In the recent much-linked interview with Michael Moore, Moore mentions that he can’t imagine what pharmaceutical company will be sponsoring the next commercial. Blitzer responds:
In fairness we’ve got a lot of commercials for Sicko that we’ve been running on CNN as well, so, uh, we have commercials. This is a business, obviously.
That struck me as an odd argument. I was expecting something more along the lines of “at CNN we have strict separation between our ad sales division and our news division, so the commercials we run have no impact on the stories we cover.” But he didn’t say anything like that. Is Blitzer tacitly acknowledging that CNN changes its news based on who the sponsors are?
I don't think Mr Blitzer is saying anything along the lines of CNN changing it's news based on sponsors, instead he seems to be saying that they will happily take money from anyone, because they are a business. That doesn't require pandering.