Bill Donohu

Jeanine Pirro provided a textbook demonstration of media bias against the Catholic Church during her stint as a substitute host for CNN Headline News's "The Joy Behar Show on March 29. Pirro never gave her guest a chance to defend the church and interrupted him six times within 1 minute, 59 seconds.

Pirro is a former Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney and judge who now hosts the TV program, "Judge Jeanine Pirro." She also appears on network and cable news programs as a legal analyst.

First, she stacked the deck. Pirro hosted a panel discussion about the recent allegations that Pope Benedict XVI failed to act when confronted with evidence about priests sexually abusing children. Of the three panelists, only Catholic League president Bill Donohue defended the church. The other participants included Kevin Cullen, a Boston Globe reporter who was part of the investigative team that broke the 2002 story of the Boston diocese covering up sexual abuse and Jeffery Anderson, an attorney who has filed thousands of suits against the church since 1983.

Pirro told Anderson he was "right" in one instance, and then proceeded to call one of Donohue's argument's "hogwash," despite the fact that The New York Times backed up the claim that Benedict, as a cardinal, did not know that a priest in Germany accused of sexual abuse was transferred and allowed to serve in another parish.