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For CNN's Ashleigh Banfield, complete opposition to abortion equals a "very far right" position, as she insisted on Tuesday about the new Republican Party platform. For context, CNN used the same "far right" label to describe Sikh shooter Wade Michael Page's racist skinhead band.

"[T]he platform, for the most part, was crafted by the very far-right wing of the party and then if you combine that with the timing of all this ugliness that's going on with Mr. Akin...does that besmirch this platform that so many people agree with?" she asked, framing the completely pro-life stance as extreme and possibly damaging to the GOP. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Piers Morgan played right into the hand of the Obama campaign's co-chair on Monday night, casting the fallout from Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) rape remarks as "Romney's worst nightmare."

"Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head," Morgan told Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) after she delivered her liberal spin tying Akin to Paul Ryan and the GOP. "Now it [the debate] has become Romney's worst nightmare. It's gone right back to the social conservative issues he was so desperate to move off on." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Although the Obama/Biden campaign has plenty of gaffes and erroneous statements to answer for from the past five-and-a-half months -- the last presidential press conference was March 6 -- Associated Press White House correspondent Jeff Kuhnhenn opted to toss a softball to President Obama today as he was selected by the president to ask the first question at the chief executive's impromptu session with reporters in the White House press briefing room.

"You are no doubt aware of the comments that Missouri Senate candidate, Republican Todd Akin made on rape and abortion. I wondered if you think those views represent the views of the Republican party in general. They have been denounced by your own rival and other Republicans. Are they an outlier or representative?" Kuhnhenn asked, having obviously answered his own question. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

CNN already understands why the Family Research Council (FRC) was labeled a "hate group" by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). On Saturday, CNN gave more credibility to the SPLC as anchor Randi Kaye cited the group as a credible source on "hate groups" in the U.S. right after quoting their explanation for the FRC's "hate group" label.

"Statistics show hate groups are on the rise in this country. The Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 1,000 known hate groups operating in the U.S. last year, and the FBI reported nearly 7,000 hate crimes," reported Kaye during the 10 a.m. hour of CNN Newsroom. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Remember the days when nightly news anchors were supposed to be serious journalists?  Apparently Brian Williams never got that memo.  Appearing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on August 15, the managing editor of NBC Nightly News showed the continuing decline of the gravitas of the broadcast news anchor. 

Appearing on The Daily Show, Williams continued his routine of making awkward and inappropriate comments that even Jon Stewart seemed uncomfortable with.  The NBC News veteran seems to find bestiality funny as he gleefully recalled anecdotes about his dog Qually to promote a segment on his primetime newsmagazine program Rock Center.  [Video follow page break;  MP3 audio here.]

In a fawn-fest over Chelsea Clinton with CNN's Ashleigh Banfield on Wednesday, Vogue magazine's contributing editor Jonathan van Meter slipped in some serious love for Bill and Hillary.

"I think one of the things the Clintons will go down in history for, it may very well being the world's greatest parents. I mean, they did such an incredible job of protecting her [Chelsea] from the likes of us, basically," van Meter admitted of the press. [Video below the break.]

Shortly before 11 a.m. this morning, 28-year-old Floyd Corkins opened fire on a security guard at the conservative Family Research Center, located in downtown Washington, D.C. Local news stations, including NBC's Washington station, devoted resources to cover the developing story, as did CNN and Fox News, which regularly updated viewers with progress in the investigation.

But MSNBC devoted a scant 17 seconds to the story, in a news brief at 2:51 p.m. Eastern by News Nation substitute anchor Jose Diaz-Balart, and ignored noting that it may well be classified as an incident of domestic terrorism [MP3 audio here; video contrasting coverage follows page break]:

In what seemed like a White House commercial, CNN used cartoon characters to explain the benefits of ObamaCare back in June. Now CNN is trotting out the same elementary and partisan stunt to hype that seniors might lose ObamaCare benefits if the Romney-Ryan ticket wins in November.

