Noel Sheppard had a hilarious little freakout in an Aug. 13 NewsBusters post, complaining that CNN host Soledad O’Brien read a quote from a congressman taken from a story on the website Talking Points Memo:
Can CNN’s Soledad O’Brien make her sources any more apparent than she did Monday night?
[…]
While filling in for Anderson Cooper, O’Brien was actually caught on screen looking at an article from the left-wing website Talking Points Memo to assist her in a heated debate with Romney campaign senior adviser Barbara Comstock (video follows with commentary):So, a CNN anchor with her own daily program used a far-left website for her show prep before talking to a Republican guest.
Do you need any more evidence of just how far to the left the self-described “most trusted name in news” is or why its ratings continue to tank?
Sheppard never disputes the accuracy of an information in the TPM article in question, nor does he prove his claim that TPM is “far-left.” We’ll concede that TPM is liberal-leaning, but it also has an excellent journalistic reputation. And it’s certainly not as ideologically driven as, say, NewsBusters, which would certainly reject any description of it as “far right” even though that’s exactly what it is under Sheppard’s definition.
Weirdly, this has become a theme at NewsBusters. An Aug. 15 post by Matt Hadro begins, “Was Soledad O’Brien borrowing from liberal Talking Points Memo again? She was caught red-handed doing so Monday night, and her challenge to Romney’s budget on Wednesday’s Starting Point seemed awfully similar to TPM’s take on the matter.” Like Sheppard, Hadro does not dispute the accuracy of any of the information in the TPM piece he claims O’Brien was reading from.
All we have here, it seems, is yet another example of the Media Research Center being upset that the truth is being reported, despite its “Tell the Truth!” mantra.