There must have been a lot of tension in the BuzzFeed clown car office after left-wing smear merchant Andrew Sullivan launched into a series of anti-Mormon attacks against Mitt Romney in the waning days of the 2012 campaign. After all, BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins is a Mormon who was brought on the staff in part to cover Mormon issues. But…
Coppins’ boss, Ben Smith, is a huge fanboy of Andrew Sullivan’s.
Other than this squeak of a tweet, a good faith search has failed to find a BuzzFeed Politics’ article critical of Uncle Sully for his utter lack of journalistic standards — which is odd. BuzzFeed claims to be an objective news outlet and yet Coppins and BuzzFeed are quite famous for lecturing and relentlessly ridiculing conservative media.
Coppins once again had the opportunity to condemn Sullivan’s appalling lack of journalistic ethics during an appearance on MSNBC with Chris Jansing Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, though, Coppins chose to remain silent on the issue.
This might sound like an unfair criticism. Jansing’s topic, after all, was the ten-year anniversary of the Iraq War. But as BuzzFeed itself has taught us, the new journalistic standard is to report on what public figures do NOT say when given the opportunity.
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