By Ken Shepherd | March 11, 2015 | 5:33 PM EDT

Perhaps because it's becoming harder and harder to defend Hillary Clinton on the merits, MSNBC.com has turned to the tried and true "hypocrisy" card to try to undercut Republican complaints about the former secretary of state's lack of transparency.

By Ken Shepherd | May 15, 2014 | 12:31 PM EDT

"Feisty campus dissent is back. And it’s winning," exulted msnbc.com's Aliyah Frumin in her May 15 story, teased on the main page with the header, "Commencement speakers drop like flies." [see screen capture below page break]

"In the last few weeks alone, campaigns at three schools forced commencement speakers to pass up significant speaker fees rather than face angry campuses," Frumin noted, adding that "[t]he last-minute cancellations have proved embarrassing to school leaders" and conceding that in turn they "have raised concerns about free speech and exposure to opposing views in settings designed to foster free thought." Although Frumin did not thread the needle on this point, it's pretty clear from her reporting that it's left-wing pressure groups forcing speakers to drop out on the basis of liberal complaints, while left-leaning speakers seem to face little or no pressure to back down from a speaking gig and/or have the full-throated backing of the campus administration in the event conservatives would protest [emphasis mine]:

By Ken Shepherd | April 22, 2014 | 6:22 PM EDT

One minute the liberal media will tell you that Hillary Clinton is a tough-as-nails politician and stateswoman who is eminently qualified for the White House and in the next the same folks are in high dudgeon about how the former secretary of state is the target of mean ol' "sexist" and "ageist" Republicans. 

Witness msnbc.com's Aliyah Frumin riding valiantly to the rescue of the poor sexagenarian damsel in distress/grandmother-to-be. "When it comes to conservative criticism of the Clintons, not even Chelsea’s unborn child is immune," Frumin laments, citing a New York Post columnist as her evidence of a vast right-wing conspiracy to rain on Grandma Hillary's 2016 parade:

By Ken Shepherd | March 10, 2014 | 5:27 PM EDT

When Obama IRS official Lois Lerner yet again pleaded the Fifth Amendment last Wednesday rather than answer challenging questions during a congressional hearing, the liberal media stifled yawns. To the extent the March 5 hearing was covered, media attention turned to the post-hearing fireworks between ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) rather than the substance of the questions Ms. Lerner refused to answer on the record under oath.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon with MSNBC.com lamenting how "Christie aides double[d] down on Fifth Amendment" in a state investigative probe of the Bridgegate scandal. Here's how staff writer Aliyah Frumin reported the story [emphasis mine; see screen capture below page break]

By Ken Shepherd | December 3, 2013 | 6:35 PM EST

As my colleague Jeff Meyer noted earlier this afternoon, msnbc.com has been busy today boosting HealthCare.gov, insisting that the "bug" which made the website nearly inoperable in October and November was now fixed and everything was working just fine.

Well now the landing page for the Lean Forward network is hailing HealthCare.gov as the "website [which] might just save your life." The teaser headline links to msnbc.com staffer Aliyah Frumin's gauzy treatment of President Obama's latest speech plugging his troubled health care overhaul (emphasis mine; see screen capture below page break):