CNN is scrambling this week as they are suffering through two self-inflicted scandals that have them in all-out damage control mode. The damaged network is busy issuing denials over being busted for "scripting" their town hall event, and they are now calling one of the Parkland Florida school shooting survivors a liar, right on the heels of having targeted a female Trump supporter and doxing her (publicizing her personal information), which has resulted in her being attacked relentlessly by liberals online and offline.
CNN ACCUSED BY FLORIDA SHOOTING SURVIVOR OF 'SCRIPTING" TOWN HALL EVENT
Colton Haab, the Junior ROTC student that courageously shielded students from an active shooter last Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were murdered, is accusing CNN of refusing to allow him to offer his commentary and ask his own questions at the town hall they held on Wednesday, stating that instead it "ended up being all scripted."
"CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted," Haab told WPLG-TV. "I don't think that it's going get anything accomplished. It's not gonna ask the true questions that all the parents and teachers and students have."
After being informed he would not be able to ask his own questions, nor offer his commentary that CNN originally asked him to write up, Haab chose to pull out from the event.
CNN rushed into damage control mode by issuing two sets of statements. The first said "CNN did not, and does not, script any questions for town hall meetings, ever."
CNN then offered an expanded statement after Haab's accusations, via Senior Public Relations Manager at CNN, Richard Hudock:
There is absolutely no truth to this. CNN did not provide or script questions for anyone in last night's town hall, nor have we ever. After seeing an interview with Colton Haab, we invited him to participate in our town hall along with other students and administrators from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Colton’s father withdrew his name from participation before the forum began, which we regretted but respected. We welcome Colton to join us on CNN today to discuss his views on school safety.
Apparently not understanding the concept of cutting your losses, in a statement to The Daily Caller, CNN’s Vice President of Communications and Digital Partnerships Matt Dornic, not only offered the DC the same two responses, but decided to expand even more, which is where their claims break down.
Dornic added the network gave Haab the opportunity to expand on the idea of arming teachers, a topic which was brought up multiple times during the town hall, as opposed to delivering a prepared speech. Haab reportedly declined to reframe his remarks, and his father subsequently prevented him from taking part in the program.
So, they admit they were not going to allow him his "prepared speech," which wasn't quite in line with CNN's gun control agenda, yet as the DC highlights, with video, other participants that were pushing for gun control, were allowed extended time for lengthy statements that went beyond asking questions.
In particular, Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was one of the 17 victims who lost their lives in last week’s tragedy, gave a speech while Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel And NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch sat on stage.
The grieving mother ended her powerful, four-minute-long remarks by asking Loesch, “what is your plan to put things into action? What is your action?” yet Loesch was not given an opportunity to respond by moderator Jake Tapper.
CNN's agenda is clear and has been for a very long time and their actions in regards to this town hall is simply another example as to why their network has dropped 30 percentage points in ratings over the last year.
LIBERAL JOURNALISTS SHRED CNN FOR DOXING FEMALE TRUMP SUPPORTER
Perhaps the biggest scandal CNN is embroiled in right now, isn't over their nasty habit of publishing fake news, but was their attempt to distract from the fact that they had been caught helping to promote a Russian-organized anti-Trump event.
On Monday, February 19, 2018, it was revealed that CNN and MSNBC heavily promoted an anti-Trump rally that was organized by Russia in November 2016, allegedly using "unwitting" Americans as part of their campaign to "sow discord" as described in the Mueller indictments.
The media called it a “Love Rally” Back on November 12 of 2016, as they heaped piles of praise and promotion on to an anti- Trump Rally event in New York City. And according to special investigator Robert Mueller’s indictment the “Trump is NOT my President” rally was put together by Russians.
MRC put together clips of both MSNBC and CNN's coverage of those Russian-organized rallies, seen below.
As the screen shot above shows, CNN, also on Monday, went out on a hunt for citizens that participated in rallies that were organized and promoted by Russian trolls. Rather than approach a public figure, such as filmmaker Michael Moore, who was a high profile participant, or even to interview members of their own network since they attended and promoted the event becoming "unwitting" tools for Russia, CNN decided it would be better to stalk innocent, every day American citizens, publishing their names and social media accounts and harassing them at their homes.
A private citizen received online abuse after CNN tracked her down and publicly shamed her for unknowingly sharing a “Russian-coordinated event” on her Facebook page.
While filming the woman, who runs a pro-Trump page on Facebook, CNN publicly shamed her for “unwittingly” promoting a “Russian-coordinated event.”
“When you’re talking like this, I don’t want anything to do with you,” complained the woman after being repeatedly harassed by CNN’s Special Investigations Unit Reporter Drew Griffin.
Following the incident, conservative commentators criticized CNN for tracking down and attempting to publicly shame private citizens.
“Stop harassing people at their homes, you psychos!” replied conservative YouTube star Mark Dice.
