CNN says it refused to air Trump press secretary’s statement live today in case it was false
During the course of the 2016 election, CNN was one of the news outlets which took significant heat from the public for giving Donald Trump too much free airtime during the campaign, without bothering to push back against his nearly constant false statements and lies. But now CNN appears to be attempting to rectify that, announcing today that it made the decision not to give a live broadcast today to a statement made by Trump’s press secretary, under the presumption that it would include false information.
CNN host Brian Stelter tweeted the following this evening: “FYI, CNN made a conscious choice not to show the [White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer] statement live. The decision was to monitor the statement & then report on it.” It did end up airing Spicer’s claims on a delay, but within the context of pointing out that his claims about the size of the Trump inauguration crowd were false. Moments later, the official CNN Twitter account posted a story titled “White House press secretary attacks media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds.
Donald Trump verbally assaulted CNN reporter Jim Acosta at his press conference last week and accused CNN of being “fake news” for daring to report on Trump’s latest Russian scandal. But it appears that CNN is not backing down.
