Free Republic

This could go down as the most egregiously misleading graphic in morning show history. Have a look at the screengrab. Reporting on census data being released today, the Early Show on CBS displayed a graphic, under the headline "Economic Crisis," reporting that in the first part of this decade--the early Bush years: * Household income dropped 79% * The poverty rate increased 70% * Unemployment was up 71% What?? If those number were true, they would reflect a depression that would have made the 1930s look like life on easy street. View video.

The Early Show did its best this morning to help Barack Obama dig out of the hole he's dug for himself with his close association with Jeremiah Wright. In a set-up segment, CBS's Dean Reynolds rhetorically asked: "the question is whether the rhetoric is so remarkable, because in African-American churches pastors often seek to rouse their congregants to self-reliance by speaking harshly about the country's troubled racial past and the need to overcome it." Nice try, but how does accusing the US government of introducing AIDS and giving black people drugs equate to a call for self-reliance? Reynolds concluded by...

Particularly when you consider the ramifications for millions of children growing up without a two-parent family, the news that 51% of women in America now live without a spouse is serious indeed. But the decline of our culture was nothing but a laughing matter for the boys of the Early Show. Rather than seeing any cause for concern, CBS displayed the graphic seen here blithely informing viewers: "No Husband Needed." As Russ Mitchell threw the story to Harry Smith, he mirthfully proclaimed: "So Harry, now there's now statistical data for what we always knew: they really don't need us,...

Though in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars -- the only way to measure prices over time -- a price of a barrel of oil will have to exceed $87 to reach a record high, the broadcast networks have been falsely trumpeting nominal oil prices as a "record high." On Wednesday night, for instance, CBS Evening News anchor Russ Mitchell inaccurately asserted that "oil prices hit another record high today, closing above 72 bucks a barrel." NBC's Brian Williams wrongly claimed that oil prices were "surging to yet another record high close. The gain on the day 82 cents per barrel. Closing price...

At about 10:40am EST, Rather wondered: "Having studied every American president in some detail, has there been any American president in a time of war who has asked for as little sacrifice as President Bush has done? Or is that a misreading of history?" Professor Joseph Ellis, a CBS News analyst, a historian and an author, most recently of a new biography of George Washington, confirmed: "No, I think you're right, Dan. I think what's unusual about President Bush is that he's perhaps the only President that took us to war at the same time as he cut our taxes....