Talk:Dana Bash

Ron Paul PAC
I understand there is some question about Dana Bash's reporting that has been raised by Ron Paul's PAC. Such material probably is important enough to be in this article, but it is at least as important-- and truthfully, more so-- that such material be well sourced, and meet Wikipedia's standards for Neutral Point of View. This is particularly true as the subject of this article is a living person; WP:BLP also applies. -- JeffBillman (talk) 23:13, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Have added a short bit. Struggled to make it sound neutral, as CNN haven't commented their side yet, but I found a short quotation from a spokesperson in a politico report (linked to) which said "all is fine," so have stuck that in. Wikiditm (talk) 23:12, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the problem here is weight more than neutrality - this is an article about her life and career, and the importance of this one matter is highly questionable in terms of her whole life. I understand that Ron Paul supporters think it is highly important, but I think this is way out of proportion for her article. Has this affected her career in any way?   The article should give more information about her overall career, with this matter perhaps boiled down to one or two sentences - if included at all. And we tend to try to avoid sections called "Controversies" - if there are valid, notable matters, they should be incorporated into the text. I am inclined to remove this section entirely at this point, pending it reaching some level of notability. Has anything more been said about this?  Tvoz / talk 05:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I concur with Tvoz. Telco (talk) 14:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It looks as though it's died down. My initial bit was just a paragraph, it's now become its own section which beats her entire career in terms of length. The controversy never came to anything in the end in terms of media coverage. I'm for removing it entirely now but maybe with one line saying "in 2011 she was criticized by a superPAC for alleged bias." Wikiditm (talk) 22:01, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

This section is an absurdity of epic proportions. Sarah Palin's article has NO controversy section what-so-ever, yet because this one particular reported decided to call out the Wikipedian's messiah, Ron Paul.. she now has five paragraphs of controversy. Well done wikipedians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.144.46 (talk) 19:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. I have axed the entire section in favour of a single sentence mentioning the controversy. Hope this is ok.Wikiditm (talk) 13:36, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

For better or worse, Dana Bash's coverage of (and subsequent removal from) the Ron Paul Campaign is the arguably the most noteworthy event of her career. A quick search of various news outlets for the name "Dana Bash" will bear this out. Stories on her coverage of the Ron Paul campaign outnumber all other stories combined. Please don't misunderstand, the current section is by all means too long, but removing it entirely doesn't make sense unless you want to make an argument that she is too minor a media figure to even warrant a page at all. Dana Bash's name will forever be tied to her coverage of Ron Paul for Americans. Look at her page views stats on wikipedia, the majority of views are during her coverage of the Ron Paul Campaign. Quite frankly, judging from those stats, her controversial coverage of Rom Paul is the only reason most people might have any idea who she is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.47.150.168 (talk) 12:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I performed a search on google news. Of the 170 results for Dana Bash, less than 10 refer to RevolutionPAC. I'm just not buying that this is a big deal. Literally nothing came of it. No formal charges, the Paul campaign said everything's fine, CNN said everything's fine, all we have here is a group of fans that are swinging the lead. Lines like 'Some Paul supporters point to the strange timing of the "technical difficulties" as being intentional' are particularly inappropriate for a wikipedia article. That this total non-event is given its own section (which takes more space than the entire section on her career) is insane. I really think the single line in the intro is a better choice here Wikiditm (talk) 22:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

The only reason that APPEARS to be true to you, and many others is because you are diehard Ron Paul supporters. Just because Ron Paul's multi-million dollar propaganda campaign riled up their base to put a hit out on this woman (for having the guts to critique him), and thus got the google count to go up thanks to the Ron Paul circles, does not make it the defining moment of her career.

A minor criticism section is okay. Inflating that section to make mountains out of molehills, in order to put out a hit job on this woman for criticizing your favorite politician is NOT okay.

I do understand that criticizing Ron Paul is something Ron Paul supporters just DON'T DO, but independent journalists should be encouraged to, for the sake of those of us who want to be able to hold politicians accountable. --69.125.144.46 (talk) 18:34, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, simply google Dana Bash. The vast majority of the results have to do with her controversial coverage of the Paul Campaign, and they come from a wide variety of sources -- not "diehard Ron Paul supporters" as you suggest. Nothing in the controversy section refers to any objective "critique" or "criticizing" of Ron Paul, it states that she had a subjective fear of him staying in the race, compared his supporters to those in the Arab-Isreali conflict and made other statements that you would not associate with an objective journalist. The fact that she was removed from covering the Paul campaign in the aftermath of this affair says more than anything I can state here. Again, the controversies section needs to be edited, not removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.47.150.168 (talk) 21:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll quote a part of the controversies section of the article. At Paul's Campaign Headquarters in Iowa, Bash was also involved in a controversy involving an interview with army corporal Jesse Thorsen, where "technical difficulties" were blamed for an interview being cut short when Thorsen attempted to express his opinion that Israel could handle Iran by itself.[8] Some Paul supporters point to the strange timing of the "technical difficulties" as being intentional and accused Bash of cutting Thorsen off because of his politics.[9] The above section is complete conspiracy-theory nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence for these allegations and they seem to only exist in the minds of Ron Paul supporters (see the sources).

The entire controversies section of this article is ridiculous. It's nothing but a series of unfounded allegations by Ron Paul supportes, backed up mainly by Ron Paul blogs. There is substantial evidence of friction between her and the Ron Paul campaign. That deserves to be mentioned. But it is completely ridiculous that nearly a third of the article is taken up by this. She was the White House reporter and Congressional correspondent for CNN, one of the more important jobs in the United States media. A single Google search should not determine the content of such a large section of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.20.61.186 (talk) 02:44, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree completely. I initially added in the section as it was news at the time, but it ended up never coming to anything. The section has now expanded to a monstrosity. It is 2 paragraphs long, outstripping the length allocated to her entire career, and gives next to no important information at all. I've tried editing the section out, and replacing it with "In 2012 she was involved in controversies concerning alleged bias against presidential candidate Ron Paul," as a sentence at the end of the opening paragraph. However, when I do that, my edit gets reverted by unregistered members. Someone should really semi-protect this page. Wikiditm (talk) 12:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Page protection
This page is STILL seeing major edits from unregistered users. It should really be at least semi-protected. Wikiditm (talk) 16:29, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Ron Paul controversies sentence
The sentence saying Dana Bash has been involved "in a number of controversies" related to Ron Paul seems very strange. Wouldn't more specificity be better? Something like "Ron Paul supporters called for her to he fired after she made on-air comments they interpreted as biased against Paul." Although really personally I don't think it belongs in the article at all: it's not at all unusual for journalists covering politics to be accused of bias by supporters of the people they cover. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1000:B00D:3C2D:AC0B:531B:3852:71E0 (talk) 19:16, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Sean Spicer Paths crossed
She seems to be most knowledgeable. Would their paths crossed-career wise?--Wikipietime (talk) 21:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Update Needed
Are Dana Bash and John King divorced by now? People rely on Wikipedia for information and you should be up to date on things like this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1000:B024:CE:F09E:BE76:E382:AA75 (talk) 21:55, 20 March 2020 (UTC)