Under Jeffrey Zucker’s tenure at CNN, the once-proud network has ceased becoming a true news organization with a distinct line between anchors/hosts vs. analysts vs. commentators vs. reporters. Instead, the lines have been blurred in which all groups provide up hot takes and snide remarks.
And that was on display during Tuesday afternoons’s CNN Newsroom as host Brooke Baldwin and New Day’s Alisyn Camerota cheered the far-left activism of the Hogg family, hailed the March for Our Lives as having given them “goosebumps,” and pushing Australian-style mass gun confiscation to “fix” mass shootings (that’s not as fantastical as they’ve claimed).
After first showing her piece on the Hoggs being her “Champions for Change” on Monday’s New Day, Baldwin boasted that the Hogg’s “have become political and cultural forces inspiring thousands of people, including my friend Alisyn Camerota.”
Live in studio after the piece aired, Baldwin told Camerota that “I love you for doing this” since she has had “the same thoughts that parents do across the country, but to see these young voices. I mean, it gives me goosebumps just to think back to March for Our Lives in D.C.”
Playing March spokesperson, Camerota laid out the movement’s platform (click “expand”):
You know, they really want, as you hear them say, federal legislation and they did something remarkable. They got Florida where, you know, people feel strongly about their guns, to change the legislation in the wake of what happened in Parkland. Now they want it on a national scale. So, of course, they want universal background checks. They want to band high capacity magazines. They want more dollars — federal dollars to study gun violence and that’s what they’re setting sights on so what they were doing in D.C. where you saw there was going from lawmaker to lawmaker and just, you know, making them hear their plea and setting all of that art installation up outside the windows of the Capitol so lawmakers couldn't miss it and had to walk by it.
Looping in last weekend’s shooting at Colorado’s STEM School Highlands Ranch, Baldwin stated that “our kids don't feel safe.”
Camerota responded not as a journalist but as a partisan lobbyist, ruling that “we don’t have to live this way” in which “we...have to send our kids off to school every day just crossing fingers and hoping that they’re not sitting ducks for gun violence.”
She then closed with a plea for taking a massive chisel to the Second Amendment and becoming more like Australia.
In turn, she showed a complete ignorance to how, unlike Australia (or even New Zealand), America is different for a reason, has a Constitution, and isn’t a Commonwealth: “We can fix this. Australia had a mass shooting. They fixed it. Other places have given us actually a blueprint on how to do this. We are better than this. We don't have to live this way.”
Going back to the piece itself, Camerota stated that, as a mother, her children are “no safer than the kids at Parkland were” and, in the case of the Hogg family, David “just gripped the whole country's attention” with his activism.
“Even in the hours after they'd been through the most hideous tragedy imaginable, they were already trying to change the world....And I felt the same way when I met Lauren Hogg,” she gushed.
A syrupy profile of lefties wouldn’t be complete without softball questions, so here was one Camerota lobbed up to David Hogg: “When you hit obstacles, how is it that you have been able to stay energized?” And towards the end, she wanted to know from him “what’s been your greatest achievement?”
She then concluded:
I'm just so impressed with these kids. All of us thought maybe this will peter out, maybe they'll have to be busy with school but they haven't given up. They're just as strong a year later. They just are as energized as the day that I first met them.
So it’s safe to say that CNN won’t be profiling Kyle Kashuv or the Pollack or Petty families from Parkland or, to go to an activist group on the right, anyone from the pro-life movement seeing as how they’d rather hold a show trial for those who think differently than the Hoggs.
To see the relevant transcript from May 14's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, click “expand.”
CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin
May 14, 2019
2:45 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Champions for Change; Brother and Sister Survivors Lead School Safety Debate]
BROOKE BALDWIN: This week, we are bringing you stories of remarkable people making lasting impacts around the world and we're calling the series Champions for Change. It’s our chance to revisit the amazing change makers we've covered in the past and have never forgotten. Their passion inspires us as they continue to change the world. Parkland, Florida, now a city sadly synonymous with gun violence. In the year and a half since 17 people were murdered at their school, the students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas have spearheaded a national debate about school security and gun rights and fueled an international student-led movement, leading that charge a brother and sister who survived by hiding in their classrooms. David and Lauren Hogg. They have become political and cultural forces inspiring thousands of people, including my friend Alisyn Camerota.
CNN ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.
CAMEROTA: Another deadly school shooting. [SCREEN WIPE] I am in Parkland, Florida, scene at the latest school shooting. [SCREEN WIPE] This is the site of the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since Sandy Hook. [SCREEN WIPE] When I got the call that Parkland had happened, that there was yet another school shooting, my heart sank. I have kids that I send off to school every day and I know that they're no safer than the kids at Parkland were. I flew down to Parkland. The next morning we were on the air first thing. [SCREEN WIPE] We're joined by two of the shooting survivors. [SCREEN WIPE] David Hogg was one of my first interviews. Something was different right away.
DAVID HOGG: No legislative action has been taken. All we have now is more guns and more chances for things to go wrong.
CAMEROTA: A senior at the time, he took cover in a classroom during the shooting and worried about his sister Lauren, a freshman. He just gripped the whole country's attention.
DAVID HOGG: Please take action ideas of —
CAMEROTA: He turned right to the camera. He was already beseeching leaders to jump into action with him.
DAVID HOGG: You guys, like are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role. Work together, come over your politics.
CAMEROTA: Even in the hours after they'd been through the most hideous tragedy imaginable, they were already trying to change the world. [SCREEN WIPE] Lauren, how are you feeling? [SCREEN WIPE] And I felt the same way when I met Lauren Hogg.
