After her show was cancelled on account of low ratings, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown reinvented herself as an education reformer and charter school advocate -- this despite having little to no training in education, and never having taught students herself.
She founded the education advocacy group the Partnership for Educational Justice to fight teacher tenure in New York and recently launched the Seventy Four, an “nonprofit, nonpartisan” education news site.
However, as some critics have pointed out, Brown’s news site is largely dedicated to trashing teachers unions and advocating for school choice. And despite her group's goal of bringing “transparency" to the education debate, Brown has refused to disclose the donors behind her Partnership for Educational Justice -- which is not tied to the news site -- saying only that they come from "both sides of the aisle."
But MSNBC made no mention of Brown’s ties to advocacy groups -- or her lack of transparency -- when she came on “Morning Joe” on Wednesday to promote an upcoming education forum with many of the Republican presidential nominees.
The network basically let her make her pitch, then congratulated her on putting together the event. Now that’s hard-hitting journalism.
There's nothing wrong, of course, with having on guests with an agenda or a strong point of view, but the network should, at the very least, identify where its guests are coming from.
MSNBC did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Watch the interview above.
UPDATE: This post has been updated to specify which Brown-led groups have been criticized for refusing to disclose their donors.
