Talking to NBC Today co-host Ann Curry at the Cannes Film Festival in France on Friday, lefty actress Eva Longoria described her busy schedule: "I have a couple movies I'm filming, I have a couple movies coming out. And then I'm campaigning for Obama, so I'll be very busy with that." Curry replied: "Alright, sounds like you'll be very busy….it's pleasure to sit with you….You are just a lovely, lovely person."

Back in March, Longoria made it clear how "busy" she was shilling for the Obama campaign when she appeared on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show to slam the GOP and praise the President: "There's so much dismantling of what we've accomplished as women uh, by the right side….And I think women need to be educated on everything that Obama has done in his first term regarding their rights and access to health care."

She went on to rant: "Mitt Romney is probably the one on the wrong side of every issue pertaining to Latinos, education, the economy, healthcare access. He's campaigning with – he's calling the anti-immigration law from Arizona a model law for the rest of this – the country."
 

A small group of conservative protesters greeted HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – a woman whose own bishop excommunicated her – to speak at the Catholic Georgetown University. The group made the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post – and the caption highlighted “A small group of abortion foes, nearly all of them men” protested.

This is not the way the Post covered Occupy DC: “A group of free enterprise foes, nearly all of them white…” Post reporter Jenna Johnson set the scene as Sebelius was heckled:

As Kathleen Sebelius addressed Georgetown University graduates Friday morning, the secretary of health and human services felt the wrath of antiabortion activists when someone shouted “murderer!” in an otherwise quiet ballroom….

On Friday morning, a small cluster of antiabortion activists traveled to Georgetown’s front gates from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Nearly all were men, many wearing red sashes. They stood under a banner that read, “Sebelius persecutes the Church, yet Georgetown welcomes her.”

During her speech, a 27-year-old protester screamed: “I have a message for you, Kathleen Sebelius. You are a murderer!” Sebelius paused, the crowd booed, and police escorted the man out. Then the ceremony continued.

The red-sash group is Tradition Family Property (TFP) a traditional-Catholic group. The Post always seems to cast social conservatives as "antiabortion" and when they yell, it is "wrath." These, again, were not your typical Occupy terms. 

Johnson’s overarching theme was that commencement speakers can be controversial – as was President Obama’s commencement speech to Notre Dame in 2009. Johnson covered very little of what Sebelius said:

Although Sebelius did not directly mention the health-care law or contraception, she told the graduates that a “process of conversation and compromise” is required when religious issues intersect with policy decisions. Debates about such decisions, she said, require “the ability to weigh different views, to see issues from other points of view and, in the end, to be true to your own moral compass.”

Edwin Mora at our news service CNSNews.com noted Sebelius quoted John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to Protestant ministers about electing a Catholic president. She said JFK “believed in an America, and I quote, ‘where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against us all.’”

Doesn’t that “indivisibility” right now sound a lot like the religious institutions of America uniting around the Catholic Church as the Obama administration cracks down on it, demanding it pay for contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients?

The Associated Press appears to have done something unusual in its coverage of the the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case on Monday. Two identically worded stories with differing headlines are still at the AP's national site.

It is more than a little odd that the story with the earlier headline ("Cache of evidence in shooting, still huge gaps") is still present. The headline grossly mischaracterizes the nature of the publicly released data. The same story with a different and more accurate headline ("Amid evidence cache in Martin case, questions nag") is also still there. I don't think I've ever seen this happen at AP, especially not for over 24 hours (the time stamps on the two stories are both late Friday afternoon). Graphics with the two examples follow the jump.

Here's the earlier version, (with the URL "http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NEIGHBORHOOD_WATCH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT"):

Now the later version (with the URL "http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NEIGHBORHOOD_WATCH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT"):

This link at the Kansas City Star has a time stamp (3:48 CT, 2:48 ET) with the "huge gaps" headline which is just less than two hours earlier than the AP's national site.