On Tuesday, medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen explained that "Medicaid Marlene" might lose her Medicaid coverage under Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and "Donut Hole Don" would have to pay more for prescription drugs. Cohen only mentioned the benefits of ObamaCare and the uncertainty of the Romney-Ryan plan, offering no criticisms of ObamaCare and praise of the Republican plan. [Video below the break.]

Rep. Paul Ryan's 100 percent rating by the pro-life National Right to Life Committee and his support of the "Protect Life Act" are evidence of the Wisconsin Republican's extremism on abortion and as such, should hurt the appeal of the Romney/Ryan ticket with women voters, MSNBC's Alex Wagner argued on the August 14 edition of her noon Eastern Now with Alex Wagner program.

Of course the 100 percent pro-choice record that Barack Obama has with NARAL Pro-Choice America might strike centrist voters as equally "extreme," but Wagner failed to note Obama has never deviated from the NARAL line. What's more, as a state senator, Barack Obama voted AGAINST an Illinois state version of the "Born-Alive Act" which was designed to punish abortionists who kill babies who were born before the abortion procedure was finished in utero. Nothing says pro-abortion extremist like voting against a bill to penalize infanticide, especially considering that a federal version of the bill passed the U.S. Congress in 2002 without any votes in the negative. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

Instead of fact-checking President Obama's dishonest attack on Paul Ryan for blocking a farm bill, CNN simply reported it three times on Tuesday morning. Correspondent Brianna Keilar actually repeated the false attack in her own words.

"[T]hey [the House] failed to pass a bill for drought relief, which as you know is huge right now because of all of the farmers, all of the cattle ranchers who are suffering through this terrible drought in the Midwest," Keilar said, ignoring that the House did pass a different drought relief bill and Ryan voted for it. [Video below the break.]

When CNN isn't reading liberal talking points about the Romney-Ryan ticket, it's resorting to using conservative friendly fire against the Ryan budget, like Piers Morgan did on Monday.

Morgan baited Newt Gingrich by asking "it is a radical form of social engineering, isn't it?" after he played a clip of Gingrich ripping the Ryan budget as "radical change" – a statement Gingrich later recanted. It was also one Morgan happened to agree with. [Video below the break.]

Chuck Todd has chutzpah. Jake Tapper has some integrity. For decades, journalists have aided liberals by mischaracterizing proposed slight reductions in the rate of spending hikes on a program as a “cut” or “slash” to it, so many trusting people, naively presuming the words have meaning, thus assumed there’d be an actual reduction.

NBC’s Peter Alexander repeated this fallacy on Monday’s Today when he described Paul Ryan as “the architect of a politically polarizing budget plan to slash trillions in federal funding, including cuts to Medicare...” NBC’s chief political correspondent, Chuck Todd, however, had the gall to correct Mitt Romney over a “cut” claim while ignoring Alexander’s falsity.

Tonight’s (Sunday) 60 Minutes will feature an interview with the new Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan conducted by CBS’s Bob Schieffer. Last year, when Schieffer interviewed Ryan on Face the Nation, he chided Ryan over his budget plan and refusal to raise taxes.

“Why do these rich people need another tax cut?” Schieffer demanded of Ryan on the April 17, 2011 program. Conveying his no-so-profound economic reasoning, Schieffer saw a pot of money to be absconded: “I mean, they’re already rich. They seem to be doing pretty well as it is now. Why cut their taxes some more?” After Ryan explained his proposal would maintain current tax revenue levels while eliminating deductions and loopholes used by the wealthy, a baffled Schiefier ruminated:

Apparently CNN considers the stating of cold, hard economic realities to be risky partisanship now. Take the case of  Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter claiming that ObamaCare will increase costs for his company.  

Papa John's is not the first company to claim Obamacare will raise its costs, but it is the first to be viciously attacked by CNN.  [Video follows page break;  MP3 audio here.]

