Should leading presidential candidates be given the opportunity to speak to voters on live TV?
What if that candidate was former President Donald J. Trump?
Trump is scheduled to appear on CNN Wednesday night at City Hall in New Hampshire – his first live appearance on a major TV news network (other than one controlled by Rupert Murdoch) since 2020. – And a fierce media controversy is swirling.
Rival MSNBC anchor Joy Reed derided the event as “a pretty open attempt by CNN to move itself right and be glamorous and show MAGA its belly.” Her colleague Chris Hayes called City Hall “very hard to defend”. I asked the person making the claim why CNN is offering a live platform.
Those oppositions intensified on Tuesday after Trump was found responsible for sexually abusing and defaming author E. Gene Carroll. Are you still going to have a town hall with a sexual predator?” Army Colonel Alexander S. Windman, who served as a witness in Trump’s first impeachment trial, wrote on Twitter.
Trump is also currently the most voted Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election and the de facto leader of his party. Some veteran television his journalists think:
“So politicians can be mean, so why not stop doing live political events? Because politicians can lie?” Former “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel said in an interview: “I don’t know if the press should necessarily be in the business of making ideological judgments. Is he the subject of legitimate news attention? You bet.
In some ways, Wednesday’s City Hall, where Trump will answer questions from Republican supporters and undecided voters, is a stress test and a precarious preview for the TV news industry. At least the stage to include Mr. Trump prominently.
A telecast featuring the former president must be divisive. Was the anchor too harsh? too generous? How quickly have they responded to the false allegations? And Trump’s opponents will cringe just to see him on the air.
But longtime CBS anchor Bob Schieffer said interviews of key politicians were needed. “There is no question that he could be nominated,” he said of Trump. “We are in the business of telling people what we are running for and what we stand for.”
CNN faced criticism in 2016 for giving Trump hours of free air time during the Republican primary. The network’s president at the time, Jeff Zucker, later admitted that it went too far.
After that, Mr. Trump spent years denigrating the network, calling “CNN sucks,” and banning correspondent Jim Acosta from the White House.a YouGov poll Last month, we found CNN to be the most polarized major media source in the country, with the widest gap between Democrats who trust it and Republicans who don’t.
Trump last appeared on CNN in 2016, but a lot has changed since then. CNN was acquired by Warner Bros. Discovery and Zucker was replaced. His successor, Chris Licht, has promised to broaden the network’s appeal. He is backed by Warner Chief Executive David Zaslav, who defeated opposition to Trump’s town hall on Wednesday.
“The United States has a divided government. We need to hear both voices,” Zaslav said on CNBC last week, after being repeatedly questioned about the decision to host Trump. We need to represent both sides, and I think that’s important for America.”
Trump, meanwhile, is angered by Fox News, angered by Murdoch’s support for potential Republican rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And he found Mr. DeSantis reluctant to appear on mainstream media like his CNN.
Trump and CNN have not fully settled. The troubling fact is that Trump still has a $475 million defamation lawsuit pending against the network. And in his letter to Truth Social on Tuesday, the former president told fans that CNN “wants to earn those great (Trump!) ratings again.” He added: Let’s see how it goes for a while, shall we? “
As the olive branch progressed, I felt a little limp. But CNN political director David Charian dismissed it. “Even though he said a lot about us, we didn’t stop reporting him as president,” Chalian said in an interview. “We never stopped working.”
CNN executives will broadcast Trump’s remarks live without delay. That means if Trump makes a false allegation, host Caitlan Collins, or an on-screen graphic, will correct him in real time. It was pre-recorded. (Fox recently paid him $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems because some of its anchors amplified Trump’s lies about the company. is.)
In an interview, Charian said CNN “is in the business of live news events, and that’s what we do.” “Obviously, we can’t control what Donald Trump says, but what we can control is our journalism.”
CNN disagreed with City Hall’s premise, Charian said, saying it was “out of the question,” and Collins spent several days preparing for the broadcast. is consistent with Licht’s emphasis on reporting rather than commentary. Collins, best known for his daily coverage of the White House, previously worked for conservative outlet The Daily Caller.
Coppell said in an interview that Collins is a “tough and capable” journalist who can handle Trump in a live environment. .
“Shouldn’t Trump be pushing the boundaries of honesty, good taste, civility, humanity, etc., and not mentioning him at all unless there is an opportunity to completely cleanse what he’s saying? said Mr Coppell. “I understand that it is a valid question. Because it means letting them decide.”
