With sexual harassment allegations swirling around Herman Cain it would seem only natural to ask former president Bill Clinton, who has some experience in this area, his opinion. That is unless you are NBC or MSNBC and you are planning to interview Clinton about his new book.
Clinton appeared on The Today Show on NBC and on Morning Joe on MSNBC and managed to avoid being asked what should have been an obvious question, given the Cain controversy and allegations that surfaced during Clinton’s presidency.
According to Ben Smith of Politico, spokeswomen for the two shows said that there were no preconditions for the Clinton interviews.
A representative for Clinton confirmed to Smith that there were no ground rules about discussing Cain’s sexual harassment controversy.
Asking Clinton about the Cain controversy would have certainly brought up some painful memories and taken the former president off message from the subject of his book, but it is a question that any good journalist or interviewer has an obligation to ask.
It’s not that surprising that The Today Show punted on the opportunity, considering their overt liberal bias, but considering that Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough served in Congress during the Clinton administration and voted to impeach him, it would have been very easy for him to quiz Clinton on the issue.
But that’s when Scarborough was actually conservative, compared to his more moderate tone today. That is probably why he, too, took a pass on asking the tough questions of Clinton and threw him a big wet kiss instead.
So until Clinton faces a real journalist we will probably never know what Clinton thinks of the Cain controversy.
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization Accuracy in Academia. As the son of Reed Irvine, who launched AIM in 1969, he developed an understanding of media bias at an early age, and has been actively involved with AIM for over 30 years.
