OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD, another CNN reporter caught pushing fake news!
Chris Cillizza, a political reporter and editor for CNN, sent out a tweet Thursday that has conservatives and others from across the political spectrum calling him out. Cillizza claimed that during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw, the Polish president’s wife snubbed Trump, foregoing a handshake with the American president. Cillizza’s response:
“OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD”
Sure, if you look at the edited video of the presidents’ greeting, it does appear Poland’s first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda ignored Trump’s outstretched hand. However, when you get the full news, the full video and not the tweaked and edited version, it’s clear for all to see that Kornhauser-Duda first shook Melania Trump’s hand then a second later shook Trump’s.
President Duda didn’t take too kindly to besmirching his wife either. In a tweet later that day, he wrote:
Contrary to some surprising reports my wife did shake hands with Mrs. and Mr. Trump @POTUS after a great visit. Let's FIGHT FAKE NEWS.
Social media was all atwitter with the altered news. The Root published a brief snippet saying "Kornhauser-Duda, didn’t want any part of (Trump's) tiny deplorable fingers as she straight curbed him when he came in for a handshake.” And that wasn’t, by far, all of the gleeful comments and articles from the left. Stassa Edwards from The Jezebel claimed it was a triumph for all women.
According to Beckett Adams of the Washington Examiner, it all began with a tweet by David Lewis that included the edited version of the video, which is what Cillizza linked to in his tweet. From there, the abbreviated version spread like wildfire with posts and articles quickly surfacing from several media outlets including the New York Daily News and CNBC, all of whom claimed the president had been snubbed by Poland’s first lady.
Even when the Polish president himself is calling it fake news, the mainstream media is still out to sell headlines with sensationalism and false leads. Adams especially took affront with Cillizza’s OHMYGOD response:
Here's a friendly tip: Coming across as a girl who is welcoming the Beatles on their first visit to the United States is a very bad and unprofessional look for supposedly professional media commentators. Try a little dignity, please.
Can’t you just picture Cillizza jumping up and down, holding a melting ice cream cone in one hand as he frantically types his dramatized tweet with the other hand - his giddiness reminiscent of what has become of CNN reporting lately? But Cillizza didn’t get a lot of favorable responses to his tweet. Just look at a few from his twitter account:
- He’s a mean girl not a journalist. Such a disgrace.
- Chris I’m sure you get this a lot but you have the appeal of a toenail infection.
- I find it very #sad that a leader of a foreign country needs to tweet to the world that #cnnfakenews once again got it wrong. #msm #StopIt
- And people wonder why #CNNBlackmail was #2 worldwide trending. Because this network is a flat out embarrassment w/ a 2 yr old's temperament.
And what was Cillizza’s response?
Let me say for the billionth time: Reporters don’t root for a side. Period.
Well, they’re not supposed to. However, a string of OHMYGODs across Twitter linked to an edited video that doesn’t tell the whole story doesn’t exactly support your claim, Chris. To be fair, the pressure to get “news” out to the public before anyone else has been driving the media. It’s now more important to get the news out, right or wrong, and be the first to do so than to be sure everything is legit. Corrections can always be made later, right? The problem is, it’s not very often you see a correction, or even an apology. And if you do, it’s buried on page seven or in small print on a website somewhere.
Cillizza is not the first in a long line of CNN reporters, associate producers and editors recently who have gone on record – knowingly or not – and spouted misinformed opinions, insults, false news and absurd rhetoric. Except for the three CNN employees who resigned recently, the media conglomerate has made no attempt to try and appease its viewers with apologies or even corrections.
Some believe any press is good press, even negative attention. While that may be true in some instances, that is not the case for CNN. Just look at their ratings from the last week of June.
The comparisons between CNN's viewership and that of Fox News and MSNBC are truly eye-opening. Fox News tripled CNN's viewership in nearly all of the primetime slots. Fellow left-wing network MSNBC dominated CNN in all primetime hours as well, doubling its viewership by average for most of the evening.
It’s a fair assumption to say CNN is no longer “The Most Trusted Name in News.” Why is it, then, that reporters and other CNN representatives are allowed to continue on their rants and push fake news? CNN’s supervising producer, John Bonifield admitted that the whole “Russia influenced the presidential elections” story didn’t have any real proof to back it up, but it was all about the ratings and that their ratings “are incredible right now.”
Incredibly low.
When is CNN going to do something about its employees running amok, spouting off misleading and false information and acting like giddy school girls talking about the cutest boy in class? Cillizza is not the first, nor will he likely be the last, CNN employee to publicly discredit the mainstream media, but as Adams wrote in his post, all reporters need to step back and take a breath. Think before you speak … or in Cillizza’s case, before you tweet:
It would be awesome if we didn't have to Zapruder the news cycle because reporters can't keep it together long enough to figure out the truth of certain events. Can we please have just a little bit more restraint?
OHMYGOD, wouldn’t that be awesome?
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