Noel Sheppard Award Winner Hemingway: Why John Harwood Has 'No Business' Moderating GOP Debate

Ken Shepherd
October 28th, 2015 6:03 PM
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Mollie Hemingway -- the winner of NewsBusters's first annual Noel Sheppard Media Blogger of the Year Award -- has an excellent piece at The Federalist detailing why "CNBC's John Harwood Has No Business Moderating A GOP Presidential Debate."

It's an excellent read, laying out a compelling comprehensive case that looks at both on-air and social-media evidence of not only Harwood's biases but his outright cheerleading of ObamaCare and spinning for Hillary Clinton.

Here's an excerpt:

Harwood has long defended Hillary Clinton when embroiled in scandal. A recent example:

There are multiple problems with this “PERSPECTIVE” tweet. For one, Petraeus’ mistress actually had security clearances. For another, he didn’t put the information out on the open Internet as Clinton did. For another, her IT firm in Denver didn’t have security clearances. Her attorney, who kept the classified information on a thumb drive, didn’t have security clearances. None of the people who wiped her server or helped her screen her email to choose which would emails would go to the State Department and which would stay hidden from the public had security clearances. This tweet does give “perspective” but only a view into what a Clinton hack Harwood is. Harwood also put out this gem a while back:

Now, to put this as succinctly as possible, evidence of national security harm is not required for punishment under the law. Take the sailor who was indicted the day before Harwood’s tweet on allegations he had classified photos on his cell phone. He didn’t get off because nobody could prove he’d grievously harmed national security. He just faces 30 years in prison. That’s par for the course, which is why people who are not journalists are outraged at how the law seems unevenly applied for people with and without power.

Or what about this exchange where Harwood tried to argue that Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush’s handling of email was identical, nevermind that Bush was not, in fact, Secretary of State; hadn’t had a secret email address but one that was totally public; hadn’t built a secret server in his house to keep emails from being detected; had voluntarily released his emails; was not held to the stringent security requirements of the country’s chief diplomatic office; and hadn’t had a history of stonewalling investigations into his emails or blocking FOIA requests. But yes, other than that, sure. You really must read the whole exchange to get a flavor of how clueless Harwood is on the substance of the Clinton scandal.