[snicker]

I don't waste time fretting about any dreaded "liberal bias" in the mainstream news media. Ideological slants abound, of course -- MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right come to mind -- but they're poseurs, not credible news networks.

I'm fully capable of digging past headlines and sound bites, thank you very much, and I can form my own opinions.

That said, CNN is my primary source for TV news. Over 31 years it's developed the horsepower to be present, relevant, agile and useful. It's not 100% accurate every time but, in my experience, it gets its facts straight far more often than do most other outlets. When it screws up, it takes responsibility.

One thing that continues to annoy me about CNN, however, is the outright clumsiness of many of its anchors. Carol Costello, for example, clearly is better suited to early-morning duty at a small-market affiliate. Wolf Blitzer, though well-traveled and smart, is such a company man that his reports often become interminably awkward infomercials for the network.

The unsophisticated Brooke Baldwin took over the mid-afternoon slot last fall when CNN fired The Crazy Cuban. Late in yesterday's program, she preceded a commercial break with the following tease:

"More and more members of Congress [are] getting a look at those pictures of a dead Osama bin Laden, and those who have been invited to see these photographs sit on the House and Senate committees on intelligence and the military.

"Coming up next, I will speak with Congressman Doug Lamborn about what he saw and why one Senator suggested bin Laden was still alive in some of those pictures. I wonder what he saw. Stay right here."

The implication: Our guys photographed bin Laden before they shot him. Intrigued, I stuck around for the interview. Here's how it began:

BALDWIN: "Congressman Lamborn, thank you for coming on. And sir, let's just start with, how many photos did you see today at Langley?"

LAMBORN: "Well, when I went over to the CIA headquarters this morning, there were about six or eight photos. And some have a side-by-side showing him living, but from at roughly the same angle, so you can use that for identification and comparison purposes. He is, indeed, dead."

Ok, at that point I felt foolish for biting on the hype -- that is, I got it and laughed (at myself) out loud. Baldwin, alas, did neither.

BALDWIN: "You bring up -- and this is what we [heard] from Senator [Jim] Inhofe last night, talking to my colleague, Eliot Spitzer. So, several of these photos were of him living. Can you explain more specifically how -- how those photos were shot?"

LAMBORN: "Oh, they just had on-file photos of him over the years, and they only do a side-by-side to show the same angle and for ID purposes for, like, the forensic people.... He is dead."

There was a brief-but-delicious pause.

BALDWIN: "I see. So the living photos were not shot in the [Abbottabad, Pakistan] compound...."

Behind every inept anchor is a whole team of doofuses -- the detached producer, the clueless director and an army of wet-behind-the-ears interns. Take a look at what Sen. Inhofe said on Spitzer's program the night before, words that formed the basis for Baldwin's on-air idiocy:

"Three of the first 12 pictures were of [bin Laden] when he was alive. And they did this for the purpose of being able to look at those and seeing the nose, the eyes and [their] relationship for positive identification purposes."

Sen. Inhofe's description seems crystal-clear to me. It didn't send host Spitzer careening into the ditch, either, but it exposed the gulf between Baldwin and common sense.

For me, this won't prompt a rant about incompetence in the media -- there's incompetence in every profession -- but I was glad for a chance to chuckle at chuckleheads.