CNN’s Chris Cuomo told viewers Wednesday evening that they need to be wary of media bias during the Democratic presidential primary debates because reporters love to “pick favorites in this business.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas and a host of others vying to become the party’s nominee may want a level playing field, but Mr. Cuomo said there is usually select people who get their “apple polished” by biased coverage.
“He got a lot of artificial help, let’s call it,” the CNN host said of Mr. O’Rourke’s raised national profile. “He didn’t organically design his own fundraising base. He got help … with the media polishing his apple. I mean, people pick favorites in this business. He needed to come tonight and show I was a favorite for a reason early on, and he didn’t do that.”
Atlantic White House correspondent Elaina Plott soon echoed Mr. Cuomo’s point while talking about Mr. Buttigieg leading up to Wednesday’s debate in Miami.
“I think O’Rourke and Buttigieg are similar, at least, in my opinion in this way,” she said, the media watchdog NewsBusters reported. “They have a really shiny nice veneer, but the media kind of perpetuates narratives that it wants to be true. So you had Vogue recently calling Pete Buttigieg the sexy guy who is also a policy wonk. I don’t remember at any point reading a really definitive piece on Pete Buttigieg’s policy.”
MSNBC’s debate was the first of two as a means of organizing a crowd of more than 20 Democratic presidential candidates.
The first installment focused heavily on health care policy — possibly abolishing private insurance altogether — and the immigration crisis along the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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