CNN Obama piece a dog's breakfast

Wolf Blitzer and Bill Schneider are two of the very few left at CNN who I can stomach, but this piece is very misleading and selective.

First of all, as Media Matters has reported, this report leaves out that Obama acknowledged in the introduction of his book, Dreams of My Father, "that [Obama] created composite characters, presented dialogue that 'is necessarily an approximation of what was actually said or relayed to me,' and changed the names of most of the 'characters ... for the sake of their privacy.'"

This one minute drive-by shooting of Obama by Schneider, another one of the few CNN reporters I respect, sounds more like a Fox News strategy session, or for that matter, a RNC strategy video (Wait - those two are the same thing. Never mind.)

A few of my thoughts...

First off, I'm sick to death of hearing about the anti-Hillary Clinton Apple Computer ad. To me, this non-story story was all over the news for three or four days. Then, a week later, it was revealed that the ad had been created by an employee of a firm the Obama campaign hired to do some work. Immediately upon his being "outed," the guy was fired, a fact that Schneider neglects to mention in the disingenuous report above.

Secondly, as Media Matters so adeptly points out, Schneider takes the title right from The Politico, which seems sort of lame. There are no true ideas left in journalism, Bill, but you can't come up with your own title?

Just a quick thought about The Politico and The Drudge Report - it would be nice if the mainstream media did a little reporting of its own for once, instead of taking the word of GOP shill Matt Drudge, a journalistic hack who has admitted that a. "He's not a real journalist" and b. Never even attended college, from what I can tell. Not that college is a pre-requisite for being intelligent, but it always helps.

It's pretty funny how quickly the "news" networks will pick up just about anything on Drudge and report it as fact. The most shining example of this is the recent announcement by John and Elizabeth Edwards that her cancer has returned. A few hours before the announcement was made that Edwards would stay in the campaign, The Politico ran a one-source story that Edwards was withdrawing from the race. Of course, then Drudge ran with it, as did CNN, Thom Hartman on his radio show, etc. So, these two very popular Websites have a lot of sway over the mainstream media, and they shouldn't.

The only mistake in the Bill Schneider piece at the top of this page is that he's even reporting stuff like this in the first place. Even at this early stage of the campaign, this is broadcast filler and little else.