CNN Takes a Side

The CNN performance at the last Democratic debate, designed to turn women against Bernie 
Sanders, was blatantly biased in ways that I have not seen CNN use before. Matt Taibbi nailed it in the article below. It's a long piece, so I have provided only the opening. The review gets worse as it continues. If interested you can search for the full review on the 'net.

The basic problem with CNN is that they push their ideology too hard. (Centrism is an ideology.)

CNN is no longer on my viewing list. 

(Also on facebook)

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CNN's Debate Performance Was Villainous and Shameful

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

16 January 20

The 24-hour network combines a naked political hit with a cynical ploy for ratings

NN debate moderator Abby Phillip asked Bernie Sanders in the Tuesday debate in Des Moines:

“CNN reported yesterday — and Senator Sanders, Senator Warren confirmed in a statement — that, in 2018, you told her you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?”

Not “did you say that,” but “why did you say that?”

Sanders denied it, then listed the many reasons the story makes no sense: He urged Warren herself to run in 2016, campaigned for a female candidate who won the popular vote by 3 million votes, and has been saying the opposite in public for decades. “There’s a video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States,” he said.

Phillip asked him to clarify: He never said it? “That is correct,” Sanders said. Phillip turned to Warren and deadpanned: “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”

That “when” was as transparent a media “fuck you” as we’ve seen in a presidential debate. It evoked memories of another infamous CNN ambush, when Bernard Shaw in 1988 crotch-kicked Mike Dukakis with a question about whether he’d favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife, Kitty.

This time, the whole network tossed the mud. Over a 24-hour period before, during, and after the debate, CNN bid farewell to what remained of its reputation as a nonpolitical actor via a remarkable stretch of factually dubious reporting, bent commentary, and heavy-handed messaging.