By Matt Hadro | June 13, 2013 | 6:39 PM EDT

On Wednesday's The Lead, CNN's Erin McPike touted Hillary Clinton's speech at the Clinton Global Initiative and hyped her prospects for 2016. She ignored any controversies from Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, like Benghazi and new accusations of a cover-up of sex scandals abroad.

"[T]here's no question that the big star here was a very relaxed Hillary Clinton," McPike reported. "The political world is abuzz over a potential race for the White House in 2016." A CNN headline trumpeted "Here Comes Hillary."

By Randy Hall | May 31, 2013 | 3:11 PM EDT

Five months into his tenure as president of the Cable News Network, Jeff Zucker gave a “progress report” on Wednesday by stating that rivals Fox News Channel and MSNBC “are covering politics” while CNN is reporting on “politics and much more.”

“News is how you define it,” Zucker said during a panel discussion in the “All Things Digital” conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, Calif., and “we define it broadly as news and information. Our competition now is two political channels that have actually left most of the actual news coverage to the side.”

By Ken Shepherd | May 23, 2013 | 6:10 PM EDT

Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hassan is still drawing his military paycheck while the Defense Department has refused to deem Hassan's victims as suffering combat-related wounds, which would entitle them to Purple Hearts and additional pay and benefits to aid the cost of their rehabilitation, Scott Friedman of Dallas, Texas, NBC affiliate KXAS reported on Wednesday morning. [watch the original KXAS report below the page break]

Yesterday, native Texan and MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall aired Friedman's report on her NewsNation program in her "Gut Check" segment in which she asked her viewers to weigh in on her Facebook page, "Should the Pentagon designate the Fort Hood shooting a terrorist attack?" [For their part, 76 percent of her viewers agreed that it should.] Although this is a pretty compelling report, at time of publication, neither NBC's Nightly News nor Today programs have aired the story.

By Matt Hadro | May 22, 2013 | 6:09 PM EDT

CNN's Jake Tapper took Obama's Justice Department to task on his Wednesday afternoon show, sounding alarm over the "precedent" that the administration's investigation of Fox News reporter James Rosen would set.

Tapper directly challenged liberal defenders of President Obama: "But even if you side with this President over those of us in the media who challenge him in his administration, it is important to remember the precedent these actions set going forward. Perhaps when it's not your guy in the White House."

By Matt Hadro | April 29, 2013 | 5:20 PM EDT

After NBA player Jason Collins came out as gay on Monday, CNN hyped the announcement as a "bombshell," a "big deal," and one for the "history books." CNN's open support of gay rights advocates is no secret, as it has already picked sides in the gay rights debate.

CNN's Don Lemon has framed gay rights advocates as being on the right side of history, and anchor Brooke Baldwin played into that narrative on Monday. "The NBA's Jason Collins has entered the history books today," she touted. "As of today, he's the first openly-gay male athlete playing a major team sport in America. This is a big deal."

By Tim Graham | April 26, 2013 | 7:26 AM EDT

One might think the opening of George W. Bush’s presidential library in Dallas was an occasion for dignity. But Bill Clinton didn’t think so. On CNN yesterday, Jake Tapper asked former Bush chief of staff Andy Card about “an interesting moment” in Clinton’s remarks.

“Your mother showed me some of your landscapes and animal paintings, and I thought they were great. Really great,” Clinton said. “And I seriously considered calling you and asking you to do a portrait of me until I saw the results of your sister's hacked e-mails. Those bathroom sketches were wonderful, but at my age I think I should keep my suit.”

By Matt Hadro | April 12, 2013 | 3:07 PM EDT

[UPDATE BELOW] CNN has devoted exactly 24 seconds to the trial of former abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his clinic of horrors. In contrast, the network spent over 18 minutes on Tuesday discussing the controversy over Brad Paisley and LL Cool J's song "Accidental Racist." Tapper did tweet this morning that he would be covering the story on his 4 p.m. ET show The Lead.

Despite the horrifying testimonies on Gosnell's clinic, CNN instead emphasized the controversy over "Accidental Racist." The Wall Street Journal's Christopher John Farley said it "obviously is problematic. It set Twitter ablaze. People were talking about it saying what is going on here? I think part of the problem is, one, it's bad musically. This music is bad. The lyrics are also quite bad. The themes are bad."

By Tim Graham | April 12, 2013 | 2:36 PM EDT

CNN host Jake Tapper is announcing he’ll be discussing the Kermit Gosnell trial today on “The Lead.” But earlier, he got angry with a Twitter critic, insisting “that ‘one sentence’ nonsense from Media Research Council is false. We covered it before + we will cover it again.”

I gave Brent Bozell the claim that Tapper only did “one sentence,” and I was wrong (sort of like messing up “Media Research Center”). On March 21, Tapper gave it a brief five-sentence report, 76 words in all. That’s better than everyone else at CNN and the Big Three. But our Matt Hadro reports CNN has given Brad Paisley’s song “Accidental Racist” more than 18 minutes of coverage, compared to CNN’s 24 seconds so far this year on Gosnell:

By Matt Hadro | April 9, 2013 | 12:20 PM EDT

A Fox News reporter faces jail time for not giving up her sources in a story on the Aurora shooting, but CNN host Jake Tapper is the only anchor or reporter at the network to mention her plight. Fox News has reported on it, along with various online outlets; the networks have been silent. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough brought it up on Monday's Morning Joe.

Tapper made the story part of the "Buried Lead" segment on his Monday show, "stories we don't think are getting enough attention." It certainly hasn't piqued the curiosity of anyone else at CNN, meriting only a CNN.com piece and no other mentions on air. "Where is the public outrage about this type of thing?" Tapper asked. "Does the public not understand or see us as a check on people in power?"

By Matthew Balan | April 6, 2013 | 1:40 PM EDT

The Big Three networks' Friday morning newscasts all highlighted the "backlash" over President Obama's "best-looking attorney general in the country" compliment of California's Kamala Harris. But in addition to ignoring First Lady Michelle Obama's recent "single mother" gaffe, as of Saturday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC have yet to report on the President's erroneous claim about the use of an automatic firearm at the Sandy Hook massacre.

The Democrat made the false statement at a Wednesday fundraiser in California. Mr. Obama asserted, "It is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country...but also make sure that we don't have another 20 children...gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon – by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly."

By Matt Hadro | April 5, 2013 | 7:12 PM EDT

Call it the tale of two gaffes. CNN only briefly covered President Obama's blunder that the gun used in the Sandy Hook shooting was an automatic weapon. Meanwhile, the network gave almost 40 minutes on Friday to outrage over Obama calling California's Attorney General "the best-looking attorney general in the country."

CNN's Jake Tapper was the only CNN anchor or reporter who caught Obama's "automatic" gun error. He reported it twice, once during his 4 p.m. ET show The Lead and later on while filling in for host Erin Burnett on OutFront. Automatic weapons are already strictly regulated and have been for decades; the gun used at Sandy Hook was a semi-automatic weapon.

By Tim Graham | March 23, 2013 | 2:12 PM EDT

Pardon the age of this item, but it's on an issue of campaign history. On March 13, NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviewed new CNN host Jake Tapper about politics and journalism, and whether there was blowback from presidents and candidates over tough questions. But Gross felt compelled to bring up the "lies" told about John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign -- without expressing anything specific.

Tapper said he was assigned as a Swift Boat Veteran fact checker by ABC. Gross said, "So you were fact-checking some of the Swift Boat attacks against presidential candidate John Kerry. There were so many lies in those attacks. What was the fact-checking like, and how effective do you think it was in trying to counteract the lies?"