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On Thursday, the co-hosts of "Morning Joe" weighed in on whether ABC News should have disclosed Martha Raddatz's connection to President Obama ahead of the vice-presidential debate.
Raddatz is set to moderate the showdown between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan Thursday night. Conservative media outlets recently cried foul after reporting that Obama was a guest at Raddatz's wedding to her first husband Julius Genachowski, his classmate at Harvard Law, in the early 1990s. ABC News pushed back at the story, while the Commission on Presidential Debates defended Raddatz. The Romney campaign has also had no objections to her moderating the debate.
On Thursday, the co-hosts of "Morning Joe" praised Raddatz's record as a journalist, but said that the information should have been disclosed.
"She's an incredible journalist, I'm not worried about her being objective," Mika Brzezinski remarked. "I don't know if she disclosed this, but these things should be out there. We should be as transparent as we can about our family connections."
Joe Scarborough agreed. "The thing is, everybody thinks Martha Raddatz is a great reporter, one of the best that we have," he added. "That said, ABC News should have been transparent up front and should have said there was a connection there."
When asked if he had any similar concerns about moderator Gwen Ifill in 2008, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt replied, "No, not really, but we definitely worked the referees with it."
On the issue of transparency, Brzezinski went a step further and said that news organizations should allow journalists to disclose their family backgrounds and who they voted for. "I don't understand why reporters hide the essence of who they are... because it is by which they view — the lens that they see things through, and people deserve to see that."
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