So why are two otherwise identical stories with different headlines still present at the wire service's national site? My theory: By changing the URL of the second story, AP made the old story with the distortion-driven headline less likely to be replaced at subscribing outlets on Friday evening, meaning that that a lot more print editions probably carried the "Huge Gaps" headline in their Saturday editions than would have been the case if the wire service had done what it usually does, which is to revise stories, make no change to their URLs, and effectively flush older versions down the memory hole.

The "huge gaps" headline's continued existence is pretty convenient for those who desperately want to keep portraying Trayvon Martin as an innocent, harmless victim while continuing to fan racial animosities. Based on what they have seen during the past week or so, many who are closely following the case, including well-known lawyer Alan Dershowitz, believe that the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman should be dropped

If there's a better explanation for what AP has done, I'd like to see it.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

When it comes to his memory of the 2008 presidential campaign, Ed Schultz is either dishonest or ignorant, though he might well be both.

On his radio show Thursday, Schultz made a claim that was demonstrably false — and refuted by the source he cited to bolster it, the HBO docudrama "Game Change." (video, audio clips after page break)

Schultz was angered by news of a proposed GOP ad campaign that would criticize President Obama for his erstwhile close ties to radical minister Jeremiah Wright, a relationship ended by Obama in the spring of 2008 after Wright became a political liability.

John McCain hammered Obama over Wright four years ago, an indignant Schultz complained (audio) –

You know, McCain tried all this garbage. Hell, you can even see the movie "Game Change" and see how they, you know, McCain didn't want to do it but they did it and it failed! It fail-, in fact, President Obama came out and gave two speeches on race and this was, Hannity, he couldn't get off this story for several months. This was their strategy. And I think you can make the case that had Hannity not gone down this road, who knows, it might have been a closer race than it was.

With Schultz's suggestion in mind, I revisited "Game Change" and found not one, not two, but three scenes where McCain or a senior advisor explicitly reject proposals tying Obama to Wright.

All three scenes are included in the video embedded here. (Warning: the language gets salty in a hurry). In the first scene, late July 2008 with Obama holding a double-digit lead in the polls, McCain is told by media strategist Fred Davis, "John, if there ever was a time to run a Rev. Wright ad, this is that time." The suggestion is rejected out of hand by advisors Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt. "There's footage of his own reverend saying 'God damn America' ," Davis counters. "It's the single best  weapon we've got."

"I want to run a f****ing campaign that my kids can be proud of," McCain bristles. "And that precludes attacking a black reverend!"

Second example, three months later, campaign party after the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin speaking with Schmidt.

"Senator McCain wanted me to congratulate you on a fantastic debate," Schmidt tells Palin. "You really did a great job."

"Thanks," Palin responds. "Tell John I want to bring up Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright. I think it's time to go for the jugular."

The suggestion doesn't go over well with Schmidt. "Uh, you'll have to discuss that with your running mate," he tells Palin. "He made it very clear that he doesn't want to touch Wright."

"I'll talk to him about it," Palin responds, then leans forward to whisper, "I have to win this thing. I so don't want to go back to Alaska."

Last example, closing days of the campaign, polls showing McCain down 5 to 8 points. "We've got to make this about Obama," says campaign manager Rick Davis. "We've got to get tough and we've got to get negative." Fred Davis again suggests hitting Obama with Wright and McCain again forcefully rejects it. "If we go this way," Davis says, "Rev. Wright is still the best play we have."

McCain — "Any of you ever been accused of having a Negro child out of wedlock because your adopted daughter was born in Bangladesh? And then when she was 16 and Googled her name, I had to explain to her why President Bush's henchmen called her a bastard when she was 10 years old."

"Yeah, listen, South Carolina, that was an ugly primary," Rick Davis says, referring to the 2000 campaign. "But this isn't the same thing. I mean, Rev. Wright really did say those things."

"That may be true," McCain responds. "But there's a dark side to American populism. Some people win elections by tapping into it. I'm not one of those people."

