Media Fairness: Democratic Activist Plants Get To Ask Questions At Democratic Debates; To Be Even Handed, Democratic Activist Plants Also Get To Ask Questions At Republican Debates

So why are you complaining? The MSM applies its rule fairly to both parties!

A few weeks ago, during the most recent Democratic debate, it was uncovered that a lot of the questioners CNN picked had were Democratic party officials and apparatchiks. The justification at the time was "oops -- we didn't know!" and "well, it's for the Democratic primary, so of course it's going to be a lot of Democrats asking the questions."

Now that lightning has struck twice at CNN and we have a new slate of Democratic appartchiks and activists asking questions of Republicans, the new narrative seems to be "well, they were valid questions, so it really doesn't matter who asked them."

This raises the interesting question: if who asked the questions is irrelevant, then why didn't the gay general ask about lead in toys, while the mom with her kids ask about gays in the military? The honest answer is, of course, that this is a case of "identity politics" -- in many cases, who is saying something is just as important -- if not more important -- than the actual statement.

The irony here is that the argument is correct. Those were good, solid questions. But CNN, by playing by completely contradictory standards for its questioners at debates, betrays its bias: the Democrats get to stack their questions to make their candidates look good; the Republicans find themselves having to squirm and evade, or give concrete answers that won't make some people very happy.

Indeed, in both cases, CNN and the media choose questioners that make it difficult to disagree with the liberal position and difficult to agree with the conservative position. And they do this at Democratic debates, and then the same at Republican debates.

Thanks to CJ.

More... At least four plants so far and counting.

And it was easy to discover the Democratic plants-- but CNN was either too lazy to do so or, more likely, didn't want to do so. Whether it's a Democratic or Republican debate, CNN and the MSM know that liberal Democratic operatives are the only persons, other than themselves, qualified to ask questions of candidates.

If any of the candidates had bothered to have staffers watch the videos, they would have seen what seemed like a bias of Democratic supporters over true Republicans who had submitted videos. It looks like YouTube has pulled the 5000 or so submissions down (at least my search skills aren't good enough to find them), but from what I remember when I was watching the videos from time to time, it was pretty easy to ferret out the Dems. All you had to do was click on the username of the person submitting the video and you'd see any other video they posted. CNN was lazy, no doubt about it.

If You Tube has pulled the questions, that's outrageous. Because we are all entitled to see the questions CNN didn't pick -- like, perhaps, a homeowner who defended his family from an intruder with a gun making a sympathetic and powerful case for gun rights.

posted by Ace at 02:30 PM

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