Daily Kos Slams Biased ‘Clinton News Network’

November 17th, 2007 5:35 PM

It's certainly safe to say that conservatives rarely agree with anything written by liberal bloggers.

However, on Saturday, not only was there a prominent posting at Daily Kos entitled "Clinton News Network = CNN," which received 631 comments in only seven hours, but the website's proprietor, the esteemed Markos Moulitsas, wrote an article of his own that was highly critical of Clintonista James Carville's role at the cable network.

In the end, the hypocrisy was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

But before we get there, the first piece voiced displeasure with the recent shenanigans by CNN during Thursday's Democrat Presidential debate:

CNN was looked at as the real fair and balanced network.

After this debate, not so, any longer.

For Wolf Blizter to not give Obama and Edwards a chance for follow up questions, and give Clinton all the time in the world, what would you call it?

Then planted questions. Again?

And of course, first hand account of what really happened in Las Vegas, what do you come away with?

Questions of how that debate was handled. How CNN and moderator let those boos go, like business as usual. And the boos were only directed to Edwards and Obama.

[...]

Remember, David Gergin [sic] was also on the scene, a former Clinton adviser. And then of course, Carville, Clinton's close friend adviser. Now can someone tell me how anyone can get a fair and balanced shake, with these analysts? They can not. And then, Anderson Cooper, followed the script and did very little to disclose anything, but continued to give Clinton glowing rhetorical platitudes, while calling Edwards campaign over and stating Obama did nothing in the debate.

Now the outrage is warranted and the handling of the whole debate questionable, since we have another planted question story, surrounding Clinton. One can only really ask, "Was this debate rigged?"

The reader is advised to amble through the over 600 comments to this post to witness almost universal agreement with the author's disgust.

Of course, the truly delicious hypocrisy is that these same folks haven't in any way been angered by Carville, Gergen, or Cooper's continual rants the past seven years against President Bush, members of his administration, and any politician with an "R" next to his or her name. Those opinions were certainly impartial, and by no means affected by any prior political affiliation.

How convenient. So was Moulitsas's anger at this network:

The issue isn't even that James Carville was an adviser to Bill Clinton. It's that he's an active participant and adviser to the Hillary effort. For a network that pretends it's unbiased, this lack of disclosure boggles the mind. And it's not even a new issue. Carville and CNN have been getting slammed for fielding a roster of partisan Hillary boosters as their "analysts" for over a year now.

The chyron with his name on it should continuously remind viewers of his extensive efforts on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

I quite agree, Markos. However, I've got a quick question for you: Is this a new revelation on your part, or did you feel the same disclaimer should have been present under Carville's name whenever he spoke on television during the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 campaigns?

Or, do his current biases only bother you now that they don't mesh so nicely with your own?

Also, now that the Kossacks are recognizing how such previous political affiliations might impact someone's objectivity as a journalist, what might these folks say about George Stephanopoulos's impartiality, or Tim Russert's, or Chris Matthews's?

All I can say is it's about time these folks realized what's been obvious to conservatives for years, and if objectivity in the media is truly what they crave, maybe they should immediately divorce themselves from the extraordinarily partisan and Hillary-loving Media Matters for America, Think Progress, and Center for American Progress.

After all, on a daily basis, blog postings across the spectrum of the Netroots regularly link to articles from these three entities, and do so quite proudly.

With that in mind, if a media outlet's connection to the Clintons disqualifies it as an objective disseminator of information, then the same must be said of these institutions Hillary herself admitted - at Kos's own convention, mind you - she "helped to start and support."

As such, if these folks have any integrity whatsoever, they must stop linking to MM and TP, and publicly express their disgust for their Clinton sycophantism as well.

Barring this, the current contempt for CNN being expressed by the Kossacks and their leader might be convenient for the moment, but it is about as deeply-felt as anything dribbling out of Hillary's mouth while the cameras are rolling.

*****Update: Jim at Gateway Pundit has more on this issue.