"OK, so what about Bill Ayers?" Fred Davis suggests. "Obama began his career in the living room of a domestic terrorist. Domestic terrorist, nothing to do with race."

"Yeah, OK, Ayers is fair," McCain says — but not Wright. In other words, strike three.

Clearly it hasn't dawned on Schultz that the proposal to revive Wright as a campaign issue is based in large part on McCain's refusal to do so. Whether it would have helped McCain can never be known. What is known is that McCain lost to Obama after taking what he considered the high road — and four years later it cuts him no slack whatsoever with shabby liberals like Schultz.

On his radio show Friday, Schultz puffed himself up in a way that was all the more laughable considering his delusions about McCain and Wright. Listen to what Schultz says after a caller complains about media coverage of the campaign leading to recall elections in Wisconsin next month (audio) –

CALLER: If this fails, Ed, if this fails there's no hope for democracy left in America.

SCHULTZ: I mean, here's what amazes me. This is what amazes me. And I'm not trying to talk down to anybody in the media in Wisconsin, don't get me wrong. If I was a young aspiring reporter, if I was in a newsroom, I would have no loyalty to anybody but the story and the facts. And if there was somebody lying, I'd make a career out of it.

Uncovering or emulating?

In an appearance on NPR's Diane Rehm Show on Tuesday, longtime Newsweek correspondent Eleanor Clift offered one surprising bit of understatement: "Obama and his people ran a brilliant campaign and yet it's hard to look at the last three years, four years in the White House, and think that they governed with equal brilliance."

Other than that, it was a constant drumbeat of predicting Mitt Romney is going to be sunk for going too far to the right:

Taft was in the Congress and had a conservative agenda, much like today's Republican Congress has a conservative agenda, and Mitt Romney, an urban northeastern governor, has got to run away from that agenda or else it could sink him….

It's hard to look at the Republican primary process and think that that was really character shaping. What it forced Mitt Romney to do was take a lot of positions to the right of everybody else, positions that he may or may not be able to move away from.

And on immigration, he got to the right of Governor Perry even on reproductive rights. He's pledged to "get rid of Planned Parenthood." And these are positions that — he's pledged also to never raise taxes so how does he make — if he wins, how does he make the compromises necessary, I think, to set this country on the correct path?

A caller wondered if the Republicans didn’t hatch some master plan to have all the non-Romney presidential contenders lock up their voters to motivate them to vote for Romney in the fall. Clift dissed the whole field: “Is the caller referring to the rest of the Republican candidates as the surrogates? Because I don't think any of them are particularly strong, but the fact that Romney did have to campaign in a number of states does allow him to put down an organization.”

The other guest, former CBS News pollster Samuel Popkin, insisted we have a Jon Stewart Primary of sorts:

I was very intrigued the other day when I read an interview with Ross Douthat, the very, very smart conservative columnist at the New York Times, who he was talking about the media and he said, basically you're not ready to be president if you can't defend yourself on "The Daily Show." And when the New York Times says it's not enough that we like you, you have to be good enough to — he didn't say you have to agree with Jon Stewart, but if you can't go on Jon Stewart and defend yourself with smart intellectuals, you're not ready. That impressed me.

This was the actual statement from Douthat in New York magazine:

But as Douthat knows well, the defenders of cultural conservatism have to speak across that divide. “There’s an unhealthy elitism, but there’s also a healthy elitism: If you can’t defend your ideas on The Daily Show, then you’re not ready. The apostle Paul was able to go to Athens and preach to the sophisticated Greeks.”

Matthew Balan noted earlier today that CBS This Morning loved Jay Leno’s joke that Chris Matthews offered so many wrong answers on “Jeopardy!” he was offered a job at Fox News.” We're not so sure Charlie Rose should be laughing it up at Fox when not only is CBS's perpetually low-rated morning show getting thumped by ABC and NBC, but is even getting spanked by a cable morning show — on Fox.

