Christiane Amanpour interviewed former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famous for her October 2000 meeting with North Korean dictator Kim "He’s Not a Nut" Jong Il, as part of her "Notes from North Korea" program, which aired on Saturday and Sunday evenings. During the segment, the CNN senior international correspondent failed to note how her husband, James Rubin, worked as spokesman and Assistant Secretary for State for Albright from 1997 until May 2000. Albright emphasized how "it's possible to have verifiable agreements" with the North Korean regime and how "negotiations need to be pursued actively." The Clinton administration that she worked for conducted negotiations with the communist dictatorship during the 1990s and signed a nuclear agreement with them, which the North Korean government violated by conducting a secret uranium enrichment program. So much for "verifiable agreements."

Amanpour did call the North Korean regime "a police state" and a "dictatorship" during her special, but she downplayed the communist government’s responsibility for the deaths of millions of North Koreans during a famine in the 1990s. [audio available here]

So, do you want to see a most egregious example of equating apples to oranges? Well, even that old saw is too mild a metaphor to describe the disgusting example of Christiane Amanpour's latest foray into moral relativism. In her CNN piece titled, "Survivor recalls horrors of Cambodia genocide," Amanpour assumes that American "waterboarding" today is exactly the same thing as the genocide of millions as perpetrated by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Amanpour seems to think that waterboarding is the same thing as what Pol Pot did with prisoners that were "whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. Prison guards mutilated women's genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered."

Amanpour's latest project is being touted as a "major CNN documentary" that focuses on "those who stood up and said, 'Listen! We must stop the killing. Stop the genocide,'" during a turbulent 1970's Cambodia. The genocide in question describes the murderous reign of Pol Pot who slaughtered over two million Cambodians and imprisoned and tortured millions more after the end of the Vietnam war.

But what is Amanpour's focus with her report? Is it how the Khmer Rouge communists tortured women, children and men to elicit faux "confessions" of capitalist crimes? Is it the many families that were torn apart? Is it that these murders continued with impunity because the Democrat Party convinced the U.S. to lose the war in Vietnam? No, none of that. Amanpour doesn't seem to care much about what happened back between the years 1975 to 1979. No, it's today that she is more interested in. Yes, Amanpour is far more interested that she get her Cambodian survivor to say that what Pol Pot did to millions of Cambodians was just as bad as what George Bush is rumored to have done to a few terror suspects today.

Is offending someone's religion or religious beliefs a sign of having a conscience?

Apparently it is to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences which is going to give an award to the highly controversial CNN miniseries "God's Warriors" for being "Television With a Conscience."

I kid you not.

As reported by the Academy Thursday (emphasis added, h/t TVNewser):

Long-time CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour still harbors some resentment toward the American media for the Iraq war.

In September 2003, Amanpour spoke out publicly and said CNN was intimidated by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship." Over four years later, Amanpour is still disappointed with the media leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

[Click Here for Audio]

"I said it before and I'll say it again," Amanpour said. "I believe that we failed as a profession to do our duty which is simply to ask the hard questions, to stay on it, to fact check and to cross-check and to not take one version of the story hook, line and sinker."

The same day CNN’s Allison Flexner, an one-time producer of Cuban stories, apparently issued a memo instructing how the "resignation" of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was to be covered, CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour neatly matched one of the points made in the memo during two segments on Tuesday’s "American Morning."

During the first segment, which was six minutes into 7 am Eastern hour, Amanpour heralded Cuba being "a leader in many things such as education, health care -- all of those things that it has been able to bring to its people, but not the fundamentals" such as "openness, freedom, the ability to have enough wherewithal, and, you know, the same kind of bread and butter issues that everybody all around the world wants."

Media watchdog website Honest Reporting has awarded their annual Dishonest Reporter Awards. Some of these stories you know and some you don't--probably because they were ignored by the media. Some were even covered here at NewsBusters.

The "winners" included Christiane Amanpour for “God's Warriors,” the BBC for covering up an internal investigation into its Mid East reporting, US government funded Al-Hurra TV's former 'director Larry Register for dhimmitude, a UNC Daily Tar Heel article about breaking up with a boyfriend because of Israel and of course Charles Enderlin and the Mohammad Al Dura Fautography that launched the Second Intifida. See how many of the stories over at Honest Reporting you know:

Dishonest Reporter of the Year (Christiane Amanpour)

This year's Dishonest Reporter voting marks a change for HonestReporting readers. Previous awards went to large, impersonal news services, but not so this year. One journalist made herself such a lightning rod in 2007 she easily defeated BBC and Reuters – the traditional disfavorites.

