[Update, 3 pm Eastern: Video and audio clips added.]

CNN glowingly featured an entire segment on Thursday’s American Morning about Wendell Potter, a former chief corporate spokesman for the health insurance company Cigna, and he attempted to discredit conservative ad campaigns against health “reform” proposals as “outright lies.” But reporter Jim Acosta left out his current ideological employment: since May, Potter has worked as a senior fellow on health care for the Center for Media and Democracy, the brainchild of John Stauber, the co-author of  “Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America Into a One-Party State,” and a unpaid advisor to the anti-war group Iraq Veterans Against the War [audio clip from segment available here].

Acosta’s segment, which aired at the end of the 7 am Eastern hour of the CNN program, featured four extended clips from Potter, and introduced the former Cigna spokesman as a “health insurance company insider...[who] has stepped forward to warn the public about the industry’s practices, and some of those ads shaping the debate.” After a short introduction of his subject, Acosta began by playing the first clip of Potter from a recent Senate hearing, where Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller compared him to Russell Crowe’s character in the tobacco-industry-expose movie “The Insider.”

Barack Obama nominates someone to head the CIA whose major qualification is his inexperience. Even Democrats are dismayed.  John Travolta's son, sadly, died. So in its crucial first half-hour this morning, the Early Show naturally devotes almost five minutes to the Travolta story while ignoring the controversy surrounding Leon Panetta's appointment.  Far from revealing that even senior Dems like Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller have signalled their displeasure over the naming of Panetta, CBS' Chip Reid painted the pick as a sign of how Obama is briskly taking charge.  Here was the sum total of the Early Show's discussion of the matter:

CHIP REID: He may not be Commander-in-Chief just yet.  But Mr. Obama is wasting no time, on Monday picking former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta to head the CIA, and retired Admiral Dennis Blair to be director of national intelligence.

Our news analysts at the MRC have combed through the April 9 editions of ABC's "Good Morning America," CBS's "The Early Show," and NBC's "Today," and found zero mentions of the comments that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) made smearing McCain and military pilots past and present.

[See a related NewsBusters item by Clay Waters here.]

Yesterday I noted how news agencies were slow to cover the story, and certainly were not blowing up the incident into a major gaffe for Sen. Barack Obama, whom Rockefeller supports for president, to publicly and personally denounce.

Rockefeller's offensive remarks, as reported in an April 8 AP wire story (emphasis mine):

The New York Times's Kate Phillips filed a dutiful story on offensive comments against John McCain by a Senate Democrat who recently endorsed Barack Obama in Wednesday's "West Virginia Senator Apologizes for McCain Comments."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia managed to smear both McCain and fighter pilots in general when he told his home state paper, The Charleston Gazette, on Monday that:

"McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

Phillips led off with Rockefeller's apology, not his offensive comments, then moved quickly on to his endorsement and praise of Obama.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV personally apologized to Senator John McCain of Arizona on Tuesday after remarking in an interview that Mr. McCain's years as a Navy fighter pilot would not have given him an understanding of everyday issues faced by Americans.

E-mail tipster Mike Huggins pointed out to NewsBusters that as of 4:30 p.m. EDT today, he found but one media mention of Obama backer Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-W.V.) smear of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) among the seven major online news sources he checked. Rockefeller's comment, which he now regrets, is also arguably a smear of U.S. military fighter pilots past and present.

From an April 8 AP wire story (emphasis mine):

"McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they (the missiles) get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues," Rockefeller said.

Sounds kind of like Bill Maher, doesn't it?

Huggins noted that while he searched the Web sites for the Washington Post, L.A. Times, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABCNews.com, and CBSNews.com, he found but one story on the incident and that on ABC's Web site.

In an effort to have a fair and balanced debate on the issue of the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer invited Democratic Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, and liberal Republican, Senator Chuck Hagel, on to Sunday’s broadcast. Hagel proved to be left of Rockefeller:

We are saying what to the world? That the Army Field Manual applies to our Army people, our armed services people, but the C.I.A. and all these Blackwater-type variations of militias and armies are unaccountable to what? That's not who we are as Americans, Bob. We're better than that. We don't need that. The world wants us to be better than that. We want to be better than that. We need to be smarter. Burning tapes, destroying evidence, I don't know how deep this goes. Could there be obstruction of justice? Yes. How far does this go up in the White House? I don't know.

That does not sound like an opinion from the mainstream of the Republican Party.