TV Station Backs Off Accusation That CNN Played Politics

An executive at a San Diego television station that accused CNN of rejecting an appearance by one of its reporters for political reasons conceded Friday he didn’t really know why the network turned him down, reports The Associated Press.

After CNN reached out to KUSI-TV to see if reporter Dan Plante would come on the air Thursday to talk about how a border barrier was working in the San Diego area, the segment never happened.

CNN said plans change all the time, and that the network chose to have its own reporters talk about border security. But KUSI saw other motivations.

Steve Cohen, KUSI’s news director, said he told CNN that it might not want Plante because his reporting has concluded that a border wall there has worked well, and that such a conclusion might not fit the cable network’s “narrative” against the wall. He said he never got a call back.

Thursday morning, @CNN called the KUSI Newsroom asking if a reporter could give them a local view of the debate surrounding the border wall and government shutdown. After we informed them about our past reports, they declined to hear from us.

More info: https://t.co/RX4mB6EdNE pic.twitter.com/r0SAvWxFIm

— KUSI News (@KUSINews) January 11, 2019

CNN said it had also reached out to reporters at other local stations about a possible segment but didn’t follow through when the plans changed. “This happens many times every single day,” the network said in a statement. “This is a non-story.”

Cohen said he never actually spoke to anyone about CNN about why Plante wasn’t used.

“It’s certainly plausible that they didn’t want it for the viewpoint, or they just didn’t want it,” he said. “Both are plausible conclusions. I made one rather than the other.”

KUSI-TV is unaffiliated with any broadcast network and owned by McKinnon Broadcasting Co. Its general manager, Michael McKinnon, was described by the San Diego Business Journal as a “longtime supporter of conservative causes and candidates in the San Diego area.”

CNN noted that it had aired another report from KUSI about border security in November.