Two CNNs In One

“CNN’s Roland Martin: Showing Newtown death photos would ‘shake the conscience of America.’”

As compared to the times after those terrorist attacks about which the legacy media prefers the conscience of America to remain unshaken and unstirred:

“The question is, are we informing or titillating and causing unnecessary grief?” ABC News chief David Westin told the New York Times just days after the Sept. 11 attack. Explaining why his network decided not to show any pictures of people leaping to their deaths at the World Trade Center, he said, “Our responsibility is to inform the American public of what’s going on, and, in going the next step, is it necessary to show people plunging to their death?”

Meanwhile, “CNN’s Don Lemon: ‘Should white men be profiled?’”

Well, as long as we’re profiling everyone, why not. (I always figured with a name like Driscoll, if the IRA had carried about 9/11, I’d be looked askance whenever asked for ID at the airport.) But CNN doesn’t seem in favor of that idea, based on an August 2009 piece on their Website titled, “Commentary: Time for America to ban racial profiling:”

Earlier this month, one of the biggest movie stars in the world was flying from Newark, New Jersey, to Chicago, Illinois, when he was allegedly pulled out of a security line and questioned and detained for over 1½ hours, apparently because of his Muslim name.

Bollywood megastar Shahrukh Khan is adored around the world, with an estimated fan base of 3.5 billion people. His fame merited a wax figure at Madam Tussauds in London, England.

Khan had come to the United States to participate in Indian Independence Day events in Chicago.

And finally, forget two networks in one — Piers Morgan is two anchors in one: “Does Piers Morgan’s bodyguard carry a gun?”

All of which is a reminder of how lucky CNN was to acquire Jake Tapper from ABC. After a decade of Piers, and newsreaders such as Anderson “it’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging” Cooper and the Rev. Wright-approved Roland and Soledad, he’s the first grown-up journalist working for CNN in a very long time. As Mark Steyn writes, his hiring by the network is “a lesson for the ‘J-school zombies’ in the WH press corps.”