CNN is facing backlash Town hall Former President Donald Trump appears, an event quickly descending into chaos in a stark display of the tightrope facing reporters covering a 2024 Republican front-runner who refuses to play by the rules.
Wednesday’s town hall was the first big TV event of the 2024 presidential campaign, and CNN defended its decision to make it an opportunity to put Trump in front of a broader audience, outside of the conservative media bubble he has largely kept in from early on. in his presidency.
Critics said the event, staged in front of Republicans and unaffiliated voters who were expected to vote in the GOP primary, was instead turned into a rally for the Trump campaign and allowed to do so. Repeat old lies while dodging difficult questions
Tom Jones, a senior writer at the Poynter Institute for media research, said he favored the idea of holding CNN at the town hall at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. But he said he was surprised by the public’s behavior, which he expected to be more neutral.
Instead, the crowd gave Trump a standing ovation as he walked onstage, praising some of his more provocative comments and laughing at many of his pranks, including when he lashed out at E.G. Carroll, the columnist who accused him of raping her in 1996 and this week. He won a judgment of $5 million against him.
Putting the air down, Jones said CNN Director, Caitlan Collinsin an almost impossible situation as she tries to get answers directly from Trump and validate his comments about his supporters storming the Capitol on January 6 and the 2020 election, which he still falsely insists he won.
“Anytime she was going to corner him, the audience would have set him up,” Jones said. He just encouraged him. He realized, ‘I can do or say anything I want,’ and she was moved at that point through no fault of her own. It was against the whole room.”
event was indicative of A new era of leadership at CNN and the administration’s efforts to attract viewers who have turned to Fox News and other conservative outlets over the past decade.
In a Thursday morning meeting at CNN, Chairman and CEO Chris Licht praised Collins’ “masterful performance,” saying she asked tough questions in difficult circumstances.
“If someone is going to ask tough questions and have that messy conversation, it should be fine on CNN,” he said in a recording of the meeting obtained by the Associated Press.
He also defended the decision to convene the town hall in front of a Trump-friendly crowd.
“While we all felt uncomfortable hearing people applauding, that was also an important part of the story, because the people in that audience represent a large cross-section of America,” Licht said. And the mistake the media has made in the past is to ignore the existence of these people. Just as you can’t ignore President Trump’s presence.”
The event expanded CNN’s audience, at least for one night. The city hall averaged 3.3 million viewers, Nelson said, compared to the 707,000 who watched CNN during the same time slot the night before.
But Jones said he’s skeptical the city council will help CNN’s reputation in the long term, given the backlash. He noted that most of the network’s post-event comments were highly critical of Trump, potentially alienating conservative viewers who only followed the former president.
Conservative RedState.com writer Nick Arama criticized CNN reporter Gary Tuckman, who spoke with some of the audience after Trump’s appearance, saying, “He didn’t act like a go-between trying to get their opinions as much as Democrat propagandists trying to force his opinion on them.”
Meanwhile, critics on the left were harsh, saying that CNN should have anticipated how chaotic the event could be.
“CNN should be ashamed of itself. They lost complete control of this ‘City Council’ only to be manipulated once again into spreading election misinformation, defenses of Jan. 6 and a public attack on a sexual assault victim. The audience cheers him and laughs at the host.” Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, he wrote in a tweet.
The event was a harbinger of difficult coverage decisions, said Frank Sesnow, former CNN Washington bureau chief now at George Washington University. “Every news organization needs to wrestle because Donald Trump is no ordinary candidate.”
“You can’t ignore him,” he said, “but you can’t give him carte blanche either.”
A one-on-one interview would have been preferable, though whether Trump would agree to that is a different question, said Sesno, who added that he sees value in allowing Trump to speak to a broader audience, including several people who may have most of them done. fine tuned in recent years.
Sesno noted that although Trump supporters were pleased with his performance, Republican pundits, including New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, seized on him to express concerns about the former president’s ability to win the national election.
“As messy and bizarre as the event was,” he said, “I think as a journalist it’s important for people to see it.”
