Many bloggers have assumed that the tape of the World Economic Forum must be damning to Eason, else it would have been released. This is largely confirmed, I suppose, by this from CNN's own version of the story.
The Davos organizers have said the session, like most at the forum, was off-the-record, and they have refused to release a transcript to preserve their commitment.
This is a good reason for not releasing the whole tape except with the permission of all the participants, but surely Eason could voluntarily agree to allow the key scene to be released. That he has not done so stands as evidence that he said what his critics say he said.
To get an idea how left-tilted CNN's staff is, take a look at this interview of Lou Dobbs in Mother Jones. What is most appalling about Dobb's remarks is not his partisanship, but his utter economic cluelessness. Consider this passage:
As we go deeper in debt, we continue to lose jobs and diminish our manufacturing base. Many people want to talk about our dependency on foreign oil, and it’s a legitimate and real concern. But so is our dependency on the rest of the world for our clothing, our food, our computers and our consumer electronics. Our dependency isn’t just on foreign oil; we can’t even clothe ourselves. Free-trade economists will tell you we’re a technology economy, but we don’t even produce the technological components that are the foundation of a technology economy.
Has Dobb's looked at recent employment figures? Is he altogether unaware that those nations that practice the protectionism he advocates are poorer than those that do not? Does he really think that a nation should try to manufacture all of its own goods, and that trade is a sign of weakness? Yes.
It is widely assumed that anchors need only have pretty faces and that brains are superfluous, but in Dobbs case that can't be the explanation.
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