Matt Hadro's blog

In a Tuesday interview with comedian Jeff Foxworthy, CNN's Piers Morgan presented the half-baked idea of treating the Bible as "evolutionary" and asked if being Christian "has become almost a bad word" in America. Of course, he pointed the finger specifically at Christians who are Republicans.

"Do you feel that being Christian has become almost a bad word in a country that's still predominantly Christian?" Morgan asked after noting "issues where the Christian element of the Republican party get a good kicking, because either they said something silly or inflammatory or whatever it may be." [Video below the break.]

For CNN's Ashleigh Banfield, complete opposition to abortion equals a "very far right" position, as she insisted on Tuesday about the new Republican Party platform. For context, CNN used the same "far right" label to describe Sikh shooter Wade Michael Page's racist skinhead band.

"[T]he platform, for the most part, was crafted by the very far-right wing of the party and then if you combine that with the timing of all this ugliness that's going on with Mr. Akin...does that besmirch this platform that so many people agree with?" she asked, framing the completely pro-life stance as extreme and possibly damaging to the GOP. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Piers Morgan played right into the hand of the Obama campaign's co-chair on Monday night, casting the fallout from Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) rape remarks as "Romney's worst nightmare."

"Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head," Morgan told Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) after she delivered her liberal spin tying Akin to Paul Ryan and the GOP. "Now it [the debate] has become Romney's worst nightmare. It's gone right back to the social conservative issues he was so desperate to move off on." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Soledad O'Brien defended the stimulus bill on Monday's Starting Point, calling it a "big thing" that President Obama accomplished and adding that police officers and firefighters kept their jobs because of it.

"[I]f the stimulus hadn't been passed, then what would have happened to the economy?" she threw a Democratic talking point at Rep. Mike Burgess (R-Tex.). "Didn't that to a large degree help the economy? You're not going to argue certainly that it didn't?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN already understands why the Family Research Council (FRC) was labeled a "hate group" by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). On Saturday, CNN gave more credibility to the SPLC as anchor Randi Kaye cited the group as a credible source on "hate groups" in the U.S. right after quoting their explanation for the FRC's "hate group" label.

"Statistics show hate groups are on the rise in this country. The Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 1,000 known hate groups operating in the U.S. last year, and the FBI reported nearly 7,000 hate crimes," reported Kaye during the 10 a.m. hour of CNN Newsroom. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In spite of a Washington Post poll showing 74 percent of Americans favor government-issued photo ID mandates at polling places, CNN skipped those numbers this past week in six separate segments on voter ID laws.

As a Mediaite study noted, MSNBC aired 19 segments on voter ID laws from Monday through Thursday without mentioning the poll. While CNN's coverage was largely balanced, the poll numbers still should have been reported in their discussions on voter ID laws.

CNN is harping on the "partisan" connections of a group of military veterans criticizing President Obama, likening it to Swift Boat, yet it has helped further liberal partisan attacks in the past through its own biased coverage.

"A new group of veterans, including former Navy SEALs, accuses President Obama of taking too much credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden. The group says it's nonpartisan. But a CNN investigation finds it has close links to the Republican Party," reported Joe Johns on Thursday's The Situation Room.

CNN's Brooke Baldwin couldn't find a motive behind the Family Research Council shooting, on Thursday afternoon – despite CNN having earlier reported that "politics" was involved in the shooting at the conservative organization.

"You know, who knows what really was the motive behind this particular individual Floyd Lee Corkins?" Baldwin wondered at 3:10 p.m. EDT, even though anchor Suzanne Malveaux stated at 1:31 p.m. EDT, "Witnesses say that Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the conservative group's headquarters, told the security guard 'I don't like your politics,' and then shot him in the arm." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Less than a day after a shooting at the Family Research Council, CNN dug up a 13 year-old FRC quote to support the "hate group" label by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. Early Start anchor Zoraida Sambolin said the FRC was "hate spewing hate."

"I want our viewers to actually see some of the things that this organization has put out there so that – we kind of understand why they were labeled a hate group," Sambolin insisted. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Piers Morgan is up in arms again over guns, and tried to use Wednesday's shooting at the Family Research Council to shill for more gun control. There's one problem – the shooter was not obeying Washington D.C.'s strict gun laws.

"We've had only today the conservative Family Research Council, a shooting that may well have been politically motivated," Morgan said before asking Newark Mayor Corey Booker (D), "When you take all these things into consideration, you must be disappointed that the President isn't ordering some new form of gun control, aren't you?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In a fawn-fest over Chelsea Clinton with CNN's Ashleigh Banfield on Wednesday, Vogue magazine's contributing editor Jonathan van Meter slipped in some serious love for Bill and Hillary.

