As someone who watches the media as closely as anyone can for a living, and hasn’t been at all surprised by a single moment of the media’s appalling behavior this campaign season, I have to admit that thanks to some superb reporting from the Daily Caller, I have at long last had a “You’ve got to be kidding me?” moment.’
Is it too much to ask of our corrupt media overlords that if the president of the United States was a guest at one of your staffers weddings that maybe that staffer shouldn’t moderate a vice presidential debate?
Obviously it is, because ABC News’ senior foreign correspondent, Martha Raddatz, is not only moderating tomorrow night’s debate between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden, but no less than Barack Obama was a guest at her 1991 wedding.
The media can never stop crybabying when those of us on the right call them out for their biases, and yet this same crybaby media allows things like this to happen.
Which is worse? The fact that ABC News and Raddatz thought this didn‘t matter or the fact that they tried to get away with not disclosing an apparent conflict of interest from the start.
As we’ve seen with campaign contributions, Fast and Furious, and Libya — the corrupt media not only believes that presidents with a “D” after their name are above transparency, they also seem to believe that they themselves are above transparency. Which is why I consider the media to be most corrupt and dishonest institution allowed to operate legally in America. At least public unions don’t claim to be politically objective — give them that.
Raddatz is not a journalist on my rather long “bad guy” radar. Therefore, she might epitomize all that is bright and beautiful and honorable about the storied profession of journalism. But that doesn‘t matter. There are plenty of qualified debate moderators, including ABC’s own Jake Tapper, respected for their objectivity. (Heaven forbid we jump in the Fox News pool with a Brett Baier or Britt Hume.)
Granted, twenty years is a long time, but the conflict of interest continues to this day. In 1997, Raddatz divorced the man she married in front of Barack Obama, Julius “Jay” Genachowski. But they have a son together and to this very day the father of her child is deeply invested in the Obama Administration as both an appointee and a fundraiser.
The only institution that looks worse than ABC News (the Daily Caller says the network hasn’t exactly been forthcoming about this issue) is the Commission on Presidential Debates. That organization is suspect already among conservatives, but now we know the Commission is either not vetting its moderators or isn’t concerned with a glaring conflict of interest.
This is about the future of our country. The ABC network benefits from the public airwaves. Therefore, no detail is too small, no amount of transparency too petty. It’s up to us to decide what does and doesnt matter — the public, the voters, the citizens, and the customers of ABC News.
And to not tell us this only makes us wonder why.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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