It's laughable when CNN's Erin Burnett claims to police "sandbox" politics when she covers for Obama like she did Thursday. Like her colleague Brooke Baldwin did earlier, she stood by the Obama spin that he "compromised" with Catholics on the birth control mandate and attacked a Mitt Romney ad accusing him of waging "war on religion."

"[T]o say this President is waging a war on religion, I mean, the man goes to church. That's ridiculous," Burnett complained. "That ad does not add up," she stated, adding it "seems to be at best simplistic and at worst just wrong." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

For the second straight day, CNN blew the whistle on a nasty and misleading Obama super PAC ad that ABC, CBS, and NBC entirely ignored as of Wednesday night. CNN hammered the ad, which links Mitt Romney to a woman's death from cancer, each hour from 6 p.m. through 10 p.m. and twice grilled the man responsible for the ad, Bill Burton of Priorities USA.

"I think it is deliberately mendacious," stated CNN's Piers Morgan on Wednesday. "It is a deliberate attempt to lie and smear about Mitt Romney. And I find it contemptible. I mean I'm really appalled." The three networks showed no such disdain for the ad which will air in battleground states, because they failed to even mention it on Tuesday and Wednesday. [Video coming soon.]

Everyone knows that politics can be an ugly business, but MSNBC’s Chris Matthews sunk to a new long on his Hardball program Tuesday night.  Matthews’ outrage came from an ad put out by the Romney campaign suggesting that President Obama, "announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements," which, his administration most certainly did.

Since there's nothing factually assailable about the ad, Matthews decided that the best approach for criticizing the spot was claiming it was "Willie Horton stuff." Of course, the 1988 Willie Horton ad was also 100 percent factually unassailable, which is why that ad resonated against then-Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-Mass.).  The issue at hand isn’t the accuracy of the ad but rather Matthews' insistence that racism is at play.  [Video follows page break;  MP3 audio here.]

Despite admitting no direct evidence of Islamophobia behind the recent Wisconsin Sikh shooting, CNN's Carol Costello still tried to connect Islamophobia to the shooting and hype it as a national problem that needs to be discussed.

"No one knows why Wade Page allegedly chose the Oak Creek Sikh Temple," she began before adding "maybe" the shooter mistook the Sikhs for Muslims. Then she took this hypothesis and tied it to America's national scandal of Islamophobia. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN associated a white supremacist neo-Nazi band with the political right-wing as it labeled the punk rock band of Wisconsin shooter Wade Michael Page as "far right."

CNN had reported Page's band named "End Apathy" as "white supremacist," "neo-Nazi," and as a "hate group." Yet it also repeatedly labeled it "far right" on Sunday and Monday. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's media critic Howard Kurtz made the ludicrous assertion that reporters shouting loaded questions outside of a sacred site in Poland were still a "model of decorum" compared to Mitt Romney aide who cursed at them to "show some respect" for the place.

"So, the press doesn't look so great there in Poland, but the reporters were a model of decorum compared to Rick Gorka, the Romney spokesman, who later apologized for the kiss crack," Kurtz began his segment on Sunday's Reliable Sources. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN stoked fears that new voter ID laws might hearken back to the days of Jim Crow. Monday marked the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and CNN's Zoraida Sambolin used that to discuss whether the new laws might "suppress the minority vote."

"Do you think that having an African-American president is actually reigniting some of these old prejudices?" she asked former Ambassador Andrew Young who helped draft the 1965 Voting Rights Act. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

“Harry Reid is disgrace. But you expect this from Harry Reid,” The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes zinged on FNC’s Special Report Friday night before turning his ire on a certain Washington, DC-based anchor for CNN for advancing Reid’s baseless allegation that Mitt Romney didn’t pay any income tax for ten years.

“The disappointing cohort in this, to me, is journalists,” Hayes contended as he recalled how “I saw another network anchor ask a Romney supporter about this accusation, saying Harry Reid is a really honorable man.”

In a pathetic display of adulation for a Democratic "star," CNN aired a total puff piece about the keynote speaker for the upcoming Democratic National Convention, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. Correspondent Rafael Romo's report dripped with praise for the "very successful" Castro.

