Bernard Shaw Once Asked a Devastating Question to a Democrat (and CNN Didn’t Fire Him)
Here’s an astonishing fact to consider in the year 2022.
A CNN anchor once posed a challenging question to a Democratic presidential candidate.
What’s even more astonishing is that that anchor, Bernard Shaw, perhaps unintentionally, helped torpedo Mike Dukakis’ chances of winning the White House in 1988.
A CNN reporter holding a Democrat’s feet to the fire?
Believe it.
Dukakis at the time was the governor of Massachusetts and that year’s Democratic Party presidential nominee. Dukakis was also an outspoken death penalty opponent.
At a debate between Dukakis and then Vice President George H.W. Bush, Shaw asked Dukakis if he would support the death penalty upon someone who raped and murdered his wife Kitty.
“No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life,” Dukakis said.
“I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.”
According to Time Magazine, many Americans thought Dukakis’ response was “dispassionate and dismissive.”
Shaw, who retired from CNN in 2001, passed away this week at the age of 82.
Make no mistake, Shaw was no conservative. Far from it.
In 2007, Shaw, safely retired and free to speak his mind, said anyone who opposed illegal immigrants staying in the United States was a racist.
In 2020, Shaw appeared on CNN to help celebrate that network’s 40th anniversary. He spent most of his time on air trashing then-President Donald Trump. Shaw called Trump “a presidential aberration.”
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In contemporary America, conservatives are accustomed to watching CNN anchors and reporters, Don Lemon among them, function more as lapdogs and propaganda mouthpieces for the Democratic National Committee. Nevertheless, Shaw did something in 1988 that we rarely ever see from anyone in the establishment press.
Most journalists generally tilt left. But back in the day many of them at least tried to pretend they were objective. They held Democrats to the same standards they held Republicans.
Can the establishment press at least try to get back to that old standard?
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