Roland Martin Profile…
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz profiles CNN’s Roland Martin…
CNN President Jon Klein says Martin “had a quality about him that made you stop and listen to what he had to say. I think it’s because he’s a professional journalist wrapped in a bundle of energy. . . . He lets you know how much he cares.”
Still, the 40-year-old Houston native might seem an odd choice to host Brown’s “No Bias, No Bull.” During the campaign, CNN used him as a liberal commentator who backed Barack Obama, regularly pairing him with a conservative. But Martin balks at being pigeonholed.
ad_icon“When you create these boxes, frankly, people only look at the boxes,” he says. “We have to open up our boxes and realize there are actually people out there who refuse to be driven by ideology or party labels.”
Martin says he isn’t a party-line liberal. He is opposed to abortion and backs the death penalty. He criticized the Obama administration for opposing school vouchers for poor students. He cast his first presidential vote for George H.W. Bush.
Klein says Martin’s left-leaning stance is not a problem because “now we’re asking him not to express his point of view but to host interesting conversations among a range of people.”
