Usually, when determining media bias, you compare different outlets’ coverages of an event — the headlines, the words, the angles. But every once in a while, a publication gives us the chance to examine what they celebrate as the best they have to offer — and CNN did just that this week.
At the Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Television Political Journalism, CNN was highlighted for their two-hour Parkland Town Hall, broadcast in the immediate aftermath of the February 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
USC Annenberg called the CNN town hall “compelling and powerful” and said that “[t]he program helped ‘advance the national conversation on gun control and violence.'”
(They also praised NBC for dedicating a Meet The Press episode to climate change, although there was no mention of the fact that the episode explicitly denied any dissenting views on the issue.)
This year’s award revealed two things: First, that the narrative is more important than facts.
And they aren’t even pretending to hide it anymore.
Indeed, CNN set the town hall up in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shooting when emotions were still high, funerals had just finished, and the investigation remained ongoing. There, the network specifically allowed Sheriff Scott Israel to take the stage and blame the National Rifle Association and gun laws for what happened in that school.
Israel made those claims without a single questioning remark from a CNN producer, anchor, or editor — even though Israel knew at the time that his failures to train his deputies, and his department’s refusal to go in and save lives, were directly responsible for those deaths.
Who did ask those questions? The local media in Florida. The Miami Sun-Sentinal did an in-depth report, detailing all the failures of Sheriff Israel and his deputies. Their conclusion:
Failures by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and school district cost children their lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Do you know who they didn’t blame? They didn’t blame NRA spokesman Dana Loesch, who answered hard questions at the town hall. Nor did they blame Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
The primary blame for the tragic event sits squarely at the shooter’s feet, and all the secondary responsibility belongs to Israel and his lack of leadership. In fact, Israel was forcefully removed from office for his gross incompetence following the tragedy.
But CNN doesn’t care. They advanced the narrative they wanted and moved on.
We know this because Cameron Kasky, one of the survivors of the horrible attack, who was on-stage for the town hall, has since apologized for his role in that event. He said CNN propped him and his peers up as experts on the topic when they weren’t experts at all.
CNN used kids to drive that emotional narrative.
That brings us to my second point: The award doesn’t just reward CNN’s journalistic malpractice — it holds that smoldering dumpster fire of reporting up as the pinnacle for all journalism students to aspire to.
Remember, this is a university handing out these awards, and they’re pointing directly to events where journalists reflect clear bias and telling their students: do that.
Meanwhile, those same journalists were more than happy to jump on edited video to smear the Covington Catholic High School kids. When the Parkland victims were the main storyline, it was wrong for anyone in the media to attack or criticize them. But when the narrative shifted, the press decided that smearing high schoolers was perfectly fine.
Those same journalists also happily jumped on board to the highly questionable claims of Jussie Smollett. After interviewing him on Good Morning America, Robin Roberts openly admitted that Smollett’s story had red flags, but she’d declined to ask any tough questions.
It took a waste of police department resources to get to the bottom of that story, and all the while, media outlets blasted anyone for questioning Smollett.
And on the issue of abortion, reporters say conservative claims that Democrats are engaging in infanticide are “incendiary.” But it’s the Democrats who are pushing legislation that kills infants after they’re outside the womb.
Meanwhile, the media is happily letting candidates like Beto O’Rourke jump around questions on that issue because they agree with it.
President Donald Trump likes to say that the media is the “enemy of the people.” It’s more accurate to say that the press is the enemy of the truth: they want their narrative and nothing else.
They aren’t reporting facts — they’re reporting what they want you to think. We are presented narrative and expected to go along with it. If you question the party line in the media, you get attacked as if you’re a flat-earther.
CNN can claim all the awards they want, but it won’t change what happened in Parkland, and it won’t improve their news coverage to anything more than a complete and utter disaster.
As the power of the internet spreads, the importance of journalists is shrinking. They should enjoy their awards while they still can.
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