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.
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.
Inspired loves the bats. She says that’s a perfect way to show that Madame Representative is batshit without having to come right out and say it.
i’m glad inspired likes the bats. i’m all about the subtlety, you know! 😉
She said they were subtle, too. Great minds think alike!
🙂
remarks that were ostensibly intended for her narrow tea party audience.
Correction:
remarks that were ostensibly intended for her narrow MINDED tea party audience.
no matter whom they were directed at, why was what she said any more important than any other member of congress?
I’m confused… The Titanic is CNN or the Tea Party Express?
the ship is the tea party. if cnn continues to ride it, it will sink right along with it and batshit bachmann.
Way back in 1980 when my little Texas town was finally wired up for cabel TV ($4 a month) there were two new channels that everybody was talking about-CNN and MTV. After checking both out, the conclusion was that both were crap. My opinion has changed very little. Love that movie title!
i think cnn used to be good. it really was about news. however, once they decided they wanted to compete with faux news, it’s gone not only downhill, but over the cliff.
sigh
i remember when CNN mission was to report the news throughout the world.
then they began foxing themselves up , blonding themselves down (sorry, redundant), and watering down content and anchors. gone are the days of Aaron Brown and Christiane Amanpour.
Vapid, vacuous and vivacious.
and void of content.
today’s CNN
perfectly state, latte. i agree 110%. even worse than the dumbing down is the overreach to the extreme right. they never reined in lou dobbs, and then they hired erick erickson.
they launched glenn [spit] beck, nonnie.
even uberxenophobia that is lou dobbs modestly takes a second seat to that. can we all agree on that?🙂
i had forgotten that they were the first to employ glenn blechhh. however, he wasn’t as demented back then, and they didn’t have him on the news, just the headline news network (which i will never watch as long as that shrew with the 1-door garage nose, nancy grace, is there). besides, i’m talking about way back, before they were infected with the stoopit and really did have some good news reporting.
Glen Blechhh. hahaha. I love it. That man gets on my very last nerve.
i think he’s gone insane. he’s so entranced by his own fame that he’s lost his mind (not that he had a very strong one to begin with).
hmmm….who would have ever thunk the media called the shots in politics?
i’m as shocked as you are, jillsy. 😉
cnn is an embarassment – ted turner has to be rolling his eyes every time – love him or hate him – turner wasnt murdoch
speaking of murcock – and his 50 min informerical while cairo was rioting
wow! 😯 i hadn’t heard about that. and he has the balls to call that a news network?