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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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November 20, 2007
Former ABC News anchor endorses Hillary Clinton
 Carole Simpson anchored ABC News World Tonight Sunday from 1988 to 2003. Age 66, she's now teaching journalism classes at Emerson College. She took her "Road to the White House" class to a Hillary Clinton campaign rally for instruction on covering pollitical rallies.
In the midst of the event, she made an apparently spontaneous endorsement of Hillary Clinton. "I want to tell you tonight, because I happen to be here with my students, that I endorse you for president of the United States. It's very freeing now that I'm not a journalist and I can speak my mind, and I wanted you to know I think you are the woman, and I think this is the time."
This seems to be regarded as some kind of journalistic faux pas. Indeed, Ms Simpson offered to resign her teaching job. Jerry Lanson, another Emerson professor who co-teaches this class said, "As faculty members if we're teaching journalists, we need to model the behavior we're teaching in the classroom." Thankfully, the school refused to accept her resignation. Of course, some right wing bloggers are jumping on this as evidence of Liberal Bias. Yeah, yeah.
Really now though, why is this bad? Now, it would certainly be bad practice if she had gone on the ABC News as anchor endorsing a candidate. Kinda works against your idea of being objective. It would maybe be bad form if she were endorsing candidates even on her own time while she's working as a journalist. I personally wouldn't take that as especially bad, but I can see how that looks bad.
But does having been a journalist disqualify you from publicly expressing your opinions for the rest of your life? Crikey, that's no good at all, is it? What would even be the supposed point of that? Are you supposed to pretend that you don't and never did have any opinions on politics after spending your professional career following them? What kind of moron could spend their whole life working as a journalist without forming some strong opinions?
I suppose you might dock her maybe one point on form for making such comments specifically while she was out with her class. It would have been better if she were absolutely out on her own time, but that's a small point. Ms Simpson and the university have apparently agreed that she'll take a leave of absence from her teaching job if she actually goes out on the stump for Hillary, who has now asked her to. That's probably a reasonable point of prudence since she is specifically teaching journalism.
Mostly though, she's a 66 year old woman who has done her time and duty for decades as a reporter. Seems like she should have as much right to a political opinion as anyone, and indeed more than most as she knows a lot about politics professionally. She's not just another idiot on a barstool.
Personally, as a rightwing nut job, I'd just about as soon poke my eyes out with a sharp stick as to spend four years watching President Hillary, but c'mon. Ol' girl's got a right to her opinion.
posted by Al at 11/20/2007 11:27:00 AM
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