MSNBC's David Gregory took umbrage with criticism of the media’s coverage of Cindy Sheehan on last night's Hardball at around 7:53pm. The following is a brief exchange from a segment that featured talk show host Melanie Morgan and Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen:

Gregory: "Melanie, let me, let me begin with you. Does Cindy Sheehan have something important to say?"

Melanie Morgan: "I think that Cindy Sheehan believes that she has something very important to say and she has the right to say whatever it is she wants to say. But that doesn`t mean because the mainstream media has portrayed her as a very sympathetic, lone grieving mother, that actually represents the case. In fact..."

Gregory: "Well, hang on one second. Hang on. Let me just, I can`t let all these mainstream media attacks go by. How has the media done that? I will grant that you there`s a news vacuum in August and she`s become a national figure, when perhaps, another part of the year, she may not have. But, I mean, let`s not get so far away from this process that we don`t say that this is a grieving parent who lost a son in, in the war. So, I mean, you just assume that the media is trying to prop her up?"

Morgan: "Well, all you have to do is take a look at the front pages of every daily newspaper in America today and read the descriptions of her as a very sympathetic person, which is not to say that she isn`t. She is grieving. She is sympathetic, but she is also a person who has had a political agenda for a lot longer than her son has been dead. She is a member of several organizations. Let me read them to you. She co-founded an anti-war activist group before Casey died, Gold Star Families For Peace. She`s aligned herself with MoveOn.org, Code Pink. And she`s stating her case. She has that right. But other families in this country, 1,800 of them, in fact, are grieving as well. But they don`t get the opportunity to say on television, like she`s doing every single night for, for endless amounts of time, that they do respect the President and that he did not cause their son`s death, nor hers. It was the insurgents in Iraq, who are viciously slaughtering every man, woman and child they can blow up. And those include civilians, as well as American troops."

—Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research Center.