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Liberal media watchdog group Media Matters has posted a complaint about Wednesday's installment of "Katie Couric's Notebook," which centers on Barack Obama's background. You can watch the Notebook by clicking on the video box.

"Is America ready to elect a president who grew up praying in a mosque?," Couric asks at the outset of the Notebook. She goes on to say this:

Barack Obama has arguably the most diverse religious background of any candidate ever. He was raised in Indonesia by a Christian mother and Muslim stepfather and attended a Catholic school -- but while growing up, also studied Islam. That background sparked rumors that he had studied in a radical madrassa, or Quranic school -- rumors his campaign denied, declaring that Obama is now a practicing Christian.

As Media Matters notes, on Jan. 23 CNN posted a story headlined "CNN debunks false report about Obama," noting "[a]llegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a 'madrassa' are not accurate, according to CNN reporting." Other media outlets followed.

Media Matters is making a fair point here: To bring up the madrassa rumor and note only that "his campaign denied" it leaves open the possibility that the claim is true. Since we know that it is not, Couric would have been well served to have pointed out as much.

As the Lewis Libby trial gets rolling, reporters’ notebooks are once again the subject of much interest. In a hearing yesterday, The New York Times and Time magazine agreed to submit to U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton reporters' notebooks and other materials related to the case. The judge will decide whether the material must be shown to Libby’s lawyers, who issued subpoenas for the information to several news organizations back in April. According to the Washington Post today, The Times, Time and NBC

“had filed motions seeking to quash subpoenas filed by Libby's attorneys on the grounds that the requests were too sweeping and that some of the material did not exist, was irrelevant or is protected. The Washington Post and CNN separately turned over enough subpoenaed information to satisfy Libby's attorneys; The Post said in a statement that it did so without violating promises to its sources.

Walton indicated that he accepted NBC's argument that it had no relevant materials.”

For the media, it looks like the controversy is just getting started. One of Libby’s attorneys, William Jeffress “said that ‘for better or worse, the press is right in the middle’ of the trial. But Walton expressed skepticism about the defense requests, noting that the court ‘has to be cautious’ about releasing information related to journalists' sources.”

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