Rachel Maddow: CNN’s Objectivity Claim Is “Their Excuse For Not Really Trying”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was back on CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman last night, and the pair discussed how much her guest host Chris Hayes looks like her.
But the main topic was, “why is CNN just about out of business?”
That was the question posed by Letterman (to be fair, they definitely aren’t almost out of business). Here’s Letterman’s theory on cable news:
You have the people at Fox who represent kind of the screaming right-wing conservative viewpoint, and then you have MSNBC which is a little more objective, a little more liberal. But CNN is right down the middle, they don’t have opinions at all. Is that why they’re out of business?
Well Maddow didn’t hold back in disagreeing with that interpretation. “They think they’re doing something qualitatively different than what Fox is doing and what we’re doing,” she said. “I don’t think they are, and I think the fact that they judge it to be different is their excuse for not really trying.”
Maddow says hosts on cable news should be “trustworthy” and “authoritative with your facts” but that “people are smart enough to know that just because you believe a certain thing doesn’t mean you can’t be trusted.” As CNN prime time transitions to Eliot Spitzer, Kathleen Parker and (probably) Piers Morgan, it appears the network is moving toward that model.
As for Hayes, said Letterman: “What they have when you’re not on the show is a guy who looks exactly like you on the show.” And Maddow agreed: “I sort of look like a guy, so we got a guy who looks like me looking like a guy.”
Here’s the whole interview – also, Letterman bungles the whole Shirley Sherrod timeline but that’s nothing new (via Johnny Dollar):
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