On October 22, 2005, my colleague Brent Baker reported Al Franken's disturbing joke to "Late Show" host David Letterman concerning Scooter Libby and Karl Rove being executed for their involvement in the Valerie Plame Wilson affair.

Almost two and a half years later, during an interview on CNN's "American Morning" Friday, Kiran Chetry asked the comedian turned Democrat senate candidate about this exchange.

When Franken had the gall to declare, "I didn't even say that in a joking manner," Chetry challenged him in a way that all media members should whenever a politician on either side of the aisle is so obviously disingenuous (video available here, h/t NBer Woody Boyd):

Every event is a chance for the media to spin. CNN twisted the latest college shooting to blame it on business, instead of a crazed killer.

On the Feb. 17 "American Morning," Veronica De La Cruz showed how two Web sites, operated by "the same owner," sold products to the shooters in both the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University tragedies. She said it was "pretty shocking to figure this out." Anchor Kiran Chetry agreed, calling it an "eerie connection."

But De La Cruz was just getting started. She was even upset at the sympathy banners on the site because they were near banners that still advertised the company's business. "I want to show you the strange juxtaposition if you move down the page. Here's the NIU shooting and then ‘Save big on rifles and handguns' right underneath. You know, something that kind of turns your stomach, if you will," she added.

In a class-warfare driven media, where the "haves" are often pitted against "have-nots," you would think an outgoing CEO giving up $37.5 million in pay would be celebrated.

Not quite. CNN's "American Morning" didn't think it was quite good enough when Countrywide Financial's Angelo Mozilo forfeited $37.5 million in severance pay because he said he felt it was the "right thing to do."

"It's another disconnect with Main Street," "American Morning" anchor Kiran Chetry said Jan. 28, 2008. "Because most people don't get rewarded when things go wrong at their job, and this is what we see with these CEOs."

"Over and over and over again," CNN's personal finance editor Gerri Willis added.

CNN’s Alina Cho, in a report which ran twice on Friday’s "American Morning," described Michelle Obama in nothing but glowing terms. When she introduced the report during the 6 am Eastern hour, Cho described the wife of Barack Obama as a "fascinating woman," and went on to call her "funny, fiery, and blunt ."

During the report, Cho used sound bites from Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the Obama family, and CNN contributor Roland Martin to reinforce the overwhelmingly positive profile of Mrs. Obama and her role in drawing black women to vote for her husband. Martin put it this way: "She's going to tell them [black women] point blank -- look, I'm you. My daughters are you. And so, my husband is going to be thinking about you every single day because he's looking at you every single day."

During an interview on Wednesday morning with the Democratic victor in the New Hampshire primary, CNN’s Kiran Chetry asked Hillary Clinton if there was a hint of sexism in the response to the senator’s apparent show of emotion in the lead-up to the vote. "Do you think it's a double standard or a little harder because you're a woman to show you're a strong leader, but also be able to show some of your human side?"

In addition to this emotion/gender issue, Chetry, like her co-host John Roberts had done two days earlier, questioned Hillary about the Iraq war, specifically about the success of the troop surge. "You opposed the troop increase when the president proposed it, even introduced legislation to try to reverse it. Since then though, the attacks have fallen by 60% and a lot of the observers say that the surge is working. Do you acknowledge that the surge is working now?"

Clinton acknowledged the recent downturn in violence, but then went on to claim that "that was not the purpose of the surge. The purpose of the surge was to try to convince the Iraqi government to make the tough decisions that, so far, it has not made. So, I don't believe that that is a real justification, and we've had such a terrible year in the loss of American lives."

The market is good for corn farmers right now. Corn prices are reaching highs because of the increased demand for food and as of late, the increased demand for corn-based ethanol.

The price of corn is at an 11-year high. Its $4.38-a-bushel price tag is fueling food inflation, according to the December 17 "CBS Evening News."

However, that's contrary to what CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta told viewers on the December 18 "American Morning." It is the low price of corn, he said, that has prompted the need for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to impose a "sugary drink tax," specifically drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.

