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Of all people, former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos was the one throwing water on Piers Morgan's liberal spin. On Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight, the host hyped that Mitt Romney's 47 percent remarks "could be an election-ending moment."

"Mitt Romney has clearly hit a bit of a buffer moment here. Could be a game-changing moment. Could be an election-ending moment," Morgan asserted before Stephanopoulos jumped in to stop him. "Wow. That's going a little far actually," he insisted. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

NBC's Matt Lauer pronounced the previous week a "bad week" for the Romney campaign and cited squishy Republicans to help make his point on Thursday's Today show. Lauer wouldn't even let Romney adviser Ed Gillespie say President Obama had a bad week.

Lauer posed to Gillespie, "by just about every estimate this was a bad week for his [Romney's] campaign. Would you agree?" When Gillespie cited polls showing President Obama's numbers slipping, Lauer tried to flip the negative spotlight back on Romney. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

"The problem we have in this country is the [pro-Obama] advertising is what goes on in between the commercials" of the liberal media programs that have interviewed the president thus far this year, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham complained on the September 19 Your World with Neil Cavuto. The liberal media are in advertising mode for the president's reelection, Graham argued, judging by the way the media fail to hold the president to account for his handling of the "serious global problems that we have" while gushing over how cool his chummy chat with comedian David Letterman was last night.

"We do expect presidential candidates to do some of these lighter shows," Graham conceded, "But what's amazing about is they're not expecting Obama to do a tough show" or a "press conference" even though "our Afghanistan mission is falling apart." [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

President Obama had time to enjoy late night laughs with David Letterman while refusing to meet with America's Middle East ally, and yet CNN's Wolf Blitzer was just fine with that. It pays for a President to have friends in the media.

"In the scheme of things, who is going to get you more votes?" was Blitzer's excuse. "A meeting that could be tense with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or go on Letterman and come across as well as he did last night?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Who needs campaign staff when you have CNN to tout your "very, very damaging" attack ad? Host Piers Morgan gave President Obama some free publicity Tuesday night while CNN kept the anti-Romney media firestorm raging.

"I'm going to play a new Obama ad which basically sums up how he's going to attack him [Romney]. And it's very, very damaging. Watch this," Morgan told his guests, after he hyped Romney's "monumental gaffe" about the 47 percent of Americans paying no income taxes. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After CNN pounded away at the latest media-manufactured Mitt Romney gaffe, CNN's Brooke Baldwin remarked on Tuesday that the campaign faces a "tsunami" of "myriad issues."

"Can they right this?" she questioned the Romney campaign's ability to weather the media storm, adding that they face "a tsunami, if you add up the myriad issues within the campaign." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The liberal panelists of MSNBC's The Cycle did their level best to help University of Pennsylvania religion professor Anthea Butler defend her now infamous tweet that the filmmaker behind the "Innocence of Muslims" video trailer on YouTube should be throw in jail. Co-host Toure Neblett went so far as to denounce the Twitter "mob" that deluged Butler's Twitter account with critical tweets. Only conservative S.E. Cupp pushed back against Butler by insisting that the YouTube video was a fig leaf justification by Islamists for violence.

"We think of this [free speech] as like an absolute right, but in fact there are limits.... So in this global world where a video clip can get spread around like wildfire, is it in fact going too far, is that beyond our constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of speech?" co-host Krystal Ball asked Butler. [MP3 audio here]

In an interview on CNN's Starting Point, Romney Campaign adviser Bay Buchanan gave an "indictment" of the media for paying more attention to a statement by a candidate than the foreign policy of the sitting President.

"That's an indictment on the media, Soledad, that they would think that some little comment by the candidate is more important than a policy, an entire foreign policy of the President of the United States," said Buchanan. And CNN's Anderson Cooper proved that argument true as he led his show the previous night with tape of Romney and not a report that the U.S. may have had advance warning on a deadly terrorist attack in Libya. [Video below the break.]

Just how bad is the media's track record this election season? On Monday, CNN's Anderson Cooper led his show with a manufactured Mitt Romney controversy instead of news that the U.S. may have had advance warning on deadly terrorist attacks.

Here's how Cooper started his show: "On Libya, late word on what American diplomats may have been told about the threat from Muslim extremists, terrorists, just three days before the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi. We're going to have that, but first, what could be a campaign blockbuster, what Mitt Romney said to big money donors about President Obama voters when he didn't think cameras were rolling." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Former Romney spokesperson Richard Grenell called out the media on Monday for not focusing hard enough on President Obama's foreign policy record. "The media needs to start looking at policies, not just lip service from this President," he told CNN's Carol Costello.

"You know, there has been criticism that Romney spoke out too early in the Middle East after 15 hours of a developing violence. How come we're not asking where was the President, why didn't he speak out before 15 hours?" Grenell asked of the media. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

“Listen for it,” CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley urged viewers Friday night in trumpeting what he hailed as “a remarkable moment of candor” from President Barack Obama “when he told us the sacrifices he makes being President wouldn’t be worth it except for one thing.”

