Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sources say CNN slants the news

This source says:

Finally, near the bottom of the article, we are handed the highly relevant information (but putting it higher in the story would have deflated the entire story) — that squabbles among aides are pretty normal: “Tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice-presidential candidates also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.” (Then comes the lone paragraph mentioning that Joe Biden “has gone off the reservation as well” — though in this case there are apparently no sources, anonymous or otherwise, worth quoting to illustrate dissent in the Biden-Obama ranks).

But this comes only after about 20 paragraphs in which the slamming of Palin is done by ”sources” who cannot be challenged or further questioned, because they are anonymous. The article ends with some lines from a Democratic pollster, who — imagine this! — is quoted by name, Peter Hart, delivering one last swipe at Palin.

There are circumstances in which journalists may reasonably cite or even quote unnamed sources. And if campaign reporters are privy to squabbles among aides, that may well be an interesting story. But when a story amounts to a litany of swipes framed as quotes from nameless “sources,” there comes a point at which a line is crossed between news and rumor, between reporting and hype, between anonymous in-house gossip and “spilling out in public.” Is it Palin who’s going rogue here? Or CNN?