On Friday, CNN announced that David Chalian would be named as their new political director. Chalian is most famous for making an obnoxious remark about Mitt and Ann Romney during the 2012 Republican National Convention.
On August 29, 2012, in live video inadvertently distributed by ABCNews.com, the-then Yahoo! News Washington bureau chief claimed [1] the Romneys didn’t care about New Orleans residents being hit by Hurricane Isaac as he charged: “They aren’t concerned at all. They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”
Yahoo! quickly fired Chalian [2]. However, Chalian’s vicious anti-Romney remark didn’t affect his employment opportunities since then.
On June 6 MediaBistro [3] reported the following:
A Friday afternoon announcement within CNN named “Crossfire” supervising producer David Chalian CNN Political Director.
Chalian, who joined the network in July 2013 after serving as VP of video programming for Politico, will manage CNN’s political reporters and producers and oversee all political coverage.
Prior to Politico, Chalian was the political director for ABC News during the 2008 presidential campaign, Washington bureau chief for Yahoo! News, and political editor for PBS “NewsHour.”
— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter. [4]