomprehensible “protesters” with their oddly well-worded “signs,” the rest of us see our own concerns reflected back at us and understand perfectly. Turning off mindless programming might be the best thing that ever happens to this polity. Hey, occupiers: You’re the new news. And even better, by refusing to explain yourselves, you’re actually changing what’s reported as news. Because it takes a tremendous mental effort to refuse to see that the rich are getting richer in America while the rest of us are struggling. Maybe the days of explaining the patently obvious to the transparently compromised are finally behind us.

By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance. The rest of America has little trouble understanding that these are ragtag, complicated, and leaderless times. This may not make for great television, but any movement that acknowledges that fact deserves enormous credit.

Another NPR freelancer has been fired for activism at an Occupy rally. On Gawker, Caitlin Curran laments she was canned from 20 hours a week producing for the public radio talk show The Takeway (co-produced by Public Radio International and WNYC Radio in New York, and supported in part by the taxpayers through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.)

Unlike Lisa Simeone, who served in a very official capacity as a public-relations flack for “Occupy DC,” Curran held up a sign in the Occupy Wall Street march in Times Square on October 15. The plan was for her husband to hold the sign, but she was also photographed with it and posted it to her personal Twitter account. It drew blog kudos – which was her undoing.

Her sign simply quoted Conor Friedersdorf: “It's wrong to create a mortgage-backed security filled with loans you know are going to fail so that you can sell it to a client who isn't aware that you sabotaged it by intentionally picking the misleadingly rated loans most likely to be defaulted upon.” Curran reveled in the little media storm it caused:

The next day, Boing Boing co-editor Xeni Jardin posted the photo as the site's Occupy Wall Street sign of the day, the post circulated around Tumblr, Friedersdorf himself saw it and wrote about it, as did Felix Salmon at Reuters, who called me "one of those protestors that photographers dream of" and the sign "true, and accurate, and touching, and grammatical, and far too long to be a slogan, and gloriously bereft of punctuation, and ending even more gloriously in a mildly archaic preposition."

I thought all of this could be fodder for an interesting segment on The Takeaway—a morning news program co-produced by WNYC Radio and Public Radio International—for which I had been working as a freelance web producer roughly 20 hours per week for the past seven months. I pitched the idea to producers on the show, in an e-mail.

The next day, The Takeaway's general manager fired me over the phone, effective immediately. He was inconsolably angry, and said that I had violated every ethic of journalism, and that this should be a "teaching moment" for me in my career as a journalist. The segment I had pitched, of course, would not happen.

Ironically, the following day Marketplace did pretty much the exact segment  I thought would have been great on The Takeaway, with Kai Ryssdal discussing the sign and the Goldman Sachs deal it alluded to in terms that were far from neutral.

Curran seems to have no idea that wanting to cause a wave of media reaction to her temporary sign-holding activism could look bad for NPR at congressional funding time. When asked on Twitter if she was an "occupier," Curran replied, "I'm not sleeping in the park or anything, but yes, I support the movement." She doesn't understand how the public would object it's unprofessionalfor her to be on one side of the protest microphone/camera lens, and then turn up on the other.

My thinking ran along the same lines as [Lisa] Simeone's. It's unclear to me how our participation, on our personal time, in a non-partisan movement warrants termination from our jobs. If the protest is so lacking, in terms of message and focus, then how can my involvement with it go against The Takeaway's ethical policies? In other words, if I'm associated with a party-less movement (and barely associated, since that was only the second time I've attended an Occupy Wall Street event), and have never exercised bias in editing The Takeaway's website, what's the harm?

On one hand, isn't it great that, as Friedersdorf wrote, our "decentralized networked-era culture" makes a movement like this possible, and as Salmon wrote, "the sentiment behind Occupy Wall Street has resonated worldwide," as a result. But on the other hand, we live in an age where I can carry a sign expressing a non-partisan, seemingly inarguable message at a peaceful protest, unknowingly have my photo taken and disseminated around the world, and subsequently be fired as a result, all within a matter of days. What are the implications of this for a democracy founded on free speech ideals? Are these "teaching moments" like mine going to dissuade people who have jobs they want to keep from expressing their opinions, however benign?