TV By The Numbers reports reported that Nielsen’s latest numbers that came out just yesterday noted that for 18 weeks straight, “Fox & Friends” has been beating CBS This Morning in total viewers in five of the Top 20 markets around the country. Not only have these same market leads sustained for all 18 weeks, since CBS re-launched this new program,  but FOX & Friends is now also beating what CBS in the key advertising demo (25-54) in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta and Detroit. But CBS is still boasting to advertisers.

According to TV Newser, CBS chief Les Moonves insisted at the network's "upfront" presentation to advertisers at Carnegie Hall that the current show is "the best broadcast we have ever had in the morning." By the numbers, that wouldn't be much of a boast. The new show continues to draw ratings below "The Early Show" it replaced when compared to the same period a year ago.

In his introductory speech, Moonves said, “At CBS News there is a true renaissance going on under the leadership of [CBS News chairman] Jeff Fager and [CBS news president] David Rhodes, and we are thrilled with the results." CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler added, “It is a distinctive broadcast that is getting our day off to its best start in decades.”

No wonder TV writers seem to have a permanent cynical smirk in the tone of their copy.

Even after Mitt Romney condemned a proposed controversial super PAC ad attacking President Obama, CNN's Piers Morgan couldn't help but speculate on whether the candidate was still playing dirty. On Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight he wondered aloud if the Romney campaign leaked the failed proposal to the press to keep the Reverend Wright controversy in the news.

"And I guess I think the really sinister aspect is, was it part of their intention to just have it leaked to the front page of the New York Times?" the ratings-starved Morgan asked about the Romney campaign. "Then you get all the publicity anyway without actually spending any money." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The proposed ad in question had already been rejected, followed by Romney's "repudiation" of it – but the media still jumped on the story. And ironically, Piers was doing the same thing he accused Mitt Romney of doing – keeping the mention of Reverend Wright in the news cycle by running three straight segments on the failed ad proposal.

Guest Kurt Andersen shot down Morgan's theory. "I just think it's too stupid. I think this doesn't do them any good," he said of the campaign. Piers wouldn't budge, though, and kept pushing his speculation.

"But Mitt Romney can stand as he did today and say, look, I knew nothing about this. I'm as appalled as you are. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Wright, who had disappeared off the radar, is now all over the news agenda again. And you can bet your life that they will be repeating now all over cable stations in America. They'll be playing his incendiary comments."

Que the irony of Morgan keeping Wright in the news while complaining about the media doing so. Meanwhile, even Time's Mark Halperin said it was "McCarthyism" to hold Mitt Romney responsible for the ad. Yet Morgan still grasped at a connection between Romney and the ad, through a tenuous "leak" he thinks may have happened.

"The media tends to take associations of Republican candidates and make – tie them around the neck of the Republican and say Mitt Romney has to account for every Republican out there, every conservative, every idea," Halperin declared on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Friday.

"It's McCarthyism to say Mitt Romney is responsible for everybody out there who he has a direct or indirect contact to. That is what the Obama people did. They're raising money off it. They're wasting a day of campaign dialogue on it because it is effective for them," he continued.

A transcript of the segment, which aired on May 17 on Piers Morgan Tonight at 9:49 p.m. EDT, is as follows:

PIERS MORGAN: Well that's what I was saying earlier. To me it's unfeasible that nobody in Mitt Romney's camp – he may have been distanced, plausible deniability and all that.

KURT ANDERSEN, author, "True Believers": Or implausible deniability.

MORGAN: Somebody in his campaign would have known all about this. And I guess I think the really sinister aspect is, was it part of their intention to just have it leaked to the front page of the New York Times? Then you get all the publicity anyway without actually spending any money.

ANDERSEN: My suspicion is not. I don't go that next level of sinister –

MORGAN: Really? Anything about the behavioral patterns of these politicians in Washington the last year made you feel less than cynical?

ANDERSEN: I feel entirely cynical. I just think it's too stupid. I think this doesn't do them any good. I think what you're supposed to do, if you're Mitt Romney's campaign, is make the people who are uncomfortable with a black president feel uncomfortable without ever mentioning black people.

