"We sometimes scratch our heads and wonder, 'Why can't they figure this out?'" said former CNN correspondent Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communication and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina, describing his talks with another old CNN hand on his faculty.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, whose reruns often beat Anderson Cooper's first-run newscast on CNN, mocked his rival for trafficking in news rather than analysis at night: "CNN seems to still think it is the primary source for its viewers, that they know nothing until they tune in. This is, ever increasingly, nonsensical."

At CNN, they suggest critics take a narrow view of what it does.

The network could cast aside Cooper, Larry King and Campbell Brown for opinionated analysis and probably see its ratings go up, said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide.

The benefit for one arm of the company isn't worth the potential damage to others, he said.

CNN has built its business -- encompassing international networks and wholesale news reports, mobile device services, a Web site, a wire service to print publications and radio -- around the notion that it is delivering nonpartisan, straight news reporting, he said. The company has shown double-digit growth for the past few years and is on pace to continue. It invests by hiring more personnel, and this month opening a new production facility in Abu Dhabi.

"People hear what's being said and it's branded CNN and (they say), 'OK, that's news. That's nonpartisan, that's factual, it's timely," Walton said. "That's what we want to deliver around the world. We compete against a lot more than Fox and MSNBC."

The rising fortunes of HLN means the company makes money off opinion, too. One of the reasons that network's name was changed from CNN Headline News was to avoid having CNN's name associated with that type of programming.

Of the flagship network's sagging fortunes, Walton said, "It matters to us. Trust me, it matters. We want all of our networks to grow their audiences. But the fact is, (CNN) is a vibrant, healthy company that's growing in an industry where we're pretty much one of one."

MSNBC's move to the left and Fox's ownership of the right would, theoretically, give CNN a wide middle to conquer. The problem is, that middle might be more inclined to watch Tom DeLay on "Dancing With the Stars" than on "Larry King Live."

Statistically, CNN's audience is far from nonpartisan.

Of people who say their main source of news is CNN, 46 percent identify themselves as Democrats and 13 percent as Republicans, according to a July survey by the Pew Research Center (the rest say they're independent or don't identify themselves politically). The same study found that Fox's main source audience was 38 percent Republican and 18 percent Democratic.

To a certain degree, it stands to reason: If so many Republicans find Fox a comfortable home, there are fewer remaining for CNN, particularly in a country where Democrats have an enrollment edge.

One-third of news viewers questioned by Pew this fall said they didn't perceive CNN as advancing an ideology, more than Fox (24 percent) or MSNBC (27 percent). Still, 37 percent of those questioned view CNN as liberal, and 11 percent as conservative.

It wasn't always this way. In a pre-Fox world, many on the right saw CNN as a good alternative to the broadcast networks, said Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center. They loved "Crossfire," he said.

But conservatives began to identify CNN with President Bill Clinton, in part because a president is a natural time-killer for a network on 24 hours a day, he said. They believe conservative voices are weak and outnumbered on CNN.

"Could they claim to be in the middle?" Graham asked. "I think they could. I don't think they're doing it."

Liberals are suspicious about CNN because of Lou Dobbs and his anti-immigration efforts, said Karl Frisch of Graham's liberal counterpart, Media Matters. CNN points out that Dobbs' show has become less opinionated this year. In the meantime, Fox News Channel and the Obama administration have publicly squabbled.

What CNN needs is to find a way to bring the passion to stories that its rivals bring to arguments, said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief and now professor at George Washington University.

"Will people sit down in the evening and find news reporting interesting?" Walton asked. "That's the question, really."

CNN is still searching for the answer.

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On the Net:

http://www.cnn.com

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- David Bauder can be reached at dbauder"at"ap.org

"It certainly didn't originate here, but someone on this newshour having advocated for Medicare for everybody two weeks ago tonight," Olbermann said. Then he introduced a video clip from his hour-long editorial on healthcare reform earlier this month. Then, he had said:

The public option is, in broad essence, Medicare for everybody. Frame it that way, sell it that way, and suddenly, it doesn`t sound like a threat, turning this seemingly solid insurance which people have now for better or worse into something optional, and turning anything private into everything public... Medicare for everybody might not be literally true, but instead of terrifying, it would be reassuring and the explanations and the caveats would be listened to and not shouted down as anger and fear.

Later on Wednesday night's show, Olbermann's guests, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson, credited the host with the shift on language. "Well, Keith, you and my good friend [Minnesota Rep.] Jim Oberstar sold me on that branding sometime ago," Clyburn said. Olbermann didn't exactly complain. "I'm honored to be any part of it, sir," he said. Carlson said "in light of your rebranding," conservative Democrats were coming around.

It all seemed a little much, especially since, as Olbermann -- to his credit -- acknowledged, he wasn't remotely the first one to come up with the "Medicare for Everybody" idea. Last month, Bill Moyers had suggested that Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall should write Obama's healthcare speeches for him, specifically because Marshall had already started referring to the public option as, yes, Medicare for all. In a post on TPM in August, Marshall had raised the notion. "I think I could pretty much guarantee you that if the question in the public mind was 'Would you like the option of buying into Medicare before you turn 65?' the opposition would be vastly diminished," Marshall wrote. "This isn't just rhetoric. This is the most accurate and graspable explanation of what's being proposed."

Again, to his credit, Olbermann made clear Wednesday night that he knew he wasn't the one who came up with the concept. "We suggested two specific actions in that 'Special Comment' two weeks ago," he said. "No claim that either was my idea." But he certainly didn't seem to mind if people had that impression anyway.

Watch Olbermann Wednesday night here:

"When you preach this type of hatred and say that an African-American president hates all white people, you are playing with fire, and bad things can happen. And if they do happen, not only is Glenn Beck responsible, but conservatives who don't call him out are responsible," Scarborough said on his show Tuesday. "You can not preach hatred, you can not say the president's a racist, you can not stir up things that could have very deadly consequences. I was in Congress in 1995. I know where this can end. You can't do it and then say, 'I'm a rodeo clown.'"

Video is below.

In the piece, which was reprinted on MSNBC.com and caused a fair amount of controversy, Buchanan wrote:

[I]f Hitler was out to conquer the world ... Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?

Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell? ....

Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps ....

Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.

As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?

Winston Churchill was right when he called it “The Unnecessary War” — the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.

The column has now been removed from MSNBC's Web site. A spokesperson gave Politico an explanatory statement that says, "An editorial decision was made to remove the column from msnbc.com. Pat is a contributor to MSNBC, his syndicated column does not speak for the network or represent the views of MSNBC."

According to the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, only 34 percent of respondents said Fox News was a reliable source, compared to the 41 percent who called it unreliable. Its competitors, CNN and MSNBC, didn't fare much better in the poll. CNN matched its 44 percent reliability rating with a 44 percent unreliability rating, and MSNBC raked in a 23 percent reliability rating compared to a 17 percent unreliability rating. The poll was conducted earlier this month and surveyed 2,400 people with a 2 percent margin of error.

But broken down by party identification, the poll shows impressions of the networks are even more split. More than two-thirds of Democrats -- 68 percent -- rated Fox News as unreliable, compared to just 11 percent of Republicans. Sixty-one percent of Republican respondents called CNN unreliable, compared to 20 percent of Democrats. MSNBC tallied 31 percent unreliable marks from Republicans and just 7 percent from Democrats.