It's disingenuous to argue the Occupy Wall Street protests are "nonpartisan," as if they're non-ideological. You can protest with a "party-less movement" and be incredibly political. Many causes — gun rights, abortion, even wars — can be asserted have "bipartisan" support, so opposition could be pitched as "party-less." She knows she was being an advocate and making an argument. Having it be "seemingly inarguable" is beside the point. Does she know how many journalists refuse to wear flag pins or say the Pledge of Allegiance, which to many Americans is "seemingly inarguable"?

But it's beyond disingenuous for Curran to say she "unknowingly" had her photo taken. Her own Gawker post explains she posted the picture on her own Twitter page, and hoped for it to be picked up everywhere.

Clearly, Curran wasn't canned for having liberal opinions. Check out this liberal mind-meld with her then-employer on her Twitter page on October 9: "I think this is a great question. RT @The Takeaway: Columbus Day is a controversial federal holiday. Does he deserve a holiday, in your opin?"

She was canned for promoting herself as an activist instead of a journalist. Her only understandable confusion is that line gets awfully blurry in the liberal land of public radio.

The topic for this month’s diabetes Social Media Advocacy (DSMA) blog carnival kind of made me do a double-take. Under the auspices of “what you should know about people living with diabetes,” the specific prompt question is: What types of decisions and frequency of diabetes-related decisions do you make in any given day?   Uh… [...]

It’s been very exciting to see all kinds of talented young musicians with diabetes pop up in the entertainment industry — from megastars like Nick Jonas to American Idol protégés like Crystal Bowersox and new indie artists like Nikki Lang — and now, there’s Amanda Lamb. Admittedly, we first heard about Amanda when were contacted by her [...]

November is nearly upon us, which means the biggest month in diabetes advocacy is about to begin! As most of you know, November is National diabetes Awareness Month, and don’t forget to circle Nov. 14 in blue — that’s World diabetes Day. World diabetes Day was launched unofficially in the mid-1980s by the International diabetes [...]

Ever indulged in a little pizza with the kids or Italian food on date night, gone to bed at a perfectly respectable blood sugar, but then woken up in the middle of the night with a sky-high number that has you racing for the bathroom? If you have, then you’ve encountered a dreaded delayed postprandial [...]

CNN's Carol Costello, on Thursday's American Morning, scolded the editor of conservative publication Human Events for not providing the same critical coverage of both Republicans and Democrats. Costello – who has her own history of liberal bias – interviewed Jason Mattera of Human Events over his confrontation with Vice President Joe Biden, and asked him why he wasn't tougher on Republican candidates.

"So you're tough with Joe Biden. So why not be a bit tougher with Republican candidates, even though you work for a conservative web site?" Costello posed, apparently unaware that since Human Events is a conservative publication it markets itself to a more conservative Republican audience. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Mattera affirmed that Human Events has a conservative worldview and does hit Republicans, but from the right. "Yeah, well I'm a conservative, unapologetic conservative," he answered Costello. "I have a world view that I'm looking to advance conservative ideas and expose liberal lies. We are tough at 'Human Events' on Republicans when they need to be."

Later in the interview, Costello lectured Mattera about his history of ambush interviews. "That's where gotcha journalism fails, I think," she told him, "because we want truth from both sides of the aisle, don't we?"

And she kept peddling her point that Americans want balanced news coverage and that CNN is the place for that – except when it's not. "Well, to me, I think the audience wants a lot of information," Costello preached. "And they want the truth from both sides of the aisle so that they can make a decision when they go into that voting booth."

A transcript of the segment, which aired on October 27 at 7:43 a.m. EDT, is as follows:

[7:43]

CAROL COSTELLO: So you're tough with Joe Biden. So why not be a bit tougher with Republican candidates, even though you work for a conservative web site?

JASON MATTERA, editor, Human Events: Yeah, well I'm a conservative, unapologetic conservative. I have a world view that I'm looking to advance conservative ideas and expose liberal lies. We are tough at "Human Events" on Republicans when they need to be.

COSTELLO: In the same way that you are tough on Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders?

MATTERA: Well no, because I don't think the Republicans you just showed are ruining the country. I do think that Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and liberalism in general is very destructive to this country as we've seen over the last three and a half years, and I'm going to do everything in my power as a conservative journalist to bring awareness and attention.

