Should CNN Be Allowed to Host Any More Debates?

November 29th, 2007 12:07 PM

NewsBusters.org - Media Research CenterIn the greatest of ironies, after Democrats refused to participate in debates sponsored by Fox News due to its supposed partiality, CNN has now shown itself in back-to-back debates to be as biased as biased can be.

After either participating in or allowing the planting of campaign operatives at November 15's Democrat presidential debate in Las Vegas, it has now become apparent that similar stocking of audience questioners occurred in Wednesday's Republican debate.

As NewsBuster Matthew Balan reported Wednesday, "a member of Hillary Clinton's "LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee" not only asked a question via YouTube, "but he was also present in the audience, and got to ask the candidates for a ‘straight answer.'"

On Thursday morning, Michelle Malkin identified two plants from the Obama and Edwards campaigns. As her website is having some problems at the moment, Inside Cable News reported that according to Malkin, one plant was David Cercone, a declared Obama supporter, who asked the following question:

David Cercone: Hi, my name is David Cercone. I'd like to ask all the candidates if they accept the support of the Log Cabin Republicans, and why should the Log Cabin Republicans support their candidacy?

The third plant was LeeAnn Anderson, an activist that is part of a union which has already endorsed Edwards. She asked this:

LeeAnn Anderson: My name is LeeAnn Anderson and I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and these are my kids Evan and May. Maya is from China and we adopted him to give her a better life. We never dreamed that she would that she'd be exposed to lead after leaving China, and now we find trains like this that are covered with lead in our home.

My question for the candidates are, what are you going to do to make sure that these kind of toys don't make their way into our homes and that we have safe toys that are made in America again and we keep jobs in America?

As such, it hasn't even been 24 hours since this debate concluded, and three plants - all with connections to Democrat candidates - have been identified.

Regardless of whether or not CNN is specifically involved, as this is now the second consecutive incident of such behavior at a debate sponsored by this network, has it now abused the public trust enough to not be allowed to sponsor any more debates in this election cycle?