CNN Hires Trump Staffer With No Journalism Experience To Run 2020 Coverage

So there's one 'news source' you can safely ignore.

In a move that has media watchers scratching their heads, CNN has hired Sarah Isgur, a Republican political consultant who served as Jeff Sessions's official spokesperson, as a political editor for the network. Isgur (formerly Isgur-Flores) has no journalism experience at all, so as is only logical, she will "coordinate political coverage for the 2020 campaign," according to Politico. No, really. A major network's coverage of an entire election will be massaged by a partisan whose only experience with the news business has been as a press flack for one party's candidates. EXCELLENT CHOICE, CNN, now maybe Donald Trump will start respecting you finally.

Oh, except Trump reportedly can't stand Isgur because she said lots of mean things about him while she was Carly Fiorina's deputy campaign manager, and even after Fiorina dropped out, like when she said on Twitter, "Saying you will criminally prosecute your political opponent when you win is a scary and dangerous threat." So who even knows what sort of weird catshit parasites are eating the brain of whoever at CNN thought this would be a great hire.

Politico blandly observes,

While it is common for departing administration officials to join cable news networks as analysts or contributors, it is less common for them to oversee news coverage. Isgur has no experience in news but a long history as a political operative... [then they copy in her résumé from LinkedIn, we guess] 

Well gosh, that IS unusual. In fact, we'd say it's probably freaking unprecedented outside of state-run news services, no? CNN's 2020 election coverage will be "coordinated" by a partisan hack? OK, just another day, we guess. You'll all be delighted to know that, to avoid any conflicts of interest, Isgur will not be involved in covering the Department of Justice, so bravo to CNN for all those kickass ethics.

(A CNN person assures us that there are many political editors, and 2020 political coverage will still be overseen by David Chalian, who is a terrible biasssss lib because he once pointed out a mean thing about Mitt Romney, which you know was liberal biasssss because it was true.)

At least Mediaite managed to portray the cavalcade of exploding heads among media reporters -- because maybe standards and qualifications matter -- as a silly outburst from a bunch of elitist snobs:

Pfft, how silly these media people are, getting all upset about a network throwing what little credibility it had out the window. Again. Or maybe a fifteenth time.

Vox's Aaron Rupar put together a thread of some really important tweets by "CNN's new political editor," who over the years has offered some decidedly non-journalistic opinions, not that they could possibly influence CNN's 2020 coverage. From Rupar's thread, we compiled a few screenshots, just in case CNN's new political editor decides to send some of her own social media history down the memory hole.

And now she works for the Clinton News Network! Bet she'll get right to work making it more, how would you say, fair and balanced? We can only imagine what CNN's coverage of the Democratic debates will look like, perhaps with live onscreen graphics estimating the number of defenseless babies that will be aborted in response to each candidate's statements.

Back in the Before Times, in what your people called 2015, Isgur really took the simple truth that climate change is fake to Chris Hayes; the rightwing Newsbusters site was over the moon at her willingness to blame the California drought on -- yes, of course -- environmentalists who like fish too much. (See, Trump didn't make that up himself!)

I think [Carly Fiorina's] point is that liberals have been willing to sacrifice jobs, people's livelihoods on the name of ideology rather than actually explaining to people what it would take to make a difference. Liberals don't explain that. All they do is destroy a lot of jobs in order to say they're doing something. [...]

The drought has been exacerbated because liberals in California haven't been willing to build a reservoir in 30 years. If they were willing to capture some of the rain water in years where there was more rain water, then the drought wouldn't be as bad on years when there is drought, which is fairly common in California actually.

Can't wait to see CNN's coverage of the debate over the Green New Deal, huh? Now there may be two cable networks that are all laughing at cow farts, all the time.

We'd like to hope CNN will rethink this incredibly bad hire. We hear there are a few actual political journalists looking for jobs, you know?

CNN, we know you really try hard to suck. But honestly, this is too much.

And now roar and tear your hair out in this, your OPEN THREAD!

[ Politico / Mediaite / New York ]

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