The Problem With Soledad O’Brien: The Pretense of Neutrality
Posted by RB in Blog on August 14, 2012 1:23 pm / 4 comments
Once again, as first reported by Ali Akbar over at ViralRead.com, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien has been caught being a shill for the DNC. This morning, John Sununu called her out again for being a talking point parrot and Brandon explained it in his piece this morning.
Recall how she was busted back in March running interference by trying to downplay Obama’s close ties with Derrick Bell and you see a pattern of pro-Obama / pro-Democrat bias. For those of us who pay attention to these things, it is very clear. The problem, however, isn’t that Soledad O’Brien is biased. The problem is that she, and her employer, pretend she’s not biased.
She’s not promoted as a partisan, or even a left-leaning show host. She’s supposed to be a straight news anchor. Here’s her bio on CNN. There’s a heavy emphasis on “documentaries” and “special reports” but nothing about opinion or being a commentator – which would signify that she is on CNN to inject her political opinion and commentary into her shows. No, she’s a straight up news anchor and special report journalist.
That’s the problem. She is given the pretense of neutrality, a certain non-partisan credibility, and then she gets busted using leftist opposition research to challenge Republicans / conservatives she’s interviewing. I’ve seen some commentary from other reporters who say this isn’t a big deal, I vehemently disagree. It’s one thing to use leftist opposition research and disclose that the information is from a source known to be leftist. She doesn’t do that in the instance Ali highlights. She was passing off a leftist source as CNN’s own “independent” research. Again, using the pretense of being a neutral news network to push talking points created for the express purpose of refuting Republican claims.
I have yet to see one instance of O’Brien rebutting a Democrat / liberal claim with a conservative talking point where she doesn’t indicate that the rebuttal comes from a conservative source. I’m open to someone providing an example of this, and I will post it as an update here, but I’m betting there won’t be any.
It could very well be that O’Brien doesn’t even realize what she’s doing. If that’s the case, I hope she reads this and understands that her bias is obvious to many people and moving forward she works towards balancing out her reporting. But that’s probably wishful thinking. Soledad O’Brien is not a dumb woman. She’s razor sharp. For that reason, I’m inclined to think she knows exactly what she’s doing and thinks she can get away with it.
That’s a problem.
Exit question: Who sent Soledad O’Brien the email she’s reading in this picture? Was it an internal email from a researcher at CNN? Or was it straight from some Democrat source / SuperPAC?
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4 Comments
Every Republican that appears on CNN should hold up a memo from Breitbart or the Tea Party Express and pretend to read from it. Let’s see how well that would go over.
Soledad has been told are her life she is smart and even got into Harvard via Affirmative action. Her condescending laugh as she conducts these interviews only confirms that she thinks she is smarter than everyone else. Getting caught reading Talking Points, being schooled by Joel Pollak and now Sununu must be such a blow to her ego. Soledad, its not that you arent smart, its just that you arent as smart as you think you are. CNN needs to reevaluate her role.
Soledad is bias, toward the Obama administration, but so is most of the news media in this country. It should not be this way, especial when you are a news anchor. Opinions are suppose to be left for the Op Ed, and not proclaimed on and as News. Soledad, places her own personal spin, on almost all news that she reports on. She is not a professional, and she is doing a disservice to CNN and this country. Unfortunately she is not alone. Now to be fair there are News bias toward the right in fox news as well. But, believe it or not, you will here more of left and right position on fox news then in most other News reporting. We are all bias, in our opinions, and beliefs. But the Fact’s, should speak for it self, and the truth should be decided by the individual, not the news anchor,etc. I personally like Obama, as man, and I respect him as our President. I also believe, that it maybe time for a change. It all comes down to, whom do you believe can spend your money better? The Government, or the individual citizen. If you believe it is the Government, you should vote for Obama. If You believe it is the Individual Citizen you should vote for Romney. The race for presidency, is coming down, to the difference of the two political philosophies. No different today, as it was for yesterday.
With the ideals, and political philosophies on International affairs as an important differences, within the two parties. Strength with compassion, or Compassion with Strength. In reality, the two are the same, with slight variances. That either lean towards compassion or strength. In with dealing with Islamist, is not so much what we do, is what they do, and the conflict with modern ideals. We can no longer, believe that we are controlling the circumstance with the clash of Civilization. Unfortunately it is usually the one, with the highest Ideals, is at a disadvantage, and is not always in control. Hate is easy,to come by, and easier to understand. This is exactly what we have today confronting western civilization. We need in my opinion, a hands off approach, with most of the internal affairs of Islamic Nations. With the preparation of defense of our nation, and our Ideals. It is up to the moderates in the internal struggle of Islam. We can not Fight their Fight, for the Hearts and Minds of Islam. We can only support, and nature those Ideals.
Soledad O’Brien isn’t the problem. The problem is CNN!!