CNN's Kyra Phillips promised to "dip in" to Bush appearance at Burns rally if he mentioned "Iraq, John Kerry, other big issues in the news"

On the November 2 edition of CNN Newsroom, while showing a live feed of President Bush's appearance at a campaign rally for Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) in his race for re-election against Democrat John Tester, anchor Kyra Phillips asserted that CNN would "monitor what the president says" and that the network would "dip in" to coverage of the rally it the president "starts talking about Iraq, [Sen.] John Kerry [D-MA], other big issues in the news." Media Matters for America has extensively documented (here, here, and here) CNN and other media outlets' insistence upon treating Kerry's "botched joke" as a "big issue in the news." Perhaps most notably, Media Matters documented that the November 1 edition of CNN's Your World Today devoted 16 minutes to live coverage of a press briefing by White House press secretary Tony Snow, focusing on the controversy over Kerry's recent remark about Iraq. When questions turned to President Bush's Iraq policy, however, CNN cut away from live coverage after two minutes.

From the 1 p.m. EST November 2 edition of CNN Newsroom:

PHILLIPS: Monitoring the president right now in Billings, Montana. He's actually there campaigning for Senator Conrad Burns, the incumbent in trouble against Democrat John Tester. We're going to monitor what the president says and dip in, of course, if he starts talking about Iraq, John Kerry, other big issues in the news.

—R.C.