The Pentagon’s public relations machine is working overtime these days trying to sell a theme of "progress" in Afghanistan to push back against calls to end the war. The message machine behind this push is gargantuan, costing $547 million and employing more than 27,000 people. But, as our latest Rethink Afghanistan video shows, all that [...]

With General Petraeus’ stop on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric now halfway over, it’s worth taking a moment to unpack the unchallenged, false assertions and implications he’s piled up thus far on his media tour. We decided to look into the claims he made about “oil spots” of “progress” during his interview with NBC’s David Gregory. Both claims were absolute fantasies, and the remaining journalists on Petraeus’ tour owe their viewers more rigorous skepticism than what we saw on Meet the Press.

Welcome to Pakistan, kiddies. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

CBS journalists were filming a beach in South Pass, Louisiana, when, according to CBS, a “boat of BP contractors and two Coast Guard officers told them to turn around or be arrested.” The incident is thought by bloggers tracking the oil leak in the Gulf to not be the only time that BP has challenged the right of journalists to film.

It’s becoming nearly impossible for me to watch television news these days of any sort. Where has Bernard Shaw gone? And I don’t mean the man Bernard Shaw; I mean the Journalist Bernard Shaw. Try as I might, I can’t see him. I used to rely on him for news, religiously. There was something about his demeanor and the steadiness of his voice, his willingness to ask razor-bladed questions without apologizing, and his refusal to waste time on bedazzled “news” that made him “trusted”, that made CNN the most trusted news source in the world. With Shaw, there was none of the circus act, just news delivered in as respectful a manner as possible.

In the first public opinion poll to entirely account for the ongoing BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, support for offshore drilling has “plummeted” per CBS News, who conducted the poll.

A long one for me, but full of hilarious stupidity.

Anti-choice groups in Atlanta have rented billboards calling black children “an endangered species,” and advocating for laws to limit reproductive choice. The billboards are owned by CBS Outdoors. Yes, that CBS.

Written by Jodi Jacobson for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Is it way past time for an advertiser boycott of Focus on the Family and James Dobson. I think so.

The media love to talk about transparency and accountability when it comes to politicians and the government — they should, it’s an important subject. They, too, have such an obligation of transparency to the American people, particularly when it comes to who can and cannot advertise on their coveted airwaves. On that account, they continue to fail miserably.