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CNN’s Horrible, Terrible, No-good, Very Bad Week, Part XIV
So, CNN hasn’t been having the best week. First it published a hit piece against President Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci. He threatened to sue and it got memory holed. Then CNN had to head deeper into CYA mode with a memo to news teams that they can’t publish Russia related stories without a VP signing off on it and that people will be disciplined. (I won’t post the BuzzFeed original reporting on this, because they’re scum, even though they did a good job here. Props, but still scum.) Then three top CNN staffers “resigned” due to behavior unbecoming (editorial note: they made the unforgivable error of being caught rather than actual malpractice). They’ve also had to deal with Jim Acosta trying to grandstand and play the victim that persisted, who nevertheless got dunked on by Sean Spicer (the real one, not the Spicier one).
And now this breaks:
American Pravda: CNN Part 1, Russia narrative is all about “ratings”
Our friends at Project Veritas, led by investigator James O’Keefe have gotten CNN Producer John Bonifield on camera saying such endearing things as:
(About Trump-Russia ties) “I mean, it’s mostly [expletive] right now,” Bonifield says. “Like, we don’t have any giant proof.”
and
“Just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN (Jeff Zucker) said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with that, let’s get back to Russia.”
He also stated that CNN has no ethics and is just in it for the ratings.
Watch it and wait for the next shoe to drop! Make sure you’re stocked up on popcorn fellow Ricocheti!
Published in Journalism
May CNN and their evil lying covfefe brand of journalism burn. Burn. Burn.
I think this has been obvious to those of us here, but will this story get in front of the the people who feed their hate on fake news?
Covfefe indeed.
Everyone knows that any self-respecting anonymous source works for the New York Times, or Amazon’s Washington Post.
Well, DUH! We are only recognizing now that “news” organizations are in it for the money? Ratings=Money. May they go bankrupt.
Well, we knew that, but it’s great to get them on the record verifying it.
The whole Trump/Russia thing reminds me of the old joke about the guy who bought a penny stock and saw it go up to $5. He called his broker and bought more. Then it went up to $20. He bought more and watched it go up and up. Finally, he decided to take his profits and called the broker to tell him to sell.
The broker said, “To who ?”
The sell date is very close and they will be left with nothing.
Of course, as VDH points out, they have nothing anyway.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448992/trump-derangement-only-alternative-democrats-have-no-agenda
Thank you, James O’Keefe!
Have already seen one defense of CNN in the media using the “Planned Parenthood Defense”:
That’s from heavy.com.
It is, by far, my favorite charge against O’Keefe. In a desperate attempt to discredit him and other conservative undercover reporters, people who totally understand how television works try to convince the most media savvy generation of all-time that only these videos are “selectively edited.”
To make that case you’d have to assert that all other media companies do NOT selectively edit their reports. Like CNN and the legacy nightly newscasts all have rooms full of monkeys editing their stuff in some random order without regard to content. “Yeah, we just tell the monkeys to keep all our stuff down to a minute-fifteen. It’s totally incomprehensible but it keeps the show moving and our viewers don’t seem to notice.”
When it turns out that it was Obama and Clinton behind the narrative I wonder if I t will be the last laugh?
I wonder how Muelller feels right now?
What’s bad for CNN is good for Republicans and conservatives. Here’s for more weeks like this.
Tired of winning yet?
No, not yet, but thanks for asking!
Which is why O’Keefe always puts the entire raw video feed on his website if you wish to view it. Awesome.
We must demand he recuse himself, and Trump would be justified in firing the staff he has hired as they are all partisans.
Gee whiz, haven’t watched ZNN for like years now. I didn’t know how much I’ve been missing. Better punch up the ol’ channel guide so I can has me some laughs too.
I try to watch it from time to time … I just cant even. Its not news anymore, its basically 1 panel discussion after another, with opinion clowning crowding out facts. Maybe if the panels where somehow factual or interesting it could be ok…but bleaechk.
I used to like Erin Burnett when she was on CNBC, but on CNN she doesnt look engaged. Like she regrets signing a contract, and is just ticking off the time until she can go do something – anything else.
Yes, and it’s hilarious the way the media ignore that very important fact. What does it matter if there’s an edited version of a video, when the uncut one is readily available?
But they can’t help themselves when it comes to claiming “selective editing.” It’s like Nancy Pelosi and “tax cuts for the rich.” I have a feeling that if you bumped into Nancy in a Capitol hallway, she’d robotically blurt out, “Trickle-down economics!”
The “selective editing” defense is even more hilarious when you consider how often the media engage in far worse than “selective editing” (which is actually redundant – editing being the action of selecting that which will be seen and heard, as E.J. notes). If one videotaped a 90-minute interview with O.J. Simpson wherein he mostly discussed prison life, but suddenly said, “I killed Ron Goldman and my ex-wife Nicole,” would the media declare the 5-second clip to be “selectively” or “heavily” edited?
The real problem occurs when words are edited to change their meaning. Remember Maureen Dowd quoting George W. Bush? She wrote:
The ellipsis stood in place of the following: “Right now, about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case [they’re not a problem anymore].” In other words Bush wasn’t saying that al Qaeda wasn’t a problem anymore – but rather that those al Qaeda members who were jailed or dead weren’t a problem anymore. Which is rather uncontroversial, no?
Even worse than changing one’s words, of course, is manufacturing fake facts, a skill at which Dan Rather and Brian Williams excel.
O’Keefe is neither making things up nor twisting anyone’s words. That’s why the protestations will be so strenuous.
And as I wrote here, Hallie Jackson of NBC reported on Trump’s “I have no Comey tapes” tweets by quoting the second of the two and ignoring entirely the first. How’s that for heavy editing?
The first tweet was the one that said
Granted, this was bullhooey on Trump’s part, but it was also journalistic malpractice on NBC’s part to leave it out.
The real shock to me is that even though their “newsroom” is stuffed full of former and current DNC higher-ups, they still try to pretend that they are unbiased. I mean, come on. Just change your name to DNCNN already!
I remember when ABC hired Stephanopoulos, who covered for Bill Clinton throughout all his corrupt Presidency, and ABC said they felt he would be “fair”. I’ve never watched “This Week” since that day.
The video doesn’t play for me. Is it still up?
It might be down, try:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE&
2 things going for CNN.
1) Nobody pays attention to O’Keefe tapes. I thought the incitement of violence at Trump’s rallies tapes would be huge; they kind of went pfft.
2) This gives people who used to trust CNN but don’t anymore, people who view themselves as moderates or self-identify as “reasonable,” a chance to come back into the fold after a significant “shakeup.”
Unequivocally a bad week for CNN, but it may have inadvertently opened the door for them to whitewash their credibility with those already inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.