Wednesday, October 16, 2019

CNN: What I saw There

We'll tell ya, there are two journalism ethics issues we saw unfolding when we were at CNN.

On our very first day Tom Hannon, director of the Political Unit, was discussing with Beth Fouey, one of the producers of Inside Politics, rumors then floating around that Governor George W. Bush did cocaine in the 70's. At issue was whether they had proper sourcing and was it even news worthy? Do note this was February 1999, before those rumors had seeped into the public discourse. It was the first we'd heard of them.

Later there was a big controversy over a plan to have Algore guest host Larry King Live. A lot of people on the floor were pissed about the idea, he was a candidate after all. We saw genuine anger. The plan was scrapped.

We were in the room for a couple hundred morning calls with Atlanta and we never, ever heard anything like Jeff Zucker was doing in the Project Veritas tapes. Reporters, producers and other assorted staff talked about the day's news and issues and from there decided what they should broadcast that day, that's it. 

Algore was talking about sprawl, so they did a piece on sprawl. After The Phantom Menace was out for a few weeks, they did a piece on the politics in the film. 

Our point is that yes, CNN was biased, but it had journalistic standards.

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