In the April 11 edition of his “Inside the Beltway” column, Washington Times columnist John McCaslin falsely suggested that new CNN president Jonathan Klein described CNN as a “quote-unquote, 'progressive' or 'liberal' network” in an interview on PBS' The Charlie Rose Show. In fact, Klein asserted that a hypothetical progressive network that sought to reinforce viewers' beliefs, as Fox News does for conservatives, “couldn't reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions.” Klein did not describe CNN as an opinion-based network, be it liberal or conservative; he referred to it as “the information-gathering network.”

In his column, McCaslin took Klein's remarks out of context to suggest that he described CNN as liberal:

Mr. Klein's assessment of his competition?

“They've tapped into an outrage that's lurking among a certain small segment of the population, mostly angry white men, and those men tend to be rabid,” the new CNN chief tells Charlie Rose of PBS. “They tend to be habitual. They tend to like to have their points of view reinforced.”

And CNN?

“And a, quote-unquote, 'progressive' or 'liberal' network probably couldn't reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions,” Mr. Klein continues.

But Klein wasn't talking about CNN when he referred to a “quote-unquote, 'progressive' or 'liberal' network,” as the full context of his remarks from the March 23 edition of The Charlie Rose Show indicates:

ROSE: Do you believe, if you look at talk radio, most people believe that talk radio is more conservative than it is middle of the road or even liberal. It's more right center than it is left. Fox clearly is more right center than it is left. If, in fact, not [Fox News chairman and CEO] Roger Ailes but somebody else had come in, and not [chairman and CEO of News Corp., owner of Fox News] Rupert Murdoch, and said, we believe there is the absence of progressive opinion as people now believe on cable news, would that have been successful as Fox has been? My question said another way: Is it the fact that they have some, a formula, and it doesn't matter what the politics are, or the politics make a difference?

KLEIN: They've tapped into an outrage that's lurking among a certain small segment of the population, mostly angry white men, and those men tend to be rabid. They tend to be habitual. They tend to like to have their points of view reinforced. And a, quote-unquote, “progressive” or “liberal” network probably couldn't reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions. They pride themselves on that. And you know, they don't get too worked up about anything. And they're pretty morally relativistic. And so, you know, they allow for a lot of that stuff. You know, the -- Fox is very appealing to people who like to get worked up over things.

ROSE: The same reason Rush Limbaugh and so many other people and [Bill] O'Reilly and those guys do so well, they connect with an audience --

KLEIN: That's pissed off.

ROSE: Who wants -- pissed off and wants opinion.

KLEIN: Yes.

ROSE: So your marching orders within -- coming out of your analysis is that I want my guys -- meaning both male and female -- to be -- to be storytellers, number one, in the same way that 60 Minutes reporters are storytellers?

KLEIN: That's a great example. It's the most popular show ever on television, not just news broadcast, ever on television. People can't get enough of it. If you combine great storytelling --

ROSE: Because it's great storytelling and great stories.

KLEIN: And great information gathering. We're the information-gathering network. That's what we do.