If CNN wants to be balanced in how it moderates the upcoming Democratic debate on Tuesday, it will ask questions that prompt the candidates on stage to fight with one another, because that’s exactly how they handled the GOP debate back on September 16. Of the 74 total questions asked by CNN’s debate moderators at the GOP debate, 55 of them (74 percent) were framed to get Republican candidates to criticize each other’s positions and even personal traits. 

Following the lead of Tuesday’s Today show, NBC Nightly News continued its offensive against 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio for his attendance record in the U.S. Senate (despite previous precedent) and warned that his rise in the polls could result in Rubio suffering the same fate as failed candidate Scott Walker. 

One of the more tiresome criticisms the establishment press still levels at New Media from time to time is that they, unlike those awful bloggers, make sure their facts are right before they go to print or post a story online.

A story published at the New York Times on Wednesday about Donald Trump's wife Melania shows what obvious rubbish that claim often is. The Old Gray Lady had to issue six corrections over two days to (one would hope) finally get it right. One of the errors was so pathetically obvious that it's hard to imagine that Guy Trebay's story was subjected at all to the scrutiny of an editor.

The left's strategy for smearing Republicans and conservatives is, from all appearances, to "throw anything and everything out there, not matter how false or outrageous, and see what sticks."

A major reason why this strategy works is that the establishment press ignores bogus leftist smear attempts which should be utterly embarrassing, effectively eliminating the strategy's downside. Take Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Monday press release on 2016 GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio's fundraiser at the home of Dallas businessman Harlan Crow.

This NewsBuster is a paid subscriber and regular listener to Hugh Hewitt's podcasts, and believes that Hugh is the ablest conservative interviewer on radio. So it was surprising to see him serve as such a loyal CNN soldier on today's Morning Joe.

Hewitt, a member of the CNN panel at Wednesday's GOP debate, refused to complain about the paltry opportunities he was given to question the candidates. And defending the fact that Donald Trump had been given twice Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee's airtime, Hewitt said that while "unfortunate," Jake Tapper had done a "marvelous" job of allocating time. That was too much for Mika Brzezinski, who bluntly told Hewitt: "I guess you're probably uncomfortable being honest about this."  Mika's skepticism is on vivid display in the screengrab.