CNN, the sponsor of Tuesday\u2019s debate among Democratic presidential candidates, has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid being sullied with the stigma of \u201cliberal bias.\u201d The four CNN journalists handpicked to do the questioning have carefully protected themselves from such a charge.<\/p>\n
As Jeff Cohen noted Friday in \u201cCNN\u2019s Double Standards on Debates,<\/u><\/a>\u201d CNN made a point of including a bona fide right-winger in the Republican debate but \u201cis not planning to include a single progressive advocate among its panel of four questioners … CNN presents as neutral: CNN\u2019s [Dana] Bash and three CNN anchors (Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, and Juan Carlos Lopez of CNN en Espanol.)\u201d<\/p>\n The significance is that while a person from the Right or Left might break out of the usual frame of these debates, \u201cmainstream\u201d panelists can be counted on to ask predictable queries with maybe a \u201cgotcha\u201d question or two tossed in to show how \u201ctough\u201d the reporter can be. CNN\u2019s line-up fits that description to a tee.<\/p>\n Dana Bash, who was also a panelist at last month\u2019s debate among Republican candidates, has been a godsend to me as I hunted for examples to illustrate what has become of the so-called \u201cmainstream media.\u201d Speaking to college and other audiences, I often show this short but revealing video clip<\/u><\/a> of Bash plying her \u201cneutral\u201d trade.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Perhaps you will agree that, although less than a minute long, this clip is worth far more than a thousand words in making clear how CNN crackerjack reporters like Dana Bash and CNN senior statesman Wolf Blitzer apply their peculiar brand of \u201cfair and balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n What leaps out is how they, and their acutely attentive technical support, were prepared at a second\u2019s notice to nip in the bud any favorable (or merely \u201cneutral\u201d) allusion to Iran, on the one hand, and any possibly negative reference to Israel, on the other.<\/p>\n In Iowa, reporting on the Republican caucus 3 1\/2 years ago, Bash singled out Army Cpl. Jesse Thorsen for an interview. The young soldier sported on his neck a large tattoo of the Twin Towers with the words \u201c9\/11 Remember\u201d \u2013 making Thorsen seem an ideal candidate for the kind of \u201cneutral\u201d \u2013 super-patriotic \u2013 interview that Bash had in mind.<\/p>\n Although he supported libertarian Ron Paul, this young corporal on his way to his third deployment to Afghanistan looked like an easy mark for a fast-talking reporter whose \u201cneutrality\u201d was infused with Official Washington\u2019s disdain for Paul\u2019s anti-interventionist stance on foreign policy.<\/p>\n Pointing to the tattoo, Bash closed in for the kill, suggesting Ron Paul would endanger U.S. security if he pulled troops out of conflict areas like Afghanistan. Alas, Thorsen had not been briefed on the intended script, and the encounter did not work out the way Bash expected. The young soldier went off message into dangerous territory, mentioning \u2013 or, rather, trying to mention \u2013 Iran and Israel in ways that didn\u2019t mesh with what all the Important People know to be true: Iran always bad, Israel always good.<\/p>\n Just in the nick of time, there was fortunate glitch cutting off the discordant message. Or as Blitzer explained, \u201cwe just lost our technical connection, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n Personal Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n For good or ill, I have had some rather instructive personal experience with two of the other three panelists on CNN\u2019s all-star team for Tuesday evening \u2013 Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon. Those experiences might help potential viewers know what to expect as the Democrats go under their magnifying glasses.<\/p>\n Minutes after the impromptu four-minute Q & A debate<\/u><\/a> I had with then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006 in Atlanta \u2013 in which I challenged Rumsfeld about his false pre-war claims about Iraqi links to Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMD \u2013 I got a call on my cell phone from CNN star Anderson Cooper. He noted that I had been causing \u201cquite a stir here in Atlanta,\u201d adding that he wanted to interview me that evening.<\/p>\n \u201cBut first,\u201d he said in an awkwardly halting way, \u201cI need to ask you a question. \u201cEr … weren\u2019t you afraid?