The Carpetbagger Report: Holbrooke’s Blitzer smackdown:
[Former US Ambassador to the UN Richard] Holbrooke: John Kerry simply said the truth. Everyone knows it. Look at…
Blitzer: Let me interrupt. When I interviewed Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, on Sunday, he pointed it out there’s an unprecedented coalition of the willing. Ninety countries have backed the president in the war on terror. And there are 30 or 40 countries with the U.S. in Iraq right now.
Holbrooke: Mighty allies like Palau and the Marshall Islands. Let’s get real.
This is pretty sad to see someone of Blitzer’s reputation simply parroting administration cant. I haven’t watched TV news in years, but my recollection of him during the first Gulf War and afterwards was that he was a capable journalist.
I remember during the late 90s when CNN was on top the world, there was a continual sparring match between Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch over the perceived leftward slant of CNN: Murdoch seemed to think that Ted sat in the control room and prompted his reporters and announcers in every detail. It never occurred to him that all Ted did was hire competent journalists and turn them loose.
As we see from Murdoch’s newspapers and now TV empire, he still doesn’t understand that: far more convenient to hire shills while you buy up more and more news outlets to make sure your version of the facts, spiced up with spectacle, is in front of people all the time.
It’s disappointing to see CNN lose its edge just when we desperately need some solid reporting.