Wolf Blitzer and CNN are opinion journalism. They’re just terrible opinion journalism.
Wolf Blitzer, on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act:
“If they had three years to get this ready, if they weren’t fully ready, they should accept the advice Republicans are giving them, delay it for a year, get it to work there are health insurance sites that work great,” Blitzer said. “If they didn’t get it ready in time, make sure to get it right.”
It hardly needs to be said that just about every major program like this has had kinks to work out in the beginning, including Medicare Part D and Medicare itself. An online implementation this far-reaching that also has to work with private insurance sites is going to have problems at first that often can’t be sussed out until it goes live. Delaying it a year won’t fix that. None of which even touches the principle involved that if the President gives in to this hostage-taking now, it will change the face of American government for the forseeable future.
On a broader note, though, this is a good illustration that goes to the heart of the problem with CNN. CNN likes to bill itself as a straight news organization, one that doesn’t veer into partisan opinion journalism like Fox News or MSNBC.
The problem is that CNN is opinion journalism. It’s just insufferable, conventional wisdom repeating, corporate-friendly opinion journalism. Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer and the rest consistently repeat their opinions. Just today, during a discussion of Janet Yellen that focused almost entirely on whether she was too far left for the job, Wolf Blitzer quickly intoned that it’s important to say what a great job Ben Bernanke has been doing to manage the financial crisis. This was stated in contrast to a clear apprehension about Ms. Yellen. That’s an opinion, not a statement of fact.
CNN is learning what many centrist politicians do: there’s just not much of a market for corporate-friendly centrist opinions. If CNN were a straight news source it would be one thing. But it isn’t. It’s opinion journalism for voters who like Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter.
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