Early Friday, NewsBusters reported that CNN spent only one minute of airtime on the recanting of a former Ohio State University wrestler’s allegations against Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan. After reviewing coverage of the original NBC article which leveled the claims against Jordan, NewsBusters found that there was a massive discrepancy in reporting.
The NBC News article accused Jordan of ignoring sexual abuse while he was an Assistant Coach for the OSU wrestling team. CNN jumped on the story within hours of its posting, and ran it seven separate times that day, interrupting coverage of the trapped Thai soccer team and Scott Pruitt’s EPA scandals. The poorly-sourced article written by Corky Siemaszko, who has a record of fudging facts, became a national story just weeks before Jordan made his expected bid for Speaker of the House official.
In total, NewsBusters reviewed ten hours of footage immediately following the posting of the NBC article. The article was published on July 3rd at 10:00 am Eastern. Of those ten hours, CNN spent 25 minutes and 40 seconds total on the allegations leveled at Rep. Jordan. Contrast that with the amount of time spent on the recanting, and one receives a very clear picture of what CNN wants to convey about Jordan.
The Daily Caller article which reported former Ohio State University wrestler Chris Coleman’s backtrack was posted just before 6:00 pm Eastern on August 9th. NewsBusters had to search through sixteen hours of airtime before any mention of Coleman’s recanting was made. And again, exactly one minute of Brooke Baldwin’s precious time was wasted, the next day.
It is striking that CNN would have such a vast discrepancy of enthusiasm in reporting negative versus positive things about Jim Jordan. It is almost as if the news organization wants you to know about one thing more than the other. If something positive ever was reported about one of the Clinton’s many scandals, I’m sure we’d never hear the end of it.
