Wicked Garden: Video Recap of CNN's Plants at Democratic Debate

"Undecided voters," indeed.

Some more links on the Wicked Garden at Gateway Pundit, including this killer quote:

CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman commiserated: "Nobody wants or expects planted questions," he said. "We booked the crowd and we pretty much know what their interests are. We think we've eliminated any plants."

Thanks to CJ.

Jim Geraghty thinks it's not such a big deal...

It would help if instead of calling these folks, "ordinary people, undecided voters," Wolf Blitzer and crew noted that they were undecided Democrats. I'm not quite up in arms - candidates want to reach the folks who will actually show up on caucus day, so naturally the audience will be diehard Democrats - but in the aftermath of the controversy over "planted" questions at Hillary events, one might think CNN would want to keep an eye on this sort of thing.

I agree with that except for the part about not being up in arms about it. I am up in arms about it -- well, figuratively -- because this is the media once again refusing to report relevant information to the public in order to help Democrats. The media consistently omits the party affiliation of Democratic malefactors, consistently mislabels strongly liberal groups as "non-partisan," etc.

There's nothing wrong with fielding questions from Democratic activists -- so long as the public is properly informed they are, in fact, Democratic activists and hacks and not "ordinary Americans" and "undecided voters" as claimed.

It might even be useful for CNN and other media groups to allow Republican activists to ask questions at Republican debates, because the media is simply clueless about what issues divide the GOP, and instead ask a welter of questions from a left-liberal vantage point. But of course they'd never do that; it's only the Democratic Party with whom they're politically sympatico to which they extend such license.

posted by Ace at 04:02 PM

| Access Comments