Matt Hadro's blog

CNN reported a new bombshell in the ongoing Libya fiasco on Monday night, while the networks had already moved on from the story. CNN's Erin Burnett disclosed that "key intelligence" was left out of the post-Libya narrative given to the American public. The networks made no mention of Libya all day Monday and through Tuesday morning after being late to new developments in the story.  

"[T]here were a decision made as to some of these key things that obviously are now considered to be crucial to this – essential to this attack were left out of the briefing points given to Congress and given to the American people," Burnett reported.

Although a CNNMoney survey had economists by a three-to-one margin saying a Mitt Romney presidency would be better for the economy than another term of President Obama, the report's title said they "reluctantly" chose Romney.

"And many of those picking Romney were more critical of, as opposed to excited about, the Republican challenger's plans," the report read. Would CNNMoney have reported that economists "reluctantly" picked President Obama by a three-to-one margin?

Ignoring other conservative condemnations of liberal media bias, CNN's Brooke Baldwin pulled tape of former President George H. W. Bush all the way from 1992 ranting about the press – and then snidely pointed out how it "did not help" him.

"[C]omplaining about the media did not help Bush One. He lost his bid for re-election," noted Baldwin on Monday afternoon's Newsroom, who compared Paul Ryan's claim of media bias on Sunday to Bush's 1992 rant. So Ryan hitting out at the media won't help Team Romney? [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In an irony of ironies, a CNN roundtable on media bias featured a liberal figure of the institutional media, Chrystia Freeland, claiming that Paul Ryan has gotten "pretty fabulous treatment" at the hands of the media. Her statement came on Sunday's Reliable Sources.

"I think he's had pretty fabulous treatment in the press and maybe actually a lack of scrutiny of what he's actually saying," Freeland opined, pointing to the "image" of him as "superwonk." She ironically addressed media bias as a liberal member of the mainstream press. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

While ignoring breaking news in the Obama administration's Libya fiasco on Thursday night, CNN's Piers Morgan dumped on the Romney campaign for a good portion of his show, saying Mitt is "in a hell of a lot of trouble."

Morgan cited four polls in Virginia showing "Obama comfortably ahead," even though one of the polls was actually a tie and another had Obama leading within the margin of error. "Your guy's in a hell of a lot of trouble, isn't he?" Morgan asked GOP pollster Kristen Soltis. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta boosted ObamaCare on Friday morning's Starting Point without disclosing that he was once a candidate to be President Obama's Surgeon General, and thus the megaphone for ObamaCare.

"Since President Obama's health care law was enacted, 3.1 million people under the age of 26 are now covered by their parents' plans and preventive care is covered 100 percent by insurance companies. Seniors, in particular, have benefitted on prescription drugs," Gupta trumpeted at the start of his report on the health care plans of the presidential candidates. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

What is Piers Morgan thinking? On Monday, he said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "makes perfect rational sense" when talking about broadly about "Afghanistan and Iraq and America's response to 9/11." On Wednesday night, he cast Ahmadinejad's UN speech as "for him, relatively low key, dare I say almost reasonable."

New York Times columnist Nick Kristof was quick to provide some context. "It was reasonable by Ahmadinejad standards," he noted. "Not by sort of normal conventional standards." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN sounded alarm bells for the Romney campaign on Wednesday, touting a "stunning" new poll showing Mitt Romney down 10 points in Ohio and reporting it every hour save one from the 7 a.m. hour of Starting Point through the 4 p.m. hour of The Situation Room.

"Holy Toledo! Mitt Romney is losing Ohio now by 10 points. 10 points," exclaimed anchor Brooke Baldwin. "And it's got to be very disturbing right now for the Romney campaign," political director Mark Preston expressed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The media are digging deep to rain on Mitt Romney's Ohio campaign. On Wednesday, CNN's Brooke Baldwin stupidly wondered how golfer and Ohio-native Jack Nicklaus' endorsement of the candidate would help him with Ohio middle class voters.

"But here you have – you have Romney needing middle class votes in Ohio. How is he helped by a man who has been the face of professional golf, doesn't even live in Ohio anymore?" Baldwin said in her pathetic attempt to play devil's advocate. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

According to CNN, Mitt Romney "doubled down" on a "false claim" on Tuesday, but it was CNN that doubled down on its own faulty fact-check of the Obama administration and welfare reform.

