Tomorrow is the final night of Katie Couric’s stint as anchor of CBS Evening News, at which point Scott Pelley will take the reigns, lean forward even more and possibly face-plant the entire operation once and for all.

Everybody knows that Couric is the run-of-the-mill media elite liberal, but how in the world did she manage to conceal it so effectively? Here’s a montage of five years worth of Katie Couric objectivity that would make Edward R. Murrow himself well up with pride:

(h/t Media Research Center)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

If you happen to be among those who oppose a mosque near Ground Zero, you might not be so biased if only some enterprising television producer would create a sitcom about an upper middle class Muslim family — perhaps featuring a lawyer wife and a doctor husband in a colorful cable-knit sweater — and their humorous attempts to raise children in spite of the annoyances of everyday life, such as occasional cameo appearances by Sinbad.

In Katie Couric’s CBSNews.com’s 2010 in Review, the so-called perky one suggested something like that in her regular segment entitled, “There are two sides to every story: The side I agree with, and the racist/Islamophobic/bigoted side”:

Don’t stop there. What should this Muslim sitcom be called? “Shi’ite My Dad Says”? “South Park51″? “Hangin’ Mr. Cooper”? “Muhammad in the Middle”? “Everybody Hates Carl“? The premise has been beaten like the CBS Evening News in the ratings, but feel free to help out anyway, Katie!

I’d think Couric would be more interested in a sitcom that might help dispel the perception that network news anchors are biased, elitist, wildly overpaid, semi-dimwitted impartiality imposters. She’s really earning that looming pay cut.

Not surprisingly, Couric didn’t feel it necessary to mention the surge in hate crimes against Jews. Sounds like another sitcom is in order.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

***

Sisterhood of the Protected Female Liberal Journalists
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2008

Sisterhood of the protected female liberal journalist

Let’s talk Mommy Wars, double standards, and the media elite. Last Friday, Obama Campaign National Finance Committee member Howard Gutman attacked Sarah Palin’s ability to be a good parent and have a high-powered public life at the same time. In a finger-wagging appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show, Obama’s operative scolded the Republican mother of five children for not putting her professional career on hold.

“Your responsibility is to put your family first,” Gutman lectured as he singled out Palin’s Down’s Syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter. “The proper attack is not that a woman shouldn’t run for vice president with five kids, it’s that a parent, when they have a family in need,” should get out of the public sphere and stay home.

The Gutman standard has now been proffered by countless Obama hacks and water-carrying commentators. Damningly, it’s high-powered working mothers in the journalism business helping to broadcast the anti-Palin slams or doing nothing to defend her.

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien denied Palin attacks on her network, even as her colleague John Roberts asked: “”There’s also this issue that on April 18th, she gave birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome…. Children with Down’s syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?”

NBC’s Meredeith Viera asserted that only blogs went after Palin’s motherhood abilities while running for veep, even as her colleague Brian Williams slyly raised feminists’ “fears or doubts that she should be able to do this, that she should be doing this.”

How would CNN’s O’Brien like the Gutman standard applied to her? She’s been working overtime covering the presidential campaign season, anchoring daily coverage, nighttime conventions, and producing documentaries that require large chunks of time away from home. Disney’s Family Parenting website lauds her as “a modern mom balancing a thriving career as one of America’s top news anchors along with her four children” – two daughters now ages 7 and 6 and twin boys who are 4. Where are the Palin-bashers to lambaste O’Brien’s professional pursuits?

How about Katie Couric? Her husband died at 42 when her daughters were 6 and 2 years old. With two young children devastated by the loss of a father, she opted not to quit journalism. She anchored NBC’s Today Show through his illness and death, continued working an intensive, time-consuming schedule as one of America’s most visible broadcast journalists while a single mother with two fatherless children at home, and then jumped to CBS News, where she maintains a rigorous on-air schedule, travel plans, and off-air social calendar. Where are the finger-waggers?

Also at CNN, Campbell Brown flew to Las Vegas last year to moderate a political debate while 8 ½ months’ pregnant. Fox News host and left-wing blogger Alan Colmes, last seen questioning Sarah Palin’s commitment to prenatal care because she worked and traveld late in her pregnancy, had no comment. When she initially left the Today Show in 2007, Brown said she was stepping down to devote more time to family and baby. She immediately turned around the next day and jumped ship to CNN, where she has anchored wall-to-wall CNN Election Center coverage and will launch a new nightly show in November.