LAUREN HOGG: Thinking about all the victims, I just know there's a reason why I made it out that day and that reason has to be, to make change.
CAMEROTA: The #NeverAgain cropped up because they didn't want to ever have this happen again.
DAVID HOGG: We say no more.
CAMEROTA: They’ve traveled around the country. They've met other survivors of gun violence. They got the laws changed in Florida. They're not letting the lawmakers forget it. [SCREEN WIPE] [TO LAUREN HOGG] What are we looking at here?
LAUREN HOGG: This is our art installation. As I put up all those hundreds of crosses, crescents, and stars of David, I thought of my friends last year. We wrote things like teacher, doctor, to represent not only the people who were taken from gun violence but are taken from society they are in.
CAMEROTA [TO LAUREN HOGG]: You wanted to get the attention of lawmakers.
LAUREN HOGG: That's why we did it here because we wanted those people while they're walking in between breaks, when they're leaving work and know that their inaction is leading for our friends, our sisters, our brothers, our moms, and dads to die every single day.
PROTESTERS: Enough is enough. Enough is enough.
CAMEROTA [TO DAVID HOGG]: When you hit obstacles, how is it that you have been able to stay energized?
DAVID HOGG: By looking back at the success that we have had. We focused on youth voter turnout and raising this voice because we know that it's not Democrats or Republicans that can solve this issue, we ask the human beings to solve this issue.
CONGRESSWOMAN LUCY MCBATH (D-GA): I am a mother. I am a fighter and I'm a —
CAMEROTA [TO MCBATH]: Is it true that the Parkland students were your inspiration to run for office?
MCBATH: Absolutely. I stood up and decided to run to flip for the federal seat after Parkland. I was devastated that here again, we had children that were the same age as my son that were gunned down. It would be a tragedy if I didn't stand up, and then I would be letting down my son and his legacy and every other family, every other victim that I have cried with over the last seven years since Jordan was murdered. Each generation culturally has a cause, sitting at the lunch counters, you know, walking out of classrooms. It's the same thing. This is the civil rights movement that these young people are fighting for.
DAVID HOGG: Change is here. [SCREEN WIPE] We need a Congress that goes out there and talks about this issue and gives us a deadline of when they're going to actually like be able to stop gun violence.
CAMEROTA: David graduated from Stoneman Douglas in 2018. He is taking a year off from his studies to focus on activism and he plans to attend Harvard this fall.
LAUREN HOGG: I feel as though in the last year we have made an abundant amount of progress. Honestly, how young people really have realized their power is the thing that I find to be the most profound.
REBECCA BOLDRICK: They are change makers. I see both of them really changing the conversation in this country about gun violence, and then going forward and being leaders in our country.
LAUREN HOGG: It's still hard for me to think of myself as an activist because honestly, I never had that in mind when I started speaking out. I just was a kid who was upset that my friends were murdered in my school.
DAVID HOGG: I also look ahead to the future and I just can't wait until we pass our first piece of federal legislation. The law will just be an incredibly impactful moment.
CAMEROTA [TO HOGG]: What's been your greatest achievement?
DAVID HOGG: Like, we've shown that we can lead and we are leading together with other generations. I know that we can end this issue.
CAMEROTA: I'm just so impressed with these kids. All of us thought maybe this will peter out, maybe they'll have to be busy with school but they haven't given up. They're just as strong a year later. They just are as energized as the day that I first met them.
CROWD: Enough is enough. Enough is enough.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Champions for Change; Brother and Sister Survivors Lead School Safety Debate]
BALDWIN: And Alisyn is with me now. I — I love you for doing this.
CAMEROTA: Aw, thanks.
BALDWIN: I know you have kiddos. You drop them off at school. You have the same thoughts that parents do across the country, but to see these young voices. I mean, it gives me goosebumps just to think back to March for Our Lives in D.C.
CAMEROTA: Me too.
BALWIN: Tell me about David and Lauren and what they’re up to.
CAMEROTA: You know, they really want, as you hear them say, federal legislation and they did something remarkable. They got Florida where, you know, people feel strongly about their guns, to change the legislation in the wake of what happened in Parkland. Now they want it on a national scale. So, of course, they want universal background checks. They want to band high capacity magazines. They want more dollars — federal dollars to study gun violence and that’s what they’re setting sights on so what they were doing in D.C. where you saw there was going from lawmaker to lawmaker and just, you know, making them hear their plea and setting all of that art installation up outside the windows of the Capitol so lawmakers couldn't miss it and had to walk by it.
BALDWIN: The fact that we have continued to cover school shootings. There have been 35 this school year. We were just talking — I was just talking to a 12-year-old, Alisyn last week on this show who was describing to me in Colorado how he was —
CAMEROTA: I saw it —
BALDWIN: — holding this baseball bat, saying —
CAMEROTA: — how brave he was.
BALDWIN: Totally brave and he was ready to go down fighting and he was 12 and I'll never forget him and it’s just like, our kids don't feel safe.
CAMEROTA: We don't have to live this way. I feel as though, as somebody, somehow, we’ve accepted this is our new normal. We don't have to send our kids off to school every day just crossing fingers and hoping that they’re not sitting ducks for gun violence. We can fix this. Australia had a mass shooting. They fixed it. Other places have given us actually a blueprint on how to do this. We are better than this. We don't have to live this way.
BALDWIN: Yeah, thank you very much for bringing this story.
CAMEROTA: Thank you for featuring it.
