Soledad O'Brien

Even when told that paying for birth control would violate the consciences of certain religious organizations, CNN's Soledad O'Brien wondered why the groups still shouldn't have to cover contraceptives for interested employees.

O'Brien cited statistics from the abortion-supportive Guttmacher Institute showing that even the vast majority of Catholic women use birth control. She then asked why so many shouldn't have the option to pursue such practices, regardless of what the Catholic Church teaches. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

A rather extraordinary thing happened on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday.

The host actually defended Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney from the media's proclivity to take his statements "entirely out of context" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The victory lap for Soledad O'Brien's interview with Mitt Romney wherein the Republican presidential candidate uttered the now infamous words "I'm not concerned about the very poor" continued on CNN Saturday.

During the network's coverage of the Nevada caucuses, contributor David Gergen practically blushed when seeing O'Brien - "Love having you on the set here tonight" - as he told her, "You’ve been really much in the news. You’ve been sort of driving the conversation" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

UPDATES AT END OF POST: Martin and O'Brien respond.

Should media members congratulate each other for skewering a political candidate?

That's exactly what CNN's Roland Martin did Thursday as he high fived Soledad O'Brien for the previous day's interview with Mitt Romney wherein the Republican presidential candidate uttered the now infamous words, "I'm not concerned about the very poor" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Not surprisingly, the Obama-loving media are having a field day with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comment to CNN's Soledad O'Brien regarding not being "concerned about the very poor."

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Wednesday decided to make an even bigger deal out of this issue by cherry-picking Rush Limbaugh to make it appear the conservative radio host shared the press's view (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Was Soledad O'Brien trying to hit two candidates with one stone? The CNN host combined negative poll results for Mitt Romney with a "conservative" criticism of Newt Gingrich in her tough question to Romney on Wednesday.

O'Brien quoted so-called conservative Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, who questioned Romney's appeal to voters when "far less perfect" Newt Gingrich is still garnering support "against all reason." O'Brien pressed Romney "How do you fix that?" [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

On Tuesday, for the second time in two weeks, CNN's Soledad O'Brien insisted that President Bush, not President Obama, is the "food stamp president" – even though data show her argument is ridiculous.

On January 19, O'Brien had opened up that "it was George Bush who was the food stamp president." Then on Tuesday, she stated that Bush oversaw a greater percent increase of food stamp recipients than Obama has, and thus was more deserving of the title "food stamp president."

Former Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords retired from office a year after suffering a gunshot wound to the head, and CNN is already goading her husband to replace her in Congress. Since Democrats wanted him to run for Giffords' seat, CNN was basically asking a Democrat to run for office.

On Friday's Starting Point, host Soledad O'Brien told Giffords' husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, that historically "often spouses will jump in and take over their spouse's Congressional seat." She strongly insinuated that would be him, and that he should run. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

CNN's Soledad O'Brien would not brand Saul Alinsky as a leftist radical, and neither would she say President Obama was influenced by his writings – but she had no problem tying Alinsky's controversial beliefs to the Tea Party movement on Monday's Starting Point.

As a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama mirrored the tactics Alinsky laid out in his book "Rules for Radicals" – which featured a tribute to the devil Lucifer, "the very first radical." GOP candidate Newt Gingrich has recently tied Obama's name with Alinsky, sparking a media debate over the matter.

On Thursday morning, CNN's Soledad O'Brien suggested that candidate Newt Gingrich speaks with a "racial coding" on the campaign trail. She gave credibility to former President Carter's bizarre remark about Gingrich having a "subtlety of racism" about him, asking her panel if the quote was a "bombshell."

O'Brien could also have questioned Carter's remark as a smear coming from a Democrat. Instead she seemed to argue in favor of his side. “Is there racial coding in what Newt Gingrich has said in not only in these debates, but also even in some of the campaign stops?” she asked her panel. [Video below the break.]

As NewsBusters reported Friday, CNN's Soledad O'Brien had a completely unprofessional interview with "The Obamas" author Jodi Kantor wherein she mercilessly grilled the writer for having the nerve to criticize the first lady in her book.

Kantor struck back on Monday's Daily Show saying, "By her logic we wouldn't write obituaries because we can't talk to the dead people" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In a testy interview Friday morning on CNN's Starting Point, host Soledad O'Brien gave Times reporter Jodi Kantor the third degree over the credibility of her new book "The Obamas." O'Brien repeatedly hit Kantor for not having interviewed First Lady Michelle Obama since 2009, despite Kantor having used Obama's own aides as sources for her material.

