In addition to her softball interview with Imam Abdul Rauf on This Week,  Christiane Amanpour hosted a panel on the state of Islam. She managed to find an evangelical who supported the Ground Zero mosque. All three of the panelists were pro–Ground Zero. Even worse, Amanpour — with not a shred of evidence — claimed that mosque opponents are taking the position that al-Qaeda is building the Ground Zero mosque. Huh? Is anyone making that argument? She also takes as fact that the Ground Zero incident was “whipped up by certain political interests.”

This sort of performance merely reinforces the perception that Amanpour plays fast and loose with the facts. And let’s get real — there is more than sloppiness at play here. Whether claiming that waterboarding is akin to torture by despotic regimes, parroting the CAIR line, advocating against the Iraq war, or throwing softballs at the Ground Zero mosque team, she has hardly been a role model for balanced journalism. Even liberal media critics have figured out that this is not the venue for her.

As a colleague with mainstream-news experience observed recently, it is hard to “believe ABC expects to hold or build an audience this way.” Maybe an MSNBC shouting-heads show would be up her alley — but a serious Sunday network talk show? At some point I suspect that the ABC brain trust will have to admit error and get her out of there.