On Friday, reporter Jessica Yellin got a chance to sit in as host of CNN’s show, Campbell Brown.  Yellin wasted no time in bringing her partisan political views front and center for the CNN audience to witness firsthand as she brought on for a one-on-one interview the man running for Governor of California – Jerry Brown.

Yellin

In a live performance from the California Democratic Convention in Yellin’s hometown of Los Angeles, Yellin shockingly interviewed Brown and never once told the viewers that Jerry Brown is running for Governor of her home state or that he was sitting at the California Democratic Convention in the town where she grew up.

jerry-brown

In a cozy chat, Yellin introduced Brown to CNN as “California’s top law enforcement official” — immediately positioning him as someone more interested in issues than politics even though Brown is in the middle of a hot campaign for Governor.  Yellin threw Brown multiple softball questions, with not a single follow-up question to Brown’s long diatribes and no interruptions to Brown’s soliloquies.  Yellin, who is known for her liberal political views, even trumpeted the Brown campaign’s messages about his presumed Republican opponent, Meg Whitman.

Starting off the interview, Yellin warms up with asking Brown what he thought about the Goldman Sachs scandal.  Brown quickly proclaimed:

regulators let people get away with murder….this is a massive meltdown, the biggest around the world….we are being stymied by federal laws and rules that often block the Attorney Generals from enforcing anti-fraud statues based on state law…this was, you could say fairly, the biggest bank robbery in the history of America.

Yellin just smiled approvingly but didn’t ask a follow-up, nor did she question Brown’s pandering answers.  While unbiased journalists may think to question a man running for Governor about why he hasn’t done more to combat the Goldman Sachs type of problem in his current position as Attorney General, or why, as a Democrat, he thinks the Obama Administration has allowed this to happen, Yellin had nothing to say.

Yellin’s next question was about Sarah Palin.  And Yellin didn’t miss the chance to hit the Democrats’ talking point:  “You are investigating a California school that invited her to speak but then wouldn’t disclose the terms of her contract…. why does this merit the attention of the AG?”  Brown went on and on about how “we want to make sure that charitable foundations do what the rules require,” and wondered “is the foundation connected with this state college following the rules of charitable trusts?” Yellin once again let him filibuster without interruption or a single follow-up question.

sarah-palin-on-a-harley

While an unbiased journalist, interviewing a man running for Governor of California, may have wanted to ask Brown why he just this week started his new campaign to rid charitable foundations of financial abuse by targeting a Republican star like Sarah Palin, Yellin just smiled and moved on to the next topic – Meg Whitman.

Let me turn to another focus of your attention these days – the Governor’s race.  Your likely Republican opponent… has already pumped a remarkable $59 million of her own money into this race, she’s vowing to spend so much more… How do you build momentum against her at this point?

It was a moment that the Brown campaign couldn’t have orchestrated better.  Yellin positioned Brown, whose interest in Buddhism is well known, as the Zen-like non-politician, and painted Whitman, the former president of eBay, as a wealthy capitalist spending “so much” of her own money.  She hammered home the Brown message that Whitman is “pumping” millions of dollars of her own money into the race and is “attacking” her opponents.  It was a television moment that must have made all of Yellin’s friends at the Democratic State Convention in her home state cheer as they watched the interview.

Yellin gave Brown plenty of free air time to mention the importance of going to the people, and that the race is really dead-even, and how 1.9 million jobs were created the last time he was governor, how strongly committed he is to improving the state’s economy, protecting the environment and fixing the schools.  Brown continued with a claim that Whitman is a billionaire trying to buy the race and that she’s never even voted.

Yellin wasn’t done yet.  After playing some of the Whitman commercials which Yellin labeled “attack ads,” she asked, “how do you plan to go up against attacks like that when they come your way?”  It was a question the Brown campaign had hoped she would ask by labeling Whitman an attacker and positioning Brown as the David to the oncoming Goliath.  Brown replied, “Making stuff up about the opponent is silly….”  And there was no response from Yellin.

As they wrapped up their comfy chat and said good-bye, Yellin couldn’t help herself and blurted out, “Thanks Mr. Attorney General, I always enjoy talking with you.”

Mr. Attorney General?  For heaven’s sake, Jessica, he’s running for Governor and you are a journalist – can’t you even fake it? Probably not.  Here’s how she treated Gov. Moonbeam last month, in a report about his gubernatorial race:


In sum, this most recent “interview” was something that the Whitman campaign should complain to CNN about, and request that CNN  report to the FEC as an in-kind contribution to the Brown campaign.