All three morning shows on Friday identified the man who killed 12 at an Army base in Texas as a Muslim. However, Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer repeated a concern from Thursday’s World News: "...We heard Martha Raddatz say last night that the wife of a soldier said ‘I wish his name had been Smith,’ so no one would have a reflexive question about [a religious motive]."

In comparison, on Thursday’s CBS Evening News and NBC’s Nightly News both programs failed to reveal the religious faith of Hasan. GMA, as well as CBS’s Early Show and NBC’s Today, did not shy away from politically incorrect details, such as the surveillance footage of Major Nidal Malik Hasan in full Muslim garb in the hours before the shooting. Correspondent Brian Ross dug up information and informed, "In this internet posting earlier this year, Nadal Hasan compared suicide bombers to G.I.’s who saved their colleagues by throwing themselves on a grenade."

The Early Show’s David Martin explained, "He is an American citizen said to be of Jordanian decent and a life-long Muslim." He then added, "However, there’s a retired colonel who served with Hasan, has been quoted as saying that he heard Hasan react with glee to a news report that several American soldiers had been killed by a suicide bomber."

Scott Wolf, the star of a new show about evil aliens who use superficial journalists to take over the planet, appeared on Monday’s Good Morning America and compared his "morally compromised" character to real-life CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. The V star asserted that "Chad Decker" doesn’t have much "gravitas" and added, "He's more of Anderson Cooper-y."

In the program, which premiered November 3 on ABC, Wolf’s fictional reporter scored an exclusive interview with "Anna," the lead alien, who is secretly plotting to take over the planet. She instructed him, "Just be sure not to ask anything that would paint us in a negative light." After he explained journalists must ask tough questions, Anna delivered this punch line: "That was not my understanding." [Audio available here.]

Under the threat of losing such a high-profile interview, Decker backpedaled and offered a promise to be "fair." The scene, which some conservatives might think reflects coverage the Obama administration has received, continued. The alien lectured, "You'll need to be more than fair if you want to proceed...We can't be seen in a negative light."

Business just can't win.

For years the environmentalists and their green-loving mainstream media allies have been slamming businesses for trashing the planet. Outlets ranging from television networks to magazines to newspapers have spearheaded an incessant "eco-friendly" campaign that has been so influential on consumers that some companies have gone into the red just to be green. But of course now that being green has actually become profitable, the media's criticizing the free market for "taking advantage of it."

On Nov. 5 "Good Morning America's" weatherman and eco-propagandist Sam Champion tsked, "In the past five years, there's been an explosion of products marketed as being green or good for the environment. But just how accurate are all of those claims? And are we really getting what we think we are? Well, the government now says, in some cases, we're not."

Former Democratic aide turned journalist George Stephanopoulos appeared on Wednesday’s Good Morning America to spin the loss of a Conservative Party congressional candidate in New York as a "big loss for Sarah Palin." He enthused, "A big win for the Democrats who poured it on in the final days especially Vice President Biden who came in the final day."

Stephanopoulos seemed much more animated in discussing the New York race than he did the Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia. He extolled, "The bottom line, when there is a civil war inside the Republican Party, a Democrat can squeak through in a district that has not gone to the Democrats since about the Civil War."

Referencing the ramifications the GOP victories could have on the health care debate, Stephanopoulos began, "Well, I actually asked a White House official about that this morning." Could this be White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel? (Early this year, it was revealed that Stephanopoulos has daily phone conversations and strategy sessions with Emanuel.)

UPDATE: Not wanting to be left out of the Palin slamming scene, ABC's "Good Morning America" joined the fray on Nov. 4, interviewing the same people as CBS' "Early Show" and criticizing Palin on the same points. 

From accusing her of igniting a civil war within the Republican Party to calling her "nutty" antics a "treasure" to the Democrats, the mainstream media is once again shamelessly slamming Sarah Palin.  

On Nov. 3 CBS' "Early Show" interviewed Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, co-authors of "Sarah from Alaska," a "very revealing" book about Palin on the campaign trail.

"Later this month, Palin's highly anticipated memoir hits bookstores," said CBS' Harry Smith. "But another book beats her to it."

To start off the interview, Smith asked Conroy (who, by the way, also works for CBS) to explain what was going on "behind the scenes" when John McCain gave his concession speech on Election Day last year.  