"I think one of the things the Clintons will go down in history for, it may very well being the world's greatest parents. I mean, they did such an incredible job of protecting her [Chelsea] from the likes of us, basically," van Meter admitted of the press. [Video below the break.]

Was Soledad O'Brien borrowing from liberal Talking Points Memo again? She was caught red-handed doing so Monday night, and her challenge to Romney's budget on Wednesday's Starting Point seemed awfully similar to TPM's take on the matter.

O'Brien not only echoed TPM's liberal criticisms of Romney's budget, but featured a Fox News clip that TPM quoted from the heart of its piece titled "Paul Ryan Can't Escape Own Budget Package In Debut Solo Interview." [Video below the break.]

In what seemed like a White House commercial, CNN used cartoon characters to explain the benefits of ObamaCare back in June. Now CNN is trotting out the same elementary and partisan stunt to hype that seniors might lose ObamaCare benefits if the Romney-Ryan ticket wins in November.

On Tuesday, medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen explained that "Medicaid Marlene" might lose her Medicaid coverage under Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and "Donut Hole Don" would have to pay more for prescription drugs. Cohen only mentioned the benefits of ObamaCare and the uncertainty of the Romney-Ryan plan, offering no criticisms of ObamaCare and praise of the Republican plan. [Video below the break.]

Instead of fact-checking President Obama's dishonest attack on Paul Ryan for blocking a farm bill, CNN simply reported it three times on Tuesday morning. Correspondent Brianna Keilar actually repeated the false attack in her own words.

"[T]hey [the House] failed to pass a bill for drought relief, which as you know is huge right now because of all of the farmers, all of the cattle ranchers who are suffering through this terrible drought in the Midwest," Keilar said, ignoring that the House did pass a different drought relief bill and Ryan voted for it. [Video below the break.]

When CNN isn't reading liberal talking points about the Romney-Ryan ticket, it's resorting to using conservative friendly fire against the Ryan budget, like Piers Morgan did on Monday.

Morgan baited Newt Gingrich by asking "it is a radical form of social engineering, isn't it?" after he played a clip of Gingrich ripping the Ryan budget as "radical change" – a statement Gingrich later recanted. It was also one Morgan happened to agree with. [Video below the break.]

CNN's Gloria Borger dug deep for disgusting liberal smears of Paul Ryan's budget proposals and aired them without any criticism or outrage on Monday. In her report on the new Vice Presidential nominee, she unearthed past footage of liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman saying the Ryan budget would "kill people."

That smear was so egregious that it won the Media Research Center's "Grim Reaper Award" for 2011. Yet Borger featured it as valid liberal criticism of Ryan. And she kicked off her report by quoting other liberals saying his budget would drive America "over the cliff" and "destroy our government," before Ryan even introduced himself. [Video below the break.]

What exactly is Soledad O'Brien arguing? On Monday's Starting Point she slapped away a factual statement that President Obama has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion as "debunked" and "very much political spin."

"But I have to tell you as I'm sure you know, that 700 million dollar figure has been – billion dollar figure has been debunked by CNN and the Congressional Budget Office," O'Brien lectured Romney surrogate Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.).

CNN's Wolf Blitzer resorted to using old footage of Democratic Senator John Kerry (Mass.) as a soldier to make his point about how the U.S. needs to speed up its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"And I immediately recalled what Senator John Kerry told Congress when he returned from the Vietnam War four decades ago," Blitzer said Friday of when he got news of the deaths of American soldiers in Afghanistan. He aired footage of Kerry's 1971 testimony before Congress given as a soldier returning from Vietnam, where he called the war a "mistake" and challenged Americans to realize that. [Video below the break.]

It's laughable when CNN's Erin Burnett claims to police "sandbox" politics when she covers for Obama like she did Thursday. Like her colleague Brooke Baldwin did earlier, she stood by the Obama spin that he "compromised" with Catholics on the birth control mandate and attacked a Mitt Romney ad accusing him of waging "war on religion."

"[T]o say this President is waging a war on religion, I mean, the man goes to church. That's ridiculous," Burnett complained. "That ad does not add up," she stated, adding it "seems to be at best simplistic and at worst just wrong." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

For a network claiming to be non-partisan, CNN was quite partisan on Thursday when it used a Democratic talking point to fact-check a claim made by many conservatives. Anchor Brooke Baldwin focused on a Romney campaign ad claiming, as many conservatives are, that the Obama administration is infringing on religious liberty with its contraception mandate.

"One, this article is an opinion piece," Baldwin said of a headline in the ad accusing Obama of waging "war on religion," adding that "it came out actually before the President made this compromise back in February when he compromised putting birth control mandates on insurance companies and not on religious employers, right?" That was enough for her to ask if the ad was "misleading."

