"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Vice President Dick Cheney told tens of thousands of Republican supporters in a conference call. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."

Friday's "Nightline" pays tribute to U.S. servicemembers killed in Iraq, with anchor Ted Koppel reading the names of fallen troops. Saying the show "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq," the Sinclair Broadcast Group is barring its ABC-affiliate stations from airing the show. The ban affects seven media markets in six states. ABC News "respectfully disagree[s] with Sinclair's decision." Senator McCain (R-AZ) protested in a letter to Sinclair's president: "Every American has a responsibility to understand fully the terrible costs of war." Nightline's producer remarked: "We want to remind people that each of [the dead] has a face, has a name, had a life -- and that's all its intended to do." According to the Center for American Progress, Sinclair executives have donated more than $130,000 to George Bush and his allies since 2000.

Was it the horrifiic images of US soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners that caused the announcement? If so, no mention was made of it when "Margaret D. Tutwiler, the State Department veteran who was summoned from abroad to overhaul the public diplomacy effort, said Thursday that she was resigning to take a position at the New York Stock Exchange. The move was a blow to the Bush administration's hopes to improve America's image and better articulate its policy goals as the country faces growing opposition to the war in Iraq and to its support of Israel's plan to redraw its boundaries. It also highlighted the administration's difficulty in retaining managers of public diplomacy. Ms. Tutwiler's predecessor in the job was Charlotte Beers, a former New York advertising executive, who resigned in March of last year. ... An extensive report on public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world, released in October, painted a dire picture of American efforts to reach out to foreign countries and build support for Washington's actions. The bipartisan report, called 'Changing Minds, Winning Peace,' found that America's prestige had dwindled, that its good works were largely ignored and that it lacked strategic direction in its message."