Former CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour appeared on Wednesday's Piers Morgan show and was praised as being like "the queen of England" and "Beyonce [1]." The Piers Morgan Tonight host also allowed Amanpour to get away with declaring herself non-"ideological" and not "opinionated."
Amanpour, who once compared Christians who don't watch R-rated movies to "totalitarian regimes," bragged about her role as a journalist, "... You're not trying to say this is right or that is right. You're not trying to be political. You're not trying to be ideological."
The This Week host, who in 1999 blamed Mikhail Gorbachev for the "unbridled capitalism" that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, boasted, "I don't believe that I'm opinionated when it comes to ordinary stories."
Amanpour, who is married to Jamie Rubin, a former advisor for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, proclaimed, "I believe in a lot of liberal policies and a lot of conservative policies."
Amanpour grew up in England and attempted to use this as a way to prove her conservative bona fides. She claimed, "I don't know why I'm saying this, but I remember my first democratic vote was for Margaret Thatcher in England." Of course, Britain has a parliamentary government and citizens don't directly vote for the office of Prime Minister.
The Media Research Center compiled a Profile in Bias of Amanpour's most liberal, most biased quotes. It can be found here [2].
Morgan sycophantically began the show with this praise: "Christiane, watching you come back into this studio just now was like almost the queen of England returning to meet her subjects
The cable anchor also offered his own unsupportable claim on the subject of fairness. Morgan declared, "And people have always got this quaint idea about CNN, that it doesn't have opinions. What it doesn't have is partisanship, which is a very different thing from having an opinion."
This is the same host, who, while talking to Ann Coulter on June 07, 2011 [3], wondered, "Where is the similar mob to Mussolini's and Hitler's in the modern democratic era?...Tea Party?"
No partisanship there.
A partial transcript of Amanpour's comments about bias can be found below:
06/22/11
PIERS MORGAN: Christiane, watching you come back into this studio just now was like almost the queen of England returning to meet her subjects. The sort of warmth and adoration that was thrown your way there, it was really quite touching. How was it for you?
AMANPOUR: Well, really touching and fantastic. These are people who I worked with all my career. And I'd obviously dispute the word subjects. We're a team. I've always been a team player. I believe strongly that television- that all our, our, our medium is only a team operation.
...
MORGAN: What is the art of being a good journalist? Not just an ordinary journalist, or even- in fact, take it a step further, to be a great journalist, what does it take?
AMANPOUR: Well, I think to be a journalist takes a fundamental commitment, a fundamental pursuit of truth, and to be curious and to admit that you don't know everything, that you're not trying to put your stamp on the world, that you're not trying to say this is right or that is right. You're not trying to be political. You're not trying to be ideological. You literally try to uncover more and more information in order to make sense of the world and to impart it as best you can.
...
MORGAN: What I've always liked about your style is it's- I wouldn't say confrontational, but you've never shied away from being opinionated. And people have always got this quaint idea about CNN, that it doesn't have opinions. What it doesn't have is partisanship, which is a very different thing from having an opinion. And whether it's been in Bosnia or about Rwanda or any of these big issues, you've never been afraid to speak your mind, to take sides, if need be, if you see a genuine inequality in terms of a defensible position between the sides, you'll take a side.
AMANPOUR: Well, I think you highlighted something very important there. You talk about opinionated and then you talk about these fundamental massive crimes against humanity that I've been covering. And I think that there are two different standards for us. I don't believe that I'm opinionated when it comes to ordinary stories. But I do believe that by force of being confronted with it, in very formative years, being in Bosnia, for instance, when a genocide was happening, I was unable and unwilling to say that each side is equally guilty.
...
MORGAN: But the reason I said girl power is that I'm sure a lot of your instinct is, great to see women at the top of their profession, like the Sarah Palins, Michele Bachmanns. And yet my instinct would also tell me that ideologically and politically, you're about as far removed from what they're saying as it could possibly be.
AMANPOUR: Well, the truth of the matter is- and this is where it gets very dangerous having assumptions like the one you've just put forward. I am not an American. I don't vote. I don't have an ideological bias. I actually have a lot of both.
I believe in a lot of liberal policies and a lot of conservative policies. And I remember - I don't know why I'm saying this, but I remember my first democratic vote was for Margaret Thatcher in England. And the reason was because of the way the British government at the time was dealing with Iran. And they were selling out what I considered my homeland and the people who I had grown up respecting. But also, and you probably remember in the '70s, we had untrammeled union power, do you remember?
MORGAN: Yeah, yeah.
AMANPOUR: That we had no electricity, no hot water. And I remember that being part of my formative, boarding school years.
— Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [4] to follow him on Twitter.