For the second straight day, CNN blew the whistle on a nasty and misleading Obama super PAC ad that ABC, CBS, and NBC entirely ignored as of Wednesday night. CNN hammered the ad, which links Mitt Romney to a woman's death from cancer, each hour from 6 p.m. through 10 p.m. and twice grilled the man responsible for the ad, Bill Burton of Priorities USA.

"I think it is deliberately mendacious," stated CNN's Piers Morgan on Wednesday. "It is a deliberate attempt to lie and smear about Mitt Romney. And I find it contemptible. I mean I'm really appalled." The three networks showed no such disdain for the ad which will air in battleground states, because they failed to even mention it on Tuesday and Wednesday. [Video coming soon.]

CNN relied on liberal analysis and Democratic talking points to dismantle a new Romney campaign claim about Obama gutting welfare reform. On Wednesday morning the network twice cited PolitiFact calling Romney's new ad "Pants on Fire" and quoted former President Clinton calling it false.

As NewsBusters reported, the July HHS directive does away with work requirements for welfare recipients, which was at the heart of the 1996 welfare reform bill. The memo would allow states to creatively redefine the work requirements and replace them with excuses for "work."

Not so, says CNN, who even resorted to quoting former Democratic President Bill Clinton to back up its argument. "Even former President Bill Clinton who orchestrated this welfare-to-work program back when he was president said it's just simply not true," anchor Carol Costello said of the Romney ad.

Despite admitting no direct evidence of Islamophobia behind the recent Wisconsin Sikh shooting, CNN's Carol Costello still tried to connect Islamophobia to the shooting and hype it as a national problem that needs to be discussed.

"No one knows why Wade Page allegedly chose the Oak Creek Sikh Temple," she began before adding "maybe" the shooter mistook the Sikhs for Muslims. Then she took this hypothesis and tied it to America's national scandal of Islamophobia. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After forcing gun control into headlines only hours after the July 20 Aurora massacre, CNN gave a voice to anti-gun advocates on Monday and Tuesday in the wake of Sunday's Wisconsin shooting.

The network hosted three guests who pushed for gun control on-air, and correspondent Dan Lothian highlighted prominent gun control advocates like Mayor Bloomberg in his Tuesday morning report.

CNN associated a white supremacist neo-Nazi band with the political right-wing as it labeled the punk rock band of Wisconsin shooter Wade Michael Page as "far right."

CNN had reported Page's band named "End Apathy" as "white supremacist," "neo-Nazi," and as a "hate group." Yet it also repeatedly labeled it "far right" on Sunday and Monday. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's media critic Howard Kurtz made the ludicrous assertion that reporters shouting loaded questions outside of a sacred site in Poland were still a "model of decorum" compared to Mitt Romney aide who cursed at them to "show some respect" for the place.

"So, the press doesn't look so great there in Poland, but the reporters were a model of decorum compared to Rick Gorka, the Romney spokesman, who later apologized for the kiss crack," Kurtz began his segment on Sunday's Reliable Sources. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN stoked fears that new voter ID laws might hearken back to the days of Jim Crow. Monday marked the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and CNN's Zoraida Sambolin used that to discuss whether the new laws might "suppress the minority vote."

"Do you think that having an African-American president is actually reigniting some of these old prejudices?" she asked former Ambassador Andrew Young who helped draft the 1965 Voting Rights Act. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After government audits showed Amtrak costing taxpayers millions of dollars due to waste and theft, CNN reported the story on Friday morning while ABC, CBS, and NBC were all silent.

"Waste management and employee theft at Amtrak, it appears to be off the rails," reported CNN's Zoraida Sambolin. "Pretty stunning report," added Early Start co-host John Berman. CNN mentioned the audits four times between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. EDT.

In a pathetic display of adulation for a Democratic "star," CNN aired a total puff piece about the keynote speaker for the upcoming Democratic National Convention, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. Correspondent Rafael Romo's report dripped with praise for the "very successful" Castro.

Romo hailed Castro as a "very successful mayor" and a "young charismatic Latino leader" who is "media savvy," with an "only in America" story. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux wondered if he had future presidential aspirations. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In a move out of the liberal playbook, CNN hammered Mitt Romney on Thursday for appearing out of touch because his horse is competing in the "elitist" Olympic event of dressage.

"He's back here in the United States, preparing to pick a vice president, and possibly trying to avoid charges that a sport involving horse ballet might not make him the most relatable candidate for the average voter," hyped anchor Carol Costello. [Video coming soon. Audio here.]