Susan Candiotti on CNN claims CNN reporters helped Bishop's Confirmation.

[KoKo]

Media Alert: Media now involving itself with our Religious Deliberations by allowing reporters to do their investigations.

CNN has a show with female reporters on every Saturday. They sit around in a "round table" discussion with views on the weeks events. The segment was about the Bishop Robinson's confirmation. Susan Candiotti said that CNN had learned the"night before" about alegations against Robinson from an Anglican group. She said their reporters did a check on the "Website that was in question and reported back to the Episcopal Council that the website was not a porn website and that one had to click several sites away to get to any porn pictures. She said the reporters found no evidence that Robinson was in any way affiliated with the "website in question" and they then alerted the Council of CNN's reporters findings and that then the Church Council did their own investigating and found the website and the other issue had no basis and so the vote for Robinson went on and he can now be ordained. (I believe CNN's findings are true and that Robinson is innocent of these last minute charges, btw)

My question is this: Since when is it up to CNN to investigate people? Why would the Church allow this interference in it's deliberations? Is this what our press should be doing. In this case, many folks will think that CNN provided a great service by having reporters do an investigation so that the vote for Ropbinson wouldn't be held up or delayed indefinitely.

But, if they are doing free research for the Episcopal Church Governance in this instance WHO ELSE are they doing their own independent research for?

Isn't this a question of the Press overstepping? What ramifications could this have........what else have they been doing? If someone knows how to get the transcript for this show please do.......and look for Candiotti's report. It was about 10:45 a.m. (est), on CNN, but I don't know the name of the show. On EDIT: I'ts called "On the Story" from 10 to 11:00 (est) according to TV Guide.

(BTW: since many of you know I'm an Episcopalian.....and had questions about Robinson's ordination...you may feel I'm reporting this because I was against Robinson.....and, therefore,it doesn't matter that CNN did it's own investigation and interfered in Church
business. My answer is that I, myself, thought these "last minute allegations against Robinson were bogus and trumped up" and I did not post or involve myself in any Robinson posts on DU after the one I posted saying "I am an Episcopalian and I have problems."
This is a MEDIA INVOLVEMENT issue I'm bringing up.)

[joeybee12]

1. Whos is this Candiotti Whore?

Seriously, is she a CNN reporter, or some member of a right-wing group?

[madmax]

2. She's a CNN reporter

I prefer the term 'talking head'. :evilgrin:

[KoKo]

7. No, I don't have a problem with Candiotti, and I'm glad she reported it...

because it exposes that CNN folks are into our lives doing reporting on issues that they should not be involved in. If CNN was involved in an investigative report for their own organization, and their reporters are being paid to do it by CNN then that's what they are supposed to be doing. But, getting involved with church business is wrong, IMHO...and worrisome. I'm assuming an Anglican Group leaked the "allegations" to CNN and asked them to check out the "website." CNN should have said NO! You present this to the Church Council and let them check it out. Since when are CNN's staff supposed to get involved with something thats a CHURCH issue? As, I said, I think this was a move against Robinson that backfired on whatever Anglican group presented this bogus info.......(even though I have problems of my own with Robinson's confirmation......) Why was CNN an arbitor in the matter by doing it's own investigating?

[americanstranger]

10. Revisionist history.

Candiotti was among those who were breathlessly reporting the charges against the bishop-to-be. Atrios has a few posts about Candiotti's involvement on his blog (http://atrios.blogspot.com).

She was a goddam pitchfork-carrier, and now she's portraying herself as 'helping' Robinson? Sheah, right.

-as

[KoKo]

17. Stranger, replied to you below on this thread before I saw this......but..

as I said, I hadn't been aware of any of Candiotti's reporting on Robinson until I saw the show this morning where she was making it sound like CNN had been responsible for exposing that Robinson had been unfairly and wrongly accused.

So, in fact from your links she WAS doing "revisionist history." Since she may have been the one that Barnes was leaking to. But, on the other hand if Robinson has been cleared then it's because CNN investigated so in the end most folks will feel CNN did a great job countering "smear" tactics.

But, I oppose that CNN even got involved and reported the smear tactics. That was Church business.

[DUreader]

3. CNN investigating? Sounds like hype.

Investigative reporting is dead.

I guess maybe they do private investigating. They sure don't

use it in their news.

I think they are being self congratulatory.

[DUreader]

5. To clarify, why would you believe anything cnn says?

?

