Happy Sunday Morning! So nice and comfy...so beautiful outside. Too bad I won't get to enjoy it! This is my regular weekend to work, so I'll be on the phone, collecting those overdue phone bills. So if yours is past due, have your credit/debit card at hand or be away from home, otherwise you may get that call from me!

One story that has not apparantly received a lot of attention is interesting, since it involves that bastion of "fair and balanced" newsgathering (sarcasm intended here), Fox News Channel, a/k/a Faux News. It seems that after Thursday night's debate, FNC Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron did a fake story in which he quoted Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry touting his manicure and sex appeal to women. It actually appeared on the Fox News web site for several hours before editors noticed and pulled it.

The hoax, brushed aside as an innocent prank by Cameron's superiors at FNC, was called a "regrettable error" which occured due to "fatigue and bad judgement, not malice". Cameron, it was said, was simply "reprimanded".

In Friday's edition the Minneapolis Star-Tribune made mention of the incident in an editorial (registration required to access). The MST noted that if this type of situation had occured at another network there would have been near scandalous consequences. It is no secret that it's "We Report, You Decide" motto, Fox News Channel has a decidedly conservative lean to it's newsgathering. This is the tablod style commonly used not only in owner Rupert Murdoch's media properties worldwide, but generally in media throughout Europe and Australia where you can look at the front page of the newspaper and read from the headlines which point of view the paper takes. With FNC Murdoch has brought this to television...and it's spreading.

The problem with cable news today is that with so many "talking head" shows on: Paula Zahn and Larry King on CNN; Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, and Deborah Norville on MSNBC; Bill O'Reilly, Brit Hume, and Neil Cavuto on Fox News Channel (and I'm sure I didn't mention them all!), it's difficult for many viewers who are tuning in casually to tell when they are getting straight news, and getting opinion.

NOW IF THE BUCS CAN ONLY WIN...