And at NBC, famous balancer of work-and-motherhood Viera replaced Couric on the Today Show. She has three children at home and a husband who has battled multiple sclerosis and two bouts with colon cancer. By the Gutman standard, Viera should have left the business years ago to tend to her family in need.

As a working woman in the media for 16 years and a working mother in the media for the last eight. I know the commitment and energy it took for these women to get to the top. I’ve filed columns from hospital beds, written books while nursing, brought my toddlers to TV studios, and told bedtime stories on the cell phone while boarding planes. I’ve worked hard to strike the “balance” we all seek. I’ve made good choices and bad choices, and have no regrets about the opportunities I’ve taken and the opportunities I’ve rejected. I couldn’t have done it without a supportive husband willing to forego his own career goals – the kind of spouse that the media has ignored in Todd Palin and the kind of spouse I’m sure the Sisterhood of the Protected Female Journalist all have.

I don’t challenge the commitment these fellow working mothers in the media have to their home lives. What I challenge is their silence and complicity as the Palin-bashers impose a “Family First” double standard on conservatives. The sorority is closed to the Right.

***

K-Lo has a point here. But it’s not “whining” to expose double standards. It’s an object lesson.

John Hawkins has a video show of solidarity from the conservative sisterhood.

Conservatives frequently criticize TV personalities for not taking time to visit the troops and getting a lay of the land. Well, now Couric is going. Seems hypocritical to bash her when she didn’t go and bash her now that she’s headed over, doesn’t it?

Is she trying to boost her TV ratings? Sure. Who in tee-vee land isn’t trying to do that? Does she have a liberal agenda? Again, with few exceptions, who doesn’t have a liberal agenda in tee-vee land? Will she change her mind about the war? Probably not, but who knows? Look at Rep. Brian Baird.

Couric is coming under extra scrutiny because she is a single mom. She has two daughters, one in her teens and another a tweener. Is it reckless for her to leave her family and possibly risk her life to broadcast from Iraq? Some folks who think women have absolutely no place on the war front believe so. I don’t. I made the decision in January to embed with our troops in Baghdad for a short trip, leaving my husband and two young children (much younger than Couric’s), because I felt compelled and driven to see and experience what was happening on the ground for myself. My Hot Air colleague, Bryan Preston, who accompanied me, also left behind a young family. It was an invaluable experience for us. We were able to share unique video, photo essays, and blog reports with our audience, make contacts and friends, deepen our understanding of a complex battlespace, and express our appreciation for the troops. We would do it again in a heartbeat.

No one makes the decision to leave their family lightly. There are single moms, single dads, and married parents in the military who have to make these decisions for much, much longer periods of time and who make far, far greater sacrifices every day to protect and serve our country.

Couric will be there for a total of 10 days. I’m sure it will be derided as a “drive-by” trip, a micro-embed, etc. But there is great value in walking even a foot in non-civilian shoes. Couric will not see combat and she probably won’t have to lug around 50 pounds of gear, but she still will have to wear her own body armor, ride in a boiling C-130, and sweat like everyone else.

I don’t expect much out of her reporting. She deserves low expectations, but she doesn’t deserve derision for making the decision to go.

For now, I only have these words for Katie Couric: Good luck and Godspeed. May the journey open your eyes.

***

While all the rest of the media buzz about Katie, Katie, Katie, I think her trip is a golden opportunity to give a platform to all the independent journalists who are embedded and/or who have been embedded overseas doing the reporting Katie hasn’t done. Maybe she’ll run into some of them. If NBC’s Brian Williams can get a clue about Michael Yon, maybe Couric will finally notice the outstanding work that blogger embeds have been doing.

If these citizen journalists aren’t on your daily reading list, they should be:

Michael Yon
J.D. Johannes
Bill Roggio’s PMI
Jeff Emanuel
Michael Totten
Matt Sanchez
Bill Ardolino
Mario Loyola and W. Thomas Smith, Jr. at The Tank

Milblogger Greyhawk takes on the Times’ Ed Wong and his reporting in Hurriya. Greyhawk zeroes in on this paragraph:

From morning until afternoon, at least four mosques were attacked in Hurriya, a mixed neighborhood in the capital. Two were destroyed, and at least 5 Sunnis were killed and 10 wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. A hard-line Sunni Arab group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said 18 people had been killed when one of the mosques burned down.

