Zennie on CNN's "Money and Main Street" as iReporter

Thanks to the iReport team for this. They and Anderson Cooper are the best!

SHAME ON CNN FOR FORCING JESSICA YELLIN TO CHANGE HER STORY

DID YOU SEE THIS:

CNN's Jessica Yellin's turnabout statement taking the blame off her former employer, which was thought in this space to be ABC News and Yellin says was MSNBC. At any rate, here's her new statement:

J

essica Yellin
Congressional Correspondent

I find myself in an interesting position. Today the blogs lit up with comments I made last night on AC360° and suddenly I’m being reported on.

It’s not the most comfortable position for a reporter.

So let me clarify what I said and what I experienced.

First, this involved my time on MSNBC where I worked during the lead up to war. I worked as a segment producer, overnight anchor, field reporter, and briefly covered the White House, the Pentagon, and general Washington stories.

Also, let me say: No, senior corporate leadership never asked me to take out a line in a script or re-write an anchor intro. I did not mean to leave the impression that corporate executives were interfering in my daily work; my interaction was with senior producers. What was clear to me is that many people running the broadcasts wanted coverage that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the country at the time. It was clear to me they wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.

And now I’m going back to work covering the Puerto Rico primary from San Juan.

All I can say is SHAME ON CNN for having Yellin make this statement. I seriously doubt she did this on her own. But now the cat's out of the bag and the emperor wears no clothes at all. It's sad to see CNN try to restore it's reputation. Good luck there.

On CNN, Jennifer Donahue Blasts Hillary Clinton For Playing "Race Card" On Obama; Clinton Advisor David Gergen Can't Stand Truth

Jennifer Donahue, who's a political pundit and Senior Advisor for Political Affairs at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, gets my award for a major act of courage.

Thursday night, on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Jennifer Donahue blasted the Hillary Clinton campaign for using the race card against Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Race. She was on the show with Cooper, Clinton Advisor and Political Consultant David Gergen, and CNN contributor Jeffrey Toobin. Whereas Toobin and Gergen were circumspect in their way of addressing the matter, Donahue was right on.

This seemed to rankle Gergen.

Gergen tried to hide his anger at the mere mention of race and Clinton campaign strategy, but he's angry because deep down he knows they've taken a path of trying to "Willie Horton" Barack Obama. Look, Gergen's a Clinton Advisor -- something Anderson Cooper didn't mention -- and this is the second time in as many weeks he's tried to protect or soften a person's attack of a Clinton campaign tactic, beit Carl Bernstein who claimed the Clinton's were being desperate, or now.

Gergen's openly using the CNN platform to help Hillary Clinton's campaign for president. Thus, he's fair game to be denounced.

The simple fact is that with the Clinton Campaign having both volunteers and paid campaign staffers who worked to launch a race-based smear campaign against Obama, starting with planting the idea that he's Muslim -- a total lie -- they have indeed played the "race card" and Gergen knows it.

For Gergen to argue otherwise is in itself advancing a lie. For CNN to allow Gergen to do this without revealing that he's a Clinton operative is just aiding and abetting the advance of the same lie.

I noticed that no one bothered to claim that Hillary Clinton was playing the "sex card" when she said the "boys were ganging up" on her.

Geez. David, you should know -- indeed, you do know -- that people make some views of others based on racial stereotypes and that the Clintons have been playing to those stereotypes.

To the woodshed with Gergen! His assertions to the contrary are an outrage! Thankfully, the main stream media, like the Washington Post , is picking up on this terrible approach.

CNN / YouTube Republican Debate On Wednesday - Not Too Late To Get In Your Video!

A creation of The CNN / YouTube Debate System

On Wednesday, the CNN / YouTube Republican Debate will be held in St. Petersburgh, Florida. This is the long-awaited second of the debates of the successful CNN / YouTube partnership. I expect the star of the debate not to be the videos, but exchanges between Ron Paul and the other GOP candidates -- forget the "Quarter Question."

As some of your know who are regular visitors to this space, my question -- "The Quarter Question" -- was part of the Democratic CNN / YouTube debate process. And as some of you remember, I was a guest on the CNN Roland Martin Show as well as on local Channel Five here in Oakland. So basically CNN and YouTube launched my career as a political commentator. But because of that, my questions may not be picked this time around. I submitted nine of them, and I've got one more up my sleeve before the November 25th deadline.

Which reminds me to tell you that there's still time to get your questions in. Regardless of what CNN does with me, I think it's the greatest debate format ever done and is so right for its time, it could not have been done even four years ago.

Now as far as advice, my suggestion is to stick to questions that concern the Republican Party. I've noticed that a heck of a lot of the submissions -- including mine -- have a "democratic" bent to them. I also read in the NYTimes that CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Borhman has stated that questions which pander to CNN will be rejected, so that excludes one question I submitted and was inspired by a segment of last week's "CNN Situation Room."

But, in their racially ignorant way, the NYTimes -- which employs a writer who managed to present me as two different people in two consecutive paragraphs in an NYT article before the last CNN / YouTube debate -- managed to miss the obvious question to ask Bohrman: if by picking questions that deal with "Republican Issues" they will skip questions concerning race. At a time when the party's beset by divisive questions regarding how it treats African Americans, I can't imagine a debate that avoids that issue.

We shall see.