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“I admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate.” —
That’s what Obama said about CNN at last night’s White House Correspondents Association dinner.
Let me explain why that is such a great line. CNN sees itself as “in the middle” between left and right, MSNBC and Fox. Just recently, in fact, CNN president Jeff Zucker praised the middle as the place to be. But CNN also sees itself as a great newsgathering organization that is all about truthtelling rather than ideology. “Keeping them honest,” as Anderson Cooper, face of the brand, likes to say.
Put them together and what do you have? Keep ‘em honest, but stay in the middle. Which doesn’t work. For what happens when one side is BS-ing us more than the other? What happens when independent and honest reporting shows that these people on this side are mostly right in what they’re saying, and those people on that side are distorting the case?
CNN wants to believe, tries to believe and I think does believe that this problem does not exist. Therefore we have to remind them about it, because it does exist. And that’s what Obama did: “cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate” is saying to CNN: Accuracy and truthtelling will be sacrificed to your ideology— the middle, no matter what it takes.
(via jayrosen)
The sad part is, they had all these problems before they hired Jeff Zucker. And then they hired Jeff Zucker, a man whose entire recent career has been built on tone-deaf failures to understand his network’s audience, whatever that network might have been.
(via shortformblog)
(via shortformblog)
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http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdVhlshcRbsRFrq8j7kLmnZTuy1NZFdLv -
Detroit Gangs - a YouTube playlist
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Stan K. Diesel: Crunk For No Reason At: keeping it real is a privilege, hm? -
try telling that to black women who are let go from jobs, victims of police brutality, victims of partner violence, victims of stalking, forced to work in hostile environments, have their children removed from their custody, aren’t believed or taken seriously when reporting crimes, are accused of…
The white perspective on “black privilege” is most often completely wrong.
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