CNN

Of the three cable networks, Fox News on Wednesday offered the most substantial coverage of whistleblower testimony on the September 11th terrorist attack in Benghazi. Fox broke in first at 11:36am and has been airing the hearings mostly unobstructed since. CNN followed at noon. Anchor Wolf Blitzer appeared and introduced coverage.

The cable network stuck with the testimony for 15 minutes before leaving to feature discussion by Blitzer and Jake Tapper. MSNBC, unsurprisingly, was last. It wasn't until 12:17pm, after spending copious amounts of time on the Cleveland abduction case, that the network finally showcased the hearings.

Mainstream media’s limited reporting on the murder trial of Philadelphia abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been obvious.  You might think that CNN, the self-styled “Most Trusted Name in News," would pay more attention to a case involving over 250 criminal counts, including ones for first-degree murder. 

You’d be wrong.  Today, CNN’s Newsroom occupied six hours of air time.  The Gosnell trial was mentioned only twice.  Anchor Wolf Blitzer reported:

In Philadelphia, the 72-year-old abortion doctor, Kermit Gosnell is awaiting his fate. He's accused of first degree murder for allegedly killing babies born alive during late term abortions. Jurors are now in their fifth day of deliberating after not reaching a verdict Friday. 

CNN's Carol Costello didn't hide her feelings Monday after NFL punter and gay rights advocate Chris Kluwe was cut from the Minnesota Vikings.

Costello tweeted "Chris Kluwe cut from Vikings. Sad!" on Monday afternoon, and followed up with a link to the story. "I am so sad," she lamented. Kluwe received media attention last year for his outspoken advocacy on behalf of gay NFL players, and last week Costello hosted him on CNN to talk about gay NBA player Jason Collins.

After conservative radio host Dana Loesch tweeted about firing "all manner" of guns with friends at her local range this past weekend, CNN's resident gun police Piers Morgan swooped in to badger her.

Twitchy had the exchange. Morgan mocked Loesch's gun range tweet, "Yee-haw!" and pointed out, for all those unaware, that the AR-15 rifle she tweeted a picture of was "The assault rifle used at Aurora & Sandy Hook." When Loesch replied that everyone shooting were "law-abiding citizens," Morgan invoked the Newtown shooter's mother: "Like Mrs Lanza?"

CNN primetime host Anthony Bourdain continued his string of vulgar offerings Sunday.

His Parts Unknown - airing at 9PM on the east coast and 6PM out west - featured three uncensored S-words, a bleeped F-bomb, and oral sex jokes (video follows with transcribed lowlights and commentary):

CNN's Christiane Amanpour and Jeffrey Toobin continued to push for Guantanamo Bay to be closed on Thursday's 10 p.m. ET hour of Anderson Cooper 360. "It's just not American," Amanpour insisted.

Amanpour, CNN's chief international correspondent, knocked the "roughty-toughty Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided no Geneva Conventions" for the detainees. Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst, challenged the law passed by Congress mandating that Guantanamo be kept open. "That doesn't mean it was right," he said of its bipartisan passage. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

For the second time on Piers Morgan's CNN show, Breitbart's Ben Shapiro got the better of his host as on Thursday he goaded Morgan into calling for a British-style handgun ban in the U.S.

"You're from the UK, why don't we go with a full gun ban?" Shapiro challenged Morgan, who, audibly flustered, admitted, "Listen, we've discussed this. The UK has 40, 50 gun murders a year, America has 12,000. Why don't we try our way?" He then promptly switched the topic. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Erin Burnett hosted a liberal roundtable on her Wednesday show to gripe about President Obama's shortcomings and whack Republican members of Congress for obstructing his agenda.

How often would CNN host a conservative roundtable to complain about the Republican leadership? Regardless, liberal comedian Dean Obeidallah warned that Obama could become a "lame duck president" while lefty radio host Stephanie Miller and Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen largely focused more blame on Republican obstructionists. [Video coming soon. Audio here.]

Insisting that Guantanamo Bay has become a recruitment tool for future terrorists and must be closed, CNN's Christiane Amanpour arrogantly scoffed at opinions to the contrary on Wednesday's special edition of Anderson Cooper 360.

Amanpour knocked Rudy Giuliani's concern of "I can't imagine where you would put these people," by jeering, "Come on." Later on, when The Blaze TV anchor Amy Holmes argued that  "Jihadists have a laundry list of resentments against the West" and that the Guantanamo hunger strikes are not their prime motives for attacking the U.S., Amanpour condescended, "Oh no, we're just talking facts here now, Amy." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Hosting liberal filmmaker Spike Lee on his Tuesday show, CNN's Anderson Cooper supported Lee's prediction that more professional athletes will come out as gay like NBA player Jason Collins.

"The tide of history is moving forward," the openly-gay Cooper remarked in a not-so-subtle boost of the gay rights movement. On Monday, Cooper hailed Collins as "a true pioneer" and lauded his announcement as a "historic decision." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

For the first time in over two years, the farce of a cable news network known as MSNBC dropped to third place in total viewers and primetime in April being beaten by the long-suffering CNN and of course Fox News at the top.

As TVNewser reported Tuesday, despite April being a heavy news month with disasters in Boston and West Texas, MSNBC viewership was actually down from April 2012:

In just 24 hours, CNN spent over 76 minutes of air time on NBA player Jason Collins's announcement that he was gay. That was over nine times more coverage the network gave the Gosnell trial in one week.

