I was a talking head (part of an independent voter analyst panel) on Don Lemon’s CNN show about a dozen times from 2010 – 2012. He was always a straight shooter and I’ve written often that even before I was on his panels I had concluded that he is from the “old school” of broadcast journalism in terms of the way he conducts his interviews. But he will also call out his guest and challenge them.
Here’s the latest example — and an important one. One of the key conservative media responses to President Barack Obama’s remarks on the George Zimmerman trial, race in America, and how African-Americans must deal with racial profiling on a day to day basis has been is a)Obama is playing the race card trying to divide America by his remarks, b)it is somehow inaccurate for Obama to describe this kind of day to day racial profiling that he said he himself experienced as a black man.
In this segment, Lemon called out conservative commentator Ben Ferguson on the subject of Obama’s comments on racial profiling. MUST VIEWING:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.