digby: Disclosure

[babylonsister]

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/disclosure-by-digby-cnn-roundtable.html

Disclosure

by digby

The CNN roundtable analyzing the upcoming Democratic debate features Campbell Brown making her debut with CNN. It's funny though. I didn't hear any disclosure that she is married to someone who worked for the Bush administration and is now on the Romney campaign.

Ron Brownstein quit the LA Times when they told him he couldn't cover the presidential race since his wife works for the McCain campaign. But no harm, no foul:

Ronald Brownstein, who joins the Atlantic Media Company as political director next week, is the type of reporter who reads the 1994 CBO score of the Clinton health care plan. For fun.

He is the political reporter who takes policy seriously, honing his craft at National Journal, after all, before becoming the chief political correspondent at the Los Angeles Times and then its national affairs columnist after the paper objected to the woman he fell in love with.

He is the political reporter who other political reporters secretly envy because he is so damn smart and so damn perceptive. (He was a Pulitzer finalist, twice.)

It's just wrong to assume journalists' marriages might influence their coverage. They're are objective and unbiased by definition. Pulitzer Prize winners! They have jobs to do. Like determining whether Hillary's husband is going to be secretly running the country. 0r whether Mrs Obama is a detriment or an asset to her husband's campaign. Or whether it's appropriate for John Edwards to continue running for president when his wife has a cancer diagnosis.

Or writing a new book which essentially says that now that the Republicans have completely spent themselves in a decades long orgy of rhetorically violent partisanship, it's time for the Democrats to let bygones be bygones.

It's just nobody's business if reporters have biases or conflicts of interest. They will rise above them because they are professionals. Certainly there's no need to know if they are married to someone who is working on a Republican presidential campaign. Why ever would anyone ever think so?

Update: James Carville, married to a Fred Thompson operative, was on the post debate show and failed to disclose his relationship with the Clinton campaign when he declared her the winner.

The Village is an incestuous little berg, isn't it?

.

[KoKo]

1. yep, let's just let 'bygones bygones' and keep the public in the dark...

:rofl:

[gasperc]

2. the debate really sucked

the questions were like 2 minute monologues, Wolf tries to bend public opinion towards conservatism, what's more important national security or human rights? Holy fuck, human rights just got shit canned?

I'm an Edwards supporter and he just did ok, maybe because I thought he could have been more visionary or forceful I don't know. All I know is that the debate format sucked, the debate sucked, I don't think it was a fucking accident that Clinton and Obama were not only next to each but in the front of the forum. Edwards was off to the far end, Kucinich got 5 minutes, almost the same for Dodd, Biden and Richardson. Cambell is a Romney plant, Wolf is a conservative ideologue trying to salvage the conservative brand and John Roberts, I swear to God, does he come up with his questions while smoking dope.

It...was...a...suck...ass...debate

Oh, and Carville at the end, Clinton won. You should have taken off your Clinton for President button at least.

[babylonsister]

3. I wasn't impressed. The candidates were fine, but the CNN

personalities did nothing for me, and to see Carville in the post-debate just fried me. I also didn't much care for the format; I think the audience was a distraction, making it look less like a debate and more like The Daily Show or Real Time. Doesn't the gravity of deciding on who might be the next prez call for more seriousness? I guess CNN didn't think so.
I did like the audience questions except now I find CNN planted at least some of them-again, not impressed.

[mod mom]

4. Heck Carville made the way for Clinton to run:

Did Carville Tip Bush Off to Kerry Strategy (Woodward)


By M.J. Rosenberg | bio




On page 344, Woodward describes the doings at the White House in the early morning hours of Wednesday, the day after the '04 election.

Apparently, Kerry had decided not to concede. There were 250,000 outstanding ballots in Ohio.

So Kerry decides to fight. In fact, he considers going to Ohio to camp out with his voters until there is a recount. This is the last thing the White House needs, especially after Florida 2000.

-snip

"Carville told her he had some inside news. The Kerry campaign was going to challenge the provisional ballots in Ohio -- perhaps up to 250,000 of them. 'I don't agree with it, Carville said. I'm just telling you that's what they're talking about.'

-snip

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/oct/07/did_carville_tip_bush_off_to_kerry_strategy_woodward