Damn; I feel compelled to write a post which appears to defend CNN. One of my most loyal readers has warned me not to get into the "foxhole" with them, and I don't intend. Watching the debate was pretty painful - from the dumb questions to the audience reactions, I didn't like it much at all. (Although watching Rudi's lisp get more pronounced and his upper lip drip sweat as he blew question after question was kind of fun)
Still, reading Tim Hutten's mental sloppiness (courtesy of memeorandum) really annoyed me. His piece if tripe bore the title "CNN: Corrupt News Network" and in part complained that CNN tried to 'sensationalize' the debate by using questions "that made for moments of conventional television conflict" in order to improve ratings. Note that Mr Hutten does not entitle his piece "Sadly, CNN Failed to Appeal to the Best in Us As a Nation." His title is designed to promote journalistic conflict as much as anything CNN did. It's how you sell newspapers - and the L.A. Times does it as does CNN.
Almost every sentence is fraught with outrage.
it pales beside the wickedness of using some crackpot's query about the candidates' stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that's anathema in our system -- to probe people's individual religious consciences.
You can feel the objective search for truth in this sentence -words like "wickedness" "crackpot" and "anathema" always are appeals to reason. Quite frankly, if someone answers a question about their most influential philosopher-thinker, and they answer "Jesus Christ": a followup question is not inappropriate.
Rutten is dishonest throughout. "CNN chose to devote the first 35 minutes of this critical debate to a single issue - immigration." CNN did not make this choice, the Republican candidates did in their confrontational answers. Since when is this debate, about twelve months before the election, more "critical" than the one on May 4, about 18 months before it. Can any debate that includes Tom "The Basement" Tancredo and Dunc Hunter be called "critical?"
His use of Pew statistics was deceptive and the whole piece an attempt to create controversy and sell papers. In the great tradition of William Randolf Hearst and of Rupert Murdoch's barely clad women, the bustard salutes you. Your bogus article made some noise.
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