MORGAN: But Mitt Romney can stand as he did today and say, look, I knew nothing about this. I'm as appalled as you are. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Wright, who had disappeared off the radar, is now all over the news agenda again. And you can bet your life that they will be repeating now all over cable stations in America. They'll be playing his incendiary comments.

ANDERSEN: Chickens coming home to roost.

MORGAN: All that stuff. So he's back in the forefront of people's minds in relation to the president.

ANDERSEN: You might be right. My belief is that what this does is not help Romney with the independents, that small group of people truly in the middle who could go either way. This looks cynical and wretched and unappealing.

MORGAN: Yes. However, it may help him with lots of other people, in galvanizing people who have a race element to their thinking.

ANDERSEN: Talk about galvanizing, I think if you're an African-American, 90 plus percent of whom voted for Barack Obama in the last election, this galvanizes you into thinking oh, look at these Republicans; they really are trying to make this dead-and-gone race issue from four years ago a live issue again.

MORGAN: Playing Devil's Advocate, is there any part of Jeremiah Wright which is relevant to this campaign? Is it unacceptable completely for a Republican like Mitt Romney or his campaign to actually use anything that Jeremiah Wright stood for against the President?

ANDERSEN: Nothing is unacceptable. I just think it won't work. And it's – and people judged in 2008 that it was a minor, perhaps briefly disturbing, then put to rest by Barack Obama himself issue. So it's not — it's not – it's ugly and it's stupid and perhaps beyond the pale by certain judgments. But they can try whatever they want.

MORGAN: This (Inaudible) sort of an unpleasant undertone, the Abe Lincoln reference and all the rest.

ANDERSEN: Metrosexual Abe Lincoln, yeah.

MORGAN: Yeah. It was pretty awful, I thought, to say that. But let's be realistic about political campaigns. When you watched the Republican nominee race, for example, that was pretty vile. You had them all lobbing bombs at each other. And at the end of it, they all kiss and make up and they're all friends again. Is the public really that naive? I mean, do we not just get used, conditioned to this? Has it not always been like this?

ANDERSEN: I don't think it has been as much like this. And I think this corrosive cynicism that is afoot in the land as regards to national politics is just made worse by this. I recommend that people go read this document closely. For instance, one of the things they propose is changing the name of the super PAC to "Character Matters."

MORGAN: Yeah.

ANDERSEN: I mean, you can't – Aaron Sorkin couldn't make that up.

Hardball's Chris Matthews ranted on Friday that Sean Hannity and Fox News are spreading "crap" about Barack Obama and trying to turn the President into a "black revolutionary" with an "automatic weapon."

Of his competition on the higher rated Fox News, Matthews spewed, "And then he's like a black revolutionary with the automatic weapons, the big sunglasses, the beret. Right?…Is that Sean [Hannity's] image of this president?" The liberal anchor prefaced his comments by threatening, "Let's do a psychoanalysis of this guy, Sean Hannity." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Mocking FNC viewers, Matthews imitated, "Did you hear that, dear? Come in here! Did you hear what Sean says? He's really one of those people."

Deriding Hannity's viewers as stupid, he marveled, "Somewhere someone must be believing this stuff, this crap."

Of course, considering Matthews's dismal performance on Jeopardy, perhaps he shouldn't be questioning anyone's intelligence.

A transcript of the May 18 exchange can be found below:

5:05           

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let's do a psychoanalysis of this guy, Sean Hannity.

DAVID CORN: Oh, please!

MATTHEWS: No, no. Is this showmanship or does he really have in his doubt- Does he really believe there's some other person under this guy we're watching?
   
…

MATTHEWS: You know, the image they must have in their heads- First of all, they love Alinsky because it sounds, basically, like a communist And then he's like a black revolutionary with the automatic weapons, the big sunglasses, the beret. Right? That's- Is that Sean's image of this president?

