Matt Hadro's blog

CNN touted ex-president Jimmy Carter as a "new cult favorite" and asked if his image was "being rehabilitated" on Monday's The Situation Room. After friendly interviews of Carter and his grandson last week, it might be more accurate to ask if CNN is trying to "rehabilitate" Carter's image.

Liberal historian Douglas Brinkley made the laughably thin case for Carter. "But when you look at the Iran hostage crisis, I mean, Carter eventually negotiated the release of all of those hostages. It cost his political re-election. He could have bombed Tehran during it, and maybe gotten himself re-elected but he didn't," he argued. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Responding to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) on Monday, CNN's chief business correspondent slammed GOP "weird math" and "balanced budget nonsense" on the sequestration and accused Jindal of being "misleading."

"And it's this weird math that the Republicans are using, that it's just three percent of the federal budget," Velshi ranted. "Except you can't touch entitlements. So it's three percent of a small part of the federal budget, which makes it a very big part of some major agencies," he insisted. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Piers Morgan got some love from Hollywood liberal Dustin Hoffman at Sunday's Oscars.

"God bless you for what you're saying about gun control," Hoffman lauded Morgan's incessant gun control advocacy. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Former President Jimmy Carter claimed he didn't raise a dime of money in the 1976 general election and CNN's Piers Morgan wouldn't challenge him on Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight.

"As a matter of fact, when I ran against incumbent President Gerald Ford, you know how much money we raised? None," Carter bragged to Morgan. According to election law, general election campaigns couldn't take private money if they accepted public financing but Morgan still let Carter off the hook by refusing to question his claim of zero infractions. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN only had soft questions and praise on Thursday for Jimmy Carter's grandson who had unearthed the tape of Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks. Host Wolf Blitzer gave a warm interview to James Carter IV on The Situation Room and Piers Morgan later teed up former President Carter to brag about his grandson on Piers Morgan Tonight.

"How does it make you feel that your grandfather is so proud of what you did? What has he said to you?" Blitzer asked his Democratic guest. "He certainly was proud of you in the interview with Piers Morgan," he gushed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After the Newtown shooting, CNN anchor Don Lemon cried that "We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets," but he still insisted it "wasn't advocacy" and that he's "about accuracy and the truth," in an interview with the LGBT publication Dallas Voice.  

"It wasn't advocacy. It was being a human. I've always said we are human beings before we are reporters," was Lemon's excuse. Of course, basically calling for an assault weapons ban is advocacy, not to mention comparing opponents of same-sex marriage to segregationists.

After hyping the "draconian" sequester cuts set to take place March 1, CNN kept up its frenzy on Tuesday afternoon by spreading government hysteria over the $85 billion spending reduction. Headlines sounded alarms like "Medicine, Food at Risk," "Travel Nightmare In the Making," and "U.S. justice system in jeopardy."

"President Obama is warning of dire consequences for all of us if lawmakers don't act quickly," The Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer channeled White House angst. "The President clearly wants all of us to be very, very worried about the budget axe that's about to fall," he hyped during the 6 p.m. ET hour. "The President has said it's an issue of national security," reported correspondent Joe Johns on cuts to the justice system. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Even though the upcoming sequester cuts amount to only $85 billion, compared to $16 trillion of U.S. debt, CNN hyped the deleterious effects of the cuts to the economy by comparing them to the recent asteroid that just missed earth.

"Watch out. Like the asteroid headed to earth, they're coming. $86 billion in automatic budget cuts," anchor Carol Costello warned. And "draconian" was in the CNN talking points as Costello and her colleague Christine Romans repeatedly gave that label to the cuts. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Apparently it's okay for MSNBC panels to sit around and tell race jokes on-air. Host Melissa Harris-Perry had her panel guests tell their "favorite race joke" or "best punch line" on race on her Sunday show and laughter ranged between nervous and uproarious. Harris-Perry capped it all off with a Jewish joke.

