{"id":8206,"date":"2006-08-15T09:51:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-15T13:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8206.html"},"modified":"2006-08-15T09:51:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-15T13:51:00","slug":"calls-for-accountability-for-headline-news-anchor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/calls-for-accountability-for-headline-news-anchor\/","title":{"rendered":"Calls for accountability for Headline News anchor"},"content":{"rendered":"

To follow up on an item<\/a> from the weekend, [tag]CNN[\/tag] [tag]Headline News[\/tag] anchor [tag]Chuck Roberts[\/tag] was discussing the political implications of last week’s thwarted terrorist plot with Hotline senior editor John Mercurio on Friday. Roberts asked Mercurio, “How does this factor into the Lieberman\/Lamont contest? And might some argue, as some have, that [tag]Lamont[\/tag] is the [tag]al Qaeda[\/tag] [tag]candidate[\/tag]<\/a>?”<\/p>\n

The remark has prompted more than just blog complaints. [tag]Arianna Huffington[\/tag] is pushing CNN to “hold Chuck Roberts accountable<\/a>.” CNN’s Howard Kurtz noted Sunday<\/a> that “Roberts said, according to the transcript, was that some<\/i> are calling Ned Lamont the al Qaeda candidate,” prompting Huffington to conduct exhaustive search that found that the only person who has called Lamont “the Al Qaeda candidate” is Chuck Roberts.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Media Matters spoke out<\/a> as well in a letter too CNN President Jonathan Klein and Headline News General Manager Rolando Santos.<\/p>\n

One expects to hear this kind of hyperbolic rhetoric — which also perfectly plays into the Republican Party’s baseless smears of Democrats as soft on national security — coming from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, or Michael Savage. CNN, however, is supposed to be a legitimate news organization.<\/p>\n

Mr. Roberts might have a defense if it were actually the case that people were calling Mr. Lamont “the Al Qaeda candidate.” But as Arianna Huffington pointed out on CNN’s own Reliable Sources yesterday, the smear appears to be entirely the creation of Mr. Roberts. We note that Mr. Lamont’s opposition to the Iraq war is shared by a majority of the American people; we hope it is not common practice among CNN anchors to refer to most Americans as Al Qaeda sympathizers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[tag]Media Matters[\/tag] asked how CNN will respond to the incident, and whether a retraction and\/or on-air apology will be forthcoming.<\/p>\n

I’m not expecting much, but I’m glad to see CNN and Roberts face some heat over this.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Roberts delivered a classy, forthcoming apology<\/a> to Lamont directly this afternoon. Good move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To follow up on an item from the weekend, [tag]CNN[\/tag] [tag]Headline News[\/tag] anchor [tag]Chuck Roberts[\/tag] was discussing the political implications of last week’s thwarted terrorist plot with Hotline senior editor John Mercurio on Friday. Roberts asked Mercurio, “How does this factor into the Lieberman\/Lamont contest? And might some argue, as some have, that [tag]Lamont[\/tag] is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}