DAVID CORN: it seems to be-

MATTHEWS: Not this guy who likes to play golf- spends his free time trying to learn to play golf. There's a lefty. He's trying to learn. He won't even tell us his score. He's just trying to learn. There's a lefty if I ever saw one.

CORN: This is an imaging of the Bill Ayers. Sarah Palin saying he pals around with terrorists. It all goes back to this that he's not us. He's not American, whether it's because black or socialist or whatever he is.

EUGENE ROBINSON: We don't know what he is, but he's not us!

CORN: And we never figured it out! Now it's time to figure it out!

MATTHEWS: Look at Michelle. Doesn't she look like one of those lefties from the campus. Scraggly hair, hanging around the campus. She's a fashion plate. She's perfectly turned out.

CORN: No, no. She's the angry black woman.

MATTHEWS: That's what I don't see. They're raising perfect kids. They're all well turned out. They act like they're Mr. And Mrs Perfect everyday.

CORN: They have fooled you.

MATTHEWS: They're meeting in the middle of the night.

CORN: You've fallen for it. It's a ruse. And they're bailing out the banks!

MATTHEWS: Somewhere someone must be believing this stuff, this crap.

CORN: I'm sure it's good for ratings at Fox. Right?

MATTHEWS: "Did you hear that, dear? Come in here! Did you hear what Sean says? He's really one of those people."

In the midst of fill-in host Craig Melvin hyping accusations that black lawmakers were "being unfairly targeted for ethics investigations" by the Republican-led House Ethics Committee during Firday's News Nation on MSNBC, the channel's graphics department mistakenly displayed an image on screen of the Reverend Jesse Jackson senior, instead of his son, Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Melvin touted Democratic Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver "now calling for members…of the House ethics panel to temporarily step aside." He continued: "The Congressman writing a letter saying in part, quote, 'I write to express my deep and abiding concern with the protracted length, abnormal number, motive, and fairness of pending matters.'"

As pictures of five black Democratic members of Congress under investigation appeared on screen, including the wrong Jackson photo, Melvin turned to Politico's Manu Raju and wondered: "Is this, first of all, is this an unusual number?"

After the segment concluded, Melvin apologized for the error: "I also want to apologize to our viewers at home. We just put up a graphic of the – of the five congress people who are under investigation, under scrutiny by the ethics panel. We mistakenly put up a picture of Jesse Jackson senior, it's Jesse Jackson Jr., we apologize for that mistake."

This is not the first time MSNBC had an ID problem with Jesse Jackson. In October of 2009, then-MSNBC host Contessa Brewer introduced Jackson as "the Reverend Al Sharpton."

Here is a portion of the May 18 exchange:

2:40PM ET

CRAIG MELVIN: Are black lawmakers being unfairly targeted for ethics investigations in Congress? Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, is now calling for members of House ethics – of the House ethics panel to temporarily step aside. The Congressman writing a letter saying in part, quote, "I write to express my deep and abiding concern with the protracted length, abnormal number, motive, and fairness of pending matters." Joining me now is Politico's Manu Raju, and of course his article first appeared in Politico. Manu, good afternoon to you.

MANU RAJU: Thanks for having me.

MELVIN: Five black lawmakers currently under scrutiny in some shape or form by the Ethics Committee.

[ON-SCREEN GRAPHIC: Pictures of five members of Congress under ethics investigation, including Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, but Jesse Jackson senior's picture is shown. Click on image to enlarge.]   

MELVIN: Is this, first of all, is this an unusual number?

(…)

MELVIN: I also want to apologize to our viewers at home. We just put up a graphic of the – of the five congress people who are under investigation, under scrutiny by the ethics panel. We mistakenly put up a picture of Jesse Jackson senior, it's Jesse Jackson Jr., we apologize for that mistake. There are the five congress people who are under scrutiny by the congressional ethics panel.

