It looks like lefty bloggers aren't the only ones irked by ABC News's decision to tap Andrew Breitbart for election-night analysis: People in ABC's newsroom were also caught completely off guard by the news, a newsroom source tells me.
"This blindsided a good portion of the team here," the source emails. "And not in a good way."
ABC News has confirmed Breitbart's announcement that he will be bringing analysis live from Arizona on election eve, along with Dana Loesch, the editor of Breitbart's Web site Big Journalism.
The news kicked off a round of criticism from liberal bloggers who pointed out that Breitbart is an unabashed right-wing activist with a known history of trafficking in distortions and falsehoods, most recently the heavily edited and subsequently debunked video supposedly showing racially-charged comments by Shirley Sherrod
ABC's David Ford has now justified the decision this way:
The problem with this, of course, is that it suggests that ABC thinks it's very possible Breitbart may try to mislead viewers -- but that this won't be a problem because someone else will be there to correct him. You can see why the network's professional journalists might be unhappy about this."He will be one of many voices on our air, including Bill Adair of Politifact. If Andrew Breitbart says something that is incorrect, we have other voices to call him on it."
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