On last Friday's "The Situation Room" on CNN, Wolf Blitzer allowed commentator and activist John Avlon to attack Sarah Palin without disclosing to the viewers that Avlon is a co-founded the anti-Tea Party group No Labels. Blitzer introduced Avlon as a "CNN Contributor and a senior political columnist for 'Newsweek' and 'The Daily Beast'" without disclosing his No Labels ties.
Such an omission is noteworthy because Blitzer had Avlon on to discuss an article that slammed the woman whose endorsement carries the most weight among Tea Party voters: Palin. In a nutshell, the exchange symbolized CNN's problem of hiding its biases behind a veneer of objectivity and allowing its guests to do the same.
If CNN has a rule that forces hosts to only mention three affiliations of a guest, Blitzer could have easily substituted Avlon's "No Labels" affiliation for "Newsweek" or "The Daily Beast," or just referred to both as simply "NewsBeast."
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