Even CNN’s Own Employees Think The Network Did Not Serve America Well With Trump Town Hall

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CNN executives are trying to spin the Trump town hall by saying that it served America well, but there are CNN employees who reportedly disagree.

Former CNNer Brian Stelter tweeted:

There is a load of problems in Licht’s comments. CNN’s job isn’t to make the news. It is to report the news. When CNN provides a forum to a political candidate, the network has a responsibility to its audience and the nation to not platform dangerous people and rhetoric.

The corporate media mistake of 2015/2016 was not ignoring Trump and his audience, but it was giving Trump billions of dollars worth of free campaign promotion with unlimited coverage. The dangers posed by Trump were ignored and downplayed by organizations like CNN, and they are repeating that mistake again in 2023/2024.
Licht agreed to a format with Trump that guaranteed that Kaitlin Collins would fail. She gave Trump too much room and allowed him to take over the stage. It is a tough task for any journalist to put guardrails on Trump, but Collins, who has been a rising star at CNN since 2017, looked inexperienced and overwhelmed by the setting.

The odds are that Trump would have never agreed to do the town hall if CNN would have selected Dana Bash, Jim Acosta, Jake Tapper, or Anderson Cooper to moderate. The Trump campaign wanted someone that would be cannon fodder, and that is the exact position that Licht put Collins in.

Chris Licht can spin this, but it was clear to anyone watching or listening that platforming a serial lying, Putin-loving, sexual abuser, coup plotter was a bad idea for the country.

Reportedly, some of CNN’s own employees understand this, but there is little that they can do to stop a corporate owner that wants to chase Fox News’s audience.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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