CNN Having Bad Week

April Ryan, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon

It’s been another rough week for CNN as the network suddenly has a plethora of off-screen issues in addition to its usual ratings struggles.

“Just when one thought things couldn't get any worse for CNN, they did,” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told Fox News.

“In CNN's current form, they've always had putrid ratings, disingenuous personalities and a pathetic inability to simply cover the news – instead fear-mongering the small, anti-Trump audience into submission – but this past week was possibly the worst ever in totality.”

The liberal news network started off the week making headlines for the wrong reasons. “CNN Tonight” host Don Lemon was accused in a civil suit of a sexually charged assault of a bartender in New York's posh Hamptons area last year. The same evening that the Lemon news broke, on Tuesday, video circulated of CNN political analyst April Ryan looking on while a local New Jersey news editor appeared to be violently removed from an event where she was a keynote speaker.

We got the video of Charlie Kratovil being removed from the Heldrich Hotel by a bodyguard working for CNN's April Ryan. https://t.co/D85GUf00dz

— New Brunswick Today (@NB_Today) August 10, 2019

The Lemon and Ryan headlines came less than 24 hours after video of “Cuomo Prime Time” namesake Chris Cuomo threatening a man who called him “Fredo” went viral, capturing the attention of President Trump in the process.

"This was not a good week to be CNN. In addition to its abysmal ratings, three of its top news personalities are embroiled in scandal and controversy," Cornell University Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News.

"In a rational world, CNN leadership would implement a dramatic course correction, but there is no sign that rationality prevails at CNN,” he said.

The CNN host is the younger brother of Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York. But Cuomo’s outburst over being referred to as “Fredo,” a reference to Fredo Corleone, the weak and facile brother in the movie “The Godfather,” has been labeled hypocritical because several CNN personalities have used the exact reference to mock President Trump’s children.

CNN’s public relations team called the remark “an ethnic slur” and Cuomo compared it to “the N-word” for Italians. But CNN and the “Cuomo Prime Time” host didn’t seem to think the word was some sort of vile smear in the past.

The New York Post unearthed an old video in which Cuomo playfully referred to himself as “Fredo” during a 2010 radio interview and CNN’s Ana Navarro used the moniker to belittle Donald Trump Jr. earlier this year on Cuomo’s very own show. Cuomo didn’t reprimand Navarro for using the term that he now feels is equivalent to “the N-word.” CNN anchor Jake Tapper has also used the term, while CNN legal analyst Paul Callan used it in an op-ed earlier this year.