In an exclusive, TMZ.com broke the story that CNN axed Soledad O’Brien and Miles O’Brien as hosts of the low-rated “American Morning.” Replacing them will be the network's in-house talent, John Roberts and Kiran Cherty, who was recently fired from FNC's morning show "Fox & Friends.”
TMZ says that “the move will be effective in two to three weeks” and that the O’Briens , who are not related, “will remain at CNN.”
Who are the new hosts?
Chetry was abruptly fired after a nasty contract dispute that went awry but was promptly hired by CNN. Since then, she has occasionally co-hosted “American Morning” and read news bulletins. Newsbusters noted that Chetry “let show a certain DNC-mindset” in reporting about Karl Rove. There aren’t many examples of Chetry’s biased reporting; we’ll see if that changes.
Roberts, on the other hand, should be very familiar to Newsbusters readers. He’s done the usual unequal labeling of conservatives and liberals, and he legitimized a liberal activist who claimed the levees were “bombed” during Hurricane Katrina without later reporting that those fringe theories when lauding her Congressional testimony.
The Media Research Center listed Roberts’ past bias at CBS, among which is the echoed the “standard liberal hostility to cutting taxes.” In 2001, he cited a “Reagan-bashing activist as an expert, claiming that expert ‘can’t forget the last time Congress went on a tax cut spree in 1981. America is still paying the bill.’”
Newsbusters caught Roberts morally equating Iran’s Ahmadinejad to Bush in a segment that asked “how did the mudslinging” “get so bad?“ In reality, there is no comparison. While noting in passing that Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and “insistence that Israel be wiped off the map,” in the same breath, he leveled a similar weight of condemnation for Bush’s “Islamophobic language” for using the term “Islamo-facsists.”
While mentioning “phobic” language, Roberts didn’t mention Ahmadinejad encouraging repeated chants of “Death to America!” Nor his calling Israelis “bloodthirsty barbarians” and saying, “Are they human beings? They are like cattle…” Then he promised that Iran “will soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism” and vowing “Islamic sovereignty over today’s world.” Mudslinging? Imagine if Bush had said any of that.
So, will “American Morning” reflect Chetry’s track record or Roberts'?
