If America Has Talent, Why Does Piers Morgan Have a Show?

From The Wire at BUSINESS INSIDER:

Last year Rachel Maddow proved herself adept at media criticism when she took Fox News to task in a number of blazing segments over their coverage of Shirley Sherrod and the ACORN debacle.

…snip…

She appear to be back at it this week.  Except this time around her focus is not Fox News.  It’s CNN.

She is still scorching.

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Maddow has devoted two segments since Tuesday to criticism of CNN’s decision to air Michele Bachmann‘s Tea Party response to the State of the Union: “Inexplicably, a national news network decided that they would give Michele Bachmann a job that her own party never did.”

CNN’s Piers Morgan leapt to his new network’s defense on Twitter saying: “Sorry, but just nonsense for @maddow to say @cnn shouldn’t have run Tea Party speech. Rep split is proper news, may decide next election.”

…snip…

Maddow went on to itemize why the Tea Party Express, the group to whom Bachmann was actually responding (and whose camera she was addressing) is a “sort of a scam” ever since a Republican political consulting firm set it up and now uses it to fund candidates.

More problematic, however, and what is essentially the heart of the problem is that CNN has teamed up with the Tea Party Express to host a 2012 debate.

For their coverage of the State of the Union this year CNN did not present the news, they presented a reality of their own making.  One in which their debate partner officially speaks for the Tea Party.  And the Tea Party is a co-equal third party of equal stature to the Democrats and the Republicans.  And CNN has a competitive and potentially  financial interest in selling you that reality as if it is news.  It’s too bad.

(Links to videos at the BUSINESS INSIDER link above)
From the Los Angeles Times (opinion):

But Bachmann was right there Tuesday night, having weathered another round of left-wing hand-wringing, characteristically comparing the Obama administration to the “totalitarian aggressor” U.S. Marines fought on Iwo Jima. And CNN, whose own Anderson Cooper has previously chastised Bachmann for unapologetically flubbing American history, later aired the congresswoman’s cliched invocations of the Founding Fathers and constitutional originalism, remarks that were ostensibly intended for her narrow tea party audience.

The problem is that Bachmann is a sought-after pundit in the first place. Much of her brand is bombast, which brings with it a less-than-wholesome treatment of the truth. Getting into a tizzy over her untrue, yet confident, utterances gives her more airtime than her intellectual heft deserves. Of course, this means the non-Fox News broadcasters would have to resist the temptation to invite her on as a commentator.