As Fox News noted on Friday, it took CNN 12 hours to cover Biden’s latest gaffe: asserting on a radio show Friday morning that if you aren’t a Biden supporter, “You ain’t black.” CNN's disinterest in the controversy has continued; after spending average of less than four minutes per day on it over the weekend, CNN appears to have stopped covering it entirely.
MRC analysts reviewed 76 hours of programming on CNN from 8:00 am EST on Friday through noon on Monday morning, and found that the network spared a meager 11 minutes and 34 seconds to discuss Biden’s racist gaffe. The last show even to mention it was the 9:00 am EST hour of State of the Union (as of noon EST on Monday, May 25).
During that same span of time, the network aired 15 minutes and 34 seconds of Biden talk that was unrelated to his Friday morning interview. That means that less than half (42%) of CNN’s Biden coverage even included a mention of the controversy.
Four hours after Biden’s interview on Friday morning, CNN host John King ran a segment during the noon EST hour about Biden’s potential running mate picks. At the time, CNN still had yet to mention Biden’s latest blunder.
Amazingly, King even referred to Biden’s relationship with “communities of color” during the segment, but still somehow managed to forget what the individual in question had just said about one such community just hours earlier.
By Sunday, shows were routinely covering other Biden news as though the gaffe had never occurred. For example, both the 6:00 and 7:00 am EST hours of New Day, co-host Christi Paul reported on a tweet sent by Biden’s twitter account which mocked President Trump.
From their initial 12 hours of silence, to their meager coverage, to their focus on other Biden-related news, CNN’s programming since Friday betrays a desire to move past Biden's devastating blunder as quickly as possible.
