Frank Sesno

The liberal media have spent 12 years feeling sorry for Al Gore.The Man Who Should Have Won in 2000 has had megatons of positive publicity dumped on him, hailing him as the “Goracle.” They cheered as leftists honored him with the Nobel Peace Prize and gave an Oscar to his filmed eco-sermon “An Inconvenient Truth.”

So when Gore sold his left-wing cable channel Current TV to al-Jazeera for $500 million, where were they? Despite the fact that conservatives thought the deal sounded like a ridiculous April Fools joke, the networks had nearly nothing to say. ABC skipped it entirely. CBS and NBC offered a perfunctory sentence on a couple of newscasts.

Now that former NBC News president Jeff Zucker is set to take over as president of CNN, the fate of the cable news network is an open question. In a Sunday discussion about the transition, CNN media critic Howard Kurtz and his guests passed over the network's left-of-center reporting, implying instead that CNN is somehow devoid of bias compared to its primary competitors, MSNBC and Fox News.

During a segment on “Reliable Sources,” panelist David Zurawik -- media critic for the Baltimore Sun newspaper -- asserted that the news organization is “the nation's last bastion of television journalism.”

The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik on Sunday made fools out of CBS White House Correspondent Chip Reid and former CNNer Frank Sesno.

Ironically, this happened during a "Reliable Sources" segment on CNN dealing with today's "Poisonous Press."

With host Howard Kurtz leading a discussion about how news outlets today are spending a great deal of time bashing each other, the conversation predictably led to Fox News.

Both Reid and Sesno tried to make the case that FNC is irrelevant because nobody watches the network.

Zurawik marvelously clued them both in (videos and transcripts follow with commentary):

In today's You've Got To Be Kidding Me moment, former CNN personality Frank Sesno scolded Fox News for its coverage of last week's Tea Parties while defending the disgraceful behavior of Keith Olbermann and Susan Roesgen.

This from a man who is now a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.

Appearing on CNN's "Reliable Sources," this was Sesno's opinion of the Tea Party involvement of Fox News's Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck (file photo):

CNN President Jon Klein recently announced to a Huffington Post interviewer that CNN beats Fox News overall, and at 4, 5, 6, and 10. That would mean Klein boasted about Lou Dobbs at 6, even though he can’t really control him. Klein, best known as the man who killed "Crossfire" in 2005, lamenting the "noise" and nastiness of elbow-throwing partisan TV, must have rolled his eyes when Dobbs booked Ann Coulter on January 7 and praised her as "the sharpest-tongued, sharpest-witted conservative out there." He started by mocking deniers of liberal bias:

DOBBS: That's the reason we want you here, because we want to drive book sales and to see you again and talk about those nasty liberals that you just skewer in your books --

COULTER: Thank you.

DOBBS: -- In almost every word. But I've got to ask you, this liberal bias in the media. [putting on sarcasm] I've never noticed such a thing. What makes you think there's such a thing?

Ten years ago, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton.

Ten years later, how will the very media that helped sway public opinion in order to prevent a guilty verdict in the Senate report this anniversary?

As a preview of what we should expect, here's how CNN's Frank Sesno recounted the tawdry details during Thursday's "American Morning" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Beware the tendency for media liberals to paint the new Team Obama as a surplus of centrists. Just after 8:30 on CNN's American Morning, Frank Sesno declared that Rep. Rahm Emanuel, projected as Obama's chief of staff, is seen as "on the center to center-right." But that's not what his congressional voting records suggest.

Emanuel's American Conservative Union average since joining the House in 2003 is a 13, with a 4 in 2006 and a zero in 2007. The Americans for Democratic Action voting index is even more emphatic: Emanuel averages out (by my math) to a 96 percent liberal score.

His ADA scores: 95 percent in 2003, 100 percent liberal perfection in 2004 and 2005, 90 percent in 2006, and 95 percent in 2007.

Just a few days ago, Sesno noticeably announced in the same morning slot that "The era of Big Government is back." Emanuel's record matches that sentiment.