Corrupt News Network

The fallout continues for CNN after the pathetic sham of a debate Wednesday night. What was at one time a credible news organization has become a journalistic laughingstock, and they have only themselves to blame.

Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times unleashes on CNN following the fraudulent YouTube fiasco brought to us by what is laughingly called the most trusted name in news.

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday's debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg has CNN's Virtual Reality in the New York Post today.

By now you've probably heard that CNN made such a laughingstock of itself at the recent YouTube debate in Florida that it could only have been worse if host Anderson Cooper conducted it in fluent Klingon.

In what was billed as a glorious exercise in democratic do-goodery and civic seriousness, CNN opened its gates to the American people and, to their surprise, the network's relentlessly touted credibility ran out the door like a dog in heat. Nearly a third of the questioners in the debate proved to be if not outright plants of the Democratic Party or other liberal interests, then at least very far from the "ordinary Americans" this whole circus was supposed to be catering to.

It's doubtful CNN will ever get back to leading the cable news race, and after this dreadful performance, they may want to reconsider what exactly their mission is.

Pimping for Democrats isn't going to win much of an audience.