CNN’s “AC360” host Anderson Cooper stated that CNBC’s moderators “made it very easy” to attack the media on Thursday.
Cooper said, “For candidates to attack the media, clearly the audience last night was warm to the idea, but is it just a politically easy trick? I mean I certainly think those moderators gave them ammunition and really made it very easy because I do think some of the questions just — seemed kind of obvious ones that they could be attacked on.”
CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen added that while complaints about media bias have existed among conservatives for a while, Republican presidential candidate Florida Senator Marco Rubio “had a point” in his criticism of the media’s coverage of the Benghazi Select Committee, and the media didn’t talk about the “clear inconsistency” in Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s story. He added that part of the reason the media was interested in whether Clinton could handle Republicans “because it was Republicans who told us that this was a rigged job, that this was a rigged process, the Benghazi hearing. So, naturally, we looked at it through that lens when it was over.”
He further argued that “mainstream media, print media, tends to be more liberal.” Later in the segment, Gergen said GOP candidates had “some legitimate question about whether, in fact, the same kind of tough questions have been put to the Democratic candidates as have been put to the Republican candidates.”
Cooper and Gergen both agreed that it’s wrong to say Fox News is not part of the mainstream media.
Cooper also said that there are “many kinds of biases,” to which CNN Senior Media Correspondent Brian Stelter argued that the handling of the CNBC debate was due to “conflict bias”.
Cooper further criticized the debate as “poorly produced,” and pointed to moderators not having relevant quotations to back up their questions.
(h/t Mediaite)
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