What followed that report was CNN readers rushing over to harass the woman on her social media page, calling her "dumb sap," "traitor," "Hillbilly racist," "treasonous," "stupid," a "TWAT," "Ugly," "vile," "stupid, stupid, bitter old hag," and those are just the tip of the iceberg showing the type of abuse the woman has been receiving since CNN doxed her, for doing nothing more than seeing a planned pro-Trump rally and sharing it on her small Facebook page. (Screen shots can be found on Jerry Dunleavy's Twitter feed)
One of Dunleavy's statements on the series of tweets showing screen shots of what CNN had wrought, says "Just wonderful @CNN. Give yourselves a hand. Again — Russia wanted Americans turned against Americans? They wanted to sow chaos? They wanted to create division? Look at what a news report doxxing an old lady’s Facebook page results in. Vicious. Vile. Senseless. Uncharitable."
If the conservative commentator reaction was harsh, the most brutal of critiques over what CNN did, actually came from liberal journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald, who took to his social media account to rip into CNN in a long series of tweets, calling them despicable, vile, gross, along with other commentary expressing his complete disgust with the network.
Greenwald Tweets:
Despicable: CNN hunts down an ordinary citizen at home, accusing her of aiding Russia because she promoted an event on FB that Mueller says Russians organized.
Go ask Michael Moore why he did that. Ask Joy Reid why Russian bots RT her so much. Challenge power. This is bullying. [LINK]
CNN blasted her name all over their networks' airways & the internet, to millions of people, and now - predictably - she's being widely harassed online. What for? What's the journalistic value in exposing her identity? Do you want Fox to go to the homes of #Resistance activists?[LINK]
One last thing that is vile about what CNN did. This reporter would *never* show up uninvited at the home of, say, Obama military or intel officials & ambush them with cameras. They'd respectfully invite them into studios & allow them to decline. So easy to confront the powerless[LINK]
In CNN had ambushed a random #Resistance activist who unwittingly promoted on her FB page a Russian-organized anti-Trump event (as Michael Moore did), blasting her name everywhere, subjecting her to harassment, I wonder if opinions about CNN's behavior would be different? Hmmm. [LINK]
Beyond the ugly power imbalance of CNN using its huge platform to expose this woman, the premise is also gross: unknowingly promoting a Russian page or event is nefarious. Fox just trolled Michael Moore for doing *exactly* that, but at least he's prominent.[LINK]
The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill responded to Greenwald, stating "Also, that woman is now receiving a deluge of vicious, nasty attacks and threats on her Facebook page. CNN could have talked to her without broadcasting her image and name everywhere. It was stunt journalism that resulted in her being harassed mercilessly."
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange also responded to Greenwald's shredding of CNN, saying "It's two to four men men from a billion dollar corporation with decades of experience filming a surprise attack on an old woman at her home demanding to know whether she was in league with a foreign power so as to harness her shock for their power faction in the domestic war."
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia tells the network "CNN should be ashamed. This is not journalism this is abuse," while Huffington Post’s Yashar Ali also takes them to task saying "This is nuts. A woman living in her suburban home doesn’t deserve this badgering. She didn’t mastermind the conspiracy and she’s not a public official or a person known to the public."
THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME CNN HAS TARGETED AN INNOCENT INTERNET USER
Back in early July 2017, CNN was engulfed in yet another scandal, after having to retract a story in late June, which resulted in three high profile CNN employees being forced to resign. On July 2, 2017, President Trump tweeted a meme of an older wrestling clip that Trump participated in, replacing the head of the man Trump was wrestling, with the CNN logo. CNN went nuts, said Trump was threatening them, and then using that to distract from the major scandal they had been engulfed in, decided it would be a good idea to hunt down a random Internet user who created the original meme, and to threaten to reveal his identity to the world if he continued his "ugly behavior."
The result of CNN's attempt to distract that time backfired on the network "BIGLY" as immediately the #CNNBlackmail hashtag began to trend, where liberals and conservatives alike took them to task for their threat to dox some random guy for his amusing meme, simply because President Trump shared it. Then Reddit and 4chan users declared war against CNN, which became the "great meme war on 2017," with hundreds, if not thousands, of Internet memes were created against CNN and shared to the point where the movement went viral online.
BOTTOM LINE
Right now CNN is embroiled in two scandals, but one of them is blowing up bigger than the other, as their attempts to distract from their own network heavily promoting an alleged Russian-organized event back in 2016, they decided to target an elderly female private citizen for doing far less than they did to help "sow discord" in the U.S by promoting and reporting on the event, and in doing so caused a massive negative reaction from both sides of the aisle to their own actions after the woman they targeted started receiving ugly and vile abuse from CNN readers and/or viewers because of CNN doxing her.
This has become an almost predictable pattern for CNN, when they get caught out for questionable actions, reports and behaviors, their knee-jerk reaction is to attempt to create a narrative to take attention off of them, but it backfires and takes a minor scandal for them and turns it into something far larger and far more damaging to the network as a whole.
February Note to Readers - If we make it through March when we start seeing the revenue generated by the new ad network, we may just have a chance to turn big techs' bias back against them and come through this stronger, louder and more powerful, together. February 2018 has been the most brutal month yet due to the censorship we have been battling against this past year, so any extra readers may be able to spare for donations is greatly appreciated.
