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Campbell Brown's non-scoop: Mixing up bias and bull in Fox News debate (with video)
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It's amazing to me that someone could miss the point of the White House's calling-out of Fox News as much as CNN's Campbell Brown has.
Brown is completely hung up on the notion that the White House is not equally targeting MSNBC for "bias," which is apparently the cardinal sin of all reportage (which I think is misguided in and of itself, but that aside for now). But the White House isn't highlighting Fox because of bias in the abstract; they're making the point that Fox's particular bias leads them to distort the truth and actively work to harm the president and his agenda. Given this reality, the White House is going to deal with them on that level, as political adversaries.
But Brown doesn't understand that. At all. MSNBC's bias is certainly to the left (excepting Joe Scarborough), but it also doesn't go out of its way to lie or rile up hatred and xenophobia. Therefore, the White House has no reason to deal with MSNBC any differently than they ever have. This whole kerfuffle is about the White House opting to acknowledge the relationship they have with an explicitly oppositional outfit. It is most certainly not, as Brown thinks it is, about policing the political media as a whole and calling out all those who hold opinions in one direction or another--and it never has been! At no point has the administration made noise about getting the press to go straight down the middle or some such nonsense, but Brown thinks that's the pose being put on by the White House, and thinks she has a scoop for calling them out on it. It's embarrassing.
In the interview with Valerie Jarrett, it's apparent that Jarrett is a little at a loss to make the correct case, which is unfortunate, as it only allowed Brown to feel like she had checkmated the White House on the non-issue.
Brown is a wearying figure. Her own opinion monologues are often these holier-than-thou, hey-I'm-just-being-honest diatribes that wind up either saying something painfully obvious, something of no real substance, or revealing an astounding lack of depth of understanding. This is an example of the latter. Brown performed similarly in the midst of the controversy over Elizabeth Dole's anti-atheist "Godless" ads against Kay Hagen in 2008, wherein she concentrated merely on how Dole had gone too far in saying mean things about Hagen (that she hangs out with dirty atheists) and never mentioning once that it might actually be okay if she did hang out with dirty atheists, and that where Dole was wrong was in labeling that an inherently evil thing. And again, Brown delivered her un-special comment as though she was the first person brave enough to denounce the attacks.
So, a note to CNN, who would like to stop losing to MSNBC: The best way to contrast yourselves from opinionated networks is to do excellent reporting and add more substance and depth, not to do what you're doing; being vague, shallow, and insipid.
Oh, and "unbiased" CNN? Maybe take a look at that Lou Dobbs guy while you're at it.
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