COSTELLO: And see, that's – that's where –

(Crosstalk)

MATTERA: And I think I've been pretty successful in doing so.

COSTELLO: That's where gotcha journalism fails, I think, because we want truth from both sides of the aisle, don't we? And wouldn't it behoove those who read your stories or watch your stories online to know the truth from both sides?

MATTERA: Well, I'm a conservative first. It's not shilling for any particular party. But if I have to – first of all, this exchange with Joe Biden was impromptu. I didn't expect to get him, but I took the opportunity that was afforded to me. The media, though, has a bias and a presupposition. They hide it well. It's a veneer.

COSTELLO: I know. I know.

(Crosstalk)

MATTERA: At least I'm – at least I'm out with it –

(Crosstalk)

COSTELLO: I know. I know.

MATTERA – and say, hey, this is my world view. This is my standard. And I'm going to ask questions that comport with my world view. But at least I'm up front about it.

COSTELLO: You are up front about it, and that is true. Jason Mattera, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We appreciate it.

MATTERA: Thank you very much.

COSTELLO: You knew that was going to come up, didn't you?

ALI VELSHI: Yeah, but I think there, what we have – the discussion here is, is he a journalist or is he a partisan?

CHRISTINE ROMANS: And it's advocacy journalism. And some people like to say it's advocacy journalism, and this is the kind of journalism where you have – you wear your affiliations on your sleeve.

(Crosstalk)

COSTELLO: But you're only going around and you're targeting people just to make them look silly. Or provide those gotcha moments, like how much can people really learn from that? Especially when you're selectively using parts of things that you have done with politicians.

(Crosstalk)

ROMANS: Well, maybe if your audience only wants one kind of news, then that's what they want. They just want that.

COSTELLO: Well, to me, I think the audience wants a lot of information. And they want the truth from both sides of the aisle so that they can make a decision when they go into that voting booth.

VELSHI: And that's why we're here because we think you guys want lots of information.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday blamed the Tea Party for Congress's record-low job approval.

Much as Bill Press did on MSNBC Wednesday evening, the Hardball host totally ignored the fact that Democrats control the Senate (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with this: here’s how government’s supposed to work in this country. You have an election. One party wins, the other party loses. Both get the message and do what they’re supposed to do. Republicans won the 2010 Congressional elections. They were supposed to come to Washington and make a deal with the Democrats, one favorable to their side and the people who voted for them, but a deal nonetheless.

No they weren't.

They were elected to represent their constituents. If that happens as a result of an agreement with the Democrats, that's fine. But any deal offered by Democrats that doesn't fit with constituents' wishes is not a good deal.

Taking this further, according to CNN, only sixty Republicans in the House caucus with the Tea Party. With 435 Representatives in that body, pinning all responsibility for actions and inactions on roughly one sixth of its members is pathetic as is ignoring that there's another legislative body known as the Senate which is controlled by Democrats.

But akin to what Press did on Wednesday evening's PoliticsNation, Matthews ignored the existence of a second chamber as well as who's the majority party in it. Maybe he got the idea from the White House. But I digress:

MATTHEWS: Democrats lost the 2010 Congressional elections. They were supposed to come back to Washington, acknowledge the results of the elections, and agree to a deal with the Republicans who won it. That means carving a deal that favors the Republican position while not giving it all away. That’s how deals should be made between the two parties. They should favor the party that just won the election. This is how Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill cut the deal that saved Social Security back in 1983.

The Tea Party lead House of Representatives has refused to deal. It refused to any possible bipartisan deal by insisting that the debt ceiling not be raised unless the Democrats buckled to a big spending cut without a nickel in higher taxes.

That's total nonsense. In the House, 95 Democrats and 174 Republicans voted for the bill to increase the debt ceiling. In the Senate it was 45 Democrats and 28 Republicans in favor.

As such, Matthews completely misrepresented this outcome. But I once again digress:

There is room in America politics for Right as well as Left, for that is the way we get a consensus that reflects the will of the American people. The Tea Party Republicans rejected a consensus. They deserve the whack they’re now getting in the polls. Nine percent of the country approves of the job Congress is doing. Got it, Mr. and Mrs. Tea Party? You are less popular – not just less than Jimmy Carter, not just less than Barack Obama – but any president in history.