[Ivory_Tower]

4. On the other hand

Isn't it the job of investigative reporters to investigate? After all, I've been concerned for ages that investigative reporting has deteriorated into complacency, and simply reporting whatever a PR group feeds them.

The only concern I have about this is that CNN appears to have simply reported back to church officials, that is, it wasn't treated as a news story -- at least that's the impression I got from your post (I didn't see the CNN reports). Did they run a story at the same time explaining that the accusations were bogus? Did they run the ORIGINAL story bringing up the allegations? If they ran either (or both) of these stories around the same time, I could see them contacting officials and relaying their findings in the context of getting "comments" for the follow-up story.

If they didn't run a follow-up story, and simply gave the results to the church officials, then I think they just do a lousy job of running a so-called news organization.

[KoKo]

8. Ivory Tower....you make very good points. I don't watch CNN enough to

to know the exact timing of the "before and after" but the clips I saw I don't remember that CNN said they were doing an independent investigation of the allegations agains Robinson when the news broke that the vote had been delayed. Maybe somewhere they said that in the 24 hours that the vote was delayed.....and another DU'er will know.

This is the first I heard that CNN had involved themselves. And their involvement did speed up the vote on Robinson because they had access to check out everything about the "website" in question which would be more complicated than just doing a "llaptop earch" as one poster on this thread suggested. Candiotti gave the impression that the website and everything to do with it had been thoroghly investigated by their reporters. The speed at which the church's investigators announced that the allegations were bogus was surprising to me in the reports I heard.....because it was less than 24 hours I believe before the confirmation vote occurred, so it stands to reason that the CNN investigation was what allowed the allegations to be quickly discovered as unfounded and bogus.

[realFedUp]

6. A simple use of a laptop...

I imagine when anyone with a laptop at the convention
got word of the site, they went to it and found out for
themselves.

I'm sure there were lots of google searches also
on David Lewis.

[Ripley]

9. Why is this issue so important for them to do such investigative work?

And yet they can't find the PNAC website?

What a joke CNN has become.

[QC]

11. What's the problem?

Robinson's detractors made the charge publicly, so what is the problem with a news organization investigating something that is a subject of public discussion? Frankly, I wish more news outfits would refute smears against public figures, instead of just repeating them, like the "Al Gore is a liar" smear.

There are lots of reasons to criticize CNN, but this one seems like quite a reach.

FWIW, I'm also an Episcopalian, and found it disturbing--but not at all surprising--that the church's so-called conservatives were so willing, even eager, to lie about an opponent. Throws all their insufferable moral posturing into an interesting light.

[Ramsey]

12. The version I heard

Barbara Bradley Haggerty gave this version of events on NPR last week.

She said that the conservative group from the church, the American Anglican Council, who were opposing Robinson's confirmation had come up with the information about the two allegations: the inappropriate touching incident and the porn site connection. They intially contacted a number of members of the press, including Ms. Haggerty, trying to get them to report on the scandal. She said that none of the reporters would do so at the time because it was basically the night before the vote was to take place and they didn't have time to confirm the story. But the reporters did start to investigate the story, going to the website in question for example.

The ACA became frustrated that they couldn't get the press to make the accusations public at this eleventh hour, so they took the accusations to the church leadership itself. Recall how quickly these events unfolded, mere hours before the confirmation vote was to occur. As you know, the church appointed Bishop Gordon Scruton to investigate, who found that both allegations were baseless. The touching incident involved Robinson placing his hand briefly on a man's arm and back in a public forum while answering a question. The website for Outright was established after Robinson had been involved with the group, and was not pornographic. Porn sites could only be accessed by taking several hyperlinks away from the site itself, and Robinson knew nothing about the website anyway.

So, since the ACA initally went to the the press and asked several reporters (presumably including CNN) to investigate the story before they took the allegations to the church itself, that doubtless explains why the reporters were inverstigating the story before the church was. It doesn't seem too unreasonable that they would then share their findings with the church leadership. I would argue that the ACA went to the press first because their main intention was to smear Robinson, rather than a genuine concern about his ethics (other than the fact that they think homosexuality is aberrant in itself).

Edit: typos

[KoKo]

15. Thanks Ramsey for that additional information........but....

It still bothers me that any church group would go to CNN and ask them to get involved. If CNN had been doing this story as part of it's own Special Investigation, then it would make sense that they would get reporters involved.