In addition, Kantor responded to O'Brien scolding her to "Get Real" earlier this week, which NewsBusters reported on. The CNN anchor had incorrectly claimed that reports from multiple news outlets discredited a segment in Kantor's book – but the author set the story straight on Friday. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

When DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz claimed that Mitt Romney suffered a "setback" in New Hampshire, CNN Soledad O'Brien challenged her outlandish assumption – but then used the talking point to grill Romney in a later interview with the candidate.

According to Schultz, Romney failed in New Hampshire by not garnering 40 percent of the vote. O'Brien, who questioned that point by hailing Romney as "the clear front-runner," gave the spin credibility when she pressed Romney "I get it that her [Schultz's] job, governor, is to spin, spin, spin, spin, spin. But doesn't she have a point about – this is a place where you have lived, and that number, while very good, is not 60 percent, or 70 percent?"

Attempting to dismsiss negative reports about Obama's White House, CNN's Soledad O'Brien completely mangled and fumbled key facts on Monday's Starting Point. O'Brien had claimed that her own network reported on a White House event in 2009 – except that key event details were missing from the CNN reports at the time.

The claims that O'Brien dismissed as baseless were made by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor in her new book "The Obamas." Kantor had written that during the recession in 2009, the White House hosted a Halloween "Alice in Wonderland" themed tea party with celebrity donors – but was careful not to get the word out about the lavish event due to the hard economic times.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien tried to make race an issue on Tuesday where there was no conflict to begin with, and she continued thumping Republicans over immigration on Wednesday. O'Brien asked candidate Mitt Romney if he was simply driving Latino voters to Obama with his immigration stance, and brought up the issue again in a later interview.

In her interview with Romney, O'Brien cited his opposition to the Dream Act and noted the large Latino voting bloc in Florida, the site of an upcoming GOP primary. "You know immigration is a big issue for Latino voters. When you tackle that, when you say something like that very publicly and very strongly, are you essentially handing those voters off to President Obama?" she pressed the candidate. [Video below the break.]

[UPDATE at bottom of post.]

In a provocative segment on Tuesday's Starting Point, CNN's Soledad O'Brien hit Republican candidates for not campaigning in Iowa's first majority Hispanic town. The liberal CNN host brought on citizens of the town – West Liberty, Iowa  – to discuss why no GOP candidate had yet stumped in the town. "GOP candidates skip majority Hispanic town," the CNN headline blared.

One of the four guests, CNN reported, was a Democratic candidate for the Iowa House of Representatives, and another was a Hispanic immigrant who organized for Obama during the 2008 caucuses. What O'Brien also failed to reveal is that the town, with a small population to begin with, voted heavily for Barack Obama in 2008. [Video below the break.]

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien has had a history of liberal bias – to a scale approaching activism – and she showed where her newest CNN show might be headed on Tuesday with a completely liberal double-standard in her interviews.

During the 7 a.m. hour of CNN's Starting Point, O'Brien hit GOP candidate Michele Bachmann from the left on homosexuality, but later teed up liberal "Occupy" protesters to defend their cause and claim to be "non-partisan." Bachmann blasted O'Brien's "gotcha" question and insisted that voters are focused on economic issues. [Video below the break.]

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien returned to the anchor desk Monday morning as the network reworked its morning anchor line-up for the second year in a row. In 2007, O'Brien was removed as the co-host of CNN’s ratings-challenged American Morning in an effort to jump-start the flagging program. Now she returns to host Starting Point, the second half of CNN’s morning coverage that airs from 7-9 a.m EST.

During her stint as American Morning co-host and as a CNN correspondent, O'Brien repeatedly exhibited a liberal bias -- particularly through her coverage of gay rights issues, her flattering treatment of President Obama, and her promotion of Democratic talking points in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some of her most outrageous moments on-air are documented below.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien's Sunday documentary about the controversial mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee predictably leaned towards the local Muslims who want it built. O'Brien brushed aside an opponent's concerns over Sharia law in the U.S.: "In New York City, we have a big Muslim community. There is no Sharia law [there]." She also omitted how a featured Muslim woman is related to one of the mosque's planners (audio available here).

Forty-five minutes into her hour-long documentary, which aired at 8 pm Eastern, the journalist noted the fall 2010 trial which asked for an injunction to halt the construction of the mosque, but instead of reporting that the trial focused on concerns that the approval of the mosque "did not provide adequate public comment and that its members will impose Sharia Law on Murfreesboro residents," as a local newspaper reported, O'Brien spun this by playing up how, apparently, "in a small courtroom in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Islam was on trial." She then explained that "opponents claim the facility would increase traffic, damage water quality, and provide a foothold for radical Muslims and Islamic law."