Conroy wasted no time painting Palin as a media hungry mongrel, saying:

Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer conducted a surprisingly tough interview with Al Gore on Tuesday, pressing him on profiting from global warming and whether or not climate change legislation is pointless in light of pollution-spewing countries such as China. She also forced the ex-Vice President to respond to a challenge from Glenn Beck.

Sawyer even pointed out the amount of methane gas created from the bodily functions of cows, observing that it's "20 times more damaging it is than CO2." The host, who will become the anchor of World News in January, then played a clip of Fox News' Beck mocking Gore:

GLENN BECK: I'm siding with PETA on this one. Once again asking Al Gore if you really want to save the planet, Al, why don't you put down the cheeseburger and pick up the veggie burger? Time for, maybe, soy milk and tofurkey.

Good Morning America’s Bill Weir on Saturday interviewed Nancy Pelosi and wistfully responded to the House Speaker’s reminiscing about the "stillness" and "silence" of Barack Obama’s inauguration. He cooed, "What happened to that sense? That was such a day of, of unity. You think it's still there?"

After Pelosi assured the weekend anchor that such solidarity still existed, Weir responded, "Even after the town hall meetings and everything that we’ve been through?" Weir certainly seemed to enjoy the January 20, 2009 inauguration. Reporting for World News that day, he memorably asked if "national pride" can "make a freezing day feel warmer?"

He also said of the event: "...From above, even the seagulls must have been awed by the blanket of humanity." On November 5, 2008, the morning after Obama’s victory, Weir referred to the previous evening as a "transcendent" night of "communal joy."

Former top Democratic aide turned journalist George Stephanopoulos on Monday spun the upcoming November 3 congressional election in New York as a Republican "civil war." Recounting the battle between the Conservative Party nominee, a Democrat and a liberal Republican, he claimed, "But, what's most interesting here is civil war inside the Republican Party."

Stephanopoulos added, "You saw this conservative candidate just come in and swamp the Republican who was pro-choice, pro-gay rights. And what the White House is trying to do even if they lose here is exploit- is fan the flames of this civil war."

Of course, Stephanopoulos, who served in the Clinton White House and worked for Michael Dukakis’ 1988 campaign, doesn’t often talk about Democrats engaging in a "civil war," despite the unhappiness by liberals over issues such as the "public option" and President Obama’s inaction over gays in the military.

Stephanopoulos also appeared on Sunday’s GMA and played prognosticator. Discussing the two gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and the congressional election in New York, he predicted, "I think you're likely to see a split here." (The This Week host suggested a victory by Democrats in New Jersey.) Previewing White House spin, he added, "If there is a split, I think it's a wash and we'll move on."

All three network morning shows on Friday skipped a Washington Post report revealing that powerful congressional Democrats such as John Murtha, James Moran and others on a defense panel are the subject of an ethics investigation for a relationship with a lobbying firm. The Democrats, and some Republicans, are under intense scrutiny for steering over $200 million in earmarks to clients of a company called PMA.

However, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today show and CBS’s Early Show somehow managed to ignore this potentially damaging problem for the Democratic majority. Instead, NBC’s hosts found time to dress up as Star Wars characters. (Ann Curry appeared as Darth Vader.) Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith went drag and impersonated Julia Child for a cooking segment (See video and blog here.) Even though it’s October, GMA promoted a new version of A Christmas Carol.

It seems unlikely that these news outlets would ignore a similar story that involved possible allegations about a group of mostly Republican lawmakers who are in charge of earmarking federal funds. Washington Post staff writer Carol D. Leonnig explained:

Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer on Tuesday helped promote an upcoming HBO documentary on Barack Obama and allowed producer Ed Norton to gush over the "zen" presidential campaign of the Democratic candidate. [MP3 audio excerpt here] Sawyer breathlessly teased the program as "the Obamas behind closed doors. The grandmother who raised him and the man you’ve never seen."

Sawyer played several clips of the By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, a film that followed Obama and his family during the 2008 campaign. The segment, which ran six and a half minutes, will be supplemented by more promotion on Tuesday’s Nightline. When asked what surprised her about the Obamas, director Amy Rice enthused about "just how normal they were."