Since The New York Times decided to put Reverend Jeremiah Wright back on the nation's agenda, it's important to note that some voters (especially the youngest new voters) may not understand what happened in the last cycle. The most important part for them is this: Barack Obama said in a widely hailed speech on March 18, 2008 that "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He then disowned him on April 29, and finally cut ties to the church entirely on May 31. None of his craven (if very delayed) moves were forced by the networks, which covered them like a sad family decision.

A 2008 Media Research Center Special Report studying ABC, CBS, and NBC news broadcasts  revealed that a viewer watching only broadcast TV news would have received a very limited (and even censored) version of Wright’s most outrageous sermons. Key findings:

The broadcast networks took an entire year to locate Reverend Wright. Despite a feisty interview on Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes back on March 1, 2007 about Obama’s church’s controversial commitment to a "black value system," the name of Jeremiah Wright didn’t surface on the Big Three networks until CBS first broached it on February 28, 2008. The first story with Wright sermon soundbites aired two weeks later, on ABC on March 13. By then, 42 states and the District of Columbia had already voted.

The broadcast network evening news shows gave virtually no coverage to Wright soundbites in March. Snippets of Wright’s sermons drew only 72 seconds of evening news coverage in all of March, or an average of 24 seconds per network, less than one commercial.

The Big Three morning shows gave four times as much time to Wright soundbites as the evening shows in March. The morning shows carried almost five minutes of Wright clips (297 seconds), with ABC offering the most at 128 seconds. The other two networks each ran less than 90 seconds.

The networks completely ignored soundbites of Wright’s conspiracy theory about the U.S. government inventing AIDS to kill blacks, and mostly ignored his comments about the September 11 terrorist attacks being "America’s chickens coming home to roost." None of the network morning or evening shows found one opportunity to air Wright’s 2003 sermon accusing the federal government of hiding the truth about their "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." His attack on America’s alleged record of terrorism and violence was ignored by all three evening shows, as well as by CBS’s The Early Show.

The broadcast networks gave clips of Obama’s "race speech" on March 18 more than twice as much air time in a few hours than they gave all of the Wright bites aired in the month of March. The evening news shows on March 18 carried almost six minutes (348 seconds) of highlights from the Obama speech, or roughly five times more than all the Wright bites in March. The morning shows carried roughly nine and a half minutes (572 seconds) of sound from the speech. The three morning shows gave almost twice as much time to the Obama speech clips as they devoted to Wright soundbites in March. Combined, Obama’s one speech drew about 15 minutes of clips, while Wright’s years of sermons drew about six minutes.

Broadcast network interview segments on the Wright remarks and Obama’s race speech in March were dominated by liberal guests. When the networks allowed Republican or conservative guests, they stayed neutral or praised Obama’s remarks. Overall, the network pundit count was 16 to 5. CBS especially loaded its reaction panels with nine liberals and just one right-leaning pundit, pollster Frank Luntz, who contained his remarks to grading Obama’s stagecraft. NBC allowed six liberals and three conservatives. ABC aired one liberal and one conservative.

Wright’s National Press Club vitriol repeating his opinions about an AIDS conspiracy and America deserving 9/11 went virtually unreported. The broadcast network morning and evening shows aired only two and a half minutes (155 seconds) of soundbites from Wright’s April 28 performance at the National Press Club, but there were no soundbites about AIDS and only 23 seconds about America deserving a terrorist attack. By contrast, these same Big Three shows aired almost six minutes (358 seconds) of clips of Wright’s softball interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, where he accused conservatives of smearing him as a hater.

In today’s rapid-fire political atmosphere of cable news, talk radio, and the Internet, media analysts can easily make the mistake of believing that the leading network news outlets were tough on a candidate because of the general perception of how the entire media – Old Media and New Media – brought a controversy to the public’s attention. But voters who sampled only a light menu of news from Big Three network TV could easily have missed the depths of Reverend Wright’s outrageous remarks. No one could find in these stories a scouring scrutiny of Obama’s decades of membership in his controversial church.

It also comes in PDF form.