Apparently a separate incident from the “6 Sunnis burned alive” claim – and one with no quotes from neighbors to support or dispute it, something admittedly within Ed’s ability to deliver. As I’ve noted before, 18 is more than 6, and a “burned down” mosque is relatively easy enough to verify. Given Ed’s passion for balanced reporting, it’s unfortunate he failed to at least note the well known connection between the Association of Muslim Scholars and al Qaeda – opting instead for the ambiguous “hard line” descriptor. And yes, this is the same group that claimed 184 Sunni mosques had been attacked within hours of the Shrine bombing (and that now appears to be rupturing after their leader fled Iraq)…

…if the NY Times is serious about accurate reporting from Iraq, they might want to start examining the work of their own man on the scene, who’s never met an unsubstantiated rumor of atrocity he found unfit to print.

Recall, as Curt at Flopping Aces noted, that the military refuted the mosque-burning stories on Nov. 25:

Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood.

Soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division conducted a patrol in Hurriya Friday afternoon in response to media reports that four mosques were being burned as retaliation for the VBIED attacks in Sadr City on Thursday.

The Soldiers set up a checkpoint near the Al Muhaimen mosque at approximately 2 p.m. and found the mosque intact with no evidence of any fire at the location.

While investigating the Al Meshaheda mosque, the patrol received small arms fire from unknown insurgents. The patrol returned fire, and the insurgents broke contact and fled the area. A subsequent check of the mosque found the mosque intact with no evidence of a fire.

At approximately 3:50 p.m., a local civilian reported to the patrol that armed insurgents had set the Al-Nidaa mosque on fire by throwing a gas container into the mosque. The patrol pursued the insurgents but lost contact with them.

The Soldiers called the fire department and set up a cordon around the mosque. Local fire trucks responded to the scene and extinguished the fire at approximately 4:00 p.m. The mosque sustained smoke and fire damage in the entry way but was not destroyed.

An alleged attack on a fourth mosque remains unconfirmed. The patrol was also unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident.

Paging Tom Zeller…

Speaking of Zeller, Ace pointed out something strangely missing in his coverage of the six burning Sunnis story yesterday: Not a word about Jamil Hussein. Why?

Dan Riehl notes that neither Time magazine nor al Jazeera has been able to confirm AP’s report of the six burning Sunnis. We continue our coverage at Hot Air today here.

Curt at Flopping Aces summed up where things stand this way:

Unnamed witnesses. One fraudalent witness. One witness who recanted. No bodies. No family members of the victims found. No evidence of burned bodies on the street such as clothing. No outcry from local clerics and politicians…

But who are we to question the media[,] right?

Mark Tapscott at the Examiner calls for an investigation:

It’s time for AP to take the same sort of approach to resolve the Captain Jamil Hussein controversy. But there is one big difference between the present issue and the Dan Rather/”60 Minutes” ordeal – AP provides news to virtually every daily newspaper in America. AP is a cornerstone of the mainstream media. If AP’s credibiilty is harmed, every news organization that uses its products also suffers.

Thus, AP should ask the American Society of Newspaper Editors to oversee the appointment and conduct of an independent panel of respected journalists and outside evidentiary experts to determine the truth behind Captain Jamil Hussein and all other sources similarly in doubt.

To allow this controversy to continue to fester without taking decisive actions to resolve it to everybody’s satisfaction could be disastrous for journalists everywhere.

Wretchard at The Belmont Club contemplates blogs and the collection-analysis-dissemination cycle.

Jim Hoft notes that Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz Hakim addressed dubious media reporting at his meeting with President Bush.

Meanwhile, Brian Montopoli (to his credit) is blogging at the CBS News website. He writes:

In the end, where you stand on this one comes down to who you have faith in. Conservative bloggers tend to believe the military over a press corps that they feel is unworthy of their trust. Journalists, who are inherently distrustful of power, tend to trust their colleagues over the military. In an ideal world, both sides could put aside their prejudices and look objectively at the facts. Bloggers too often let their outrage cloud their judgment, and journalists can be too quick to dismiss criticism. The sooner both sides acknowledge as much, the better. But judging from how this one has played out, I’m not holding my breath.

Well, I’m not holding my breath that anyone at CBS News other than Montopoli will lift a finger to get to the truth.

Paging Katie Couric?

