CNN Called Out For 'Dishonest' Gun Coverage

A Bloomberg View has called out CNN for its biased reporting in the wake of the Parkland school shootings.

Watch the network, read its website or scroll through its Twitter feed, and the overall message will come through loud and clear: Assault weapons should be banned, Republicans should be put on the spot for their votes to the contrary, and anyone who disagrees is on the take from the National Rifle Association.

The website has featured one pro-gun-control story after another. A sample headline: “Some of the most powerful quotes from the #NeverAgain rallies.” (“To every lawmaker out there: No longer can you take money from the NRA.”)

Alisyn Camerota asked two survivors of the Parkland shootings now calling for gun regulation if they knew they were up against the money of the NRA. (They did.) Fair enough -- except that no CNN anchor is going to mention Planned Parenthood’s political contributions in a segment about late-term abortion. And Camerota didn’t mention the millions of voters for whom the NRA speaks, voters from whom it gets that money in the first place.

Anchors also promoted gun control on their own Twitter feeds. Chris Cuomo retweeted a fake story about a 20-year-old who had allegedly bought an AR-15 in five minutes, and then angrily defended himself from critics when the account was exposed as untrue. When President Donald Trump brought up the idea of arming teachers as a defense against school shootings, Brian Stelter responded, “Music to the gun lobby’s ears?” He could have said, “This will please gun-rights supporters.” But he has never tweeted the phrase “gun rights.” He has never tweeted about the “gun-control lobby” either. He uses hostile terminology for one side of this debate.

The point isn’t that CNN’s point of view is crazy or extreme, or even wrong. But, according to the Bloomberg piece,  CNN presents itself as an institution that reports the news straight. That’s the point of its “This is an apple” ad campaign. The idea is that in an atmosphere of pervasive distrust and no shared agreement about what’s true, it’s more important than ever to trust reliable and neutral sources of information. The network is not marketing itself as an explicitly progressive media outlet, the way Mother Jones and the Nation do. It’s not even an all-but-explicitly partisan outlet like Fox, which dropped its “fair and balanced” slogan last year.