It's very troubling.

Brian Williams: You know what I thought was unsaid ---they took their position Chris, we're seeing the replay --- they end up in this spot and the sun is coming is just from the side and there in the shadow is John McCain's buckled, concave shoulder. It's a part of his body the suit doesn't fill out because of his war injuries. Again you wouldn't spot it unless you knew to look for it. He doesn't give the same full chested profile as the president standing next to him. Talk about a warrior...

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather and Bill)

Full 34-minute interview available here.

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters:

Searching for more proof that celebrity Beltway journalists enjoy warm, friendly relations with Republican presidential hopefuls? Look no further than last week's cozy sit-down between NBC News anchor Brian Williams and GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani.[..]

I watched the Giuliani interview last week and was busy taking notes when I wasn't picking my jaw up off the floor. That was partly because of the forced, old-friend vibe that permeated the interview, but mostly because Williams never asked Giuliani a single uncomfortable question. The treatment stood in stark contrast to the relentless and often factually challenged grilling Williams and his NBC News colleague Tim Russert unleashed on the Democratic front-runner at the Philadelphia debate two weeks ago. Not to mention the type of loaded, contentious questions Williams posed to Democrats when he moderated their debate (solo) in South Carolina in April.

Sitting down with Giuliani though, Williams suddenly lost his edge and was content with lobbing vague questions, refraining from meaningful follow-ups, and allowing Giuliani to attack Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at length for being on "the defensive" in fighting the war on terror and for promoting "higher taxes for the whole country."[..]

Williams, a regular Rush Limbaugh listener, had 30 minutes to ask the candidate any questions he wanted. It's instructive to examine the questions Williams did, and did not ask, Giuliani.

Williams' first topic of discussion was about baseball, specifically why Giuliani, as a lifelong New York Yankees fan, would publicly announce, while campaigning in New England, that he was going to root for the Yankees' bitter rivals, the Boston Red Sox, in the World Series. But the way Williams raised the topic made it plain that he thought the issue was silly, and the query served more as an icebreaker than a serious question about perhaps the campaign season's most blatant bout of pandering. And that's why Giuliani responded to Williams' soft question with a hearty laugh.

How did Williams signal the trivial intent of the question? He began the query with a serious tone and expression by referring to a "tragic day for most New Yorkers," but then quickly revealed that the "tragic day" was in reference to the fact that former New York Yankees skipper Joe Torre had just accepted a job with the Los Angeles Dodgers. (That segued into the Yankees/Red Sox question.)

Get it?! The "tragic day" wasn't a reference to the terrorist attacks of September 11, because Williams flipped the script and turned it into a baseball question. And that's what made Giuliani laugh. Priceless.

The newest revelations about the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman's death are horrifying enough to merit widespread media coverage. But rather than rehashing the details, I think it's instructive to watch two very different broadcasts, ironically, by two stations with the same parent company:

Here's Jim Miklaszweski on Friday's NBC Nightly News:

Download | play QT later...

Now to be fair, that's an fair and accurate reporting of facts. However, what Miklaszewski fails to do is to connect the dots or provide any context. Compare it to this report (using the same footage and in fact, citing Miklaszewski's report) on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann with Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org:

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Which reporting made you feel like you understood the situation better?

UPDATE: Apparently, both MSNBC & NBC operated from AP's report of Tillman berating a soldier in the last moments before his death, based on a second-hand account given by a chaplain who debriefed the unit after the incident. According to MSNBC yesterday, the soldier involved said it didn't quite happen that way. Maybe it's me, but don't you think that AP might have wanted to confirm the events with someone who was, say, there before running the story and painting Tillman as an angry and dismissive atheist fragged by his fellow troops?

  Update: I forget to mention Russert and I-A-R-K.

via NBC Nightly News. Russert and Williams discuss the new NBC/WSJ poll:

Download | play Download | play (h/t Scarce)

How's Harry Reid looking now?

MSNBC:

Yet the poll shows that 56 percent say they agree more with the Democrats in Congress who want to set a deadline for troop withdrawal, versus the 37 percent who say they agree with Bush that there shouldn't be a deadline. What's more, 55 percent believe that victory in Iraq isn't possible. And 49 percent say the situation in Iraq has gotten worse in the last three months since Bush announced his so-called troop surge. Thirty-seven percent say the situation has stayed about the same, and just 12 percent think it has improved.

According to the poll, only 22 percent believe the country is on the right track. That's the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when Bush father's was running for a second term -- and lost.

  Alberto Gonzales gave NBC's Pete Williams an exclusive interview yesterday -- shockingly, considering he bailed early on a press conference in Chicago Tuesday to avoid any purge questions -- yet ended up directly contradicting himself about the purge.

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How do these two statements square?:

"I was not involved in the deliberations over whether or not the US attorneys should resign..."

"I know why I asked these United States attorneys to leave and it was not for improper reasons..."

So, he had nothing whatsover to do with selecting which attorneys to get rid of, yet he knows why he got rid of them? Is he trying to say that he had nothing to do with "the deliberations" -- meaning his subordinates reviewed the cases and recommended these particular eight -- then signed off on it personally based soley on their advice? Either way, this doesn't fly because the "performance-related reasons" excuse -- the only possible explanation other than deliberate poltical interference -- is bogus.

You gotta love how Brian Williams mentions at the end that his viewers can find the entire interview with transcript online.

(h/t Heather)

Countdown covered Brian Williams interview with Bush last night.

Video - WMV   Video - QT

For someone who does not like how the public perceives him, Bush does not help his case any in this interview. Take this little exchange:

WILLIAMS: When you take a tour of the world, a lot of Americans e-mail me with their fears that, some days they just wake up and it just feels like the end of the world is near. And you go from North Korea to Iran, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and you look at how things have changed, how Americans are viewed overseas, if that is important to you. Do you have any moments of doubt that we fought a wrong war? Or that there's something wrong with the perception of America overseas?

BUSH: Well those are two different questions, did we fight the wrong war, and absolutely -- I have no doubt -- the war came to our shores, remember that. We had a foreign policy that basically said, let's hope calm works. And we were attacked.

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