CNN’s “best political team on television” is proving itself to be the best at closing its eyes, plugging its ears and repeating “la, la, la, we can’t hear you” when it comes to Republicans addressing economic concerns.
In its coverage of the Republican National Convention September 3 and 4, the cable network accused the GOP of ignoring the economy at least 27 times. The criticism originated from Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign, and CNN picked it up and ran, according to analysis from the Business & Media Institute.
Nevermind that five of the Republican convention’s headline speakers – President George W. Bush, former Sen. Fred Thompson, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin and presidential nominee Sen. John McCain – all addressed some aspect of the economy. That’s not including other speeches that were not broadcast.
“The only thing that we really haven’t heard from last night coming out of the RNC was talking about the economy,” anchor Soledad O’Brien said on “Newsroom” September 3.
Later in the day O’Brien cited “a lot of criticism about no talk about the economy yesterday. I mean, a lot of talk that, you know, flags and warm feelings, but no, you know, no sort of here’s where we are. The number one issue on the minds of the American voter is the economy. No one really tackled that last night.”
O’Brien even managed to level the charge immediately after showing a clip of former senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson talking about the economy during his speech. O’Brien wrote it off as “one of the very few times that the economy actually came up in a speech. It wasn’t really the theme last night.”
John Roberts told CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider that Palin’s speech had “a lot of red meat, but analysts are saying not a whole lot of substance on issues of great importance to Americans.” Schneider responded that economic references were “missing,” even though Palin discussed taxes in her speech.
