CNN's double standard

Two weeks ago, The New York Times quoted CNN president Jonathan Klein saying that connections between on-air contributors James Carville and Paul Begala and Hillary Clinton should be “disclosed as much as we can.” Klein noted that Carville “has disclosed all of this previously and repeatedly on our air” but added, “He happened not to last night, and it's an unfortunate omission.”

Klein was referring to Carville's November 15 appearance on CNN to discuss the Democratic debate that the cable news channel had just televised. Klein explained that though Carville is not on the Clinton campaign payroll, his support still required disclosure:

“He's not on the Hillary payroll, but he's on the Hillary bandwagon, and that should be disclosed as much as we can,” Mr. Klein said. “I wasn't comfortable with it myself as I watched it.

It isn't exactly a state secret that James Carville and his fellow CNN contributor Paul Begala like the Clintons. They are, after all, James Carville and Paul Begala. Still: Klein was right. When Carville or Begala appear on CNN to comment on the presidential candidates, their support for one of those candidates should be disclosed.

But there was another CNN employee who participated in the channel's coverage of that November 15 debate without disclosing a conflict of interest. And Jonathan Klein hasn't apologized for that ”unfortunate omission." Nor has The New York Times published an article about it.

CNN anchor Campbell Brown played a role in the debate itself, asking questions of the Democratic candidates. It was Campbell Brown who began the debate by telling Hillary Clinton that she had “stumbled on an important question” in a previous debate and by asking her to respond to criticism from her opponents. Earlier in the day, previewing that evening's debate, Brown had described supporters of John Edwards as “the angry far left, anti-war vote.”

Brown's November 15 appearances actually marked her debut with CNN after having worked at NBC for 11 years. Given that it was Brown's introduction to CNN viewers, and that she was helping to moderate a Democratic debate, you might think it would have been the ideal time for her to disclose the fact that she is married to Republican strategist Dan Senor.

Senor served as a senior adviser to Paul Bremer, the presidential envoy in Iraq. According to his bio on the Bush White House's Web page, “Senor traveled to Baghdad in mid-April [2003] in one of the first civilian convoys to enter Iraq following the fall of the former regime. He advised Amb. Bremer on a variety of policy and communications issues.” Senor has also served as a spokesperson for and advisor to Vets for Freedom, in addition to being "on retainer to help with fundraising" for the 527, which exists to support the Iraq war. And Senor is an unpaid adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

When CNN received complaints about the lack of disclosure of Carville's support for Clinton, CNN president Jonathan Klein reacted swiftly, agreeing that he “wasn't comfortable” with it and adding that CNN should disclose the conflict “as much as we can.”

But Klein has been silent about his new anchor's conflict.

It's worth remembering that James Carville is not an anchor or a reporter, he's a commentator. Few people expect him to be impartial in his comments. Campbell Brown, on the other hand, is an anchor who will have her own prime-time news show beginning in February. And Carville is widely associated with the Clintons, while it is unlikely that many CNN viewers know that Campbell Brown is married to a Republican strategist who advises a GOP presidential candidate and has been a key player in mustering support for the Iraq war.

So there is plenty of reason for CNN and Brown to disclose her conflict when she reports on Iraq or politics. The Los Angeles Times certainly must think so: Earlier this year, the paper barred its star reporter, Ron Brownstein, from covering the presidential campaign due to his wife's job as spokesperson for Republican candidate John McCain. (Brownstein subsequently left the Los Angeles Times and joined Atlantic Media Company.)

But CNN and Brown refuse to acknowledge her conflict, even as her on-air comments raise greater concerns.

This week, Brown described MoveOn.org as “American insurgents” and explicitly linked them to the insurgents who attack and kill U.S. troops in Iraq:

BROWN: General David Petraeus made his reputation taking on insurgents in Iraq. But when he came to Capitol Hill in September, he was confronted by American insurgents, a liberal anti-war group called MoveOn.org.

Coincidentally, Senor's Vets for Freedom led the right-wing assault on MoveOn in September, issuing its first press release denouncing MoveOn's Petraeus ad a day before it even ran.

Brown's comments would be inappropriate coming from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News; this kind of slur against the millions of men and women who are members of MoveOn has no place on a cable channel that calls itself the “most trusted name in news.”