So only nine percent of Americans currently approve of Congress. What Matthews chose to ignore is that exactly one year ago, when both chambers were controlled by an overwhelming majority of Democrats and before all the Tea Partiers were either voted or sworn in, Congress's approval was ten percent just one point higher than it is today.

Understandably, Matthews neglected to inform his viewers of this for that would have totally undermined his point.

That he's allowed to get away with such blatant misrepresentation should sicken people on both sides of the aisle.

MSNBC could easily change its acronym to MSNARAL given its concerted effort to attack a pro-life ballot measure that goes before Mississippi voters in 12 days.

Hardball host Chris Matthews joined MSNBC colleagues Thomas Roberts and Tamron Hall today in featuring guests on their respective programs who blasted Initiative 26, an amendment to the state constitution that would confer legal personhood on unborn babies if it's approved by Magnolia State voters this November 8.

Unlike Roberts and Hall, Matthews did provide some balance by allowing Family Research Council's (FRC) Ken Blackwell to defend the ballot initiative on air. Even so, Matthews spent that interview attacking Blackwell from the left, accusing him of not doing enough to discourage unplanned pregnancies. What's more, Matthews concluded the subsequent softball interview with Newsweek's Michelle Goldberg by accusing pro-lifers of attempting to subvert a woman's "free will."

Although Matthews persistently attacks Republicans and conservatives for being "anti-science," the Hardball host seemed flustered at the notion that a fertilized human egg should be considered a human person.

Blackwell pointed out the moral dilemmas raised by in vitro fertilization practices that produce more embryos than are implanted, thereby producing human lives which are disposed of or indefinitely kept on ice.

Matthews then scolded Blackwell for attempting an "end-run" around the Constitution:

You know what I think? I've let you give your position, but I think this is what we call in football an end-run. I believe whatever else it is, it's an attempt to outlaw, ban the right of a woman to have an abortion, no matter what else you're talking about here, that will be the implication under the law. There's no other reason to go this direction. That's why you're doing it.

After Blackwell responded that "this is not an end-run, this is not a game, this is a pro-life movement," Matthews lectured Blackwell that if he "want[s] to stop the number of abortions in this country" he should "tell young men to stop having unprotected sex with women, discourage the act that leads to unwanted pregnancies, help people get birth control procedures available to them, reduce the incidents in which people choose to have an abortion in a free country…. and that's not going on."

"You know me, Chris, and you know that that's not the case," a visibly upset Blackwell retorted.

"It's all I hear though," Matthews sneered.

By contrast, Matthews's interview with Goldberg was a game of softball, with Matthews even suggesting the personhood amendment was an affront to a conservative, originalist reading of the country's Founding Fathers:

I just wonder how it squares with the writings of the Constitution [sic], and people who believe in original intent. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness relates to people who are alive and living and born.

Pursuit is a word, an active verb. I don't think you'd associate that with a fetus. And certainly liberty is a word you would apply to people who are alive and born. I don't know what it means to say an unborn person has liberty. I don't even know how the Constitution, you could possibly catch up in its original intent to what these people are talking about.

Closing the segment, Matthews reiterated his "end-run" complaint and dramatically complained that the personhood amendment was about "prevent[ing] people from having a free will at a certain point."

Thursday's Early Show on CBS provided free air time to Rep. Steve Israel of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and three of his top candidates for the 2012 election. Correspondent Nancy Cordes trumpeted how the Democratic Party is "determined to bounce back from their big losses" to Republicans during the 2010 cycle and highlighted that the three were "running against Tea Party members."

Anchor Chris Wragge teased Cordes's report by touting how Democrats were "finding their own outsiders to run against the Washington status quo. We're going to talk to some of those new recruits, including a former astronaut and a former police chief, who they say with Congress more unpopular than ever, they've got a good chance to make the kind of change in Washington that they feel Washington needs."

The correspondent added at the beginning of the segment that "Democrats are taking a page from the Republicans in 2010 in trying to recruit as many outsider candidates as possible who have never served in politics. They brought more than a hundred of them here to Washington this week to show they're determined to bounce back from their big losses." After briefly mentioning the "part pep talk, part show of strength" candidates' seminar, Cordes spent the bulk of her report highlighting Val Demings, the former police chief of Orlando, Forida; former astronaut Jose Hernandez; and Ann Kirkpatrick, who isn't even an "outsider," but a former three-term representative from Arizona who lost in 2010.

