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You'd think on the very day an NBC News producer was fired for editing George Zimmerman's 911 call to make it appear he was racist media members would be extra careful to be as factually accurate as possible when reporting on the Trayvon Martin shooting. CNN's Ashleigh Banfield clearly didn't get this memo for while substitute-hosting on Anderson Cooper 360 Friday night, she twice falsely claimed that an eyewitness she had just interviewed said the person she believed was the attacker - meaning the one on top during the fight near her house - was Hispanic (video follows with transcript...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Judge Richard A. Posner was in town for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority, I thought I would stop by the famous old Willard Hotel to see what he had to say about the 9/11 Commission Report and its legislative by-product, the Intelligence Report Act. Supposedly the legislation improves the capacity of our intelligence community in this time of terror attacks worldwide. Posner, a federal judge and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, writes on a broad range of public matters. He...

There is a great great cartoon in the hard copy of the NY Sun today. I can't find it online. It harkens back to this well-known scene from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in which Eliza is crossing the ice.Click to see enlarged picture of Eliza crossing the iceIn today's cartoon by Elliot Banfield, we see Condi crossing the ice. Instead of Eliza carrying a child, we see Condi near a sign pointing to the State Department. The nasty-looking dogs who are tracking her are labeled Kerry, Biden and Boxer.

Less than a year after bashing her own network for its war coverage in Iraq, NBC News reporter Ashleigh Banfield has reportedly been given the axe. The New York Daily News says the Canadian native has been working without a contract since late January, and she'll no longer be employed at MSNBC where she's been the last four years. "Regrettably, we were unable to agree on a new assignment for her," an NBC News spokeswoman told the Daily News. "We thank her for her hard work and wish her well." Banfield's manager, Alfred Geller, added, "Since her contract expired, we...

Banfield's too good for them. Let me see if I've got this straight. Right-wing homophobic talk-show host Michael Savage, in his "book," The Savage Nation, jokes that MSNBC stands for "More Snotty Nonsense By Creeps" and refers to MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield as "the mind-slut with a big pair of glasses that they sent to Afghanistan." So how did MSNBC executives respond? Why, they hired him, of course. And when he called Banfield a "slut" on the air for daring to interview loyalists to Saddam Hussein, his bosses reacted with silence. Now Banfield has chosen to speak out, criticizing the...

NBC's Banfield Chided Over Criticisms NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC News president Neal Shapiro has taken correspondent Ashleigh Banfield to the woodshed for a speech in which she criticized the networks for portraying the Iraqi war as "glorious and wonderful." Banfield delivered her remarks Thursday at Kansas State University. "She and we both agreed that she didn't intend to demean the work of her colleagues, and she will choose her words more carefully in the future," an NBC spokeswoman said Monday. Other sources inside NBC said Banfield promised, in effect, not to do it again and to check her...

Most noteable is Ms. Banfields lack of a degree in Journalism, her tie to Peter Jennings (what else pray tell?) as well as her Canadian Nationality and Major in French: BANFIELD COVERED the terrorist attacks of September 11, reporting live from the World Trade Centers in New York City for eight consecutive days before departing to Islamabad, Pakistan. From late September 2001 to July 2002, she reported live from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, England, Israel (Tel Aviv, West Bank), Jordan, Lebanon (Beirut) and Syria in a primetime series titled “A Region In Conflict.” From July to October 2002, Banfield anchored “Ashleigh...

MANHATTAN -- War's sobering realities never reached American TV screens during the recent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield. "We didn't see what happen when Marines fired M-16s," Banfield said during a Landon lecture appearance today at Kansas State University. "We didn't see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?" On the other hand, she said, many U.S. television viewers were treated to a non-stop flow of images presented by "cable news operators...

In Third Place, MSNBCFeels Heat From Parent GEBy JOE FLINTStaff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALTen days ago, morale lurched at MSNBC when General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt appeared on rival Fox News and acknowledged that the 24-hour cable news channel, a joint venture between GE and Microsoft Corp., needed help."I think the standard right now is Fox, and I want to be as interesting and as edgy as you guys are," Mr. Immelt said on Fox's business show, "Your World With Neil Cavuto."GE and NBC are starting to exert pressure on the No. 3 cable news channel....