After discussing if the best way to give a "social critique" on race was through humor, Harris-Perry told her panel, "Okay, so give me your favorite race joke or your best punch line on it." If a Fox News panel sat around and told race jokes on the set, there would be an uproar and accusations of racism would be directed at the network. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN media critic Howard Kurtz ripped the press infatuation with Sen. Marco Rubio's water sip as "profoundly depressing," but on Sunday's Reliable Sources he wouldn't call out his own network's attempt to use the incident to drive headlines.  

Last Wednesday, CNN's The Situation Room took the trivial and blew it up. CNN showed a still-shot of Rubio sipping water with headline flashing "Career-Ender?" Host Wolf Blitzer asked his panel if the incident was a "big deal." The headline stoked outrage on Twitter and CNN jumped to explain it as a "joke," but Kurtz didn't mention any of this hullabaloo.

The same network that wondered if Sen. Rubio's sip of water was a "big deal" is now asking just why Republicans are "so fixated on Benghazi" when they asked Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel about the Libya fiasco.

"This, despite testimony on Benghazi from General Petraeus, Hillary Clinton, Admiral Mike Mullen, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, General Martin Dempsey, among others. But it's not enough," an obviously flustered Carol Costello huffed. The CNN headline later flashed, "Why are Republicans so fixated on Benghazi?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

At CNN.com, correspondent Ben Wedeman touted "what some Catholics want in next pope," and by "some Catholics" he meant those who thought Pope Benedict's papacy was too conservative or inward-looking. He arrogantly prescribed that if the next pontiff focuses on social justice and has a global outreach, "Then perhaps the Catholic Church can be a light unto all nations."

Since when could CNN reporters tell the Catholic church what it should be doing? Wedeman hammered the church's problems, "a church in which the gap between the shepherd and his flock seems to be growing ever wider." He hyped the "Winds buffeting the church."

<<UPDATE BELOW>> On Wednesday's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer absurdly wondered if Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pausing his State of the Union response for a drink of water would "break" his career. The CNN chyron flashed "Career-ender?"

"So can a drink of water make or break a political career?" Blitzer asked. "A U.S. Senator, possible presidential candidate. We're going to find out, whether he likes it or not." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Tuesday's Entertainment Tonight ran quite the hit piece on Pope Benedict, promoting the distorted anti-Catholic documentary on the clerical abuse scandals and revisiting ABC reporter Brian Ross's 2002 confrontation with then-Cardinal Ratzinger.

"Then he slapped me like this on the wrist as if I were a schoolboy, asking an impertinent question," Ross recalled, when he rudely accosted Ratzinger on the streets of Rome about the abuse scandals. "When I got slapped, it actually stung. And I was surprised. I've been hit before by others. But generally crooks," he self-righteously gushed. Has Ross shown such scrutiny toward the embattled Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)? Nope. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Monday night, CNN's Erin Burnett badgered the Catholic church to change its doctrine and accept birth control, gay marriage, and women priests. All day long on Monday, CNN asked if the church was going to change with the times but Burnett was blatant in her push for liberalization of doctrine.

"Isn't it time for the church, which is supposed to be an inclusive, generous, giving organization, to move ahead on gay rights?" she asked her guest a loaded question. When he answered no, she hit back, "Even if they [gay people] love each other, isn't the Catholic Church supposed to be about love?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Right as CNN's The Situation Room reported the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, correspondent Brian Todd launched into a litany of the "controversies" of his papacy and pushed the positive analysis to the bottom of his report.

"Pope Benedict's papacy has been marked by serious controversies," began anchor Wolf Blitzer. Todd followed up that as far as "controversies" were concerned, "there was certainly no shortage of those during his papacy." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Only an hour after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the papacy, and not ten minutes into Monday's Starting Point, CNN's Soledad O'Brien hosted the director of an anti-Catholic documentary who has called Pope Benedict a "criminal" and a "deeply flawed human being."

Director Alex Gibney was O'Brien's first guest on her show. His new film on the clerical sex abuse scandal has been criticized as distorted and misleading and "an anti-Catholic broadside masquerading as a documentary." O'Brien praised it as "riveting, absolutely riveting," however, and let him criticize Pope Benedict.  [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Only about five percent of Americans identify as atheists, but CNN played up the "very activist atheist movement" and touted celebrity atheists like Julianne Moore and Mark Zuckerberg, on Thursday.