All three of these candidates were spotlighted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just two weeks ago, as MSNBC's First Read blog reported on October 13. Cordes played a clip from DCCC Chair Rep. Steve Israel at the beginning of her report, but didn't mention his leadership position.

The CBS journalist didn't air any sound bites from Republicans during her report, and only asked the three candidates a couple of  hardball questions near the end of the segment: "How will you deal with the fact that the President is unpopular right now in some parts of the country? Will you invite him to campaign for you?" She added that "Republicans say they've got just as many of their own candidates waiting in the wings…They also point out that Democrats may not be doing these- quote/unquote- outsider candidates any favors…by bringing them here to Washington when Washington is so unpopular."

Back in September, Cordes filed a report on congressional reaction to President Obama's proposed jobs bill, but failed to include clips from GOP representatives.

The transcript of Nancy Cordes's report from Thursday's Early Show, which aired 19 minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour:

CHRIS WRAGGE: In last year's elections, Republicans took over the House of Representatives with a lot of help from Tea Party members who promised to change Washington. Well, today, polls show Americans are more fed up with Congress than ever, and Democrats now see an opportunity.

CBS News congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes is on Capitol Hill with more for us this morning. Nancy, good morning.

NANCY CORDES: Good morning to you, Chris. Yes, Democrats are taking a page from the Republicans in 2010 in trying to recruit as many outsider candidates as possible who have never served in politics. They brought more than a hundred of them here to Washington this week to show they're determined to bounce back from their big losses.

[CBS News Graphic: "Race For 2012: Democrats' Growing Hope To Re-Take House"]

CORDES (voice-over): It's part pep talk, part show of strength.

REP. STEVE ISRAEL, (D), NEW YORK: You want to be in the majority? (audience replies, "Yes!") We're going to do this.

CORDES: Democrats call them their top recruits in their bid to win the 25 seats they need to take back the House of Representatives- 107 candidates from 36 states. We sat down with three of them, two of whom are new to politics.

CORDES (on-camera): You're all running against Tea Party members. They had all of the momentum in 2010. What makes you think it's going to be different this time?

VAL DEMINGS, (D), CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: They may have had a lot of momentum, but they have forgotten their number one responsibility, and that's to put people above politics.

CORDES (voice-over): Val Demmings of Florida spent her life in law enforcement, and rose to become Orlando's first female police chief.

JOSE HERNANDEZ, (D), CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I think folks have gotten buyers' remorse.

CORDES: Jose Hernandez of California is an astronaut who flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2009.

HERNANDEZ: Most congressional folks are lawyers by trade and they're trained to litigate. I'm an engineer. I'm trained to solve problems.

CORDES: One candidate who wants back in is Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona. She served in Congress for six years, but was defeated last year when Republicans won 63 new seats.

CORDES (on-camera): What do you think the voters in your district were saying in 2010 when they elected your challenger?

ANN KIRKPATRICK, (D), CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I think they said we want something new in Congress- we're not getting exactly what we want. We are not not there yet. But they realize now that it's actually worse than it was.

CORDES (voice-over): Approval ratings for Congress sunk to a record low of 9% in the latest CBS News poll.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, (D), CALIFORNIA (from speech on House floor): God bless you, Speaker Boehner. (audience cheers)

CORDES: Democrats hope the anti-incumbent mood that helped Republicans in 2010 will work in their favor in 2012.

CORDES (on-camera): How will you deal with the fact that the President is unpopular right now in some parts of the country? Will you invite him to campaign for you?

DEMINGS: Well, you know, the President has a tough job to do- number one. He's done some things very well. He probably could have done some things differently. But the President has to run his own race, and I have to run my own race in Florida.

CORDES (live): Republicans say they've got just as many of their own candidates waiting in the wings, and that they're focusing on those 27 or so districts where they think they could pick up even more seats from the Democrats this time around. They also point out that Democrats may not be doing these- quote/unquote- outsider candidates any favors, Chris, by bringing them here to Washington when Washington is so unpopular.

WRAGGE: CBS's Nancy Cordes on Capitol Hill for us this morning- Nancy, thank you.