CNN's media critic Howard Kurtz admitted on Sunday that the media champion some stories more than others that also merit attention, and this was painfully evident in the amount of time network gave the two stories. Once Collins announced he was gay, the network breathlessly touted the news as "historic," "a big moment for our country," and "courageous." CNN's jubilation over Collins is no surprise given its support for same-sex marriage, but it couldn't muster even half of that air time to report the alleged horrors of Kermit Gosnell's abortion clinic. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

It used to be that whenever an important news story broke, cable television viewers would quickly turn to CNN for must-see coverage of what was happening. However, according to a poll conducted regarding the five-day coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing, that is definitely no longer the case.

The survey, which was conducted by the liberal Huffington Post website and the international marketing agency YouGov, determined that former titan CNN came in as far less trustworthy than Fox News over which was the most believable cable news channel.

After NBA player Jason Collins came out as gay on Monday, CNN hyped the announcement as a "bombshell," a "big deal," and one for the "history books." CNN's open support of gay rights advocates is no secret, as it has already picked sides in the gay rights debate.

CNN's Don Lemon has framed gay rights advocates as being on the right side of history, and anchor Brooke Baldwin played into that narrative on Monday. "The NBA's Jason Collins has entered the history books today," she touted. "As of today, he's the first openly-gay male athlete playing a major team sport in America. This is a big deal." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, CNN's Howard Kurtz doubled down on his December column that the media needed "to be leading the conversation" on guns in the wake of Newtown. He even compared the gun debate to the conversations on civil rights and, recently, same-sex marriage. Is gun control the new civil rights movement?

Of course, Kurtz claimed objectivity although since Newtown the media have been anything but fair to gun rights advocates in the "conversation" on guns: "I would say that it's important for journalists, whether you like the phrase 'leading the conversation' or not, to push controversial issues that the politicians otherwise might prefer not to talk about."

Yet New York Times columnist Ross Douthat countered that the media is overwhelmingly one-sided when it tries to push issues into the spotlight, and pointed to the selective outrage behind the Newtown shooting versus the horror stories coming from the Gosnell trial.  [Video below the break. Audio here.]

As NewsBusters previously reported, CNN’s new primetime program Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown last Sunday featured four audible A-words, two audible S-words, three censored F-bombs, and a “G-d damn.”

This Sunday, the host actually jokingly gave himself the name “The Enormous C--k” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, many in the media have done their darnedest to avoid connecting the Boston Marathon bombers to radical Islam.

On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, host Candy Crowley actually apologized for doing so (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Barack Obama absolutely slayed at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner Saturday evening.

Early in his address to attendees, he took on CNN saying, “I admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After hosting a Sunday segment on whether the Boy Scouts should allow openly-gay scouts and leaders, CNN's Don Lemon re-tweeted gay advocate David Begor's praise of him giving an "anti-gay scoutmaster" a "tough life lesson" and an "intervention."

On Thursday, Begor tweeted a link to Lemon's interview with former Eagle Scout John Stemberger and activist Zach Wahls, founder of Scouts for Equality. He noted Lemon and Wahls staging "an intervention" with Stemberger, who opposes the inclusion of openly-gay members in the Boy Scouts. Begor also touted the "tough life lesson" they gave Stemberger. Lemon re-tweeted Begor's praise.

CNN's Piers Morgan absurdly claimed on Thursday that "senators and congressmen" want Dzhokhar Tsarnaev "tortured" and the "interrogation lasting for months." The only prominent call for torture came from one New York state senator who had argued his case on Morgan's show on Monday.

"So when you hear these senators and congressmen leaping up and down saying we want to have him tortured and we want to have the interrogation lasting for months, you're straying into Guantanamo Bay territory for somebody who is an American citizen," Morgan said of Tsarnaev. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

One might think the opening of George W. Bush’s presidential library in Dallas was an occasion for dignity. But Bill Clinton didn’t think so. On CNN yesterday, Jake Tapper asked former Bush chief of staff Andy Card about “an interesting moment” in Clinton’s remarks.

“Your mother showed me some of your landscapes and animal paintings, and I thought they were great. Really great,” Clinton said. “And I seriously considered calling you and asking you to do a portrait of me until I saw the results of your sister's hacked e-mails. Those bathroom sketches were wonderful, but at my age I think I should keep my suit.”

CNN's Piers Morgan had a fiery debate with controversial State Senator Stacey Campfield (R-Tenn.) on Wednesday.

At one point, Campfield said, "Now that gun control has failed, Piers, I'm wondering when are you going to move back to England. Because everyone in Tennessee is dying to know" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Despite CNN pushing Congress to enact new gun laws, a new poll shows less than half of Americans are "angry" or "disappointed" that last week's gun bill failed in the Senate. In its advocacy, CNN had touted 90 percent of Americans supporting universal background checks.

CNN wanted action taken on guns. Host Piers Morgan led a one-man crusade for gun control since the Newtown shooting, and that the rest of the network had been so friendly to the cause that the gun bill's co-author Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) actually thanked them for their "support."

[UPDATED BELOW] CNN's blackout on the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell has resumed after a three-week silence was broken for a day on April 12. The network hasn't touched the story in nine days, and despite live coverage of the disasters in Boston and Texas the network has still managed to report on stories like airport traffic, Mark Sanford's "soap opera," and the "North Pond hermit" thief in Maine.

On Friday, April 12, CNN covered the Gosnell trial for the first time since March 21 and basically shelved the story after that. The one exception came in a 90-second discussion by media critic Howard Kurtz of the media coverage of the trial, on the April 14 Reliable Sources. Kurtz lamely offered that CNN had aired a "half dozen segments" on the trial. [Video below.]

For years, NewsBusters has argued that MSNBC is not a news network.

Americans appear to agree, for last week as our nation was rocked by bombings in Boston and a fertilizer plant explosion near Waco, Texas, relatively few citizens turned to MSNBC for information about these horrific events.