Over the last year since President Trump was elected, there has not been one mainstream news outlet, paper, or television network that has not been caught in major false reporting, from the New York Times being called out by name during congressional testimony for inaccurate reporting, to an overall claim in front of Congress that "many, many" Russia-related stories dependent on leaks of classified information by anonymous sources were "dead wrong."
Despite mistakes and missteps by Washington Post, CBS News, MSNBC, and NYT, along with the recent huge screwup by ABC News, causing a 350 point drop in the stock market, and the suspension of on-air personality Brian Ross after major clarifications, edits, and retractions, no network has had quite as bad a year as CNN, in optics as well as the loss of any and all credibility.
During the 2016 campaign season, when Trump rally attendees would chant "CNN Sucks," it was amusing to see the hyperbolic reactions from CNN personalities, as well as other mainstream media employees circling the wagons, screeching about threats to press freedom when Trump would call them out for their consistent dribbling of "fake news." While present day Trump rallies continue to see some members starting that same "CNN Sucks" chant, the disdain and disgust of Americans towards the mainstream media, but specifically CNN itself, has grown exponentially.
Supposed bombshell after bombshell reported on "exclusively" by CNN in 2017, all anti-Trump propaganda stories, have had to be changed, edited, have an editor's notes added, and in one humiliating instance, after being threatened with a $100 million lawsuit, was retracted and deleted, completely removed from the Internet, with subsequent forced resignations of three very high profile reporters.
ANP has been documenting the preponderance of fake news articles from the mainstream media since well before the presidential election, from selectively editing Trump speeches in order to bash him to outright lies, as well as how much worse the issue has gotten in the year since the election, to the point where even the majority of Americans (including Democrats!) said they believe the MSM publishes fake news, so putting aside the agenda driven and deliberate disinformation campaign many MSM outlets are engaging in, we also note examples of things that are extremely bad in optics.
CNN'S OPTICS PROBLEM
CNN "journalists" publicly grandstanding and acting like they are the "opposition party" rather than an objective news organization, consistently reading directly from Democratic politicians scripts, with CNN's White House correspondent Jim Acosta constantly throwing a foot stomping temper tantrum to garner some liberal "likes" and video hits.
That is not just the opinion of Trump supporters or conservatives as there have been multiple other outlets, and writers such as Carl Golden from Center for Public Policy, who wrote at Times-Gazette in August 2017 that Acosta's antics are "an embarrassment to himself, his colleagues, his network," saying Acosta reinforces "the perception that the media is no longer an independent broker and purveyor of news, but a group of opinionated, smarmy individuals intent on expressing their own biases." Even Acosta's colleagues within CNN accuse him of using these antics as "auditions" while "angling" for his own opinion show.
Other CNN personalities like Chris Cuomo have been busted pushing outright fake news onto his audience, when he laughably claimed it was illegal for the general public to read the Wikileaks leaked emails during the 2016 election cycle, telling the audience that anything they need to learn about the leaked emails they had to learn from the media.
Remember Cuomo is also the one that admitted, before Hillary Clinton even announced she was running for President in the 2016 election, that the media were her biggest promoters and had given her a "free ride."
That does go a long way towards explaining why the media has declared all out war on President Trump..... he beat their preffered candidate and he did so despite 90+ percent "hostile" coverage before the election.
Other optical problems CNN has inflicted on themselves include an event from July 2017, when President Trump tweeted out an amusing GIF created from his 2007 video of him body slamming and punching WWE CEO Vince McMahon, where a random internet meme maker had superimposed the CNN logo over McMahon's head and face.
The mainstream media WAS. NOT. AMUSED.
Accusations of Trump endangering media members, inciting violence against them was all the rage within the MSM, but CNN took it a step further and used their resources to hunt down the random Internet user that originally created the meme, then put out an article, saying they would not expose his identity for safety purposes, and "because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again," then article stated. "…CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change."
If that sounds a little bit like blackmail to those just hearing about this for the first time, you are not alone, in fact so many thought the threat to dox a random user if his "behavior" online didn't meet CNN's standards of good behavior, should be labeled blackmail, that #CNNBlackMail instantly started trending on Twitter, with CNN issuing excuses, justifications and denials in order to make the whole bad optics of what they did, go away.
Another optical nightmare for CNN is their penchant, when they run out of "fake news" stories, or anti-Trump/Russia material, is their weird obsession they have with Donald Trump's eating habits, which started before the election with blockbuster reporting about how the then-candidate Trump ate Kentucky Fried Chicken with a fork!
CNN's fixation didn't stop there, as we see multiple articles and CNN videos about Trump's Road meals and fast foods, and "Even without the buns, Trump's favorite fast-food meal is a diet-buster," and how CNN was so concerned about President Trump's liking of Diet Coke, that they immediately rushed out to find a Gastroenterologist to interview (screen shot above), while also dedicating other segments to the same topic.
One would think there was nothing else going on that day that was newsworthy.... something like, oh yeah, a terror attack in New York!
Needless to say, Twitter users relentlessly mocked CNN for finding the President's penchant for drinking Diet Coke more important than a breaking story about an attempted terror attack.
Who can forget CNN's amazing coverage, both in creating a video and headlining an article, to the fact that President Trump likes two scoops of ice-cream on his pie! Fair warning, you will never get the two minutes of your life back that it takes to watch the video below which was published on CNN's website and on their YouTube channel.
Last but not least, we have breaking news this morning from Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo, who could find nothing more important to "report" on than how the President sipped from a glass of water.
BOTTOM LINE
All snark aside, CNN has not only become the joke among other news outlets, and considering the MSM's less than stellar reporting of late is really saying something, but they have become the joke of the internet. The more disturbing aspect of this is not just how a network that bills itself as a "news" network spends more time on utter and complete fake news, crappy news or items that absolutely have no "news" value, but it absolutely proves how they are deliberately dumbing down their entire audience.
The saddest part of this for CNN is that their "reporting" on President Trump's eating habits are about the only stories they don't get wrong these days. It appears that is all they are capable of "confirming" and they even had to get that from the New York Times, who also thought Trump's eating habits was newsworthy.
The mainstream media has had a credibility problem, with distrust of them and their reporting rising throughout the past decade, but is appears that President Donald J. Trump has quite literally broken them and exposed them for the frauds they are.