Norton was impressed with the "calm," "no-drama Obama." The actor continued, "And in a weird way, when you look behind the curtain with that team, they are really zen. It's amazing how zen they are."

"Good Morning America" is at it again. The ABC program waged another battle against food companies Oct. 26 by focusing on an "eye-popping report" about cereal marketed to children.

Dan Harris introduced the segment saying, "This really is a scathing report. Not only does it accuse the food companies of pushing the least nutritious cereals to kids, but it also says the companies' promises to police themselves are hollow. What's more the study authors say they have proof for parents that kids will eat unsweetened cereals if they're offered."

But his two minute 58 second segment devoted a meager 21 seconds to defending cereal makers, and never mentioned the role of parental responsibility.

Harris complained that the Yale study from Kelly Brownell found the "average preschooler sees 642 cereal ads a year, the vast majority of them for sugary cereals: a marketing tsunami that is exacerbating the nation's childhood obesity epidemic."

In the midst of all the elite upset over the Fox News Channel's supposedly over-the-top opposition to President Barack Obama, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz pointed out in a Saturday story across the top of the “Style” section that the apparent two finalists to replace Diane Sawyer (who is moving to World News in January) on Good Morning America “have politics, but little else, in common.” Liberal Democratic politics, that is, since the two names in play are George Stephanopoulos and Chris Cuomo.

Kurtz began his October 24 story: “One helped elect a president, the other grew up as the son of a governor. Now George Stephanopoulos and Chris Cuomo are engaged in a very different kind of contest, for one of the most coveted prizes in network television.”

On Oct. 23 ABC's "Good Morning America" aired back-to-back segments promoting climate change and, strangely enough, slamming hamburgers. First, George Stephanopoulos worried that Americans were becoming too complacent about global warming and discussed possible climate solutions with "Superfreakonomics" author Stephen Dubner. Dubner suggested choosing a kangaroo burger over a beef burger as a possible solution. Then Stephanopoulos interviewed Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and discussed the carbon footprint left behind by a McDonald's quarter-pounder with cheese.

Pollan said that "you're eating oil" when you're eating a burger: "You need oil to make the fertilizer to grow the corn. You need petroleum to make the pesticides to grow the corn. You need oil to move it all around the country."

Factoring in production, processing, and shipment, Pollan claimed that a quarter-pounder cheeseburger amounts to 26 ounces of oil. "What it tells you is that the carbon footprint of that burger is really big," said Pollan. "The result is a product that takes a huge environmental toll and obviously takes a health toll as well."

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter debated no less than two former Clinton operatives on Friday’s Good Morning America, guest host George Stephanopoulos and former State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin. On the show, she decried President Obama’s handling of Afghanistan as a "Hamlet routine."

Despite facing off against two liberals, Coulter went on the attack. She labeled 2009 as a "year where it's still Bush protecting us from terrorism. But the next four years, Obama's going around creating disasters across the world. He is lighting matches and throwing in gasoline."

Interrupting Rubin’s defense of the Obama White House’s Afghanistan policy, Stephanopoulos, who is rumored to be a candidate to replace Diane Sawyer on GMA, offered his own, similar appeal: "But, what is wrong, Ann, of having the President take a few weeks to get this decision right?"

On the Oct. 23 "Good Morning America," ABC's George Stephanopoulos was troubled. The source of his disquiet was a new Pew Research poll released on Oct. 22 that shows "just 57 percent of Americans see solid evidence" of global warming. [Emphasis ours.] This represents a 14 percent drop since last year. Additionally, the number of those who believe climate change is caused by human activity fell 11 percent. To the media's true believers - and those who just like reporting a good scare story - these numbers are upsetting.

GMA in particular has a stake in making sure Americans believe they're destroying the planet, since the morning show has been a tireless purveyor of climate change propaganda. Stephanopoulos referenced the poll in introducing a segment on the new book "Superfreakonomics," which offers "radically different" solutions on how to "save our planet."

"Superfreakonomics" co-author Stephen Dubner agreed with Stephanopoulos that global warming "very well may be" a serious problem. But he then argued that "the proposed solution of carbon mitigation as the one and primary path [to combating climate change] will be too little and too late, and it's too optimistic."