"Various surveys put the number of atheists in America around five percent. And according to the Pew study in 2012, one in five people claim they have no religious affiliation at all," anchor Carol Costello noted. She didn't mention that having no religious affiliation might not even be close to atheism.

After a man shot a security guard at the Family Research Council (FRC) last summer, the organization claimed it was targeted because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) listed it as a "hate group."

The shooter has now revealed that he indeed used that SPLC map to find his target. And CNN has not only promoted this list of "hate groups" in the past, but after the shooting it re-affirmed the FRC's place on the list as "hate spewing hate."

CNN's Piers Morgan invoked the death of Trayvon Martin to support his case for gun control, but the brother of Martin's accused shooter George Zimmerman had a retort ready on Tuesday's Piers Morgan Tonight.

"You would accept, would you not, that if your brother had not gone out armed with a gun that day, Trayvon Martin would be celebrating his 18th birthday today," Morgan first pressed Zimmerman.  [Video coming soon. Audio here.]

CNN anchors dropped journalistic integrity and went into full attack mode against supporters of the ban on gay Boy Scouts on Wednesday morning.

When the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins questioned why the Scouts should change their long-standing policy, anchor Soledad O'Brien blurted out "Because it's discriminatory," before adding "Because they think it's discriminatory." She then asked "My final question for you, do you worry you are on the wrong side of history on this?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin compared the push for the Boy Scouts to accept gays to the struggle over interracial marriage and same-sex marriage. She slammed any ban on gay scouts, local or national, as "discrimination," on Tuesday afternoon's Newsroom.

"They've been arguing that, Brooke, for years. If you let a black person marry a white person society will end. If you let gay and lesbian couples marry, society will end. That's an argument that has failed time and time again. And so to argue that we should discriminate because you want the Boy Scouts of America to survive is just a bunch of nonsense," Hostin told anchor Brooke Baldwin. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's message to the Boy Scouts is this: "the world" is becoming more accepting of same-sex marriage, and the Scouts should get with the times by accepting openly gay leaders. Anchor Carol Costello made that clear on Tuesday morning's Newsroom.

"And like it or not, children are exposed to gay people. Ever watch 'Modern Family' or 'Ellen' or hear NFL players speak out for same-sex marriage? The world is changing. And the question now: will the Boy Scouts change with it?" Costello argued. Of course, CNN helps facilitate that "change" by giving NFL players -- who wish to "harness this Super Bowl media" to push for "marriage equality" -- air time to push for same-sex marriage unopposed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The former president of CNN/U.S. doesn't regret bringing Piers Morgan to CNN and reaffirmed his desire to hire Keith Olbermann away from MSNBC in 2010, in an interview with HuffPost Live.

When asked if he regretted hiring Piers Morgan, Jon Klein replied "as a viewer I don't regret it. I mean, I watch him all the time." When pressed about Olbermann, Klein admitted his "foresight" in wanting the liberal host to move to CNN, noting "it would have made things a lot more difficult for MSNBC."

CNN thinks the Super Bowl has become "a platform for the culture wars," but they are using that "platform" to support causes like gay marriage.

The morning after the Super Bowl, CNN's openly-gay anchor Don Lemon interviewed gay rights activist and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo and thanked him for his work. No guest from the other side was brought on.

NewsBusters reported on the media's early valentine for outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and CNN's media critic Howard Kurtz focused on their "romance" on Sunday's Reliable Sources.

"[T]hings were so lovey-dovey, it almost sounded like a therapy session," Kurtz described Clinton's 60 Minutes interview.  He added the media "are almost portraying her [Clinton's] exit as walking on water." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Speaking on a different show but making the same tired liberal points, CNN's Piers Morgan hit the American "mentality" on guns and attacked the NRA on Thursday's The Tonight Show. Of course, Morgan probably reached more of an audience at NBC than on his own CNN show.

"And the crucial thing in America now is you've got to somehow change the mentality and the culture to reduce the number of guns," the liberal CNN host insisted, pointing to other countries as an argument in favor of gun control. [Video below the break. Audio here.]