"We begin tonight 'Keeping Them Honest' on a campaign distortion that will not seem to die. The false claim that President Obama is trying to take the work requirement out of welfare," began Anderson Cooper on his Tuesday show. As NewsBusters reported, CNN canned the Romney claim back in August despite conservative experts arguing that Obama indeed gutted the work requirements at the heart of welfare reform.

CNN's Gloria Borger provided the Obama campaign spin on Tuesday afternoon, excusing the President's choice to not meet privately with any foreign leaders at this week's UN General Assembly. This despite the previous two presidents having met with world leaders at the UN during a campaign year.

"This is kind of a 'don't rock the boat' strategy. I think there's a sense that no good can come of any controversy right now," Borger explained the President's decision. However, even anchor Wolf Blitzer called it "probably a missed opportunity" for Obama, and reporter John King said even some Democrats questioned it. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, CNN's Piers Morgan asked him about his love life and got into an exchange with him about women not being able to ski by themselves in Iran.

"How many times in your life, Mr. President, have you been properly in love?" Morgan asked at the end of the interview. "I'm in love with all of humanity," answered Ahmadinejad, to which Morgan responded "That might be the best answer I've ever heard to that question." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

President Obama basically admitted failure when he said that Washington cannot be changed "from the inside," but CNN tried to explain his gaffe on Friday's Early Start while later dumping on Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks.

CNN's John Berman insisted "I know what he [Obama] is trying to say there" and political director Mark Preston argued that "What President Obama said was correct." In contrast, Berman later swung at Romney by saying "I think the 47 percent is more than just another gaffe or misspeak." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Of all people, former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos was the one throwing water on Piers Morgan's liberal spin. On Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight, the host hyped that Mitt Romney's 47 percent remarks "could be an election-ending moment."

"Mitt Romney has clearly hit a bit of a buffer moment here. Could be a game-changing moment. Could be an election-ending moment," Morgan asserted before Stephanopoulos jumped in to stop him. "Wow. That's going a little far actually," he insisted. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

NBC failed to press Obama adviser David Axelrod over the President's remarks about redistribution on Friday, chucking the story out of its news cycle after two full days. In contrast, the networks hammered Mitt Romney for three days over his comments on 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes.

The Today show did find time, however,  to cover the "Honey Boo Boo" nickname generator. The reporters laughed on set over each other's "Honey Boo Boo" nicknames.

NBC's Matt Lauer pronounced the previous week a "bad week" for the Romney campaign and cited squishy Republicans to help make his point on Thursday's Today show. Lauer wouldn't even let Romney adviser Ed Gillespie say President Obama had a bad week.

Lauer posed to Gillespie, "by just about every estimate this was a bad week for his [Romney's] campaign. Would you agree?" When Gillespie cited polls showing President Obama's numbers slipping, Lauer tried to flip the negative spotlight back on Romney. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

President Obama had time to enjoy late night laughs with David Letterman while refusing to meet with America's Middle East ally, and yet CNN's Wolf Blitzer was just fine with that. It pays for a President to have friends in the media.

"In the scheme of things, who is going to get you more votes?" was Blitzer's excuse. "A meeting that could be tense with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or go on Letterman and come across as well as he did last night?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Who needs campaign staff when you have CNN to tout your "very, very damaging" attack ad? Host Piers Morgan gave President Obama some free publicity Tuesday night while CNN kept the anti-Romney media firestorm raging.

"I'm going to play a new Obama ad which basically sums up how he's going to attack him [Romney]. And it's very, very damaging. Watch this," Morgan told his guests, after he hyped Romney's "monumental gaffe" about the 47 percent of Americans paying no income taxes. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After CNN pounded away at the latest media-manufactured Mitt Romney gaffe, CNN's Brooke Baldwin remarked on Tuesday that the campaign faces a "tsunami" of "myriad issues."

"Can they right this?" she questioned the Romney campaign's ability to weather the media storm, adding that they face "a tsunami, if you add up the myriad issues within the campaign." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In an interview on CNN's Starting Point, Romney Campaign adviser Bay Buchanan gave an "indictment" of the media for paying more attention to a statement by a candidate than the foreign policy of the sitting President.

"That's an indictment on the media, Soledad, that they would think that some little comment by the candidate is more important than a policy, an entire foreign policy of the President of the United States," said Buchanan. And CNN's Anderson Cooper proved that argument true as he led his show the previous night with tape of Romney and not a report that the U.S. may have had advance warning on a deadly terrorist attack in Libya. [Video below the break.]

