CNN Anchors Deride Pruitt as 'Climate Change Denier'

December 12th, 2016 5:44 PM

Long-term followers of American politics will recall that about a decade ago, the left began pushing the phrases "global warming denier" and "climate change denier" into the public conversation as a way of discrediting those who are skeptical of the preferred liberal take on global warming theory. The expression was reminiscent of the term "Holocaust denier" and was meant to suggest that those who have doubts about global warming are as marginal in their thinking as Holocaust denier conspiracy theorists.

CNN's tendency to use this preferred liberal terminology that was founded as a pejorative against conservatives is just another example of how the left influences such big media outfits that claim to put out a balanced and unbiased news product. Since the announcement late last Wednesday that Oklahoma Attorney General CEO Scott Pruitt will be President-elect Donald Trump's choice to head the EPA, CNN has repeatedly tagged him as a "climate change denier" as if this were a neutral or proper terminology.

About half of the allegedly unbiased -- but in reality closeted liberal -- CNN news anchors and several correspondents have tagged Pruitt -- a skeptic of global warming theory -- as being a "denier," and usually without even qualifying their choice of words as a liberal take on his views.

After correspondent Dana Bash used the term in a report on Wednesday evening's Anderson Cooper 360, and on Thursday morning Early Start's substitute co-anchor Alison Kosik did the same, correspondent Sunlen Serfaty filed a report at the beginning of Thursday's New Day, followed by a report by correspondent Joe Johns, with each reporter tagging Pruitt as a "denier." Their reports ran several more times over the next few hours on CNN Newsroom.

According to a Nexis search extending from Wednesday through Sunday, CNN anchors John Vause, Alison Kosik, Brianna Keilar, Brooke Baldwin, Wolf Blitzer, Don Lemon, John Berman, Chris Cuomo, Poppy Harlow, and Victor Blackwell all called Pruitt a "denier" at least one time each.

Correspondents Dana Bash, Rosemary Church, Sunlen Serfaty, Joe Johns, Rene Marsh, and Jeff Zeleny also all used the term at least one time each, as did CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.

This use of wording more likely to be used by the left is reminiscent of similar practices by CNN on the abortion issue as terms like "anti-abortion," "pro-choice," and "woman's right to choose" are often used as if they were the proper terminology, without using terms like "pro-life" or "pro-abortion" that are the preferred word choices on the right.