HLN (formerly CNN Headline News)

(Updated) Saturday, CNN Headline News ran a repeat of Glenn Beck’s March 27 show, which showed footage of some of the images that ran behind Elton John during his elaborate 60th birthday bash at Madison Square Garden that included a burning church. This is the same man who said that religion promotes hatred and “it’s not very compassionate.” Beck discussed the very tolerant and “compassionate” concert:

NBC's David Gregory might be a decent reporter when he's not biased, and I know he's a great dancer, but he's no meteorologist. James Spann is, and on the January 22 "Glenn Beck" program on CNN Headline News, Spann explained the many other causes of global warming other than Gregory shuttling via jet from D.C. to New York to substitute-anchor the January 23 "Today" show.

Maybe D-Greg wasn't watching. The next morning he pressed White House press secretary Tony Snow if the president would "concede that humans are responsible for global warming."

But as Spann explained on Beck's program, carbon emissions are "a pop gun compared to" larger natural influences like "volcanic dust in the stratosphere, the position of the sun, the temperature of the sun, the structure of the Earth’s magnetic poles, and ocean currents."

Video of Spann here (Windows Media) and here (Real Player).

You can find more at my article here.

Updated with correction for network name at 6:27 p.m. EST

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."

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck has had a CNN Headline News show for only five months, but for each month its ratings have increased, and soon the show will overtake "Hardball" with Chris Matthews.

Reports TV Newser:

For the first time since his May launch, Glenn Beck is beating MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews in the coveted 25-54 demographic. HLN's Beck averaged 149,000 demo viewers in September, up from 112,000 in August and 99,000 in July. MSNBC's Matthews averaged 132,000 demo viewers in September, down from 141,000 in August and 125,000 in July. (Click on the chart to view it full-size.)

Beck is also growing among total viewers -- he averaged 161,000 in May, 141,000 in June, 183,000 in July, 237,000 in August, and 321,000 in September. He's gaining on Matthews, who averaged 351,000 at 7pm in September...

Don Kaplan of the New York Post has a great column today about the failing cable station MSNBC, and quite appropriately asks why we need it (hat tip to TV Newser):

“‘It's really running third in a two-horse race,’ says Reese Schoenfeld, who co-founded CNN.

“He questions whether MSNBC is even in the same league as Fox News Channel and CNN. ‘Everybody compares MSNBC to Fox and CNN - when its real competition is [CNN's] Headline News,’ he says.”

Yikes. In the sports world, that’s like saying the Yankees’ real competition is the Devil Rays. Kaplan continued:

CNN Headline News is set to debut a new show tonight (7pm ET) featuring radio host Glenn Beck. Already, liberals are up in arms about their sacred turf of non-FNC television being invaded, Broadcasting and Cable reports.

New CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck is already asking his fans to guess when his show will be canceled, and it doesn't even debut until Monday night.

The subject of an e-mail campaign from the left, the conservative talker is launching one of his own.

Beck's Web site, glennbeck.com, has a link to an online form that lets surfers guess when his talk show--weeknights, 7 and 9 p.m., starting May 8--will be off the air. His own staff gives it "three weeks," according to some streamed behind-the-scenes video also linked to Beck's Web site.

The CNN Headline News show "Showbiz Tonight" led Monday night with controversy over the movie "V for Vendetta," and stomped hard on the idea that it was directed at the Bush administration. Host A. J. Hammer began with a promo: "On ‘Showbiz Tonight,’ the war in Iraq, the war on terror and the hottest movie in America. The shock and awe over 'V for Vendetta.' And the controversy. Is art imitating life? A political thriller where the hero is a terrorist. Is that really such a bad thing?"

Is this a rhetorical question? Or is Hammer auditioning for al-Jazeera International?

MRC's Michelle Humphrey tipped me off to the story. Hammer explained: "All right, let me tell you what happened this weekend. America had a big choice of movies. Here's the one they made No. 1: 'V for Vendetta.' This is a movie all about terrorism. This is a movie that raises some serious and unsettling questions about who should really be called a terrorist. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. A movie that has chilling allusions to everything from September 11 to government spying to terror bombings to the war in the Iraq. It`s a movie that opened just as we crossed yet another disturbing milestone in the struggle to end the seemingly unending war in Iraq. It`s enough to make critics and Showbiz Tonight ask, what's going on here?"

The appropriately named Noah T. Winer has sent an e-mail to his MoveOn.Org Media Action team urging them to fulminate against CNN's plans to use conservative radio host Glenn Beck, complete with the panic-stricken headline "Stop CNN from Becoming Fox News." Winer pleads:

We recently alerted you to CNN's decision to hire right-winger Bill Bennett as a talking head. Yesterday, it got even worse: CNN Headline News announced plans to attract Fox News viewers by giving an hour of airtime every day to right-wing talk radio host Glenn Beck.

Variety magazine reports CNN "will look to build Beck into the type of TV personality that could siphon viewers from Bill O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts." There's not a single progressive host on CNN. Why is CNN trying to imitate Fox News? CNN's president thinks progressives don't really care, saying "they don't get too worked up about anything."

The Paris riots have highlighted more than any other issue in recent years not only the bias, but the ignorance of the "old media." Internet readers have studied the situation in Europe for years. Numerous writers, from Mark Steyn to Ba'at Yeor to Debbie Schlussel, have long predicted the decline of Europe and the jihad that we have seen over the past few weeks.

But the "old media" personalities still have no clue as to what is going on. And their reporting and commentary has taken on an almost comical quality as a result. 

Years after "new media" readers began to understand the consequences of French policies toward Islamic immigrants, CNN's anchor Carol Lin referred (on November 6th) to some of the participants in the Paris fiasco as African-American (apparently for lack of a better euphemism).

When the MSM seeks to use euphemisms to ignore the real issue, they run the risk of sounding stupid and bringing ridicule upon themselves. It would be far easier to identify correctly the rioters in the first place. It makes one wonder why they don't do things the easy way.

UPDATE 4pm EST Friday, by Rich Noyes: Lin’s comment came about 10 minutes into CNN’s 10pm EST Sunday Night, as reporter Chris Burns was reporting on the rioting in France. Burns reported: “The priority right now is to restore order before trying to deal with some of the underlying issues, but even after what [French President Jacque] Chirac said, we’re seeing more violence. What you could point out, though, is that there is at this point about half as many vehicles torched as the night before, so you might call that progress, Carol.”

“Hard to say,” Lin responded, “because it’s been 11 days since two African-American teenagers were killed, electrocuted during a police chase, which prompted all of this.”

The two teenaged boys, who ran into high-voltage equipment and were killed on October 27, weren't American at all. They were actually French citizens of Tunisian origin.