Early Start

CNN gave more coverage to the Jodi Arias trial in one day than it did to the entire Kermit Gosnell trial over the span of eight weeks. NewsBusters already reported how the congressional hearings on the Benghazi attacks disappeared amidst CNN's incessant live coverage of tabloid crime stories.

When the verdict was reached in the Arias trial last Wednesday, CNN's coverage for the day totaled almost a whopping three hours. In contrast, the network gave just under 100 minutes to the Gosnell story in eight weeks since the trial began on March 18.

Call it the tale of two gaffes. CNN only briefly covered President Obama's blunder that the gun used in the Sandy Hook shooting was an automatic weapon. Meanwhile, the network gave almost 40 minutes on Friday to outrage over Obama calling California's Attorney General "the best-looking attorney general in the country."

CNN's Jake Tapper was the only CNN anchor or reporter who caught Obama's "automatic" gun error. He reported it twice, once during his 4 p.m. ET show The Lead and later on while filling in for host Erin Burnett on OutFront. Automatic weapons are already strictly regulated and have been for decades; the gun used at Sandy Hook was a semi-automatic weapon.

CNN couldn't stop talking about former President Clinton's op-ed on Friday. Every hour between 5 a.m. and 3 p.m. ET, the network touted Clinton asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act that he signed as president, spending over a half hour of coverage on it.

Anchor Don Lemon reported the op-ed four times between 9 and 11 a.m. ET. Anchor Ashleigh Banfield ran two segments on it during the 11 a..m. ET hour. Lemon, openly-gay, voiced his support: "I mean, when you sit right down and just look at it, it's really all about civil and equal rights, human rights. We're a country that treats everybody equal, I mean everyone should be treated equally under the Constitution." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN gave over eight times more coverage to Beyonce lip synching the national anthem than it did to President Obama's falsehood on the sequester last Friday.

After the President claimed in last Friday's presser that Capitol Hill janitors and police would receive a pay cut because of the sequester, CNN correspondent Dana Bash fact-checked it and found it not to be the case. Her report aired twice that day and two more times over last weekend. She covered the matter for 45 seconds in each report, so CNN's coverage totaled three minutes.

On Thursday morning, CNN's John Berman hammered a Democratic congressman who said the cause of the Benghazi attacks doesn't make a difference at this point. In contrast, anchor Soledad O'Brien didn't ask about the controversy over that remark shouted first by Secretary Clinton.
                           
"But, Congressman – don't the facts always make a difference and doesn't knowing the facts and knowing them quickly always help in evaluating the situation so it can be prevented in the future?" Berman pressed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

It turns out that the Romney campaign was right to claim that Fiat, who owns Chrysler, would be making Jeeps in China instead of America, even though the media disparaged that case at the time with PolitiFact going so far as to declare the ad "Lie of the Year." According to PolitiFact, the campaign falsely implied the jobs would be outsourced, among other claims.

As Reuters reported yesterday, "Fiat (FIA.MI) and its U.S. unit Chrysler expect to roll out at least 100,000 Jeeps in China when production starts in 2014 as they seek to catch up with rivals in the world's biggest car market."

One month after the Newtown shooting, CNN "commemorated" the atrocity by hosting a string of gun control activists and Democratic politicians pushing for stricter gun laws.

From the 5 a.m. through the 3 p.m. news hours, CNN hosted five guests who had participated in the "Demand a Plan" campaign put on by the anti-gun group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. In addition, two Democratic congressmen and one Democratic senator appeared on the network and pushed for more gun laws. Only one Republican made an appearance to argue to the contrary.

CNN reporter Ali Velshi thrashed Republicans and conservatives during last weekend's fiscal cliff negotiations. As Tim Graham of NewsBusters already reported, Velshi "clearly doesn't care about looking objective" and showed it when he opened fire on Grover Norquist last week and declared that taxes must go up on the wealthy.

In what became a tired liberal rant, Velshi pushed that argument over and over again last weekend, paddling House Republicans for not "compromising" with Democrats on tax hikes while barely wagging a finger at President Obama and the Democratic Senate. Below is the worst of Velshi from last weekend. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

As NewsBusters' Tim Graham reported, CNN's Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist bragged that his is the only network "that hasn't picked sides in this election," and that viewers responded to CNN's credibility by making it the most-watched cable news channel on election night.

Of course, this begs the question of why viewers haven't turned to CNN on most other nights but regardless, Feist's claim of non-partisanship doesn't hold water. Indeed, CNN's own Howard Kurtz warned in July of a media double standard favoring President Obama that is apparent "to many people."

Below are some of the worst examples of CNN's liberal bias during this election cycle, beginning after Mitt Romney became the clear Republican challenger to President Obama on May 2, when candidate Newt Gingrich dropped out of the race.

Reacting to Democratic Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren's victory in Massachusetts, CNN's Ali Velshi gushed on Wednesday morning, "I have to say, regardless of party, good for her."

"She prevailed. She got crushed and now she's going to be a U.S. senator," he noted her prior setback, when she failed to become the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN contributor John Avlon dumped on Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) early Wednesday morning, when he quipped that she was re-elected on "a bad night for wing-nuts."

"And I mean, look, it was a bad night for wing-nuts last night, but Michele Bachmann is straight through in a redrawn district that was drawn to be more conservative," Avlon said after CNN projected that Bachmann would win re-election. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Former Daily Kos blogger Nate Silver turned heads with his Obama-friendly election predictions in the New York Times, but CNN's Soledad O'Brien thinks his conclusions show no bias. Of course, the liberal CNN anchor just might have a blind spot for poll numbers favoring Obama.