***
Previous:
The alleged war atrocity that the NYTimes can’t substantiate
Rumors and reporting in Iraq
Burning Sunnis, burning mosques, burning questions
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account
Real news vs. fake news in Iraq
The media fog of war
The Associated (with terrorists) Press strikes again
Bilal Hussein’s congresswoman
AP runs to the Washington Post
AP stands for Advocacy Press
AP vs. the “so-called blogosphere”
Associated Press and the Bilal Hussein case
Where is Bilal Hussein?

I’m blogging from the road (don’t worry, Bryan Preston is driving) on our way back from a Michael Steele campaign event. We’ll have an interview with him posted tomorrow at Hot Air. The GOP candidate was endorsed by a passionate, bipartisan group of pastors–several of whom made a point of declaring “I am a registered Democrat and I’m voting for Michael Steele!” You won’t read about in on the front page (or the back page) of the New York Times or Washington Post, or see it on Katie Couric’s newscast, of course. If he were a Democrat, the Beltway press corps would be panting “rock star, rock star” endlessly and he’d be on the cover of Esquire magazine.

Instead, Esquire derided him this week as a “lawn jockey” along with other black conservatives–more of the liberal racist smears that have been lobbed at Steele from the very beginning of his campaign.

He’s got incredible momentum–the race is now classified as a toss-up, polls are tightening, and black Democrats are coming out with strong support.

I’m told that the Cardin campaign is bringing Michael J. Fox, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton to help out in the last stretch before election day. They’re worried.

They should be. Steele is hot.

***

Baltimore Sun: Steele cuts Cardin’s lead nearly in half
Baltimore Examiner endorses Steele

Update: Mary Katharine Ham was also at the Steele event today and shares her impressions.

Update: Ian spotlights more Steele smears from left-wing haters.

Early in August I was approached by Ms. Couric herself, and she told me of a segment that they were going to do in their new newscast called free speech, freedom of speech. “Free Speech” I think it is, and every night there will be a commentator that will get between a minute and 15 to a minute and 30 depending on how competent and good they are. I got the full minute 30, and on Friday they’re going to do comedians, and they’re going to do this every night, and some nights it’s going to be a Wal-Mart shopper. Some nights it’ll be a professional academic. Some nights it’ll be a pundit. It’ll be full of people that you know or you don’t know. They hope they’re going to, you know, run the gamut with this, and Katie asked me if I would consider appearing on the first week, and I said, “Yeah, but my experience with these kinds of things, Katie, leads me to ask you for certain promises, conditions,” and I got those promises and conditions. They were met.

So last Thursday, we taped it in the EIB Building in Manhattan after the radio show, and it wasn’t until I guess Saturday that I found out it actually is going to run on Thursday. That’s the plan now. I don’t know who’s doing tonight. I don’t know who’s doing tomorrow night. I’ve heard that Clinton’s done one, that McCain’s going to do one, Giuliani. I don’t know about anybody else. I have no clue who else is doing this, other than — and I don’t know any more than you do. I only know that I did mine and it will air sometime in the newscast on Thursday, and a lot of you, I think, are a little shortsighted on this, and I responded to some of the e-mails over the weekend questioning my loyalty to the movement, questioning my sanity, questioning my brains.

When the Drive-By Media offers 90 seconds of a 22-minute program — an opportunity for me to express our views, my views, without debate, without somebody coming on afterwards to refute it — and that’s part of the feature, by the way. They’ve assured me and everybody they talked to that you do your piece on X night, the next night’s not going to be somebody responding or replying, although I have heard that George Clooney has already asked for equal time (laughing) to respond to me. Now, I’m told that’s not going to happen, and certainly it’s not going to happen the next night. I didn’t mention any names in my piece. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about, because I don’t want to give anything of it away, but just believe me on this, folks: It is our views, and they’re pretty hard-hitting, and they’re going to be on the CBS Evening News, and they haven’t appeared — these kinds of views haven’t appeared much — on the CBS Evening News or the ABC World News Tonight or the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

***

From MRC: Meet the Real Katie Couric.

Flashback: A trip down Katie’s liberal media lane.

Free market think tank types want in on the action, too. They are actually holding a contest to vote for the “most beautiful policy people.” I link, you decide.

Dan Riehl and Jim Treacher sharpen their Photoshop tools on Dan Rather, Katie Couric, and Rosie O.

No need to try it on me. Bryan Preston worked his magic and added 50 pounds to my frame last month. Feel the bloat.

Well, Smash reports another staple of the moonbat deprivation plan:

Beer!

Wonder if Katie Couric has been “fasting” on the Cindy Sheehan plan, too?

