Well, I don't think that it's any secret, but CNN's stature as a "news" outlet has fallen significantly in recent years. A prime example of this can be found in an election "story" linked near the top on the
front page of
CNN.com right now.
This story, titled "CNN survey: Bush maintains Electoral College lead", is frankly a total piece of trash. Written by John Mercurio and Molly Levinson of CNN's political unit, they discuss Bush's current huge lead in the electoral college (which apparently is 301 Bush-237 Kerry, for everyone who wasn't aware that all the too-close-to-call states have finally made up their minds!). Wow, great work guys! I bet it took a lot of difficult nose-to-the-grindstone journalism to throw this analysis together. I bet they even took the time to visit www.electoral-vote.com or 2.004k.com for all the latest polls and EV totals. So smart of them! ... Wait though, both those websites show a Kerry lead in the electoral college. Oh well, let's just call it a beginner's mistake...
Mercurio and Levinson claim they arrived at this conclusion based upon "state polling as well as interviews with campaign aides and independent analysts". So, what I read from that is they took pre-debate and incorrectly weighted Gallup polling data and used Karl Rove's (just guessing that's the unnamed "senior Bush-Cheney strategist" quoted in the article) campaign talking points to write this "story". Then they threw in a few token quotes from some Kerry strategist I don't think I've heard of before, Doug Sosnik, to give the appearance that they actually did some work and bothered to get reaction from the Kerry camp.
Additionally, to lower the standard further (like you thought that was even possible), the authors say that Colorado has come more into play in the presidential race because Democrats have a strong US Senate candidate in, and I'm not kiddin' here, Roger Salazar.
This week, Colorado offers Kerry perhaps his most surprising opportunity.
"Colorado has tightened, I'll give you that one," a top Bush-Cheney strategist said, citing the strong candidacy of the state's Democratic Senate candidate Roger Salazar.
WHAAA?! Geez, and here I thought the current state Atty. General KEN Salazar was running for the DEMs. I'm so misguided...my spending just a few hours a week on the internets has made me so misinformed. I'm sure they would counter any accusations of incompetence by saying that it's just a lot of "hard work". Seriously though, when reporters from the "political unit" at CNN don't even know (or bother to look-up, in absolutely worst case) the name of a major party US Senate candidate in a very critical race, that only underscores how hideous CNN has become. Simply unbelievable...
Since late August, Mercurio and Levinson have written four of these types of stories. And guess what??? The headline is "Bush leads" in all of them. Shocking! Scandalous! Can anyone find these jokers' email addresses? It's time to take someone to the woodshed here...