Just how bad is the media's track record this election season? On Monday, CNN's Anderson Cooper led his show with a manufactured Mitt Romney controversy instead of news that the U.S. may have had advance warning on deadly terrorist attacks.

Here's how Cooper started his show: "On Libya, late word on what American diplomats may have been told about the threat from Muslim extremists, terrorists, just three days before the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi. We're going to have that, but first, what could be a campaign blockbuster, what Mitt Romney said to big money donors about President Obama voters when he didn't think cameras were rolling." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Former Romney spokesperson Richard Grenell called out the media on Monday for not focusing hard enough on President Obama's foreign policy record. "The media needs to start looking at policies, not just lip service from this President," he told CNN's Carol Costello.

"You know, there has been criticism that Romney spoke out too early in the Middle East after 15 hours of a developing violence. How come we're not asking where was the President, why didn't he speak out before 15 hours?" Grenell asked of the media. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In an obvious contrast between the two presidential campaigns, CNN's Jim Acosta highlighted both Mitt Romney's frivolous talk show interview and his campaign's "sharpened rhetoric" on Friday and pitted them against President Obama giving a solemn tribute to the slain diplomats from Libya.

Acosta did note Romney's moment of silence for the diplomats at his campaign rally, but cast that as a "brief pause in his campaign's sharpened rhetoric." The Obama camp's Twitter account was active both shortly before and after the ceremony for the diplomats, but CNN focused instead on Romney's "day of mixed messages." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) has said new voter ID laws reflect old Jim Crow laws, and CNN's Carol Costello played right into his outlandish rhetoric on Friday morning.

"Are you kind of stunned we're talking about these kinds of things in this day and age, with your history, I mean?" Costello asked the liberal congressman of the debate over voter ID laws. He answered in the affirmative and again likened voter ID laws to Jim Crow. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Terrorists murdered an American ambassador in cold blood, and yet CNN shamelessly implied on Thursday that the makers of an anti-Islam movie might have blood on their very hands.

"Do you and Mr. Bacile feel that you have any blood on your hands as a result of the violence?" correspondent Brian Todd asked a consultant for the film, Steve Klein. Anchor Don Lemon reported that the movie "may have led to the death of four Americans." CNN was basically acting as an apologist for Islamic terrorists. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

GOP strategist Ari Fleischer set the record straight about the media infatuation with Mitt Romney's statements on the embassy attacks. On Wednesday's Anderson Cooper 360, he called out the media's "double standard" and defended Romney's criticism of the Obama administration.

"Debates about foreign policy are an absolute vital part of our democracy and I don't know why the media is rushing to criticize Mitt Romney for criticizing a foreign policy when they did not do that to Barack Obama or John Kerry when they exercised their right to criticize Republican foreign policy," stated Fleischer. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After the press belittled Mitt Romney over the politics of his statements on Tuesday's embassy attacks, CNN's Don Lemon continued asking redundant questions about process to the Romney campaign's foreign policy adviser on Wednesday.

"[Y]ou want to talk about a process issue," Richard Williamson lectured Lemon. "Because the White House doesn't want to talk about substance. It wants to talk about process." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Anderson Cooper smacked the Romney campaign Monday night for alleged dishonesty. He claimed they were talking too much about social issues while saying the economy is their real focus.

"The question tonight, and not just from the opposition, have the Romney forces been moving away from dollars and cents and jobs, and shifting toward more red meat, hot-button culture war mode?" Cooper asked. "I mean what's up with the culture stuff suddenly?" he posed later. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN deemed it newsworthy enough to interview an Obama-supporting restaurant owner who gave the President a bear hug on the campaign trail. The Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer tossed softballs to guest Scott Van Duzer, a registered Republican, on Monday afternoon.

"It's the campaign stop everyone's talking about. The President of the United States got a lift, literally, from a super-enthusiastic supporter," Blitzer introduced the segment. "Congratulations. I love the bear hug," he told Van Duzer. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The media have "nostalgia" for Bill Clinton and a "tedious marriage" with President Obama, according to panel members on Sunday's Reliable Sources. Is media bias any more evident when reporters admit the media had a past love affair with the current Democratic president and pine for the days of his Democratic forerunner?

CNN's Howard Kurtz mused that "the extraordinary media reaction to Bill Clinton's speech" from the past week's DNC "says to me journalists missed the guy." The Hill's managing editor Bob Cusack admitted "I think there was definitely some nostalgia here," and added "the media reaction was a little bit much, because he [Clinton] did meander." [Video below the break. Audio here.]