Jim Acosta must not get out much.
Acosta, cashing in on his position as CNN’s White House correspondent as he promotes his book “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America” — which (you guessed it) rips the Trump administration — says journalism is now biased (wow, really?!).
The whiny reporter did an interview with Publishers Weekly magazine this week, and he was asked: “Is there a grain of truth to claims of biased coverage of President Trump and his supporters by the mainstream media?”
“I have never witnessed a concerted effort by any news organization to take a stand one way or the other on a political issue, to damage one particular party or help another,” he said. “We have been far more honest and straightforward with the American people than President Trump has. Are there times when we fall short? Sure. But the press issues corrections. When was the last time you saw the president issue a correction or a clarification? It’s a rare thing for Donald J. Trump.”
Acosta also said there’s only one side to every story. “There aren’t two sides to the story when it’s a matter of right and wrong,” he said.
So you’ve got to wonder: Where has Acosta been? Has he not seen his own network — once nicknamed the “Clinton News Network” — clearly support Bill and Hillary Clinton while bashing Republicans left and right? Has he not seen the old mainstream glories — like the New York Times and Washington Post — write obviously biased pieces in their news sections, heavy on opinion and short on named sources?
Did Acosta not see the May 2017 study by Harvard University researchers, who found in a study that CNN’s coverage of President Trump was 93% negative, just 7% positive? “CNN and NBC’s coverage was the most unrelenting — negative stories about Trump outpaced positive ones by 13-to-1 on the two networks,” the study noted. “Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days set a new standard for negativity.”
CNN no longer even appears to be making an effort to appear unbiased. With its endless negative coverage, the liberal network has now gone so far as to boot out conservative voices it had deigned to put on the air. Some of the ousted have begun to speak out about being fired by CNN, saying the network is “anti-Trump” and “openly despises conservatives.”
“Most of us got squeezed out involuntarily,” Jack Kingston, a former Georgia congressman who appeared on the network, told Mediaite. “I was there for two years and was certainly willing to continue. It was clear to me in the end that the Republicans they prefer are anti-Trump Republicans.”
CNN has been nuking conservative contributors over the past several months. In May, the network fired former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli after reports emerged that he was in the running for a Department of Homeland Security post in the Trump administration.
The network also canned economic analyst Stephen Moore after Trump said he was going to nominate him to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. CNN and other outlets reported about old comments Mr. Moore made about women and President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, and Moore withdrew his name from consideration.
Moore wasn’t happy. “CNN is the hate Trump network,” he said. “They just trash Trump every single hour of every single day. All they’ve talked about for two years is the [special counsel Robert] Mueller report — and how bad does it make them look now that it proved nothing?”
Promoting his new book on “Anderson Cooper 360,” the liberal reporter and Trump gadfly said he never wanted to become part of the story (the White House pulled his press pass briefly after he refused to hand over the microphone during a White House press conference).
“My response to that is that we’ve been thrust into sort of an unprecedented situation,” Acosta said.
No word on whether he’ll donate his book’s proceeds to a First Amendment organization (but don’t hold your breath).
