One of Carpenter’s strongest examples is Michael Morell, the former deputy director and acting director of the CIA.

CBS News hired Morell as an on-air commentator and presented him as an analyst with extensive intelligence expertise.

On paper, that description was completely accurate.

Morell really did have extensive intelligence experience.

The problem, according to Carpenter, was the assumption that leaving the CIA automatically transformed him into a detached observer.

Carpenter argues that Morell repeatedly advanced the agency’s perspective on major issues even after leaving the CIA payroll.

That raises a broader question about how television news uses former officials.

Networks understandably want commentators with experience. A former intelligence director knows more about intelligence agencies than the average television journalist.

But expertise and independence are not the same thing.

Someone can possess extraordinary knowledge of an institution while simultaneously remaining deeply attached to its worldview.

The audience therefore needs more than a job title.

It needs to know the commentator’s institutional history, financial relationships and potential conflicts of interest.

That becomes particularly important when the commentator is defending policies favored by the same institutions in which he spent his career.

Carpenter’s complaint is that news networks have often treated former intelligence officials as neutral experts without adequately explaining their continuing institutional connections.

The result can be a very polished form of establishment messaging—delivered by someone who looks like an independent analyst.

@americanmajority