[Video embedded below the page break]

CNN personality Soledad O'Brien revealed in her new book that liberal activist Jesse Jackson put her down for her skin color during a private meeting in 2007. During the meeting, Jackson complained to O'Brien, whose mother is a black woman from Cuba, that there weren't any black anchors on CNN. When she pointed out that she was the anchor of American Morning, the activist replied, "You don't count."

O'Brien, who is now a special correspondent for CNN, recounted the 2007 incident in "The Next Big Story," which CNN.com excerpted on November 3. Just before her meeting with Jackson, the journalist had obtained "exclusive access to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s papers," as the lead-in for the excerpt underlined. Soon after this, as O'Brien recalled, "Jackson calls with an invitation to meet and talk." The two met at a restaurant "on the first floor of a famous hotel" and in the course of their conversation, the subject of the racial makeup of her network came up:

Just two months ago, CNN president of U.S. operations Jonathan Klein was declaring "Our mission, our mandate, is to deliver the best journalism in the world....No bias, no agenda." At the same time, CNN was putting together "Gary and Tony Have a Baby," a thoroughly biased ode to the gay agenda. At the top left of the front page of the Style section on Tuesday, Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales loved it all the same:

It does not, as the cliche goes, "explore all sides of an issue," but instead offers an intimate and affecting portrait of what happens when partners in a same-sex marriage set out to secure for themselves a blessed event, the limits of biology notwithstanding. 

Shales wrote that CNN allowed a "canard" or two about the alleged "threat" of gay marriage, but CNN was wise not to "rehash" all the tired opposition, focusing instead on the double vision of "paternal bliss" with Gary and Tony, which should make any compassionate human wonder why anyone would object to this arrangement:

CNN conducted two softball interviews with the subjects of their upcoming slanted documentary, "Gary and Tony Have a Baby," on Sunday and Monday. The network sympathized with the same-sex couple, hinting they were "role models" for the homosexual community, and made little effort to hide that they were advancing the agenda of homosexual activists.

Anchor Don Lemon interviewed the two just before the bottom of the 7 pm Eastern hour on Sunday's Newsroom program. Before turning to his guests, Lemon played a three-minute clip from the documentary about "how one couple tries to redefine what it means to be a family" and what CNN billed as a "new American family" (see video at right), focusing on the young woman who donated 14 of her eggs so the couple could have one child via in-vitro fertilization and a surrogate mother. Near the end of clip, the "Tony" of the documentary, Tony Brown, spoke emotionally of how the egg donor, named Holly, "gets that she's giving us this incredible gift, and it's pretty amazing." The CNN anchor replied in agreement: "pretty amazing and very emotional."

On Monday's Campbell Brown program, CNN's Soledad O'Brien presented a one-sided report about a lesbian teenager in Mississippi whose senior portrait was left out of her school's yearbook because she chose to have it taken in a tux, defying the school's rules. O'Brien commiserated with the teen, asking her at one point, "I want people to understand because other people will say- oh, for God's sake, it's just a picture. So explain to us, what does it feel like to not be where you're supposed to be?"

Anchor John Roberts introduced the special correspondent's near the end of the 8 pm Eastern hour by trying to make a tenuous connection between the report and the continuing major news of the Gulf oil leak: "All eyes are on Gulfport, Mississippi this morning as the President arrived for the first leg of his three-state tour, but about 150 miles north of the Gulf, in a small town called Wesson, the big news this season was all about the high school yearbook. It was here that a teenager's senior picture triggered an unexpected backlash, and sparked outrage throughout the state."

O'Brien sympathized with Ceara Sturgis, the teen from Wesson, Mississippi, from the start of her report: "For 18-year-old senior Ceara Sturgis, her high school yearbook is more than a collection of memories. It's about her struggle to be who she is in tiny Wesson, Mississippi, population about 2,000." After asking the lesbian to describe herself ("18 years old and I'm gay. I don't like people to push me around, especially when I have the right, and I don't give up."), the correspondent continued that "what she didn't give up on was her fight to get this picture in her yearbook, a picture she took wearing a tuxedo instead of the traditional dress, called a drape."

CNN's marriage to gay activists looks complete. Soledad O'Brien is previewing the "news" network's documentary "Gary and Tony Have a Baby" for gay activists in two cities. The one-sided no-room-for-dissenters piece was previewed along with a panel discussion for the left-wing Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation at the Paley Center in Los Angeles on June 9. CNN and GLAAD are doing the same thing in New York tonight.

