Mediaite founder Dan Abrams defended CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford as she faces backlash over a social media post praising a man who confronted Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about the Muslim Brotherhood.
The controversy began over the weekend when a man identifying himself as “Tommy” pressed El-Sayed, who is Muslim, at a campaign event and asked whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood — a question the Democrat has faced repeatedly throughout his campaign, amid accusations from his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, that he has ties to the group.
Despite El-Sayed’s categorical denials, NBC News confronted the Democrat with resurfaced social media posts from his half-sister — whom he didn’t grow up with — that referenced the group last week.
Yet “Tommy,” who was later identified as Thomas Teepell, a Republican political operative, never referenced those posts, with his exchange instead going viral after El-Sayed quickly denounced the group and accused Teepell of “assum[ing] that somehow I wouldn’t disavow, or that I’ll have some higher order allegiance than the Constitution.”
In response to the viral exchange, Crawford praised Teepell on X, writing, “Tommy, thank you,” and accusing El-Sayed of delivering a “spectacular self-own” with his response.
Crawford subsequently deleted the post and apologized, acknowledging that it violated CBS News standards.
As Zeteo’s Justin Baragona recently reported, Crawford will not face further punishment despite calls from some CBS staffers for just that.
“I think that people like Jan Crawford and Terry Moran and others should be able to express their political views without it somehow being linked to the network,” Abrams argued on Thursday’s edition of The Dan Abrams Show. “I get it, that you work at a big company, right? You go out, and you make a controversial comment; your company could say, ‘Hey, you’re getting us in trouble here.’”
Regardless, he questioned, “With all the accusations of bias going on against media entities, wouldn’t it be better if we just knew the political orientation of the people who are reporting the news? No hidden biases? We know Jan Crawford is almost certainly a Republican, almost certainly wouldn’t vote for El-Sayed. Okay? That doesn’t mean CBS News is. There’s still a way for her to report on the news in a fair way.”
Abrams went on to reference what he called “the more insidious problem” of “people who don’t admit what they think, who quietly pretend to be objective, but they’re not.”
“Jan Crawford came out and said what she thought,” he furthered. “That should guide viewers now in evaluating her reporting. Is that really a huge problem?”
The Mediaite founder did surmise, though, that if Crawford had commented in favor of El-Sayed, then CBS would have taken action against her.
“That’s a problem,” he declared. “You can’t selectively decide that which side you criticize leads to different kinds of punishments.”
Excluding offensive content, Abrams again insisted that reporters’ political views shouldn’t be seen as representative of the networks they work for.
Citing arguments from people who say personal takes are off limits because “we’re supposed to be objective,” he stressed, “But we’re not objective. That’s the point. We can’t be completely objective. There is no such thing.”
Watch the above on YouTube.
The post Dan Abrams Defends Jan Crawford Amid CBS News Firestorm: ‘No Such Thing’ as Objectivity first appeared on Mediaite.
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