An essay by Megan Garber in the Columbia Journalism Review suggests that NBC/MSNBC pull Andrea Mitchell off the financial crisis beat because of her marriage to Alan Greenspan. Mitchell might be overly concerned, Garber suggests, with protecting and enhancing her husband's legacy as Fed chairman in light of the current meltdown. And sources could be hesitant to tell Mitchell what they really believe about the roots of the current crisis for fear of insulting her husband; Greenspan has admitted himself that he was late to awake to the problems of sub-prime mortgages, and most observers see his encouragement of easy credit as a factor in today's troubles.
This assumes, though, that Mitchell does real interviewing and reporting. In fact, she is more often distilling conventional wisdom from op-ed pages, like most cable news personalities. That's not to say she has never made an argument convenient to her husband in her role as a pundit. In fact, she is using the same "blame Congress" line Bill Clinton has pulled out to justify his own actions during the 1990s, claiming that congressional leaders of both parties pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get more and more embroiled in sub-primes as a way to fulfill their mission of creating low-income housing.
I'm not sure if NBC should pull Mitchell from the air on financial stories; after all, that would make it very difficult for her to do any work at all during this time. But how about Mitchell disclosing on air who her husband is and how close to the action she actually was during the 1990s? Most viewers are completely unaware of the Mitchell-Greenspan connection.
Update: Tim reminds me that Mitchell does do more reporting than the typical cable news personality: She often calls into the campaign conference calls.
--Dana Goldstein