"Nate Silver is very careful about focusing on the numbers. And he doesn't have a liberal bias in his calculations, which I think is why a lot of people follow what he has to say," O'Brien declared on Tuesday's Starting Point. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Soledad O'Brien threw Democratic talking points at Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) on Monday's Early Start, but the Romney surrogate was ready as he defended the campaign's Jeep ad.

"Was it a mistake then to run that Jeep ad which ran in Toledo, Ohio?" O'Brien pressed. "[I]t was deemed by PolitiFact to be false," she added, despite the claim's accuracy that plans were indeed made to build Jeeps in China.

Liberal CNN host Piers Morgan canned the Democratic "binders full of women" attack on Romney as "facile and silly," but CNN reporters hammered on it Wednesday night and well into Thursday.

Surprisingly, Morgan threw his criticism in David Axelrod's face by telling him "I find it rather facile and silly, to be honest with you, that the Democrats are trying to make it fun of Mitt Romney for what seemed to be a perfectly reasonable to say, in the same way the Big Bird thing looked a bit silly and facile." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN dismissed the controversy behind a 2007 Obama video that just resurfaced, by calling it "old news" and whitewashing the President's own words. CNN even touted its own 2007 coverage of the speech without admitting that it ignored the most controversial part.

Anchor Soledad O'Brien, who has stuck up for Obama more than once before, lamely spun that Obama "was talking about racial discontent and hopelessness because of poverty." CNN's Zoraida Sambolin said "it is old news" and added that CNN "covered it at the time." [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.]

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.]

With Occupy Unmasked being released today in select theaters, this morning’s edition of CNN’s Early Start with Zoraida Sambolin invited David Bossie, producer of the film and President of Citizens United to discuss the film.  However, things got hazy towards the end of the interview where Sombolin shamelessly tried to convey the narrative that Occupy is a “peaceful” movement.

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.]

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.]

Is CNN equating racism with a store owner refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple? In its "controversial marriage news" on Monday, CNN reported both a church refusing to let a black couple marry in its sanctuary and a bakery refusing service for a gay couple's wedding reception.

Back in May, anchor Don Lemon compared Mitt Romney defending traditional marriage to infamous Alabama Governor George Wallace touting segregation, so this isn't the first egregious smear by the network that loves to promote the gay agenda. [Video below the break.]

Newsweek's print magazine has slid steeply toward irrelevance, but that didn't stop CNN from airing its latest hit piece on Romney's "wimp problem" on Monday. CNN devoted over 12 minutes of coverage on its morning shows to the attack disguised as a cover story and authored by a liberal journalist.

Early Start anchor John Berman hyped the "pretty brutal" portrait of Romney and even ventured to call former President George H.W. Bush a "wimp." Starting Point anchor Soledad O'Brien read aloud one of the nasty passages, giving the liberal screed even more attention.

CNN's Wolf Blizer took a key Obama supporter to task on Wednesday over Vice President Biden's use of an anonymous quote to slam Mitt Romney. The Romney campaign had denied saying the racially-charged remark.

"[W]hy would a sitting vice president issue this condemnation of Mitt Romney and his campaign based on a British newspaper with some anonymous quote?" Blitzer asked on Wednesday's The Situation Room.

Other CNN reporters did not share Blitzer's skepticism, though, as five stories on the matter aired on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning with none of them challenging the appropriateness of Biden's remark. The story aired even though correspondent Jim Acosta admitted that the source for the alleged Romney adviser quote could not be independently confirmed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Jim Acosta bragged that his network does not call the Affordable Care Act "ObamaCare," a term he said Republicans prefer. However, CNN has repeatedly referred to the law as "ObamaCare" in its reporting.

"He [Romney] used the term 'ObamaCare,' which by the way, that's fine in Republican circles, but there are a lot of Democrats who sort of bristle at using the term 'ObamaCare'," Acosta explained on Wednesday after Mitt Romney used the term when addressing the Democratic-friendly NAACP. "We at CNN use the term 'the President's health care law,' at least in our news reporting," Acosta boasted. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Unless you happened to sleep all week, you probably saw the story of a Colorada University student getting her picture taken with President Obama at a bar in Boulder.

Even funnier than the photo that went viral on the internet was CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield gasping on Thursday's Early Start when the co-ed in question wouldn't say she was voting for the current White House resident (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Zoraida Sambolin questioned Rick Santorum's appeal with women voters nationwide as she targeted his "ultra-conservative" positions that "some women don't relate to," on Wednesday's Early Start.

Sambolin challenged Santorum's success among women voters in the deep south by noting that nationwide he lags behind President Obama in a recent poll of women voters. [Video below the break.]

In a heated exchange Thursday between CNN’s Zoraida Sambolin and Samuel Wurzelbacher, also known as “Joe the Plumber,” Sambolin dug up comments he made about “gay people” in 2009, causing Wurzelbacher to quip that "this is TMZ. This isn't CNN, is what you're saying."

Sambolin also questioned his qualifications to run for office, and mislabeled his liberal opponent as a "conservative Democrat" while branding Wurzelbacher as a "conservative Republican."  [Video below the break.]

Railing against radio hosts demeaning women, CNN's Ashleigh Banfield called liberal radio host Ed Schultz a "conservative," implying that conservative talking heads are the ones acting sexist and degrading women. Banfield, on CNN Monday morning, directed her ire at conservatives while not once hitting liberals for vile verbiage.

"I was called a slut by Michael Savage, a conservative radio talk show host. Laura Ingram has been called a slut by another conservative, Ed Schultz, on MSNBC," Banfield ranted. "Cut it out! It's not appropriate. It's disgusting," she railed against conservative radio hosts in light of Rush Limbaugh calling Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" last week. [Video below the break.]