BRANCACCIO: Here’s one for you. CNN’s catching some heat for its youth-oriented debate among Democratic Presidential hopefuls. Here’s what one columnist described as its, quote “turtle-necked general, its open-collared Senators, and its shirt-sleeved rolled, feisty stars and bars Vermonter.”

A student complained in the Brown University paper about getting handed a scripted question to ask the candidates, something silly about what kind of computers they use, and THE WEEKLY STANDARD chided the cable network for selecting the audience, screening the questions, and deciding to whom the questions would be directed. The STANDARD said that “Rock the Vote was as authentic as Velveeta.”

It’s worth pointing out that while everyone was beating up CNN over this, no law said the Democrats had to follow the media’s script.

MOYERS: But some of our colleagues in the press were doing an old-fashioned shoe leather job of journalism when President Bush went politicking in the Carolinas this week.

The White House advance team, wanting obviously to spotlight signs of economic recovery and extol the virtues of free trade, picked a plant in Greer, South Carolina, where BMW of Germany makes roadsters and SUVs. But the nearby GREENVILLE NEWS reminded everyone that if people don’t have jobs, they can’t buy BMWs — or for that matter pick-up trucks. Said the paper, South Carolina has lost 58,800 manufacturing jobs since Mr. Bush took office.

BRANCACCIO: Now when the president arrived in North Carolina the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER reminded him about fifty thousand textile jobs have been lost in that state during the same time.

The paper also reported that this year’s federal aid has already run out for those Charlotte-area residents who are about to be evicted or have their utilities cut off. Since just last year, nearly 9-thousand more people depended on the Crisis Assistance Ministry for emergency support that’s a 16 percent increase. Six in ten of those people are employed but don’t earn enough to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the president took time out for some fundraising in both Carolinas and came back to the White House with another 2.7 million dollars for his re-election campaign. Now a hundred million and counting.

MOYERS: An update now on our story last week about wounded veterans falling through bureaucratic cracks upon their return home. THE LOS ANGELES TIMES sketched a moving portrait of Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, with the arrival of ten new casualties a day on average…that’s 300 a month. The hospital staff is going above and beyond the call of duty to care for the soldiers…working on their days off, bringing pizza to patients, taking them to the movies.

One of the therapists even drove a wounded soldier to the immigration and naturalization office to pick up his naturalization papers — one of many soldiers who went to war for this country before becoming a citizen.

BRANCACCIO: Some ex-POWs are getting a different kind of treatment. A federal court awarded seventeen of them almost a billion dollars in frozen Iraqi assets after they were imprisoned and tortured in the first Gulf War. But there’s a catch…The Administration is now blocking that payout, saying they want to use the funds to help rebuild Iraq.

MOYERS: And this is producing quite an awkward stretch for the president’s spokesman Scott McClellan. When reporters pressed him on the issue last week, McClellan managed to say one phrase no fewer than six times: "...there is simply no amount of money that can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime."

BRANCACCIO: True, although several hundred million dollars might have been a start. For links to the original stories, connect to NOW’s revamped Web site for the full bibliography.

MOYERS: Go there and see what they’re thinking about what we are saying. That’s it for NOW. Next week, a special edition of our program: “A Question of Fairness.” For all of us at NOW, I’m Bill Moyers.