Nothing to See Here…

Politico’s Dylan Byers makes much hay over Erin Burnett calling on Team Romney to release its tax returns…

This isn’t Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow at MSNBC; this is CNN — a fact the Obama campaign, which has circulated the above video and transcript, greatly appreciates.

CNN remains committed to nonpartisan news gathering, though not to the he-said/she-said. Anderson Cooper’s ‘Keeping Them Honest’ segment, in which he fact-checks false statements and accusations, is indicitave of what the network would like to do more of. In an interview with Vanity Fair this week, CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour suggested that CNN was beholden to facts, but not necessarily to balance and neutrality. In other words, when she went to Bosnia, she didn’t need to confirm with the Serbian government that she was witnessing genocide.

But even within that framework, Burnett’s venture out of journalism and into campaign advice (or admonition) seems bold and potentially risky for the network. CNN has long defined itself as the place people turn to for breaking news — and for this, it has struggled against Fox News and MSNBC, especially in the personality driven primetime hours. So perhaps this is an effort to inject some personality in the mix. But it’s certainly not an effort to cover the news. In fact, it seems like an effort to create it.

This is really nothing ground breaking from CNN. Yes, it is atypical behavior but it’s hardly unique. Campbell Brown once famously called out the McCain campaign to “Free Sarah Palin”. In fact this is hardly unique behavior for Burnett either. She had previously taken on Occupy Wall Street which sort of wound up blowing up in her face a bit.

When Burnett’s show starts going POV every night, then we’re in to new uncharted territory for CNN. Until that happens blips like the one Byers sounded alarms over need to be put in perspective. There’s really nothing to see here…