Many critics of Amanpour see her style of advocacy journalism and her alleged bias as symptoms of a much larger problem. To them, she is simply another in a long line of liberal journalists who are more or less openly biased toward the left of the political spectrum and thus unreasonably critical of the United States. The Media Research Center, a conservative advocacy group, has called her “a leading example of biased mainstream media journalism.” Pugnacious conservative writer Michelle Malkin, referring to a tense exchange with Amanpour over waterboarding, called her “happy to spread disinformation about America’s efforts in the war against terror,” and holds that, for Amanpour, “the U.S. is no different than the murderous Khmer Rouge.”

It must be said that they have a point. Amanpour certainly seems to have fairly liberal politics, and often confuses political grandstanding with sober analysis. Her reaction to President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is a case in point. The prize was self-evidently given for political reasons, and just as self-evidently unjustified, something even the recipient himself admitted. Amanpour, however, remarked that criticism of the award was “overdone,” and went on to say that Obama had “obviously done something very significant, and that is, after eight years in which the United States was really held in contempt around the world, the United States has now had a new relationship with the rest of the world.” This was not the statement of an objective or informed journalist, but of someone who has bought into the charismatic political movement Obama inspired.