Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher on David Shuster, ace objective journalist:
I interviewed now-suspended MSNBC anchor David Shuster a few weeks ago, and looking at it in hindsight, that conversation takes on new meaning. If you play it backwards at half-speed, you can clearly hear Shuster say “I’m totally jumping ship to CNN. Also, Paul is alive.” Okay, maybe not, but the interview took place around the same time Shuster was supposedly shooting a pilot for CNN, and at the time, I did find it surprising that he was so charitable to the position of Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe in modern journalism. Was he polishing his objectivity cred for CNN?
From what I know of Shuster, I don’t think that he’s ideologically driven. His umbrage at O’Keefe, in my view, had a lot more to do with being protective of journalism, which is why I found his reversal so stunning. If he had simply wanted to avoid poking the hornet’s nest, he could have begged off the question entirely.
CNN, led by Campbell Brown, has been passive-aggressively critical of MSNBC and Fox News Channel for their respective ideological slants, declaring CNN the last bastion of objective journalism. In that context, Shuster’s change of heart makes a lot more sense.
“From what I know of Shuster, I don’t think that he’s ideologically driven.”
Yeah, I can’t see that, either:
Shuster’s covering for John Edwards and his staffers in 2008 was a hallmark of objectivity as well:
[youtube q8AVkDs7MhY]
But sure, Shuster is as objective as CNN is “the last bastion of objective journalism.”
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