Katie Couric’s series of focus-group meetings with community groups across the country — without the presence of the news media — ran into a snag in Minneapolis Tuesday when a staffer for WCCO-TV attempted to disinvite Matt Bartel, who operates the local MNSpeak.com blog, then compromised by allowing him to surrender his pen. Bartel seemed unfazed by his treatment. “”I thought the event was worthwhile,” he wrote on the blog Wednesday. “I wish the discussion had been open to more people and the media, but the people who were there were, for the most part, great.”

But the Associated Press quoted Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota ethics professor, as saying, “At a time when the news media is trying to gain the trust through transparency, to have a meeting closed to the media and the general public is unbelievable.”

Funny enough, the almost-banned blogger was softer on Katie than the local MSM rag, the Star Tribune, which covered Couric’s “well-oiled machine:”

It was a well-orchestrated media event that excluded the media, a private invitation-only meeting in the brand new Minneapolis public library designed to connect network news’s biggest new deal — The Katie — with “regular folks” from Minnesota.

Those “folks” meeting Katie Couric, newly of CBS news, included former City Council President Jackie Cherryhomes, public relations guru Jon Austin, St. Thomas journalism professor Mark Neuzil, and numerous recognizable faces from government and social service agencies, as well as students and “soccer moms.”

Couric’s “Eye on America” road show passed through Minneapolis on Wednesday in a visit that was part fundraiser, part celebrity peek-a-boo, and part of the “soft sell” campaign by CBS News to introduce Katie Couric to the nation.

“To introduce Katie Couric to the nation.”

Because, you know, we haven’t seen and heard enough of her over the last 20 years.

I’d like to see more of that pushback here in the U.S.

Anyway, the face-off between the general and the bubblehead is my video clip of the week–along with some classic stage-the-news moments. Enjoy.

Fly away!

NBC is making the most of it:

According to buyers, the network is charging $110,000 for a 30-second spot in Ms. Couric’s final appearance on ‘Today.”

Reader Lynda sends along word that NBC News is soliciting one-minute farewell videos to commemorate Katie Couric’s departure from the Today Show.

Katie Couric is leaving NBC after 15 years on the “Today” show, and we want to give you, the viewers, the opportunity to say goodbye to her.

If you’d like to say goodbye … wish her well … thank her … tell her what you’re going to miss the most … share how she inspired you … or just want to say what you love most about her … here’s your chance.

Over at Hot Air, we’re holding our own Say Goodbye to Katie video contest. For details, watch the latest edition of Vent, where it’s casual Friday:

And yes, those are my Care Bear slippers.

Related: Allah Pundit’s guide to viral video is up as a companion piece to the latest Vent. Bookmark it. Hilarious!

Related: Newsbusters exposes the open-borders Today Show.

Scripps reports in Florida:

The Stars and Stripes have been replaced by the Mexican flag at Chasewood North, and residents of the condominium community off Central Boulevard are puzzled as to who made the switch.

“I woke up Sunday morning and looked up from my patio and then realized that the American flag wasn’t on the flagpole,” said Sue Miller a Chasewood North board member. “What captured my attention were the colors — at first I thought it was an Italian flag, but one of our residents said it was the Mexican flag.

“I went to the flagpole, to see if the American flag was maybe on the ground, but they took it, and they cut the rope to get the American flag down and the Mexican flag up as well.”

A best estimate of when the switch took place is Saturday night… It may be several weeks before the Stars and Stripes once again fly over Chasewood North, according to Miller, who at one time was the resident manager of the complex.

“We tried to get the flag down but couldn’t, so we need to hire a company with a boom truck to get up there and replace the rope and put up the American flag,” she said. “I would guesstimate that this would cost $500 or more to do.”

Just thought you should know, because, well, you probably aren’t going to hear about it from Katie Couric or the NYTimes.

***

Not that anyone seems to care about laws anymore, but the Federal Flag Code prescribes the proper display of and respect for the United States Flag. Pass it around–maybe to a public school teacher in your neighborhood.

Heidi at Euphoric Reality has audio files of interviews with L.A.-area school officials about the upside-down flag at Montebello H.S.

Gerard Van der Leun weighs in on America, the Big Pinata.

Meanwhile, President Bush is headed to Cancun.

And you’ll be so glad to know that he has won the backing of the Mexican government for a guest-worker/amnesty (yeah, that’s what it is) plan. More.

Previous:

The American flag comes second