CRAZY – AT 8:35 A.M. ET:  A recent Pew survey reported that 60% of the American people don't trust the mainstream media.  You'd think the mainstreamers would want to do something about that, but their arrogance and sense of superiority are too deeply embedded to be cured.

One of the real poster children for biased journalism is Soleded O'Brien, at CNN.  Her recent interview with Rudy Giuliani was an example of press bias at its worst, but yet there are no apologies.  At least Rudy fought back.  From Fox:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was never known for being soft on journalists during his time in office. On Monday’s "Starting Point" on CNN, Giuliani pushed back at CNN morning anchor Soledad O’Brien, who started their interview typically by offering the Obama talking points for Giuliani’s reaction.

But when O’Brien started insisting that the word “cover-up” was going too far, and started asking her assistant Miguel for all the Obama transcripts, Giuliani asked, “Man, am I debating with the president's campaign? I mean, the defense of the president is overwhelming.”

Giuliani simply did not believe that if the Obama administration had any savvy, they would believe that the terrorist attack on Libya erupted out of a spontaneous demonstration over an old YouTube clip uploaded from California. He thought U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice should have known this public-relations line would flop before she announced it on five Sunday network news shows.

“Susan Rice goes on television four days later -- I was on CNN with her that morning. Says it was a spontaneous demonstration,” he said. “I knew it wasn't. I'm not part of the administration; I knew it wasn't the day after. And she had to know it wasn't. They were saying it wasn't, the national security adviser said it was a terrorist plot.”

O’Brien aired more of the administration spin: “So the White House now is basically saying the State Department dropped the ball, the State Department is looking and saying - listen, I'm just telling you how it goes - and they're saying there's intel issues.”

Giuliani shot back: “Who put Susan Rice on? The State Department? Or the political people? It was a political appearance on CNN. So what they're really trying to do is they're trying to run out the clock. They're going to have this investigation; the investigation will be after the debate, after the election is over, so what they're trying to do is cover up this scandal as much as possible."

O’Brien really started to protest.

“Calling something a cover-up kind of takes it a further step, don't you think?”

“No, wait a second," Giuliani replied. "There was - a statement was made, including by the president of the United States, that this was due to this terrible movie about Mohammed.”

Then O’Brien grew passionate: “But he actually didn't say it. The verbatim, the actual verbatim of what he said, he did not say it was something other than that, but it was mentioned. But he did not succinctly say, ‘This was due to a movie.’ Miguel, why don't you pull all these transcripts for me? We have them all in the back room, we can just pull them out.”

COMMENT:  Incredible.  "Journalist" as administration flunkie.  And yet Soledad O'Brien, a Harvard graduate, gets invited to deliver commencement addresses all the time.  And why not?  Students at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, my alma mater, are taught by one prominent professor that "objectivity is overrated." 

Press bias is playing a critical role in this election.  It's got to be worth some points.  It was critical in 2008.  But the American people may have caught on, and may be ready to discount much of the press coverage.  I may be optimistic on this score, but I hope I'm right.  I also hope mainstream journalism will come to its senses.

October 16, 2012