Remember this when CNN publicists and executives laughably claim to be nonpartisan, and just straight down the middle. The gay magazine The Advocate reported that O'Brien thought her story on Gary and Tony had to be "authentic," when critics might find it propagandistic: 

CNN likes to paint itself as the "objective" middle ground in cable news between Fox News and MSNBC. But you don't find the middle with a one-hour June special titled "Gary and Tony Have a Baby." A duo of "gay marriage" activists are the stars "on their quest to have a biological child of their own" -- using an egg donor and a surrogate mother. The trailer is here, championing "the support, the drama" behind "the new American family." The pro-gay blog AfterElton.com noted CNN's own explanation of the Soledad O'Brien documentary:

Unable to legally marry in the U.S., [Gary and Tony] travel to Canada, get married, and spend thousands on an arduous journey toward parenthood via surrogacy and in vitro fertilization. ... Though Gary and Tony had hoped for a happy extended family, they discover instead ambivalence about same-sex marriage. With court battles, and struggles against their hometown community – can these men achieve a life as mainstream as their parents?

CNN is not the "mainstream" media. Like the other liberal networks, they are the "mainstreaming" media, the idealistic leftists who want to take every sexual orientation straight into the center of respectability. "Transgenders" were honored with the two-hour special "Her Name Was Steven" in March. Soledad O'Brien talked to Michael Jensen at AfterElton, and explained this project was never meant to be two-sided:

Once upon a time, liberals didn't much like Ronald Reagan - his policies, his ideology or even just because they thought he was a lousy executive and an "amiable dunce." 

"The Tower commission did not find Reagan a lousy orator; they found him a lousy president," Rep. Barney Frank said of Reagan to Time magazine in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra Affair in 1987.

And more recently, those on the left, and also some on the right, have declared the era of Reagan over for the Republican Party - a point more rational voices on the right aren't willing to concede.

So why are some supporters of liberal causes attempting to co-opt Reagan to promote their own ideals?

Asking "WWRD?" ("What would Reagan do?") is becoming a trend on myriad issues, including global warming alarmism, health care legislation, attacks on the Tea Party movement and, surprisingly, liberal pundits seeking to put the best face on President Barack Obama's leadership.

Videos Embedded Below Fold

On February 14, CNN aired both segments of its special series “Black in America," and used the opportunity to perpetuate a harmful racial myth.

In the first installment, reporter Soledad O’Brien took viewers to Project Brotherhood, a clinic in the south side of Chicago offering free medical care and advice to its black residents.

“We are seeing an increasing amount of men with resources, who are just reluctant to access services elsewhere,” Dr. Pete Thomas, a clinic doctor told O’Brien.

 “Why the reluctance? Dr. Thomas says black men are afraid of being exploited – a fear caused by history and the revelation that for forty years unsuspecting poor black men were used as medical guinea pigs in the infamous Tuskegee experiments,” O’Brien said.

In a Politico interview yesterday, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien provided some insight into herself.  No, not in the part where she admits to cursing "all the time."  It was her response to another question:

If you were the president of the United States for enough time to make only one executive decision, what would it be?

Improve public schools.

None of that preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States for Soledad.  Or faithfully executing the laws.  Or protecting our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  Or serving as Commander in Chief.

The New York Post reported "CNN should consider banning its anchors from appearing on ‘Celebrity Jeopardy’ after the humiliating defeats of Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O'Brien." O’Brien came in third behind a comedian and a basketball legend:

This month, it was O’Brien’s turn against NBA legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Michael McKean, of "Spinal Tap," "Laverne & Shirley" and "Saturday Night Live." McKean, a previous winner, ended with $24,800, followed by Abdul Jabbar with $8,800 and O'Brien with $6,200.

A CNN insider defended the journalists: "They are reporters, not trivia experts. And the buzzer is complicated. It's not activated until Alex [Trebek] finishes the last syllable of the question. If you hit the button too soon, nothing happens."

....Wolf was blitzed last month, coming in last with minus-$4,600, behind comic Andy Richter, a past winner who racked up $68,000 for charity. "Desperate Housewives" star Dana Delany came in second.

CNN featured pro-illegal immigration activist Isabel Garcia of Tucson, Arizona on two programs on Wednesday night, and inadvertently caught her giving inconsistent answers regarding a 2008 protest where she participated in the beating and decapitation of a pinata effigy of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona [audio clips from programs available here].

Correspondent Soledad O’Brien featured Garcia in the first segment of her ‘Latino in America’ miniseries at 9 pm Eastern, where she was labeled as an “unapologetic champion of people many Americans love to hate- illegal immigrants.” After detailing her involvement with a high-profile deportation case, O’Brien stated that Garcia had “nothing to do with creating the pinata and only picked it up to defuse” the anti-Arpaio protest. The CNN correspondent cast a sympathetic light on the activist by noting how she has apparently received death threats for her work.