Nancy Grace (Show)

On April 13, at a dog-and-pony show with advertisers, CNN's Jim Walton told participants: "We are the only credible, non partisan voice left, and that matters." True comedy gold.

An accurate offer by Walton to the attending advertisers, in a variation on an old Soviet joke about the wonders of their communist system ("We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us"), might have gone likes this: "We can pretend to do journalism, and you can pretend we have an audience."

It's gotten so bad that CNN's supposedly weak sister Headline News is routinely walloping it during prime time. Here's how the latest three available days as reported at Media Bistro (April 20, April 21 and April 22) turned out (all figures in thousands):

If you were a cable TV host whose audience size is obliterated by O'Reilly's, buried by Beck's, hammered by Hannity's and slam-dunked by Susteren's, would you really go around mocking someone else's ratings?

Appparently yes, if you're Ed Schultz. The host of the miniscule MSNBC program went out of his way this evening to belittle the ratings of Dennis Miller's radio show . . .

Schultz's snide comment came during his Psycho Talk segment.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann was Howard Kurtz's guest on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday, and unfortunately, viewers were treated to a litany of hypocrisies from both media personalities, so much so that it seemed like a lengthy advertisement for the controversial "Countdown."

Although Kurtz did present his guest as being mostly liberal and decidedly anti-Bush, he never once mentioned "Countdown's" actual ratings, or how Olbermann is often in last place in his time slot behind "The O'Reilly Factor," "Nancy Grace," and whatever is being offered by CNN.

You would think that since Kurtz works for CNN, he might have mentioned this.

But that wasn't the only hypocrisy Sunday morning, for when Olbermann made clear just how biased he is, Kurtz seemed to be totally oblivious (video available here, liberal website warning):

What's going on at CNN?

On Monday, the "most trusted name in news" ran an advertisement for its Headline News program "Nancy Grace" dealing with "incredible crime stories" this fall.

In the fast-moving montage, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Kent.) picture was spliced in between what appears to be convicted dog abuser Michael Vick and missing Bolingbrook, Illinois, resident Stacy Peterson. A picture of her husband Drew, who is implicated in her disappearance, followed, with a final shot of OJ Simpson.

Here's the transcript of this highly curious ad (video available here):

Earlier this year, a woman killed herself after being interviewed by CNN Headline News host Nancy Grace over the apparent abduction of her son. At the time (see this September NB posting for background), the relatives of Melinda Duckett were blasting Grace for her alleged role in driving the woman to suicide. They've since taken things a step further and launched a lawsuit against Grace:

Her parents in Lockport were outraged by the talk show hosts harsh, accusatory line of questioning. The segment aired just hours after her death.

Melinda's father, Jerry Eubank: "It was 3-4 hours after I heard that Mindy died and I'm watching this woman banging the table, and screaming about why aren't you telling us this, I mean she was judge, jury and executioner."

Melinda's mother, Beth Eubank: "She physically makes me ill. The night she aired the show on September 8th, it was less than four hours since Mindy's death, family members had not even been notified."

Is Nancy Grace, the crime-obsessed CNN Headline News host and former prosecutor, at least partly to blame for the suicide of a Florida woman whose son has been reported missing?

According to the family of Melinda Duckett, a harsh interview Grace taped with Duckett was one of the factors that put her over the top:

Duckett shot herself a day after taping an interview with CNN Headline News' Nancy Grace, who frequently focuses on missing-persons cases. Stumbling on questions like whether she had taken a polygraph test or where, specifically, she was shopping with her son before his disappearance, Duckett, speaking by telephone, became audibly exasperated.

Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk in a raised voice, saying, "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"

"Nancy Grace and the others, they just bashed her to the end," Melinda Duckett's grandfather Bill Eubank said Tuesday. "She wasn't one anyone ever would have thought of to do something like this. She and that baby just loved each other, couldn't get away from each other. She wouldn't hurt a bug."

As you would expect, Grace denies this. On Monday's show, instead of focusing on 9/11, she devoted basically the entire program (except for a small mention of the terrorist attacks at the end) to the Duckett case. Everything Grace said about the case, plus a comment, is below the fold.