Viewers soon heard from Obama how all the sacrifice he must suffer through as President, such as “the inability to just take a walk,” is all “worth it” when he hears about how an ObamaCare provision has saved someone from dying of cancer. Yes, it takes “remarkable candor” to tout  yourself as magnanimous, but you’d think a journalist of Pelley’s stature wouldn’t be so excitedly gullible.

In an obvious contrast between the two presidential campaigns, CNN's Jim Acosta highlighted both Mitt Romney's frivolous talk show interview and his campaign's "sharpened rhetoric" on Friday and pitted them against President Obama giving a solemn tribute to the slain diplomats from Libya.

Acosta did note Romney's moment of silence for the diplomats at his campaign rally, but cast that as a "brief pause in his campaign's sharpened rhetoric." The Obama camp's Twitter account was active both shortly before and after the ceremony for the diplomats, but CNN focused instead on Romney's "day of mixed messages." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Discussing the violent anti-American demonstrations erupting across the Middle East outside U.S. embassies in Arab capitals, MSNBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson put a share of the blame on, well, "horrible" Americans.

It was the "demonization of a predictable minority," in this case Muslims, that was the spark that light the conflagration, Dyson argued on the September 14 edition of the noon Eastern program Now with Alex Wagner. "It's not as if, oh in America, we've resolved this with equanimity and grace," he added, seeking to conflate isolated incidents of hate speech against Muslims inside the United States with the violent response of the Arab street to an obscure low-budget YouTube video. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) has said new voter ID laws reflect old Jim Crow laws, and CNN's Carol Costello played right into his outlandish rhetoric on Friday morning.

"Are you kind of stunned we're talking about these kinds of things in this day and age, with your history, I mean?" Costello asked the liberal congressman of the debate over voter ID laws. He answered in the affirmative and again likened voter ID laws to Jim Crow. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

"We got about 10 minutes on the three evening newscasts" last night about "how Romney must have made a mistake" with his statement on the deadly Benghazi consulate attack instead of devoting any significant attention to the question of "What is wrong with the state of our security at our embassies in the Middle East?" NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham complained to Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto on his September 13 Your World program.

The liberal media are a "pathetic pack of politicizers" who have "done nothing" but "politicize this issue," Graham added. Indeed, when President Obama was interviewed by 60 Minutes, "he gets asked, 'did Romney screw this up?'" the Media Research Center director of media analysis noted. The president probably gets "tougher questions from his daughters at the supper table than he's getting from Steve Kroft at CBS," Graham quipped. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

Terrorists murdered an American ambassador in cold blood, and yet CNN shamelessly implied on Thursday that the makers of an anti-Islam movie might have blood on their very hands.

"Do you and Mr. Bacile feel that you have any blood on your hands as a result of the violence?" correspondent Brian Todd asked a consultant for the film, Steve Klein. Anchor Don Lemon reported that the movie "may have led to the death of four Americans." CNN was basically acting as an apologist for Islamic terrorists. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Thursday's CBS This Morning rushed to President Obama's defense over the spat between the Democrat and opponent Mitt Romney over a statement issued by the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt condemning an obscure Internet video about Muhammad. Minutes after Steve Kroft tossed softballs at the President and let him speak uninterrupted for two and half minutes, the show confronted Republican Senator Rob Portman for defending Romney's attack.

Anchor Norah O'Donnell hounded Portman, interjecting five confrontational questions in just over two and half minutes, about the same amount of time that Obama spoke without any disruption. O'Donnell cried, "You're mistaken, Senator," and read statements from Peggy Noonan, Nick Burns, and Mike Rogers to emphasize that "Republicans...are saying that Governor Romney stepped in it." [audio available here; video below the jump]

GOP strategist Ari Fleischer set the record straight about the media infatuation with Mitt Romney's statements on the embassy attacks. On Wednesday's Anderson Cooper 360, he called out the media's "double standard" and defended Romney's criticism of the Obama administration.

"Debates about foreign policy are an absolute vital part of our democracy and I don't know why the media is rushing to criticize Mitt Romney for criticizing a foreign policy when they did not do that to Barack Obama or John Kerry when they exercised their right to criticize Republican foreign policy," stated Fleischer. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Mitt Romney was correct in his critique of President Barack Obama’s “Arab Spring” policies but, on the timing, The Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes cautioned on FNC’s Special Report, Romney should have known the media would use it against him:

You knew the media were going to obsess on this and obsess on it they did. They’re so now fascinated by this process story, using this process story to beat up Mitt Romney rather than taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture question about the policies.

After the press belittled Mitt Romney over the politics of his statements on Tuesday's embassy attacks, CNN's Don Lemon continued asking redundant questions about process to the Romney campaign's foreign policy adviser on Wednesday.

