Christiane Amanpour

As the broadcast network evening newscasts recounted Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Cuba, ABC's Christiane Amanpour on World News and NBC's Andrea Mitchell on the NBC Nightly News both noted reports that dissidents had been detained and prevented from meeting the Catholic leader, while the CBS Evening News failed to mention their plight.

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, ABC's Christiane Amanpour characterized conservatives as several years ago "frog-marching" the U.S. to war with Iraq as she and host Colbert discussed the likelihood Israel will soon attack Iran to prevent the Islamic state from producing nuclear weapons. (Video below)

It's always interesting to see how the several thousand readers who voted in the MRC's "public ballot" differed from the 48 media experts who selected our Best Notable Quotables of 2011 (a panel which included talk radio hosts Mark Levin and Neal Boortz, Human Events editor-in-chief Tom Winter and Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby). This year, there were six categories where our readers and the judges disagreed -- although sometimes the margins were extremely close.

Let's start with the biggest disagreement, in the "Media Millionaires for Higher Taxes Award." By a healthy margin (68 to 53), our judges chose an April 17 quote from CBS's Bob Schieffer, as he was questioning Rep. Paul Ryan on Face the Nation: "Why do these rich people need another tax cut? I mean, they’re already rich....Why cut their taxes some more?"

In her next to last week hosting This Week, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour moderated a show-long debate, touted as “The Great American Debates,” devoted to the proposition: “There’s Too Much Government.” George Will and Congressman Paul Ryan took up the affirmative case, squaring off against Robert Reich and Congressman Barney Frank. But Amanpour was hardly neutral.

She began by framing the debate around the “conundrum” that “people who oppose big government still want to collect their entitlements” and, without any matching ideological policy arguments presented to Reich and Frank, pressed Ryan and Will with liberal contentions, such as how “during the Great Depression the government did create big programs to get people back to work. Why shouldn’t they do that right now, why shouldn’t there be that kind of action?”

George Will on Sunday marvelously told liberal economist Robert Reich something that many conservatives have been dying to say for years.

During a fascinating Right vs. Left debate on ABC's This Week, after Reich predictably pined for higher income tax rates to solve all that ails us, Will struck back with the line of the weekend, "You are a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the wake of the news that Christiane Amanpour is leaving ABC’s This Week, after just 15 months as host, we'd like to remind you of six of the most egregious biased remarks from Amanpour:

“This is reverse Robin Hoodism, if you like — take from the poor, give back to the rich again.”
— Christiane Amanpour talking to Rep. Paul Ryan about his budget proposal, May 1, 2011.

On December 13 Christiane Amanpour announced she would no longer be host of ABC's This Week. Her run as host of that show was filled with shots at conservatives and their issues as she called Tea Party candidates "bizarre," and scolded that tax cuts would "hurt" the poor.

On the November 6 edition of This Week she lectured House Speaker John Boehner: "Some 75 percent of Americans agree with an increase in tax on millionaires as a way to pay for these jobs provisions. Do you not feel that by opposing it you’re basically out of step with the American people on this issue?...Are you concerned that these budget cuts are going to hurt the people who can least afford it?" (video after jump)

On Sunday's Good Morning America, This Week host Christiane Amanpour portrayed Newt Gingrich as trying to appeal to a "narrow group" because the GOP presidential candidate characterized the Palestinians as "an invented people" being used to undermine the Jewish claim to Israel, and took exception with the former House Speaker because he pointed out that the Palestinian Authority incites hatred against Jews in its schools.

Even though Gingrich during Saturday's debate referred specifically to Fatah - which runs the West Bank - and the terrorist group Hamas - which runs the Gaza Strip - Amanpour complained that he was "saying that all Palestinians were terrorists."

After ABC's George Stephanopoulos brought up Gingrich's views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the This Week host:

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour just can’t comprehend why Jon Huntsman, with his “eminently sensible” anti-conservative positions, could be losing to Newt Gingrich who is full of “bombast” and “does say some pretty alarming things, some might say outrageous things.” More upsetting, Hunstman is supposedly “reversing” himself on those “eminently sensible positions.” 

Interviewing Huntsman, who appeared from the Granite State, Amanpour noted on Sunday’s This Week that “you are at the bottom of the pack despite the fact that some independents, for instance, in New Hampshire call you the sanest one running,” yet “ what you’re offering does not seem to be resonating. It appears that the Newt Gingrich, sort of bombast and brash in your face against Obama, is what’s resonating.”

Amidst all the media coverage of Rep. Barney Frank's (Mass.) retirement from the U.S. House of Representatives, the media largely praised the retiring Democrat while overlooking the scandals of his tenure in office and his crucial support to government policies that helped fuel the housing bubble, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told viewers of the December 1 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity.

"Why isn't anyone in the media talking about the obvious? This is a man who single-handedly presided over the collapse" of the U.S. housing industry, Bozell reminded host Sean Hannity in the popular recurring "Media Mash" segment. "Barney Frank in  2003 fought George Bush when he tried to do something about it." [video of the full segment follows page break]

There was a rather telling moment on ABC's This Week Sunday.

When during the Roundtable segment the Washington Post's Michael Gerson criticized Barack Obama for his lack of leadership involving the now failed Super Committee, Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts quickly came to the President's defense (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Colin Powell on Sunday blamed the media as well as the Tea Party for the divisive political tone in Washington.

