But when they start misquoting public figures to make them look better for readers who might be fans of theirs, they’ve crossed that important line between timidity and servitude.

Remember when Sarah Palin told Katie Couric that she read “all” the newspapers?  One of the most well-documented moments of the campaign?  Well, CNN, and particularly Political Ticker producer Alexander Mooney conveniently forgets what she said.  Instead they’re quoting her as saying “Um of them” rather than “all of them.”

In a new Political Ticker post where they farm Palin’s powderpuff interview complaining about the media with a conservative host, they don’t just misquote her, but also pull one of my favorite tricks.  They say her now-infamous interview with Katie Couric “appeared to go poorly.”  No, not that it went poorly, which the entire planet knows it did, but it merely “appeared” to go poorly — the implication being, the interview actually went quite well… but appearance and perception threw it all out of whack.

But hey, I guess printing that something “appeared” such a way is one step above printing that “some people said” it was that way, which used to be the industry’s standard dead-fish-code for not taking a stand.  Check out this double whammy:

Palin also faulted the McCain campaign for agreeing to a series of sit-downs with Couric after the first one appeared to go so poorly.

During one of those follow-up interviews, Palin took heat for appearing to be unable to name the newspapers or magazines she reads: “Um of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years,” was the Alaska governor’s response.

No, it wasn’t.

What’s that?  Maybe they didn’t misquote her?  Maybe there is some sort of debate about whether she said “All of them” or “Um of them”?  Well, aside from the fact that doing a google search for her name and that quote brings up only a single page — CNN’s ticker post with the misquote — there also happens to be this pesky viral video, which doesn’t lie to soften its impact for an audience:

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No, really:

[Clinton's environmental speech] was a tour de force: so deep in the details that the propeller-heads were swooning, yet simple and compelling enough that I could follow it. On the day before his 62nd birthday, I couldn’t help cursing the 22nd Amendment, which limited Clinton to two terms. Heck, he’s still 10 years younger than McCain.

Now might be a good time to mention that Begala has been an employee of the Clintons for nearly two decades, and as a senior political correspondent for CNN during the most recent Democratic primaries (not to mention during the entire 2000 era), he was the clear architect of their unabashedly pro-Hillary bias.

After Hillary lost in the primary, Begala has been relatively scarce on CNN — apparently, he didn’t have anything left to say about the presidential race now that a Clinton wasn’t involved. (Note: CNN took so much heat for regularly featuring Begala and James Carville’s political commentary while they were paid staffers for Hillary Clinton, they briefly kicked them off the air for the final part of the primaries. Now, CNN has a massive disclaimer at the beginning of all his articles disclosing all his Clinton affiliations and promising that he’s no longer on the Clinton dole. Right.)

But now, just before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Begala reemerges to claim that neither the Obama nor the McCain presidential tickets are likely to be good enough, and that no one should care who they choose as vice president.

This is an ominous sign for the Denver convention, as Democrats are still worried about what sorts of antics the Clintons and their rabid fans might pull. Clinton is already going to ask that her delegates are seated — it’s considered an “honorary” measure, but it will do nothing to make the party appear unified behind Obama — and Bill Clinton has been wildly unpredictable and bitter regarding his post-primary remarks about Barack Obama.

Most people think the Clintons will do all they can to help Obama win. I’m not so sure. They seem to still be considering an Obama win tantamount to a Clinton loss. And Paul Begala’s timely reemergence is not a good sign.

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It’s 25,000 people who have “signed” an online petition, sponsored by a pro-Clinton group, “VoteBooth.” And considering the fact that online petitions regularly gather hundreds of thousands of votes, coupled with the fact that 18 million people voted for Hillary Clinton during the primaries, it seems to me that 25,000 people is a remarkably low number of participants.

And, to quote a colleague of mine over at Melted Reel, “we all know how effective online petitions are, and how seriously everyone takes them…” </snark>.

CNN, of course, is taking it very seriously. How odd! An international news outlet taking time out of its busy schedule to report on the tallies of various online petitions… I wonder why CNN is so interested in Hillary for VP.

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Here’s the video — commentary below:

At first, it seemed like she had gone crazy — she had finally lost control of her already weak grip on reality, and started to publicly root for the death of Barack Obama. But it wasn’t true.