The controversy behind CNN’s "God’s Warriors" continues. On the October 4 edition of "Fox and Friends First" guest Alex Safian, Associate Director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), spoke out against Christiane Amanpour’s special and its equating of Islamists with devout Jews and Christians.

Safian noted the absurdity of comparing those responsible for atrocities worldwide with devout Jews and Christians. When questioned if CNN has an agenda he responded, "I think [Christiane Amanpour] and her production team have an agenda" which he claims is "anti-Israel," "anti-Christian," and "white washes Islam."

Does the media have any understanding at all of how important they are to terrorists and other enemies of the United States with their determined moral equivalency? When it comes to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the answer appears to be a resounding no. Time Magazine's Richard Stengel provides a glowing puff piece on the Iranian leader, entirely abrogating his responsibility as a reporter to provide any context whatsoever. Stengel writes of Ahmadinejad,

The invitation was on creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy: The Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran "requests the pleasure" of my company to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel — with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly. There's Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a bowing and smiling Mahmoud Admadinejad glides into the room.

This is now an annual ritual for the President of Iran. Every year, during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, he plots out a media campaign that — in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention — would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience.

It should come to no surprise to those who know the liberal reputation of CNN that they have decided to rerun Christiane Amanpour’s "God’s Muslim Warriors" during prime time on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The more logical choice on a day where the country remembers those who were killed by an insidious act of terror might be a retrospective on what happened that day, or a look at the lives of some of the victims. Instead, anyone who tunes in between 8 pm and 10 pm Eastern will see this bias-tinged examination of Islamic fundamentalism, which Amanpour introduced by saying, "God's Muslim warriors -- they are much feared and little understood."

On Monday's MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams, host and MSNBC General Manager Abrams attacked CNN's series God's Warriors for "a defense of Islamic fundamentalism and the worst type of moral relativism," and as "shameful advocacy masked as journalism," quipping that series host Christiane Amanpour "avoided getting bogged down in objectivity." Abrams further took exception with Amanpour for comparing those who support Israel's defense strateg

Friday’s earlier post on CNN’s "God's Warriors" hinted that CNN and Christiane Amanpour gave Muslim "fundamentalists" in the U.S. sympathetic treatment, while they showed discomfort towards Christian conservatives. The original intention was to give examples of each in that post, but the distinction is so clear and important that it deserves its own separate post.

Bob Knight of MRC’s Culture and Media Institute detailed some examples of Amanpour’s biased treatment of Christian conservatives in his latest column. She spent the last 20 minutes of "God’s Christian Warriors" profiling the Battlecry Campaign of Ron Luce, an evangelical Christian who runs a larger organization called Teen Mania Ministries.

As Knight pointed out, Amanpour "couldn’t quite conceal her hostility" towards Luce. A partial transcript from this segment showing the full context of her rather-pointed questions clearly demonstrated this hostility.

Video (1:39): Real (1.21 MB) or Windows (1.03 MB), plus MP3 audio (759 kB).

In last night’s installment of the six-hour, three-part series God’s Warriors, CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour loads the deck to portray conservative Christians as dangerously at odds with science. She first uses an interview with maverick Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, who has been criticized by many Christian leaders for his embrace of man-made Global Warming theory as fact, then turns to a family of homeschoolers.

Here’s a partial transcript:

Christiane Amanpour’s six-hour miniseries "God’s Warriors" reflects less of the reality of "fundamentalist" monotheists - Jews, Muslims, and Christians - and more of liberals’ attitudes about these faiths. It is clear, given how CNN and Amanpour covered each faith, that they have sympathy towards Muslims in the U.S., "concern" with the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and are uncomfortable towards the beliefs and practices of Christian evangelicals.