Romo hailed Castro as a "very successful mayor" and a "young charismatic Latino leader" who is "media savvy," with an "only in America" story. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux wondered if he had future presidential aspirations. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

“A conservative Republican was beaten by an even more conservative Tea Party candidate,” CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley announced Wednesday night in reporting Ted Cruz’s victory in the Texas Republican primary. Sharyl Attkisson relayed how the candidate Cruz defeated, David Dewhurst, “is considered a very conservative Republican,” yet “Cruz spent months tacking even further to the right.”

CBS, however, was unwilling to apply any ideological label in their obituary piece on hard-left writer Gore Vidal, though in that story Martha Teichner did issue one tag: She referred to the “televised confrontation between Gore Vidal and conservative commentator William Buckley.”

CNN, the network that encourages gay activists and promotes the gay agenda, is now trying to sweep the issue aside – when President Obama is under fire for his support of gay marriage, that is. On Thursday morning, CNN's Carol Costello suggested Rev. William Owens, a critic of Obama's support for same-sex marriage, focus on something else.

"I think nearly every poll out there shows that same-sex marriage is low on the priority list for most Americans," she told Owens. "High on the priority list especially among African-American voters is the lack of jobs. So why not go out and talk about that instead of same-sex marriage?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On his way out to commercial break at 3:24 p.m. Eastern, Studio B host Shep Smith noted that August 1 is "National Badminton Day," and quipped "Forget National Day of Intolerance, let's just stay with badminton."

The Fox News Channel host's comments appear to be referring to Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, which Smith's fellow FNC colleague Mike Huckabee declared August 1 to be recently. Huckabee announced the eat-in demonstration to show support for the national chicken chain which found itself in a liberal firestorm after its president expressed his religious convictions against same-sex marriage. [h/t email tipster Tom Hanks; MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

CNN brags of being a centrist news network in between Fox News and MSNBC, but how serious and non-partisan can it be when hosting liberal comics to discuss the serious issues of the day?

On Tuesday's The Situation Room, CNN's Joe Johns goaded Obama fund raiser Will Ferrell and liberal comedian Zach Galifianakis to preach campaign finance reform. "There seem to be a little bit of takeouts on the Koch brothers, the conservative brothers who have done so much funding of politics. Talk to us a little bit about the message," Johns asked. [Video below the break.]

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, liberal comedian D.L. Hughley claimed that Republicans acted as bullies when they impeached former President Bill Clinton in 1998, as well as Rep. Joe Wilson when he shouted "you lie" at President Obama in 2009. Hughley also indicated that Clinton would have handled Wilson's outburst better, as "he had, to a greater or lesser degree, been bullied and seen what kind of capacity he had." [audio available here; video below the jump]

The former CNN host must not have caught the irony of his remarks, as he has a record of assailing Republicans. In 2009, Hughley claimed the Republican National Convention "literally look[s] like Nazi Germany." Later that year, he smeared former President Ronald Reagan as "the Moses of...greedy white men."

CNN excused reporters for shouting questions that could have passed for heckling outside a sacred site in Poland, but ripped a Mitt Romney aide for responding by cursing at them. On Thursday morning, CNN's Jim Acosta dismissed any controversy over the loaded questions in a completely self-righteous narrative.

Acosta excused reporters, "it's really no surprise really, that the press tried their best to get a question to him today," despite the shouted questions coming outside Poland's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. "I think it should also be noted that this press aide, and what he said to us, was really inexcusable." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

"There is absolutely no way Barack Obama can win reelection running on his record and the news media know this," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News's Eric Bolling at the top of today's Your World with Neil Cavuto.

Newsweek's current edition, featuring the headline, "The Wimp Factor: Is he [Mitt Romney] just too insecure to be president?" is just the latest example of the media's attempt to distract the American public from the president's dismal economic record, the Media Research Center president told Bolling, who was substituting for Cavuto. [MP3 audio here; Video follows page break]