\u201d<\/p>\n Not really, I replied. The experience was, rather, a real high. I went on to suggest that Cooper could experience the same high, were he to do a little homework and ask folks like Rumsfeld pointed questions \u2013 quoting them back to themselves, whenever possible.<\/p>\n The Rumsfeld speech and Q &A that followed took place in the early afternoon of May 4, 2006, and was broadcast live. So, in a sense, it fit with the perfect storm for that night\u2019s evening news. It was early enough to fit the evening TV \u201cnews\u201d cycle; there was time to check facts; it was a live exchange of a citizen confronting a powerful official, something that is disturbingly rare in modern America; and it happened on a slow news day when there wasn\u2019t some other story that dominated public attention.<\/p>\n As it turned out, MSNBC\u2019s Keith Olbermann exhibited none of the self-censoring inhibitions that seemed to worry Anderson Cooper earlier that day. Olbermann decided to feature the story that evening, as he put it, \u201cwith fact-check.\u201d And for that \u2013 and no doubt countless other violations of \u201cmainstream media\u201d etiquette \u2013 Olbermann did not endear himself to his corporate TV brass. (Where is Olbermann now?)<\/p>\n The lesson here seems to be that, if you elect to give priority to having your comely face on the tube rather than speak truth to power, you forfeit the high that can come of being a serious journalist. You get to keep both your fame and your six- or seven-figure fortune for a Faustian bargain.<\/p>\n The issue at the Rumsfeld talk in Atlanta was no trifling matter. During the Q & A, it was easy to use his own past words \u2013 together with his disingenuous responses \u2013 to show that the Defense Secretary had lied through his teeth to help get the U.S. into what the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called the \u201csupreme international crime\u201d \u2013 a \u201cwar of aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n Worth emphasizing, though, is the unfortunate reality that – malnourished as most Americans have become on accurate information from the media \u2013 only those TV viewers who were offered an Olbermann-type fact-check would have gotten anything approaching the full story that evening. Otherwise, it would remain the proverbial whom-to-believe kind of puzzle: \u201cFormer CIA analyst said ‘Rumsfeld lied’ …. but Rumsfeld said, \u2018I didn\u2019t lie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Last But Not Least <\/strong><\/p>\n Then, we have Don Lemon. After the publication by WikiLeaks of thousands of official cables \u2013 many of them highly embarrassing to the U.S. \u2013 which Bradley\/Chelsea Manning gave to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Fawning Corporate Media eagerly joined an intense campaign by the Establishment to make Assange the b\u00eate noire<\/em> of 2010, painting him the same deep black regularly used for the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n \u201cExpert\u201d after \u201cexpert\u201d on CNN tore into Assange. It was such a one-sided spectacle, that someone must have suggested that CNN invite some dope who might try to defend Assange (ha, ha; good luck) and deny that he was what Vice President Joe Biden called him \u2013 \u201ca high-tech terrorist.\u201d I was to be the victim.<\/p>\n CNN introduced Lemon\u2019s five-minute interview of me with a very violent clip from Bonnie and Clyde <\/em>and additional footage showing other terrorist miscreants at work. (In retrospect, I was glad that CNN barred me from seeing that introduction before my interview; seeing it might have strained my Irish temper beyond the breaking point.)<\/p>\n Don Lemon was loaded for bear, since one of the jobs of mainstream journalists is to prove their \u201cobjectivity\u201d by getting tough with anyone who deviates from the conventional wisdom. You have to see it to believe it<\/u><\/a>: You Say Julian Assange Is a Journalist? Wattayou Crazy?<\/p>\n After Lemon\u2019s lemon of an interview, I seem to have ended up on CNN\u2019s \u201cno-fly\u201d list \u2013 for me, a small price to pay. I would prefer to be in the company of the gutsy Olbermanns of this world rather than the timorous Coopers.<\/p>\n Let me add here that, in my view, Anderson Cooper is by no means the worst of the bought-and-sold pundits. He is<\/em><\/strong>, however, perhaps the wealthiest, as heir to the Vanderbilt fortune. So, with all due respect, he would not face the prospect of life on the streets with hat in hand, were he to decide to go for the high of committing real journalism rather than acquiesce in the customary low of showing deference when interviewing powerful war criminals like Rumsfeld.<\/p>\n