During the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, one of my friends referred to CNN as PNN.

It was short for the Pentagon News Network. He used this term because the coverage was hopelessly tilted in favour of the Bush administration.

Most people think of Fox News as the broadcasting arm of the Republican Party.

However, a media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, pointed out today that CNN still sometimes provides just the right spin for the GOP.

During the CNN Newsroom show, correspondent Dana Bash repeated Republican presidential candidate John McCain's oft-stated claim that his rival, Barack Obama, will raise taxes, whereas McCain will cut them.

Media Matters for America highlighted on its Web site that Bash, who is married to CNN correspondent John King, failed to mention that Obama's plan will cut taxes for low- and middle-income Americans.

With Obama enjoying a growing lead in the polls, it's unlikely that Bash's report will have any impact on the outcome.

Meanwile, some are taking action to reduce the likelihood of this presidential election being stolen. A U.S. group called Election Integrity is seeking volunteers to conduct citizen exit polls to provide independent oversight over the results.

"The vulnerability of US voting systems to mass scale fraud has been well documented, but little has been done to establish meaningful checks," the group stated in a widely disseminated e-mail. "Bad as the last few elections have been, coming elections--including this one--could be worse."



One of the experts involved in the project, University of Pennsylvannia professor Steven Freeman, a blogger and coauthor of a brilliant book called Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

After conducting exhaustive statistical research, Freeman reported in the book that there was a 250 million to one chance that discrepancies between voting results and exit polls could have occurred simultaneously by chance in Pennsylvannia, Ohio, and Florida.

Freeman, an organizational-dynamics professor, teaches research methods and survey design.

Of course, PNN, er CNN, is not paying a great deal of attention to the possibility that the 2008 presidential election could be stolen. That would be un-American because elections, as the media tell us, are only pilfered in countries like Ukraine and Zimbabwe, not the good old USA.