"[Y]ou want to talk about a process issue," Richard Williamson lectured Lemon. "Because the White House doesn't want to talk about substance. It wants to talk about process." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Mitt Romney's statement yesterday evening slamming the Obama administration for the U.S. embassy in Cairo's attempt to appease the Islamist protesters was "naive," MSNBC's Alex Wagner and Time magazine's Rana Foroohar agreed in a segment on the September 12 edition of Now with Alex Wagner.

While Wagner said the initial statement condemning the anti-Muhammad movie was intended to calm tempers and save lives, Foroohar went into an odd analogy that compared Islamist hatemongers with conservative radio host Glenn Beck (MP3 audio here; video embedded below page break):

CNN's Anderson Cooper smacked the Romney campaign Monday night for alleged dishonesty. He claimed they were talking too much about social issues while saying the economy is their real focus.

"The question tonight, and not just from the opposition, have the Romney forces been moving away from dollars and cents and jobs, and shifting toward more red meat, hot-button culture war mode?" Cooper asked. "I mean what's up with the culture stuff suddenly?" he posed later. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The media have "nostalgia" for Bill Clinton and a "tedious marriage" with President Obama, according to panel members on Sunday's Reliable Sources. Is media bias any more evident when reporters admit the media had a past love affair with the current Democratic president and pine for the days of his Democratic forerunner?

CNN's Howard Kurtz mused that "the extraordinary media reaction to Bill Clinton's speech" from the past week's DNC "says to me journalists missed the guy." The Hill's managing editor Bob Cusack admitted "I think there was definitely some nostalgia here," and added "the media reaction was a little bit much, because he [Clinton] did meander." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

David Gregory teased Sunday's Meet the Press by highlighting a clip of himself pushing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to upset conservatives in getting a budget deal, presumably by agreeing to raise taxes. “We go behind the scenes and on the record with Governor Romney less than two months before the election to press him on how he will turn around the economy and solve the nation’s debt crisis.”

NBC then showed Gregory pressing Romney: “Are you prepared to cut a deal with Democrats that would cause conservatives to revolt? Is it that important to get a deal to get us away from this fiscal cliff?”

Not all members of the media offered a "tepid" reaction to President Obama's DNC address. ABC's Jonathan Karl hyped that Obama's crescendo to his speech that the audience loved was "vintage Obama."

"But that last part of the speech was vintage Obama, trying to get these people here, to get the people that drove his campaign, talking about we have providence on our side. They loved it," reported Karl, who added "Tears in the eyes of a lot of these delegates, a lot of tears." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The liberal personalities on MSNBC reacted to President Barack Obama's Thursday night speech at the Democratic National Convention in the exact same way they did to Bill Clinton the previous evening - with unanimous praise. Ed Schultz's ecstacy was apparent: "He made me feel good tonight. He made the American people feel good tonight, and he gave us confidence....It was a very visionary speech." Al Sharpton trumpeted the President's "epic" address, and declared, "I think that Barack Obama won the election tonight."

Unsurprisingly, Chris Matthews rambled on and on about the apparent greatness of the speech: "I think tonight he did it again, didn't he?...The most powerful statement tonight he made is, I am the President. I am the President, and you're not, and I've had to do the tough things of leading this country, and you haven't....It was a profound statement of, I've got the best position in this country and in this race, because I am doing the job and you're just twiddling your fingers, thinking about what it might be like to be President....What a home run that was." [audio available here; video below the jump]

MSNBC's on-air personalities were plainly in awe of Bill Clinton on Wednesday night. Moments after the former President finished his speech at the Democratic National Convention, they kept up the praise for almost 20 minutes. Chris Matthews gushed over the "strong offensive" Clinton gave for President Obama. Al Sharpton exclaimed, "Elvis and Bubba showed up tonight."

Ed Schultz was the most enthusiastic for the former Arkansas governor: "Affable, effective - as a Democrat, it doesn't get any better. I'm sitting here - I'm giddy...I just think President Clinton just did Barack Obama the biggest favor he could have ever done." Rachel Maddow and former McCain campaign advisor Steve Schmidt agreed that Clinton's address was "powerful," with Schmidt exclaiming that "I wish to God, as a Republican, we had someone on our side who had the ability to do that. We don't. It would be great if we did. Just an amazing performance." [audio available here; video below the jump]

After hyping that Bill Clinton might deliver "his patented rocket fuel" to the DNC on Wednesday night, ABC swooned over his "perfect tone" and compared him to an "old pro."

"Strikes me, George, like one of those movies where the old pro comes out of retirement, filled with vitality, and does he know how to ride the waves inside this arena," gushed Diane Sawyer. Former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos called it "the best nomination a man could hope for." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

MSNBC's Chris Matthews this evening finally got the chance to interview Julian Castro, the Democratic mayor of San Antonio, Texas, whom Matthews insisted had given one of the "greatest" political speeches he ever heard Tuesday night.

It was, of course, a thoroughly softball interview, but it concluded on an odd note, with Matthews delving into his unhealthy obsession with "birtherism" to ask Castro why his home state is so chock full of people who don't believe President Obama is a natural-born citizen [MP3 audio here; video follows page break].