The spectre of Eason Jordan
Eason Jordan famously sullied the reputation of CNN by trading journalistic integrity for access in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That wasn’t his only transgression of course — things of this sort are rarely, if ever, single events.
We should have remembered that lesson when it came out the other day that the CNN audience for the Democratic presidential debate was full of plants — Democratic Party activists and campaign workers. If we had remembered the lesson, we wouldn’t have been surprised at the news that the CNN Republican presidential debate was also full of plants — and that these too were Democratic Party activists and campaign workers. This is shocking behavior on the part of a company that calls itself a “news” network.
That this behavior is partisan is not really the point — the shocking part is that CNN has utterly dispensed with any pretense of journalistic integrity in clandestinely cozying up to its preferred news suppliers. Apparently CNN still prefers access to integrity (the alternative explanation is that CNN is simply incompetent, and that seems implausible). In regular companies, people get fired for cozying up to suppliers in this way. What are the chances that that will happen at CNN?
UPDATE
The planted general whom Senator Clinton claims as an adviser and whom CNN host Anderson Cooper specifically said he knew nothing about had previously appeared as an guest on CNN, interviewed on precisely the same topic that he raised during the debate. How credible are CNN’s denials?