CNN ignored the first wave of tea-party protests that took place in dozens of cities comprised of thousands of citizens in each protest to follow around a dozen professional protestors (paid by ACORN) who went around on a bus and protested at bankers houses. CNN reported on the second wave of tea-party protesters by insulting them and being very argumentative and becoming offended by depictions of president Obama that they thought were entirely reasonable for Bush.
CNN covered the town-hall meetings by claiming that the protesters were "Too well dressed to be legitimate protesters" and claiming they had to be shills for the Republican party, while at the same time (well know) paid for protesters (and Democrat party insiders) were prominently interviewed without questioning their motives.
A year ago, in the election, CNN played every one of Tina Fey’s SNL skits without every running a fact check (and people associated the statements of Tina Fey to Sarah Palin) and this year they have done a fact-check segment on SNL because it was somewhat negative of Barack Obama.
Every time I have seen them run a discussion with "Average People" to discuss issues like the healthcare reform or stimulus spending they end up interviewing a very progressive Democrat, a conservative Democrat and a Democrat-leaning independent; and quite regularly you will see Blogs demonstrate that the “Average” people CNN interviews are directly connected to the campaigns of Senators or the President in 2008.
I could go on for hours listing how one sided CNN has been this past year, but I think people get my point ...
I’ve watched CNN every day for several years now due to it being the only morning news that is on in my gym when I’m doing cardio; and something happened about 15 or 18 months ago where they stopped even trying to appear to provide balanced news. I don’t get Fox news so I can’t compare to it, but if you were to compare MSNBC and CNN to a very well balanced news cast and 'assumed' CNN was pretty well balanced (because it was far more balanced than MSNBC) then the truly balanced network would look like a bunch of conservative kooks.
When you start alienating and insulting 50% of your potential audience, while another 25% are scratching their heads when you report that and organization/individual had been involved in a major scandal hits a point where they have to report on it and because they have never heard of the scandal (even though they watch CNN every day), you will start bleeding your audience.
