CNN Boss: Ferguson Coverage Reestablished Brand Identity

In a stunning admission of his network’s purpose as a liberal propaganda machine, CNN’s Jeff Zucker said the channel’s biased coverage of the Ferguson events helped them win back the title of America’s least trusted news organization.

All right, that’s not quite the way he put it:

I believe we have reestablished the brand identity that this is the place for news. When the Paris terror attacks happen, when war breaks out in Ukraine, when unrest happens in Ferguson, people know that CNN is the place to come.

Zucker went on to say that 2014 was the year CNN “doubled-down on news.”

While it may be true that CNN has moved away from some of the non-“news” programming filler they were hoping would boost their ratings, the news content has only gotten worse. This was clear in their embarrassing coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight, where facts took a backseat to wild conspiracy theories and Xbox graphics.

But nowhere was their news lacking more than in their coverage of Ferguson. From the first gunshots, CNN outdid almost every other media outlet when it came to presenting a biased picture of the Michael Brown shooting. At no time was Brown referred to as anything other than an “unarmed black man,” ensuring that viewers saw this as a racially-motivated injustice. While other news outlets did the same thing, CNN was especially egregious in their coverage.

On the night of the grand jury’s verdict, contributor Donna Brazile wondered aloud about the late-night timing of the announcement. “I’m a little baffled about the timing,” she said. “Why so late? I’m also concerned that some of the messages that you’re hearing — these are peaceful protesters by and large. These are members of the community. Something was clearly broken before Michael Brown was shot and murdered.”

Shot and murdered. While it’s true that Brown was shot, it is wildly inappropriate to refer to his death as “murder” in the absence of such evidence. However, no one else at CNN bothered to correct her usage of the term.

When hell broke out following the grand jury announcement, those “peaceful protestors” made fools out of their liberal defenders. Rather than admit that they had misjudged the community, however, reporters insisted that the widespread arson, violence, looting, and destruction was the work of a select few “knuckleheads.” They were “outside instigators” who did not reflect the majority of the protestors. When protestors shouted hateful obscenities at CNN’s reporters on the ground, they were censored and ignored because they weren’t preaching the “peaceful” message the network promised.

Days later, the liberalized coverage continued. A video had emerged, showing Michael Brown’s stepfather riling the gathered crowd on the night of the verdict. “Burn this bitch down,” he yelled, clearly emotional. But – much like the video that showed Brown attacking a convenience store owner minutes before his death – CNN did a lot of hemming and hawing over the presentation of this one. Several contributors questioned whether the video was “newsworthy.” No one, remarkably, questioned whether it was “newsworthy” to devote so much airtime to the Brown family’s earlier call for peace.

It’s unfair to lay the blame for Ferguson at the feet of CNN, but the lying liberal media certainly played a role in fueling these fires. Of the offenders, CNN was one of the worst. If that “reestablished their brand,” one has to wonder what that brand really is.