CNN’s Christiane Amanpour (left) was the keynote speaker at Stanford last night for the inaugural Daniel Pearl (right) Memorial Lecture, and she let critics of the mainstream media have it. According to the student-run Stanford Daily:

• Her view on what the cable news networks show: “The age that we are in right now is the age of serious, but what we are given is about the most banal and frivolous diet you can imagine … I don’t know where it’s coming from, or why the networks are peddling this kind of frivolity when we desperately need to get to the bottom of these matters.”

• How is the U.S. doing in the war on terror? “It is unbelievable that in this country we are having debates about torture and secret prisons … Things like Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo Bay have deeply affected the moral authority of this country and have deeply compromised it.”

• About accusations that reporters are unpatriotic: “Since Sept. 11, there has been a tendency by the powers that be that if stories are reported that don’t fit the political vision, then it’s the reporter’s problem — the reporters are unpatriotic, the reporters are comforting the terrorists … But we have a duty to say no, to say no, because if we don’t say no, and if we don’t expose it and stand up against it, then our whole profession is compromised.”