Jeremy Barr at The Hollywood Reporter asked CNN president Jeff Zucker and their “town hall” moderator Jake Tapper about critics of their “Students Demand Action” program on February 21. Zucker said it’s “silly” to cite the program as liberal or partisan. Tapper said critics will “get over it,” but “the people in that stadium, they won’t.”
Barr noted critics have used the town hall as “an example of how CNN has morphed into a partisan player.” As if the charge that CNN is a Trump-hating, Obama-loving network is brand new. They quoted CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp: “CNN has decided to take this path where they are kind of left-wing advocates."
It's a characterization that CNN president Jeff Zucker finds insulting. "That criticism is silly," Zucker tells The Hollywood Reporter. "The fact is we were there, we presented both sides. People who want to criticize are looking to just criticize before they even think about it." He points out that Sen. Marco Rubio could have been joined by Trump or Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott, but both declined CNN's invitation. "That's not CNN's problem," he adds....
"I think it was a really important milestone in this conversation because for one of the few times, people who have different points of view were together," says Zucker. "And the problem is: all too often, whether it’s on blogs or websites or partisan television networks, people are just talking to themselves. And nothing will ever change if we don’t start talking to one another."
This is how arrogant the network bosses are. They can set up Marco Rubio and Dana Loesch to be ripped as evil, to be booed and called “murderers” by a mob, and then say “we presented both sides...it’s not our problem if Trump didn’t show up.” He thinks he's not running a "partisan television network," even as it presents the president as mentally unfit and potentially dictatorial.
Barr quoted little chunks of Tapper dismissing the "cottage industry" of conservatives who always attack CNN:
"People even view grief through a partisan lens," says Jake Tapper, who moderated the town hall. Tapper, who presided over the event with a noticeably light touch, accepts "legitimate" critiques and rejects complaints that, he says, emanate from the "cottage industry of people who criticize CNN no matter what we do."
Tapper tells THR he's more concerned about the families of the victims of the shooting than he is about those who claim to be outraged by CNN's programming decisions. "However offended anybody was at the passion in the town hall, and however upset they were at mean words that were said to Sen. Rubio or Dana Loesch, they'll get over it," he says. "And the people in that stadium, they won't."
