CNN’s Defective Moral Compass

Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we catalog CNN’s most recent missteps and an NPR story that was universally despised, and hit more media misses.

This is the ‘Most Trusted Name in News’?

While CNN never exactly exemplified objective journalism, its crusade against podcast host Joe Rogan exemplified everything wrong with the mainstream press.

“Joe Rogan’s use of the n-word is another January 6 moment,” writer John Blake claimed in a CNN analysis piece about a video of Rogan that includes clips from as long as twelve years ago.

The piece likened the podcaster’s use of a slur to the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill and the Rwandan genocide.

“Rogan breached a civic norm that has held America together since World War II,” the article reads. “It’s an unspoken agreement that we would never return to the kind of country we used to be. That agreement revolved around this simple rule: A White person would never be able to publicly use the n-word again and not pay a price. Rogan has so far paid no steep professional price for using a racial slur that’s been called the ‘nuclear bomb of racial epithets.’”

Blake adds: “Once we allow a White public figure to repeatedly use the foulest racial epithet in the English language without experiencing any form of punishment, we become a different country.”

He suggests “allowing” Rogan to use the n-word means to “accept the mainstreaming of a form of political violence that’s as dangerous as the January 6 attack.”

After significant backlash, CNN rewrote the headline to read: “Why shrugging off Joe Rogan’s use of the n-word is so dangerous.”

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1492938011931131904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Meanwhile, CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter used his perch not to inform, but to propagandize while discussing protests against Canada’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates, asking an incredibly leading question during a conversation with correspondent Donie O’Sullivan.

“What you have seen in Canada is others are fearful of these protesters who are arguing for freedom. Right? Because some of the fringe rhetoric . . . ,” Stelter says of the truck drivers protesting at several border crossings and in the capital city of Ottawa, before cutting to a clip from The Daily Show.

While CNN had no issues publishing a piece comparing Rogan’s use of a slur with an insurrection or a genocide, Stelter and the correspondent mocked a Canadian for comparing the country’s mask mandates to the situation in Nazi Germany.

The Daily Show clip featured footage of an interview O’Sullivan did with one Canadian protester.

O’Sullivan asked the man if there is “stuff” he can’t do in Canada now because he is unvaccinated.

“Well basically if you want to compare Canada to anything, it’s like Hitler’s Germany and we’re like the Jews,” the Canadian man says.

The clip then cuts to Daily Show host Trevor Noah declaring, “You see, this is why we shouldn’t be banning books.”

Stelter says: “I can’t say it better than Trevor Noah.”

O’Sullivan calls it a “terrible historical, inaccurate comparison.” So the talent at CNN can see the problem; they’re merely farsighted.

Headline Fail of the Week

• Last week NPR published an article that asked, “Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think.”

In a tweet promoting the story, NPR wrote: “Some white people may choose 👍 because it feels neutral — but some academics argue opting out of 👍🏻 signals a lack of awareness about white privilege, akin to society associating whiteness with being raceless.”

Media Misses

• While MSNBC was appalled when Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, moved to allow students to unmask in schools, the network took a completely different tone when New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, made the same decision just a few weeks later:

• Wisconsin state representative Lee Snodgrass, a Democrat, deleted a tweet last week after going viral for suggesting that “if parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.” She walked back her initial tweet an hour later, saying, “It was lacking in nuance and easily misinterpreted. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that parents do not have a role in their child’s public education-I sure did. I encourage all parents to engage in voting for school board, join PTO and meet with teachers.”

• For those of you who remember the gnashing of teeth — and notable ouster — that followed Senator Tom Cotton’s call for the use of the National Guard to quell violent riots in the New York Times, behold:

• Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel published an editorial decrying the work of Governor Ron DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw, lamenting that she “is a full-time propagandist for DeSantis’ ambitions, and he gets to stick Florida taxpayers with her $120,000 salary.” The other 49 governors’ press secretaries must be thanking their lucky stars that the press in their states lacks outlets with the fearless industriousness of the Sun-Sentinel.