Not surprisingly, neither the class warfare stoked by President Obama and his Party nor the resulting Occupy Wall Street movement was mentioned during this seven minute interview with Christiane Amanpour on ABC's This Week (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Paul Krugman, who three months ago called for space aliens to invade earth in order to get the government to spend more money, attacked Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on ABC's This Week Sunday referring to the former House Speaker as "a stupid man's idea of what a smart man sounds like" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Through the month of October, as this MRC study found, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks completely ignored the numerous charges of sexual assaults at OWS protests on their evening and morning news shows. In fact, it wasn’t until this weekend that one and only one network, ABC reported on the rape of a woman in Philadelphia, and that was only after that city’s Democratic Mayor Michael Nutter expressed concern about safety.

On the November 13 edition of ABC’s World News reporter Cecilia Vega mentioned: “In Occupy Philadelphia, an arrest after a woman was dragged into a tent and sexually assaulted.” Vega then threw it to a soundbite from Nutter charging: “Occupy Philly has changed. We’re seeing serious health and safety issues playing out on an almost daily basis. The people of Occupy Philly have also changed and their intentions have changed.”

On the Sunday, November 13, Good Morning America, ABC co-host Bianna Golodryga declared that "it seems Americans still can't forget" GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry's "53-second brain freeze" from last week's debate as she and This Week host Christiane Amanpour discussed Saturday night's GOP debate hosted by CBS News.

Golodryga then played a clip of NBC's Saturday Night Live making fun of Perry's memory lapse using an impersonator, and then followed up by asking if Perry "will ever be able to live down those 53 seconds?"

After bringing aboard Amanpour, Golodryga began the segment:

These things take time, especially when it comes to a politician initially touted as walking on water.

But it's finally happening with liberal media mogul Arianna Huffington -- a willingness to criticize the Obama administration's penchant for theatrics over substance. (video after page break)

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, on Sunday’s This Week, hit House Speaker John Boehner repeatedly from the left to raise taxes, a hostile, political agenda-driven approach she failed to apply a month earlier to the House’s top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi.

Amanpour demanded of Boehner: “Do you not feel that by opposing” a tax hike on millionaires to pay for Obama’s jobs bill “you’re basically out of step with the American people on this issue?” She followed by yearning: “Do you agree at all that there should be any kind of tax increases?” (video compilation below)

Call it Niall Ferguson's Pauline Kael moment . . . During the roundtable segment this morning on ABC's This Week, Ferguson, an academic with appointments at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, said that "all the Texans I know" can't stand Rick Perry.

Ferguson was reacting to host Christiane Amanpour's question about Perry's highly-animated New Hampshire address.  Ferguson professed to like the "swaggering Texan" side of Perry he apparently saw in the speech.  George Will had a caustic comeback.  Video after the jump.

One of the leading liberal propaganda outlets in the nation is the website ThinkProgress which specializes in selectively editing news reports and spreading misinformation to receptive media outlets from coast to coast.

A fine example of how they deceptively operate transpired Sunday with an article promoted at their website with the teaser "Bill Gates 'In Favor' Of Higher Taxes On Wealthy" (videos follow with transcript and commentary):

President Barack Obama’s new infrastructure spending plan “makes all of the sense in the world” and is an “eminently sensible idea,” ABC’s Christiane Amanpour enthused Sunday morning on This Week as if there is no rational reason to oppose the additional federal money and without a look at the impact of the already-spent stimulus spending.
 
Following up on President Obama’s boast that “when you got the AFL and the Chamber of Commerce agreeing on anything, that’s a sign that it’s a good idea,” Amanpour brought aboard the chiefs of those two organizations to tout the self-interested spending and fret over Republican opposition.

A 19-year-old student with a learning disability was allegedly raped at this weekend's Occupy Cleveland rally, an extension of the protests happening on Wall Street.

WKYC, the local NBC affiliate, reported at its website Tuesday (video also follows with commentary):

Remember all that talk about returning civility to political discussions following Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) shooting in January?

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus clearly doesn't, for on ABC's This Week Sunday, she said of Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential candidacy, "He's like Monty Python's parrot - he's not dead yet" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the anchors of the various broadcast news programs have enthusiastically thrown their support behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Given a report from CNN Money Monday that the protesters are planning on marching on the homes of New York's millionaires, some of these television personalities might want to think twice:

Most liberal media members and prominent Democrats including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took great offense to Sen. Scott Brown's (D-Mass.) joke concerning rival Elizabeth Warren not posing naked when she was in law school.

Quite surprisingly, when this matter came up on ABC's The View Monday, the ladies sided with Brown (multipart video follows with transcripts and commentary):

CBS's Bigad Shaban failed to disclose the far-left politics of an "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrator on Monday's Early Show. Jesse LaGreca, a Daily Kos contributor who wrote in August that "Hurricane Irene is like having Christmas early" for Republicans, was identified on-screen as simply a "Wall Street protester." Shaban also barely devoted any time to critics of the nascent movement.

Offering the kind of respect, admiration and promotion ABC News has yet to offer Tea Party activists, Christiane Amanpour on Sunday asserted the far-left protesters are a “populist movement” representing a “revolution,” cited how it has “finally” been recognized by politicians, characterized it as an answer to the Tea Party and included an “Occupy Wall Street activist” on her roundtable.

“The revolution is being televised and tweeted and Facebooked,” she trumpeted in plugging the roundtable, proclaiming: “The Occupy Wall Street protests are suddenly all that Washington can talk about. Are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of Tea Party?”