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After his first full year running CNN, Jeff Zucker has little to be proud of. The primetime ratings of the self-proclaimed "Most trusted name in news" reached 20-year lows in 2013.

Ana Radelat at Advertising Age magazine revealed that in the year after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun-control groups spent $14.1 million on TV advertising, compared to just $1.9 million by gun-rights organizations – a 7-to-1 advantage. Radelat added that the National Rifle Association spent $6.2 million on lobbying, which “may have been the better tactic – especially…

Appearing on Wednesday's NBC Today to provide his New Year political predictions for 2014, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd assured co-host Savannah Guthrie that despite the ObamaCare disaster, Republicans would be "in just as bad of a place, if not worse than they were." He explained: "It just doesn't look like it right now because of health care." [Listen to the audio or watch the…

Even as he hailed Bill de Blasio's "progressive revolution," The Daily Beast's Michael Daly sought to downplay fears that the newly-sworn-in mayor was a radical leftist intent on soaking the rich. Instead Daly practically painted a picture of the Democratic politician as a drum major leading the "march" to a more "equal" New York. While noting de Blasio was a "leader speaking much the same…

  New Years seemed like a good time for ABC to push the marijuana "revolution" taking place in Colorado. World News reporter Clayton Sandell on Wednesday featured an almost entirely positive story, focusing on job growth related to pot and featuring one man (wearing green face paint) who enthused, "This is a historical event." Sandell showcased the grand opening of a new store that legally…

A group of climate change scientists were rescued by helicopter Jan. 2, after being stranded in the ice since Christmas morning. But the majority of the broadcast networks’ reports about the ice-locked climate researchers never mentioned climate change. The Russian ship, Akademic Shokalskiy, was stranded in the ice while on a climate change research expedition, yet nearly 98 percent of…

This past Tuesday, Daily Kos featured writer Hunter, whose main gig at the lefty blog is to trash the sayings and doings of conservatives, wrapped up a twelve-part series looking back on righty activity in 2013. Highlights from those posts follow. According to Hunter, last year yielded "general political incompetence, frothing buffoonery and self-made disasters" from the GOP: 

In 2006, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published a book with the inflammatory title "Are Men Necessary?" Eight years later, feminist author Hanna Rosin wrote a piece for TIME magazine Thursday with the substantially more inflammatory title "Men Are Obsolete: Five Reasons We Are Definitely Witnessing The End of Men":

The inauguration of unreconstructed liberal Bill de Blasio as New York’s newest mayor excited liberals hoping for a return to pre-Clinton times...and yet there were the Clintons, seeming to endorse the whole thing. In Thursday’s Washington Post, columnist Melinda Henneberger wrote on page A-2 that the event was “not just a progressive jamboree but a 90-minute pummeling of outgoing mayor…

Apparently, "I will think before I tweet" should be on Irin Carmon's New Year's resolution list. Her failure to do so shortly before the ball dropped in Times Square signaling the beginning of 2014 has caused her considerable embarrassment. On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an injunction which "temporarily prevented(the government) from enforcing contraceptive coverage…

Full disclosure: I never heard of Dean Obeidallah before his name came up in connection with the dustup over an MSNBC panel’s ill-chosen reactions to a Mitt Romney family photo. Obeidallah, who self-identifies as a comedian, was on the panel, and if his commentary was any indication of his sense of humor, I haven’t been missing much. He has a piece at the Daily Beast defending himself against…

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New York magazine political writer John Heilemann and his co-author Mark Halperin appeared on the PBS NewsHour on Monday to discuss their book on the 2012 election, “Double Down.” PBS anchor Gwen Ifill asked, “I wonder if Americans aren`t just sick of this and to the degree that elections never end. Do they ever end? Or are they a constant, not just the elective process, but the whole idea of…

Schlockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore made quite a statement on New Year's Day. In an op-ed published at the New York Times, Moore wrote, "Obamacare is awful."