OUT ON A LIMB: CNN lost trust over COVID coverage, internal report found.
The network won multiple prizes for its coverage of Covid-19, including the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Cronkite/Jackson Prize, which was awarded to Dr. Sanjay Gupta for his coverage “correcting Covid-19 misinformation.”
But Licht’s criticism was drawn from CNN’s own research.
Last year, CNN commissioned a survey examining viewer trust and the places where CNN was succeeding and falling short with viewers across the ideological spectrum. According to a partial copy of the report, which hasn’t been revealed before, CNN’s coverage of Covid-19 was the third leading cause of distrust in the network behind liberal bias and “the Chris Cuomo situation.”
Survey respondents of all ideological stripes criticized the network’s “overly dramatic and sensational”* and “dire” reporting, the report said.
Sanay Gupta, you say? Flashback: Joe Rogan’s Dust-Up With CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta Exposes the Narrative:
Rogan continued to ask why the network would lie about a Nobel prize-winning drug that had cured blindness due to a parasitic infection in millions of people, suggesting it was only used in animals. Rogan asked, “Does it bother you the news network you work for out and out lied? Just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer?” Gupta responded, “They shouldn’t have said that.”
That’s what Gupta told Rogan while in his studio. The following day, however: CNN’s Effort to Clean up the Gupta Train Wreck Interview Proves Joe Rogan’s Point:
CNN’s [Don Lemon]: “It is not a lie to say that [Ivermectin] is used as a horse de-wormer. I think that’s important. And it is not approved for Covid.”
[Gupta]: “Correct … If you look at the data, there is no evidence that it really works [against Covid].”
This is CNN. “But that’s the problem with CNN in a nutshell, and it’s the point that Rogan was making,” Red State’s Nick Arama writes. “They don’t care about the truth; it’s all about narrative.”
“Overly dramatic and sensational,” you say? Flashback: ‘It’s Good TV:’ CNN’s High-Drama Coverage of the Pandemic Hits Close to Home: “But another current CNN employee who spoke with THR criticized Cuomo’s appearances, particularly the dramatic moment last Monday when he was filmed leaving the basement where he was quarantined to reunite with his family, as ‘reality TV.’ ‘Him coming out of the quarantine with the cameras there, that’s all Jeff Zucker reality TV, and that screams Zucker,’ the person says, referring to the network president who brought The Apprentice to NBC and helped make Trump a star.”
Related: Explosive Report Details CNN CEO Chris Licht’s Time At the Left-Wing Network.