In spite of a Washington Post poll [1]
showing 74 percent of Americans favor government-issued photo ID
mandates at polling places, CNN skipped those numbers this past week in
six separate segments on voter ID laws.
As a MediaIte study [2] noted [3],
MSNBC aired 19 segments on voter ID laws from Monday through Thursday
without mentioning the poll. While CNN's coverage was largely balanced,
the poll numbers still should have been reported in their discussions on
voter ID laws.
In
one instance of liberal bias, anchor Fredricka Whitfield teed up
liberal guest Professor Jonathan Turley on Thursday by asking if ID laws
were "a solution in search of a problem."
"And a number of reports show however that voter fraud is actually not
much of a problem. So is this a solution in search of a problem?" she
asked Turley, who responded that "a national study found that voter
fraud is virtually nonexistent when they looked at the 2000 election."
On Friday's The Situation Room, CNN hyped "growing outrage" over new voter ID laws.
Voter ID is a topic CNN has tackled before – with liberal gusto. For
instance, anchor Zoraida Sambolin asked former U.N. Ambassador Andrew
Young the other week if new voter ID laws might "suppress the minority vote [4]."
Anchor Carol Costello asked a La Raza chairman last month "Is there a war on minority voters [5] in this country?" while discussing a Texas voter ID law challenged by Obama's Justice Department.