Clintons Boycott MSNBC over “Pimping” Remark

A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign today hinted that Hillary will probably boycott any future debates sponsored by MSNBC in response to reporter David Shuster’s unsavory comments about Chelsea Clinton.

In an appearance on MSNBC on February 7, substitute anchor David Shuster commented that Chelsea’s phone calls on behalf of Hillary to celebrities and superdelegates* amounted to “pimping” out the 27 year-old for the campaign.

Shuster’s comments further illustrate the downward slide of journalists and broadcast news towards a biased slant when it comes to politics. Recently MSNBC’s Chris Matthews (Hardball) commented that Hillary owed her political career to Bill’s former philandering ways — a comment that he later apologized for.

Early this morning on the cable network’s “Morning Joe” program, Shuster offered a half-hearted and insincere apology, referring to it as a “housekeeping matter.” It seems that first draft of an apology was not sufficient for the network chiefs or the angry viewers and Shuster appeared on tonight’s “Tucker” program on MSNBC to offer a second version of his apology.

NBC News has banned Shuster from all appearances until further notice.

I hope that NBC goes one step further and fires this pompous bag of wind, and by doing so, sending a message to their other journalists (glorified on-air personalities) that this biased reporting style will not be tolerated.

Print and broadcast news anchors, reporters and journalists are held (or they used to be) to a strict code of unbiased reporting. Bloggers (like us) are ordinary people and we are allowed our personal opinions — it’s the nature of blogging.

Those print and broadcast professionals are not allowed their own personal opinions. It’s supposed to be news!

*According to Wikipedia, SuperDelegates are defined as follows: “superdelegates are seated based solely on their status as current or former elected officeholders and party officials. They are free to support any candidate for the nomination, although many of them have publicly announced endorsements.

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the superdelegates will comprise approximately one-fifth of the total number of delegates. The closeness of the race between the leading contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, has caused greater attention to be paid to the role of the superdelegates in selecting the Democratic nominee.”