On Oct. 22, ABC's "The View" tsked at "the media" for presenting an alleged suspect as guilty. The focus of their discussion was Nicole Howell, a former high school teacher that was accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student but has since been acquitted of the charges.

"Is her teaching career over?" worried Whoopi Goldberg. "They accused her of it; it turned out she hadn't done it, and they made a big hoo ha. But now can she go back to teaching? What can she do?"

"I think it's wrecked in a certain way, unfortunately, this poor girl," said Joy Behar. "Any time somebody shouts fire, ya know, when there is none, is a problem. This is going to haunt her - unless she goes into the witness protection program."

In performing its duty to help save us from ourselves, ABC often turns to its favorite kill-joy food police, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. And they did it again on Oct. 21, when "Good Morning America's" Lisa Stark lamented with CSPI's executive director, Michael Jacobson, about the conniving designs of the food industry to lure unsuspecting consumers into its artery-clogging, diabetes-ridden death trap.

Liberal New York Times columnist Gail Collins appeared on Monday’s Good Morning America to complain that one of the biggest unresolved issues for women is a lack of government-provided pre and after-school care for children. She complained, "And we still have not come near dealing with the question of who takes care of the kids if both parents are out working."

Highlighting the favorite bogeyman of the left, Richard Nixon, the New York Times columnist whined that in 1971, "Congress passed a bipartisan bill giving quality early childhood education and after-school programs for any family that wanted them in the entire country." She lamented that the legislation was vetoed by President Nixon.

Collins, who was promoting When Everything Changed, her new book about the role of women since 1960, blurted, "I can forgive him [Nixon] for Watergate before that [the veto]." Co-host Roberts prompted the columnist, whom she never identified as a liberal, to tout the benefits of the sexual revolution: "And you also said, which I never thought about until I read your book, the sexual revolution was really helped women and explain why that was."

Hell hath no fury like an infotainment show duped. On Oct. 19, ABC's "Good Morning America" started the week by picking up where it left off the previous Friday. On Monday, GMA wasted over 14 minutes whining about the bogus balloon boy story and his family's lack of "remorse."

After months of investigation, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) released a report addressing accusations from some humanitarian groups that its use of white phosphorus (WP) munitions in the Gaza War was a violation of international law, as the report distinguishes between the use of WP as a weapon and the more common non-weapon purposes such as providing smoke screens to conceal troop movements. The pro-Israel group CAMERA recently quoted from the report in the article, "Did Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus Constitute a War Crime?" by Steven Stotsky, on its Web site. The report not only argued that the military's decision to explode the munition in the air was safer for civilians than it would have been to explode it on the ground, but it also suggested that the use of WP to facilitate troops movements also meant civilian casualties were lower than they otherwise would have been by making attacks on Hamas more accurate.

Last January, evening newscasts and some morning newscasts on the broadcast networks and on CNN and FNC reported on accusations from humanitarian groups – with varying degrees of accuracy – with CBS even referring to WP as a "banned weapon," and a "horrific new weapon, " and contending that the IDF may have committed "war crimes." At one point, CNN similarly incorrectly identified WP as a "banned substance." ABC showed a clip of a wounded Palestinian boy charging that Israelis have "no mercy" even for children. (MSNBC does not have a morning or evening newscast equivalent to NBC’s Today show or the NBC Nightly News, so MSNBC coverage was not examined.) But, according to a Nexis search, none of these news programs showed any interest in updating viewers once the Israeli military had made public its say on the matter.

As previously documented by NewsBusters, the January 22 CBS Evening News ran a report (video here), introduced by anchor Katie Couric, which left the impression that the Israeli military had used a "banned weapon," without informing viewers that there are non-weapon uses for WP, and passed on accusations of "war crimes." Couric: "Hamas just ended a bloody war with Israel in Gaza, and tonight there is growing evidence the Israelis may have used a banned weapon. Some even accuse them of war crimes."

On the January 25 World News Sunday on ABC, as he introduced a report by correspondent Simon McGregor-Wood, anchor Dan Harris played up complaints against "both sides" in the war, and even suggested that the Israeli side may have been worse in its conduct of the war as he highlighted that there was "especially tough criticism" leveled at Israel. Harris: "Both sides are being dogged now by complaints that they violated the rules of war. Israel has come under especially tough criticism for its use of a chemical agent."