Tuesday night’s "God’s Jewish Warriors" focused on the cause of the "right-wing" Jewish settlers. The term "right wing" is used seven times to describe the settlers and/or their supporters in Israel and in the United States, and "fundamentalist/-ism" was used three times, once in reference to Christian supporters of the settlers in the U.S. On Wednesday night’s "God’s Muslim Warriors," "fundamentalist/-ism" was the more prevalent term, used 11 times. "Right wing" is used twice, only to describe Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament.

A partial transcript of the first occasion Amanpour used the term "right-wing" to describe Wilders:

Glancing over blogs that have written on the CNN "God's Warriors" miniseries, I came across a critical entry by liberal activist Sharon Cobb, formerly a contributor to the "NBC Nightly News."

While Cobb professes immense respect for CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, she's not well-pleased with the jet-setting journalist's latest special. Cobb is particularly chagrined with how Amanpour's special seems to treat Judaism. Here are the first few grafs of her August 22 blog post (emphasis mine):

Mika Brzezinski might be taking a break from "Morning Joe," but the MSNBC show hasn't missed a liberal beat with her replacement. Tamron Hall today seemed to suggest that Christians and Jews could be next to emulate Muslim terror tactics.

At 6:35 A.M. EDT today, talk turned to the CNN series "God's Warriors," a classic exercise in moral equivalence. Hosted by Christiane Amanpour, the series focuses on extremists in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Earlier today, Hall had watched the segment on Jewish extremists. Scarborough called CNN on its moral relativism.

JOE SCARBOROUGH [Note: speaking very much tongue-in-cheek]: I'm sure we're going to find that there are Jewish and Christian organizations, international terror networks, that are set on the destruction of entire civilizations as we find in the Muslim world.

That's when Hall began to rise to CNN's defense.

View video here

On Tuesday’s "Morning Joe," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough mocked the very concept of CNN’s upcoming specials on Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremism. Anticipating the possible moral relativism that the Christiane Amanpour-hosted series may take, Scarborough sarcastically observed, "They’re going to study Muslim extremism, then Christian extremism, because we know Christians have, have slaughtered thousands of people across the globe in bombings..."

Comparing the CNN anchor to a liberal talk show host, an incredulous Scarborough added, "Is this Rosie O'Donnell or is this Christine Amanpour?" (In 2006, O’Donnell famously claimed that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam...") Returning to the subject later in the 7am hour, Scarborough derided the cable network again. He complained, "But to say, as CNN appears to be saying, that Muslim extremism and Jewish extremism and Christian extremism, sort of, is equal, that there is moral equivalence...between those three, that’s just ridiculous."

CNN's upcoming miniseries "God's Warriors," hosted by left-wing bias exemplar Christiane Amanpour, looks like it will play the old liberal game of moral equivalence. Amanpour reportedly compares Christian chastity advocates to the Taliban in the miniseries. Even the promos for the miniseries which have been running on CNN for the past few weeks demonstrate the probable "game plan" that Amanpour and CNN have in mind, grouping together pro-life Christian college students protesting in front of the Supreme Court, Jewish settlers on the West Bank, and Islamic radicals. To paraphrase an old children's jingle, "two of these things are not like the other."

An "unprecedented six-hour television event," the miniseries will examine "God's Jewish Warriors" on Tuesday night, "God's Muslim Warriors" on Wednesday night, and "God's Christian Warriors" on Thursday night. A preview of "God's Christian Warriors," which ran on Friday's "The Situation Room," featured an interview of Jerry Falwell, which was conducted a week before the evangelical pastor's death. As one might expect, Amanpour asked Falwell about his much-publicized connection of the 9/11 attacks with secularism in America, in particular, the legalization of abortion.

CNN's Pressroom announced that its upcoming six-hour special “God's Warriors,” reported by Christiane Amanpour, will discuss “the impact of religious fundamentalism as a powerful political force.” In the process, CNN revealed what it thinks about the various “fundamentalists” around the world by pushing the typical multi-culti PC media position that no one religion is more problematic or violent than another, with all types of fundamentalism being equally dangerous.

Their examples of fundamentalists spoke volumes. Photo captions on the program's website easily labeled a Jewish group “terrorist,” but in every mention, called Palestinian suicide bombers “martyr” or “martyrs.” Into that mix of religious violence, CNN bizarrely included the non-violent American Christian youth group, Battle Cry. Sure, that makes sense. No conviction by association there.