CNN

Controversies and Allegations of Bias

CNN has come under criticism by conservatives for alleged liberal bias. Critics have claimed that CNN's reporting contains liberal editorializing within news stories, and have jokingly referred to CNN as the "Clinton News Network," the "Communist News Network," or "Clearly Not Neutral". Conservatives point to the following as evidence of the alleged bias:

Related Topics:
Conservatives - Liberal bias - Communist News Network

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• During the first Gulf War, CNN reporters Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett, and John Holliman refused to be debriefed by the U.S. military concerning what they saw during their stay at the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad during the initiation of the air campaign, citing themselves as belonging to an "international" news organization and stating it would compromise their journalistic principles. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24752 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/633771/posts
• On August 16, 1997, Chief News Executive Eason Jordan gave a gift to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in an attempt to improve CNN's access to North Korean affairs. http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/1997/9708/news8/16.htm (Jordan had been credited in 1996 with gaining exclusive access to North Korea for CNN reporters.)
• In January 1998, Lucia Newman http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/newman.lucia.html, the bureau chief in Havana reported that Cuba's single candidate elections were better than the elections with "no dubious campaign spending" and "no mud slinging" in the United States.
• In 1999, CNN, in partnership with corporate sister Time magazine, ran a report that Operation Tailwind included use of Sarin gas to kill a group of defectors from the United States military. The story proved untrue, CNN said after a hurried two-week inquiry into the contents of the program, issued a public retraction. http://edition.cnn.com/US/9807/02/tailwind.johnson/ and The story's producers, April Oliver and Jack Smith, were summarily sacked in a move that one media critic described as 'CNN's capitulation'.
• In 2000, Lou Dobbs left CNN, reportedly due to heated clashes with then-president Rick Kaplan, who was frequently accused by conservatives of allegedly manipulating news programs to present a liberal slant. Dobbs returned the following year at the behest of CNN founder Ted Turner.
• In November 2004 at the News Xchange conference in Portugal, Eason Jordan claimed that United States armed forces were arresting and torturing non-coalition Arabic journalists in Iraq. He also claimed that American troops were intentionally killing these journalists. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1355027,00.html Also at the conference, Chris Cramer, a CNN executive, claimed that journalists were being "deliberately targeted (by the US military) for seeking out the truth." That month, al-Arabiya reporter Abdel Kader al-Saadi had been detained by U.S. forces for 11 days during U.S.-led attacks on Fallujah without comment on cause for his dentention. http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11868
• On January 27, 2005 Eason Jordan claimed 12 journalists who were killed were actually targeted by United States troops. He resigned from CNN on February 11, 2005 in an effort, he claimed, to spare the network from further controversy. Jordan's comments provoked minor controversy in the US, even among such liberal politicians as Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank.
• On March 24, 2005 in an interview with PBS' Charlie Rose, CNN President Jonathan Klein called FOX News Channel's audience "mostly angry white men ... tend to be rabid." Klein then said a liberal, progressive TV network would never be as successful as Fox because "progressives don't get too worked up about anything. And they're pretty morally relativistic."
• On the September 1, 2005 edition of the show The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer described the Hurricane Katrina victims wading through the flooded streets of New Orleans as such: "... so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black ..." http://newsbusters.org/node/841.