‘CNN Is Not a Serious Organization’: Embattled Network Denounced for Sympathetic Coverage of ISIS Terror Suspects

CNN is facing harsh criticism over a since-deleted social media post that the network now says did not “reflect the gravity” of an ISIS-inspired terror plot outside the home of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. On Tuesday morning, CNN published a story with the title, “What we know about 2 terror suspects accused of tossing makeshift bombs near the NYC mayor’s home.”Two teenagers, Emi Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, are accused of throwing explosive devices outside Gracie Mansion. The New York City Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, told reporters that the makeshift bombs could have killed people and that the suspects admitted to being inspired by ISIS. They are facing five felony counts, including use of a weapon of mass destruction, transportation of explosive materials, and attempted support of a designated foreign terrorist organization. CNN shared the article about the suspects on its X page with the caption, “Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.”“But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside the home of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The post quickly led to condemnation of the network. The official rapid response X account for the White House shared the post and wrote, “No, they’re radical Islamic terrorists who threw an IED at a protest. We don’t do that in America. Fake News CNN (which employs @kaitlancollins and @KristenhCNN , et al) is not a serious organization.”Senator Erict Schmitt wrote, “CNN got this headline wrong. It should be: ‘Two radical Islamic terrorists came to NYC pledging allegiance to ISIS with bombs meant to kill Americans’. There. Fixed it for you.”The X account for Stop Antisemitism wrote, “Every CNN employee who participated in writing, approving, and posting this needs to be terminated. An absolute disgrace to the field of journalism.”A media reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Joe Flint, poked fun at the framing, writing on X, “Nov. 22 1963: It was a beautiful Dallas morning and Lee Harvey Oswald was excited as he’d already found a perfect vantage point to watch the president’s motorcade. A few hours later his life was drastically changed when he was arrested for killing the 35th president.”After the backlash erupted, CNN took down the social media post and released a statement, saying it did not meet the network’s editorial standards.“A post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting. It has therefore been deleted,” the statement read.CNN’s media analyst, Brian Stelter, wrote in his Reliable Sources newsletter that the network was “rightly criticized” for the X post.However, the controversy did not stop there, as some commentators felt the network was trying to pin the blame on the social media team, as Mr. Stelter insisted that the “story itself was solid,” but “the tweet was outrageous.”Social media teams at legacy television news organizations are often downstream of the core decision-makers and blamed when things go wrong.Indeed, several social media users shared screenshots of the original story, which showed that the offending language originated in the article itself. A reporter for Semafor, Josh Billinson, shared Mr. Stelter’s post and wrote, “I’m of the view that your social team bears responsibility for the judgement to post it, but it’s not fair to pin it entirely on them when they lift the lede exactly as it was published on the web!”“The problem *originated* in the story!” he said. “The problem with writing ‘The story itself was solid. But the tweet was outrageous’ is that the tweet was actually the opening of the story until the tweet was deleted and the story was changed,” wrote conservative radio host Erick Erickson. The executive editor of the Washington Free Beacon, Collin Anderson, said, “‘The story itself was solid’ — but the lede of the story appears to have been the same as the post before it was updated to something only slightly different?”A journalist, Jacqueline Sweet, wrote, “It isn’t quite true that the actual story was fine. The story on CNN had the exact same lede initially, which is likely why the X account picked it up that way, then the story lede was changed at some point.”CNN updated the article to change the first paragraph. It added an editor’s note that reads, “A previous version of this story included a summary that does not reflect the gravity of the incident, thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting. It therefore has been changed.”CNN has been in turmoil in recent weeks, following Paramount’s winning a war for control of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company. The centibillionaire Ellision family, which controls Paramount, has made a public commitment that the news organizations they oversee will provide fair news coverage that reflects a diversity of views across America. The staff at reliably liberal CNN has therefore been in a panic, according to the far-left Status Beehiv newsletter.

‘CNN Is Not a Serious Organization’: Embattled Network Denounced for Sympathetic Coverage of ISIS Terror Suspects

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