All In A Lather
November 30, 2007 on 3:04 pm | In Main, Media, Race for Prez |
Update 7:30 a.m. Saturday: Colin says Stop the GOP Whining.
* * * * * * *
Jake is torqued off at CNN (and really the entire MSM) for the Clinton operatives who were allowed to ask questions at the YouTube debate Wednesday night. CNN, of course, did not disclose the questioners’ connections with the Clinton campaign.
Jake and others are convinced that CNN deliberately allowed Retired Brig. General Keith H. Kerr to ask a pointed question about gays in the military (click on the Kerr image above to see it) just to embarrass the Republicans. This is presumably because CNN wants Hillary to win or because liberal news executives want to show the nation what homophobes and bigots the Republicans are. The controversy has also become fodder for humor, generating yet more free publicity for Google.
I don’t think it’s quite that neat, however. I saw the post-debate analysis and when a guest pointed out the association between the general and the Hillary campaign, Anderson Cooper seemed genuinely taken aback. I really don’t think CNN executives thought, “Hey, we can get some partisans Dems to expose the Republicans for the [expletives deleted] they really are.”
More likely, they were approached by the questioners, but the questions were so appealing to the left-leaning CNN producers that they simply failed to perform due diligence on them. A simple Google search would have turned up the connection between Kerr and Clinton. And it that sense, Jake is correct: there is a similarity with Rathergate.
Do I think Dan Rather and his producers knowingly used forged documents to frame a story around GWB’s failure to honor his commitment to military service? No. But when they were shown the documents, they took it as confirmation of what they had suspected about Dubya all along: that he is a slacker and a chickenhawk.
So they didn’t vet the material to the same degree they might have if Bush were a Democrat. But the effect is the same: the media outlet loses credibility and the damage can be long-lasting. There are, for example, people who still hate Mike Wallace and CBS for what they did to Gen. Westmoreland in 1982.
I will say this about the Republicans, though. At least they had the guts to go on CNN and face what they knew would be a hostile reception. The Dems, on the other hand, backed out on Fox because they said it was a propaganda machine for the Bush administration (which it mostly is). Imagine if the Dems had backed out on a debate spnosored by NPR or the NYT. Gee, wonder if the MSM reax would have been a little different …
8 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^
Torqued I am. My only regret is that Rudy, Romney and Huckabee didn’t walk of the stage when CNN put up video questions from a kid pushing a bible at his computer cam, or another guy panning his camera at the Stars and Bars… let alone a host of questioners who were either employed by or openly sympathetic to Democrat candidates. Contrast that with the “diamonds or pearls” question that Hillary got at the last Democrat debate. There is no question that whole Republican debate was framed to show Republicans in the worst possible light. If this sort thing didn’t happen time after time after time, I might give CNN the benefit of the doubt. But “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”. Try and fool me everyday for twenty years and I won’t even pretend to think that the media isn’t in the bag for the Dems (Rathergate, “Swiftboating” as a verb, Bush losing explosives the week before the last election, and on and on…). And regarding the General (general in the California National Guard… not exactly Patton, by the way), he had been on CNN itself in years past, so they can’t even try to pretend they didn’t know his agenda. Let alone that they had six weeks to vet his positions and a simple Google search would have shown him to be a Democrat activist. But that aside, why was it necessary to raise the question they way they did? Should pro-life activists be allowed to raise pictures of aborted fetuses at Democrat debates? At the end of the day it was just another day in the life of a biased and failing American media which consistently makes me and many others quite ill.
Comment by Jake — November 30, 2007 #
So, I guess you have to be a Republican to ask a Republican a question.
That’s a kind of interesting policy, since we’re not in the process of trying to elect a president of the Republican Party, but a president of the United States — where, the last I knew, you didn’t have to be a member of any particular party in order to vote, or even (gasp!) to ask questions.
Comment by Geoff Brown — November 30, 2007 #
But Jake. You yourself have argued that a left-leaning media actually helps the GOP by artificially inflating the Dems hopes and giving them a false sense of security. So maybe this is not so bad for you after all?
Geoff,
Right now, the Republicans are trying to figure out who their nominee will be, as are the Dems. So we don’t really get to the business of electing a president of the US until next September, really. No one is saying only Republicans should ask questions of Republicans. But let’s face it, even CNN has conceded they should have disclosed the general’s affiliation w/ the Clinton campaign. They are embarrassed, as well they should be.
Comment by Terry — November 30, 2007 #
Geoff,
CNN claimed at the beginning of the event that they had selected questions from “undecided voters” who were presumably interested in considering Republicans in the upcoming primaries. Clearly that was not the case. Almost half the questioners were openly supporting Democrat candidates, and, as a result, would not be voting in the Republican primaries. To add insult, CNN chose questions that were uniquely designed to make Republicans look poorly. As with my example above, would Democrats think it appropriate if declared Republican supporters were chosen to ask Hillary or Obama uncomfortable questions about their abortion positions ( I can think of some real ringers)? Hell, NBC just asked Hillary a straight forward policy question on immigration and they took it as an insult. And yes Terry, in the big picture a left leaning media does helps the Republicans. But it is pretty damned irritating to see it in action time after time, especially when corporations like CNN are being contracted to be the “honest brokers” of a presidential primary debate. Imagine the outcry if Fox did this sort of thing to Democrats. We’ll never see that day, as apparently Democrats get sufficient cover from the media so that they can pick and choose who conducts their debates - unlike Republicans who have to suffer through this kind of circus or have the story lead every network and major city newspaper the next morning.
Comment by Jake — November 30, 2007 #
Uuummmm, Terry, I think you have put yourself in the questionable position of saying that the presidential primaries are somehow not part of the presidential election process.
To go a step further, if you have to be a Republican to ask a Republican a question during the primaries, and, when a Republican president is elected (our current situation) only a “loyal Bushie” can ask a question, the implication is that out of every four years there are only about four months when someone other than a Republican can ask a Republican a question.
But seriously, do the Republicans REALLY want to nominate a candidate who cannot respond to a difficult — or even hostile — question? Do we really want a(nother) president who can’t?
Comment by Geoff Brown — November 30, 2007 #
CNN is becoming worse than Fox because CNN pretends to hide its bias. It\’s just another entertainment channle as far as I am concerned. And if CNN were the Army then Anderson Cooper would be out of a job.
What\’s more, the real issue does not get discussed. After all, there ARE gays and lesbians in the military and they ARE allowed to serve as long as they stay closeted. Is army morale really the issue? Is there any other segment of American society where we demand that gays stay in the closet?
Comment by Dan — November 30, 2007 #
Geoff,
I suspect you’re kidding but if you’re not: obviously candidates have to be able to field questions from people who don’t agree with them, but if the deck is stacked, then the forum is flawed.
This is ostensibly why the Dems pulled out of the Fox debate. Intellectual honesty test: Were you as concerned about the Dems not being able to handle hostile questions when they withdrew from the Fox forum? Just asking …
Comment by Terry — November 30, 2007 #
Terry –
Yup, a little tongue in cheek for sure!
With regard to the Fox decision, I’ve realized that Fox was pretty much an entertainment channel for quite a while, albeit not a kind of entertainment that I personally like. I have to admit that I watch a lot less CNN than I used to as well, for much the same reason even though I prefer most of CNN’s entertainment to Fox’s.
Seen from that perspective, however, we all might as well be discussing the latest hit TV drama here — whatever it currently is.
Comment by Geoff Brown — December 1, 2007 #