READER CHRIS WREN EMAILS:

There were a few things that convinced me that yes, there really is such a thing as the monolithic Main Stream Media, and that they really are biased to the point of unprofessionalism: Dan Rather’s petulant rant blaming bloggers for exit poll confusion, the haste which the networks and major media outlets leapt at calling the election for Kerry, and finally that whole thing Drudge is posting right now with the CNN Bush images labelled a**hole.jpeg and moron.jpg.

On the whole, I have to concede that the blogosphere conducted itself with far greater professionalism and integrity than the media giants.

Yes, I had seen the photo story earlier on Wizbang. And, yes, it does raise the question: If they’re willing to do something this petty and spiteful where they think no one will notice, what other things are they doing where they think no one will notice?

UPDATE: I received this statement in the mail from Turner:

“A web image and text disparaging President and Mrs. Bush currently circulating on the internet was not created, disseminated or posted by CNN at any time, as is alleged. It was done by an employee of Netscape and posted on Netscape.com. CNN had no knowledge of it until it surfaced on other websites.”

The dangers of co-branding, I guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: You can see a more complete statement on CNN’s homepage — click the “Netscape responsible for Bush photo insult” link at the top right. But since that’s a java box and can’t be directly linked, and probably won’t be archived anywhere, I’m going to reproduce the full thing in the “extended entry” area below. Hit “read more” to read it.

Text follows:

Netscape responsible for Bush photo insult

Disparaging image tags used to identify photos of President and Mrs. Bush currently circulating on the Internet were not created, disseminated or posted by CNN at any time, as is alleged. They were done by a junior-level employee of Netscape and posted on Netscape.com. CNN had no knowledge of this until it surfaced on other Web sites.

Netscape, which corrected the situation when it was discovered, has released a statement apologizing for the “inappropriate and disparaging terms” that were used in the image tags — and saying that the company has terminated the employee.

So there you are.