Cursor's Media Patrol - 02/03/06

A memo reportedly documenting a two-hour pre-Iraq war meeting between President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair, is said to reveal "the president of the United States caught conspiring to create a modern-day version of the sinking of the Maine."

With 53 percent of respondents to a new Gallup poll saying the Bush administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," Eric Alterman writes that "The insider press corps cannot connect Bush's war lies to his unpopularity, because it has so much difficulty acknowledging either one."

Most major media outlets are found to have 'largely ignored' new revelations concerning 'The Plame Case, Missing Email, and the President's Daily Brief.' Plus: 'Why Rove Will Fall.'

The Gadflyer notes that "no one questioned" a claim by self-styled "renaissance man" Ben Stein, that oil company executives "make less than Hollywood stars ... and they do a much greater service," because Stein was talking to "the amateur hour of business journalism," CNN's "In The Money."

'Rumsfeld and Negroponte amp up attacks' on Venezuelan President Chavez, and Pat Robertson renews his call for the assassination of Chavez, who told the World Social Forum that "one day the decay inside U.S. imperialism will end up toppling it, and the great people of Martin Luther King will be set free."