CNN's Amanpour shoots down claims that Obama is "outsourcing American foreign policy" to Europe

What an AWESOME set of responses by the commentators. There is a growing need for people of sound reason and judgement to slap-down the news-model approach of CNN & Fox News to just ask questions from an ideologically based cue card as unfounded and ridiculous.

Let's get some intelligent, bright, insightful people asking questions on these programs instead of just pretty faces. Cable news is BROKEN.

Rearing it's ugly head again (via Mika)..

"Some people say..."

"Some critics say..."

Please.  From now on, be SPECIFIC as to who these people/critics are, Mika.

"I'm just playing devil's advocate here."

 *sigh*

American corporate-media establishmentarianism in it's purest form. Thank you, Ms. Amanpour, for challenging it. These people are not disseminating information, they're generating intellectual paralysis because their collective post-modernist preoccupation with 'balance' has over-taken their ability to think.

It's uncanny, the difference between journalists and pundits from "CNN International" compared to those from "CNN". One group is mature, sober and factual. The other is becoming more and more difficult to separate from the staff of the National Enquirer.

What that woman was saying was useless junk-thought. A waste of time. Who cares that "critics" say Obama is closing Guantanamo and starting to wrap up the Iraqi occupation "for Europeans". It isn't true. And it's not their opinion either, but their assertion (which is not the same thing, contrary to what most Americans have come to believe over the last thirty years or so).

Asserting anything you want does make it an "opinion" that must be respected as an opposing point of view. Such as if someone said "It is my opinion that the moonlandings never took place". They did. This is a fact. It is not a matter of opinion. But if we applied the corporate media's current balance meme to the late 60s, it would have been a "debate" because, at the time, there were actually many uniformed and ignorant people saying the moonlandings were  "faked".

And this is no different. What they're saying is not factual.  It is a false assertion and should be regarded as such. Repeating it is pointless. 

Imagine if Walter Kronkite had said while covering the march in Selma, "I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but critics are saying these people are puppets of the communists."  He didn't say that because they simply weren't puppets of the communists (despite what racist--mostly southern--government officials were saying).

Journalists of the day didn't bring up things people said just because they said them. They would find out first if what the person said was true, verify it, then report it or not report it depending on the factual basis of the claim. If it wasn't true, it was ignored. This was back before the anti-intellectual malaise that conservatives have been so successful at propagating (where do you think the 'balance' meme came from?) infected our "news".