No, she didn’t go crazy until Sunday.

As of today, she is using her mouthpieces at CNN to both blame Obama for the fact that people are outraged, not her own foolishness, and also to claim that her mention of RFK had nothing to do with Obama, saying:

I was deeply dismayed and disturbed that my comment would be construed in a way that flies in the face of everything I stand for — and everything I am fighting for in this election.

She also blamed the editor of the New York Daily News, who was nice enough to give her Op-Ed space to explain herself, and Bobby Kennedy Jr., for god’s sake, for “misinterpreting” her comments.

And obviously they were misinterpreted. No, Robert Kennedy, a man who died on his way to becoming the nominee of the Democratic party, obviously has nothing to do with Barack Obama, her opponent, who happens to be a man on his way to becoming the nominee of the Democratic party. The only possible alternative, of course, would be that she was comparing herself to RFK. So… let’s just not delve too deeply into that possibility.

No, definitely not.

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It looks as though the Democratic party is starting to come together behind their presumptive nominee. Now, we can start the general election proper, which should be more interesting than it otherwise would’ve been, since both Obama and McCain have a strong appeal to independents and party moderates.

And what about CNN.com? Have they toned down their anti-Obama bias? A little bit. But you tell me if you’ve ever seen them link directly to Essence Magazine, an African American culture mag, other than today, when they’re linking to a feature about what John McCain will do to help African Americans?

I’m not saying it’s wrong for this Essence article to exist, and I’m certainly not implying that John McCain won’t do anything for African Americans. All I’m saying is, CNN has never linked to Essence before.

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With a sickeningly obvious tone of glee, CNN’s Mallory Simon wrote an “article” which is, literally, a detailed play-by-play of the events on Dupri’s MySpace and Facebook pages. She reports on Dupri’s Facebook ’status updates,’ and tries to psychoanalyze what was going on in Durpi’s head when she wrote them.

For example:

“Early Thursday morning, it appears Dupre realized she needed to make some changes to alter what the public would be able to know about her.”

And surely CNN’s round-the-clock profile stalking had nothing to do with that realization.  The whole article is just a big list of things like that. “Early Thursday morning,” “At 3:00pm,” and finally: “By 2:30pm, her MySpace and Facebook pages were gone.”

Yes, that’s right. Dupri was chased off the internet by tabloid journalism — and yes, CNN’s extravagance with the story is significant, because they represent one of the most heavily-trafficked news sites on the web. And Mallory Simon just sat there and watched her updates roll by, taking notes and sketching out ways to somehow make Dupri’s friend requests a legitimate story.

CNN does go out of its way to quote one actual person, though. It’s a Law Professor (oh, god) from American University (Jesus Christ). And he’s happy to inform CNN and you, the reader, that Dupri has no right to privacy and deserves no respect from the media. After all, she opened up a MySpace account — why would she ever expect that information not to be exploited for free by mainstream media outlets?

That same law professor has some snarky comments about Dupri’s interest in singing, and her frustration that people were flooding her with hate mail:

“Unfortunately, you can’t say, ‘Oh well, I didn’t want that kind of publicity, I only wanted positive publicity,’”

I wonder what kind of publicity the professor wants.

Simon even goes so far as to detail how much she loves to investigate her subjects on the internet:

“Facebook and MySpace have become one of the go-to background tools for journalists in the past couple of years, allowing members of the press to put a face to the subject of their story and find out more about them.”

Look, I’m all for open source media, fair use, and free content — I think we should all visit social networks and interact with one another. And I’m well aware that CNN is within its rights to exploit this sort of information. It’s hypocrisy I’m against. It’s the fact that CNN would probably send me a cease and desist letter if they saw their logo on my blog. And exploitation, no matter what the source, is unethical. CNN can be my guest to write any number of stories that cite MySpace and Facebook pages — as long as they’re part of actual stories.

These last two were not actual stories. They were barely tabloid stories. I hope CNN gives some of their ad revenue from this week to that poor woman, who had to close up her social media accounts (which she was using to promote herself and build an audience for her non-prostitute ventures) because of all the hate mail and spam messages CNN’s white, middle-aged demographic started to send her.

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