But, for CNN to get involved with what was supposed to be the "Churches Own" investigation is what bothers me about the Candiotti report. She made it sound like CNN had done the church a favor, imho.......and I worry about the media getting involved with the churches private issues. They could have held the Robinson story.......who said it was their job to turn it into a KOBE story, anyway.

That was my concern. But, as I said.......I appreciate the background info from you, it fills in some gaps for me :-)'s.......thanks.

[Eloriel]

13. I can't believe I'm reading what I'm reading here

Good GOD. We sit around DU all day, every day, bemoaning the fact that journalists no longer bother to do ANY investigating so as to sort out truth from fiction, and then when they DO, someone bashes them for it.

Un-freakin-believable.

Overstepping? FINDING OUT THE TRUTH AND SHARING IT IS OVERSTEPPING?

Eloriel

[americanstranger]

14. This is what I'm talking about -

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_08_03_atrios_archive.html#106004002173798837

Candiotti: "First, let's show you a bit of the Web site. We will not show you all of its entirety but if you go to it and make a few clicks and then leave the Web site using various links and make a few more clicks you discover an erotica, what is described as an erotica site where you can download or view rather some photographs. Of course you have to pay to see additional photographs."

(From Atrios' archives)

Candiotti and CNN may have investigated the story, and that, as you point out, is their job. But I'm a little annoyed at her assertion that they were helping Robinson, when in fact, she was one of the reporters doing the figurative butt-sniff on this 'story' and feeding the hype from the get-go.

I've got no problem with reporters investigating - it is, after all, what they're supposedly paid to do. But Candiotti is trying to have it both ways here, and that is pretty low of her. Just my opinion.

-as

[KoKo]

16. Stranger....thanks for sending this quote about what Cadiotti was

reporting. Since I don't watch CNN most of the time I never saw the report of hers or paid attention to the allegations against Robinson because as I said in my post, "I thought they were bogus from the beginning because it was an "llth hour revelation" and even "I" who wasn't infavor of Robinson's Ordination to begin with thought it was a smear job by those who were opposed to him. (I would never condone tactics like that...) BUT, I thought the church was supposed to investigate not CNN turing it all into a circus.

Now that I see that Fred Barnes is a Conservative Episcopalian (I wasn't aware until your information) I can see why they leaked to CNN........and then CNN got involved. Which even goes to my point more: why the hell is CNN getting involved in Church's business and why is Fred Barnes making it a media circus.

The whole thing is just one more example of MEDIA functioning for "Special Interests." And, maybe I have my "knickers in a knot" and none of you see that this is ethically questionable for either group pro-Robinson or anti-Robinson to be involving a corporate cable (AOL-Time Warner) into sending reporters to investigate what's really the church's business.

Surely if CNN wants to be involved in Church Policy then they should start sniffing around the Fundies and some other groups and seeing if they can track down info on what goes on inside THEIR business. Like Falwell and Nigeria....like voting pamphlets passed around urging congregations to vote Republican and all the rest of it.

Oh well.......I think some of you get where I'm coming from.......and others think my knickers are knotted. LOL's

We need to TAKE BACK THE MEDIA! And I know you are working on it Stranger........thanks!

[alaine]

18. I knew it was too good to be true...

I flashed back on the old days when reporters actually reported, and they had stuff to report because they investigated.

So, she wasn't trying to help, she was actually looking for dirt...maybe she's just playing it this way now in order not to ruffle any feathers of people who were pro-Robinson.

I almost choked this afternoon watching the C-span repeat of the panel with Joe Wilson from Monday when the Time reporter said that they didn't report on the opposition to the Iraq invasion once the war started because there was no opposition to report on, and "the democrats were all over the place". That seems to paint the war as a partisan issue, which it clearly was not, and there was firm opposition from populations in other countries as well.

Reporters nowadays, for the most part, suck. So many are a literate version of the street-corner hustler doing the bidding of their corporate pimps. Any one who dares to actually report real news in this country is a hero in my book. It's not their fault, of course, the view they express are held by the powers that be, they are just messengers with microphones.

Just for a moment on reading the initial post I though there might be a shred of hope of returning to the old days, but no so. Sadly, back to reality of the present. It reminds me of what that reporter told Bev Harris when she asked them to cover SAIC's being asked to evaluate the Diebold software. He/she responded that they wanted a big story, but "not this big".