"[I]f you look at the history of this substance, ["American Morning" co-anchor] Kiran [Chetry] - I think this is very important - we subsidize a lot of corn production in this country," Gupta said. "We've been subsidizing it for a long time to support the corn farmers, which is a good thing. If there is a problem in all of this, it is that maybe we make too much corn and some of that corn gets turned into this high-fructose corn syrup."

Prior to her "tear" question, which Mika Brzezinski asked only minutes before on MSNBC, CNN’s Kiran Chetry did direct one tough question to Hillary Clinton on Monday's "American Morning," concerning the Boston Globe’s endorsement of Barack Obama and the paper’s criticism of her campaign. "'The Boston Globe' endorsed Senator Obama, saying about you, in fact, 'her approach is needlessly defensive, a backward glance at the bruising political battles of the 1990s.' Is 'The Globe's' statement fair?"

Hillary tailored her response to make it about the debate over the economy.

Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" at 7:25 a.m. to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.): "Senator, we've been talking about this all morning. Mitt Romney teared up on 'Meet the Press' over the weekend. I don't know if you saw it, what you thought of it. Do you ever tear up? When was the last time?"

Kiran Chetry, co-anchor of CNN's "American Morning" at 7:36 a.m.: "We saw Mitt Romney tear up on one of the other networks the other day. What makes you tear up, if anything?"

Both times Clinton answered with the same joke about tearing up this morning when she had had to wake up at the wee hour of 4 a.m. to get ready for the morning show chats. Both times she remarked she doesn't know how they do it. Both times the journalists in question thanked Clinton for her pander, er, candor. No, it was definitely the first one.

Video (1:20): Windows Media (2.50 MB) and MP3 audio (627 kB).

It must be wonderful to be a Democrat and know that your indiscretions are very unlikely to get much attention by media minions only willing to cover the crimes and shortcomings of folks on the opposite side of the aisle.

Take for example James Michael McHaney, an aide to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) who NewsBusters reported had been arrested last Friday for trying to lure a thirteen-year-old boy into a sexual encounter.

Not only did this get buried on Friday so as likely not to take focus away from Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) looking regal and presidential during that day's hostage crisis in New Hampshire, but also once the Associated Press deigned to actually inform subscribers on Monday that something potentially nefarious had occurred, press outlets either continued to ignore the subject, or buried it nicely so that precious few would be made aware of it.

On the television side, according to LexisNexis, the only outlet which felt this newsworthy was CNN which aired its only report on this matter during the 6:00 AM EST "American Morning" Tuesday:

Remember when you were a kid and all you had to do was cry "wolf" to get your parent or guardian to come to your aid? Well, apparently that doesn't work anymore.

Thanksgiving air travel went well; in fact it went so well it prompted CNN anchor Rob Marciano to exclaim, "Maybe the media sufficiently scared everybody."

CNN's "American Morning" and NBC's "Nightly News" reported the good news on Thanksgiving air travel, with CNN's Kiran Chetry saying it "wasn't so bad" and NBC's Amy Robach calling it a "relatively easy experience."

But both broadcasts forgot an important detail: military air space opened up by President Bush along the East Coast.

ABC's "World News Sunday" gave credit where credit was due - but left out a key point.

"Those express lanes, allowing flights to detour through military air space along the East Coast, also worked," said ABC's Jeremy Hubbard, forgetting to mention that Bush had authorized the air traffic change.

It seems like every day, the media complain about high gas prices. But it is not often that you hear that someone was so angry about pump prices they sent a death threat to an oil CEO.

According to CNN's November 15 "American Morning" Shell president John Hofmeister has not just gotten hate mail.

“Pretty brave that you decided to do this, you know you were heading out on tour, you didn’t just get hate mail, but you actually received a death threat at one point?” asked co-host Kiran Chetry.

Energy drinks might be dangerous to “people out there who have preexisting heart problems,” according to CNN’s “American Morning.” But they are also apparently safe for “healthy” people.

Kiran Chetry introduced the segment about a 15 person study of energy drinks saying, “Well, we have another warning about those popular energy drinks – the affects that it could have on your heart.”

But remarks from CNN were contradictory.

Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said, “for the most part, let me be clear, it appears to be safe.” Meanwhile, the bottom of the screen blared: “ENERGY DRINK ALERT, BLOOD PRESSURE DANGER.”

What's that 1970s horror movie where the butcher runs after all the teenagers with a cleaver in one hand and a piece of red meat in the other? I can't remember, but the reports on CBS's "Evening News" October 31 and CNN's "American Morning" November 1 came pretty close to that, sans the cleaver.

The two networks decided to enjoy some of the Halloween spirit by scaring viewers with a "landmark" study finding consumption of processed meat could increase the risk of colon cancer.

CBS anchor Katie Couric made up her mind after the "frightening" news saying, "No more bacon for me," and CNN's Kiran Chetry found the news of the findings "very shocking" and noted that "I'm in real trouble here" because of her own eating habits.

Video: Clip (34 secs): Windows Media (1.96 Mb) or MP3 Audio (268 Kb)

Sunny Hostin, a legal analyst for CNN’s "American Morning," demonstrated that she could not give an objective analysis on the legality of the death penalty during a segment on Wednesday’s show. Hostin, in a response to a question asked by co-host Kiran Chetry on the future of capitol punishment in the U.S., answered, "I think, as a society, perhaps, now we're moving towards the fact that, perhaps, killing by the state is not humane at all."

This "curious" reply, which came 21 minutes into the 7 am hour of "American Morning," wasn’t the only one Hostin made during the segment. Earlier, Hostin said that "people really are suffering" during lethal injection executions.

It’s “Attack the Insurance Companies, The Sequel,” for CNN.

Similar to criticism of insurance companies after Hurricane Katrina, the October 26 “American Morning” launched a similar assault against the business after the California wildfires – except this time, they’re starting early.

“[T]he California wildfires are leveling entire communities, leaving homeowners with nothing,” CNN “American Morning” host Kiran Chetry said. “But, what the fires don’t take, the insurance companies just might. A bad and costly situation for homeowners may have just gotten much worse.”

CNN contributor Roland Martin, in an interview on Thursday’s "American Morning" about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s apparent threat against law enforcement officials in a recent speech, tried to explain away the comments as "rhetoric," and tried to put them in the context of "the history of the Nation of Islam." "It is not like it is a surprise when you actually hear the kind of rhetoric."

Co-host Kiran Chetry interviewed Martin near the bottom of the 6 am Eastern hour of the CNN morning show. Chetry played a clip from Farrakhan’s speech that he gave at the recent 12th anniversary of the Million Man March in Atlanta. "Do you want me, as the voice of the honorable Elijah Muhammad, and really a voice of God, to ask our people to retaliate in matters of the flame? A life for a life? Is that what you are driving us to?"

CNN viewers on Friday saw a relatively rare acknowledgement of those who are skeptical of Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," including a British judge who recently ruled that there are nine inaccuracies in the movie. But CNN's Miles O'Brien dismissed the views of dissenters, and downplayed the importance of the errors cited by the judge.

As he made several appearances on various CNN shows on Friday, O'Brien tagged dissenters with such labels as "dead-enders," a "tiny fraction of a minority," and a "very small fringe," as he linked skeptics to fossil fuel companies. He also repeatedly declared that the scientific debate on global warming is over. Notably, on the July 20 "The Situation Room," O'Brien had curtly lectured former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts with similar comments on the subject. O'Brien: "You're not paying attention to the science, J.C. You're definitely not paying attention. ... The scientific debate is over, J.C., we're done." (Transcript follows)

CNN “American Morning” co-anchor John Roberts should have familiarized himself with Southwest Airlines “Contract of Carriage” before he assailed that airline for playing the role of fashion police.

Florida resident Joe Winiecki was told by airline employees to turn his lewd shirt inside out, change shirts or get off an October 7 flight according to The Associated Press. The “sexually suggestive” shirt read certified “Master Baiter.” But Roberts didn’t see it that way.

“A passenger wearing a T-shirt with a somewhat off-color joke on it about his fishing prowess was told that he couldn't board the flight while wearing it.” Roberts said on the October 9 “American Morning.” The CNN co-host used the story to promote a CNN online poll that asked if airlines should play the role of “fashion police.”