Wow, looks like things have taken a turn for the worse for CNN, even late-night Liberals are going after the network. Brian Stelter appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and was not received as well as you’d expect. Colbert questioned Stelter about the current Governor Cuomo scandal and then asked about CNN Host Chris Cuomo. Colbert was quick to throw jabs that Stelter tried to awkwardly laugh off. But CNN is definitely hurting over this scandal.
COLBERT: …Now in a small way, your network is involved in the story because of course the governor’s brother Chris Cuomo has his show “The Cuomo Zone “—.
STELTER: Is that what it’s called?
COLBERT: I don’t know what it’s called.
STELTER: “Cuomo Prime Time.”
COLBERT: Cuomo Prime Time? “360 Cuomos.” ( Laughter ) And the “New York Times” has just reported, because it had been alleged alleged that he was helping his brother with his, you know his communications team. The New york Times is reporting that’s true. Chris was helping his brother. Has that created any conflict over at CNN? Behind closed doors, are people mad at him or is he in trouble?
STELTER: Some people are mad at him. By the way I can confirm the “New York Times” report. I’ll confirm it for your viewers. I also have a source that says Chris was on the phone with his brother this week.
COLBERT: Is your source Chris Cuomo?
STELTER: He is not. He is not. You’ve got to have boundaries, you’ve got to draw lines.
COLBERT: Why he doesn’t! [audience reacts]
STELTER: I think he does, actually.
COLBERT: Really?
STELTER: I think Chris does, I don’t know about the governor.
COLBERT: What are the boundaries? What are the boundaries?
STELTER: The boundary that CNN management presented him in May when he admitted he screwed up, ‘What you did was inappropriate. You’re on the phone with your brother’s aides advising him what to do. And that was inappropriate.’ But they said, ‘of course you’re going to talk to your brother, you know there’s nothing more important–’
COLBERT: They didn’t talk about his brother once the trouble started.
STELTER: That was also a management ruling.
COLBERT: Why didn’t they rule that way when his brother was on the show pretty much every night during COVID? Seems like an odd conflict of rules.
STELTER: It is an odd conflict, but I think if we open up the journalism ethics book, there’s no page for this. It’s the crazy set of circumstances you can imagine right? A governor and brother both in these high-profile jobs, this was definitely awkward for CNN though. I tried to go into this thinking, Ok, if I was going to cover this at CBS how would I cover it?and try to cover it the same way.
I talked to a lot of sources at CNN and some said ‘This is really weird, I’m ticked off at Chris, others said you know,‘I understand, you can’t pick your family members are’. So there was a wide range of opinions. Overall, I think what was most important, was that we cover the story on air just the same as any other story. Ultimately, isn’t that what matters?
Watch The Clip Below.
Chris Cuomo is suddenly on vacation as CNN figures out what to do with him. There is definitely a conflict of interest here. Andrew Cuomo made ridiculous money on his books and that was largely due to all of the media coverage that he was getting, part of which came from his brother’s show. Chris Cuomo also refused to ask his brother the hard questions when the scandal hit. So CNN was in a way covering for the Governor.
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