Disclosure of Brown's marriage to Senor -- a key player in the Bush administration's Iraq efforts who has served as strategist, fundraiser, and spokesperson for a pro-war 527 that criticized the same group she now insults -- wouldn't have made Brown's comments any less inappropriate. But it would have given CNN viewers information that would be helpful in assessing her comments -- information they deserve to have.

Still, CNN remains silent. Jonathan Klein, who was “wasn't comfortable” watching Carville, a commentator whose conflicts are widely known, talk about the presidential campaign without again noting his ties to Clinton, says nothing as his new anchor viciously insults the millions of members of MoveOn without disclosing her husband's role in a group that has also attacked MoveOn.

But CNN's disparate treatment of Carville and Brown isn't the only recent example of a double standard at the cable news channel.

Last week, CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman announced that the then-upcoming CNN/YouTube Republican debate would not include any “Democratic 'gotchas' ”:

Most questions online have been pulled from public viewing for review, but many of the remaining posts involve asking the candidates to defend their opposition to gay marriage and abortion. Those kinds of “lobbying grenades” would be disqualified by the CNN selection team, Mr. Bohrman said.

“There are quite a few things you might describe as Democratic 'gotchas,' and we are weeding those out,” Mr. Bohrman said. CNN wants to ensure that next Wednesday's Republican event is “a debate of their party.”

But CNN had included at least one question that could only be described as a “Republican 'gotcha' ” in the Democratic YouTube debate that it had broadcast a few months earlier: “I'd like to know, if the Democrats come into office, are my taxes going to rise like usually they do when a Democrat gets into office?”

How did CNN react when Media Matters and others pointed out this clear double standard? A CNN spokesperson told Marty Kaplan, a professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication, “There is no double standard in how CNN treats Democrats and Republicans. You must be thinking of another network.”

That assertion notwithstanding, there was clearly a double standard. CNN chose at least one question for the Democratic debate (and arguably several others) that clearly represented a Republican viewpoint. Then CNN's Washington bureau chief announced that they were “weeding ... out” questions submitted for the Republican debate that reflected a Democratic viewpoint.

There's no gray area here at all: That's a clear-cut double standard. But CNN simply asserts that it isn't and moves on.

So, when CNN aired the GOP YouTube debate, including a question from a man who turned out to be on a steering committee for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, how did CNN react to howls of protest from conservatives? Did they react as dismissively as they did to Marty Kaplan? Did they point out that they had included at least one question from a Republican perspective in the Democratic debate, so conservatives should stop whining?

No. Instead, they fell all over themselves in a rush to apologize for the grave mistake of subjecting Republican presidential candidates to a question from a veteran who has an affiliation with Hillary Clinton's campaign.

CNN's David Bohrman quickly expressed contrition: “We regret this, and apologize to the Republican candidates. ... We never would have used the general's question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate.”

And CNN edited the question, and the candidates' answers, out of its rebroadcast of the debate, without any explanation or disclosure. They simply disappeared it, as though the whole thing had never happened. Because, apparently, it made some conservatives uncomfortable.

This is supposed to be a news channel. It's right there in the name: Cable News Network. And yet they're editing out portions of a Republican debate that the candidates might find embarrassing, and not even telling their audience that they've done so. What's next? Inviting Karl Rove to make line edits on Wolf Blitzer's script?

CNN actually apologized to Republican presidential candidates for allowing an American citizen and 43-year veteran to ask them a question.

That's absolutely incredible. And it again demonstrates a double standard at CNN. The cable channel unapologetically inserts Republican questions into a Democratic debate. Then it excises from a Republican debate a question asked by a Clinton supporter and apologizes to the GOP candidates for having included it.

And it does so while allowing its new anchor, Campbell Brown, to equate war critics with the Iraqi insurgents who kill American troops -- without even disclosing that her husband used to be “the Bush Administration's Chief Spokesperson in Baghdad," is one of the strategists behind a right-wing group that also attacks war critics, and advises Mitt Romney. But commentator James Carville has to remind viewers every five minutes of his well-known ties to the Clintons, or CNN's president will become uncomfortable with the lack of disclosure.

CNN isn't alone in their double standards. Most other news outlets ignored the GOP question CNN included in the Democratic debate while reporting on the question from a Clinton supporter during the Republican debate. And The New York Times, which devoted a full article to the need for Carville to regularly disclose his ties to Clinton, hasn't written a single word about Campbell Brown's failure to disclose her relationship with Dan Senor.