Media Matters founder thinks CNN's Hillary special may end up with rightward slant

Here's a strange turn of events.

Just last week Media Matters for America founder David Brock wrote letters to CNN and NBC calling on them to cancel their separate planned TV productions based on the life of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It unexpectedly put Brock, a liberal, on the side of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who threatened to boycott both outlets from participating in 2016 GOP primary debates, should they move forward with the projects.

“Given that this project could coincide with a potential Clinton campaign,” Brock wrote in the letters, “the timing raises too many questions about fairness and conflicts of interest ahead of the 2016 election.”

One of those questions is apparently whether CNN's production, a documentary, will have a rightward tilt.

Brock writes in a column for Politico:

CNN’s chief [Jeff Zucker] has yet to take responsibility for his network’s Clinton quandary. Zucker recently doubled down on plans to produce a feature-length documentary on the odds-on 2016 favorite, claiming that this will be “a non-fiction look.” Yet he also pleaded with the Republican National Committee and other GOP critics of his yet-to-be-produced program “to reserve judgment” – suggesting perhaps that Republicans might have fewer qualms with the final product. ...

Zucker has apparently made it his mission to compete with Fox News by having CNN from time to time become a pale copy — including echoing Fox’s suggestion that Clinton’s emotion at the Benghazi hearing was not real, hyping Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s claim that a 20-week restriction on abortion is “reasonable,” and distorting debate over New York’s proposed racial profiling law — CNN is tilting and slanting to the right, but without Fox’s overt ideological agenda. ...

CNN’s detectable rightward shift along with Zucker’s aggressive push for covering “what’s interesting” are warning signs as the network attempts to go forward with its Clinton documentary.

@eScarry