Should CNN Have Provided a Venue For Trump, A Known Liar?

There are many God-like jobs. Among the most reported on are the policies of presidents and other high-ranking political leaders, media moguls and CEOs of major corporations. The actions of those individuals often have an affect on our daily lives. (And despite what you might have learned in communications school, even the CEOs of the largest PR or ad agencies do not qualify as a God-like individual to people outside of our business, although their decisions can affect your future.) 

There are also God-like individuals whose decisions can affect our lives that are unknown to the public. They are the anonymous editors, reporters and TV producers at newspapers and TV stations who decide what news is and what isn’t, a subject that is being much discussed since CNN’s Town Hall featuring the twice-impeached and criminally indicted former President Donald Trump.

On the one hand, Mr.  Trumps is again running and leading in polls for the Republican nomination for president in the 2024 election, say the defenders of CNN’s decision to provide Trump with a non-right wing audience. On the other hand, CNN has been roundly criticized for providing him with the opportunity because of what he is famously known for – being a serial liar.

Whether you approve or disapprove of CNN’s decision to give Mr. Trump the opportunity to spread his lies during a prime time program (whose in-person audience consisted of conservative and conservative-leaning people), will be a topic discussed by media ethicists in the future.

But right now the subject of the CNN Town Hall is being discussed by current media personalities. 

“The format was impossible and CNN’s bosses should have known that,” tweeted Charlie Sykes, co-founder of the Bulwark (an organization 

that says it focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices) and a political commentator. “It was the Hindenburg disaster of TV news,” Keith Olbermann, a former MSNBC host and CNN reporter, said in a video posted to Twitter,” reported the Wall Street Journal on May 12. 

On May 10, the New York Times headlined an article about the Town Hall that read, ‘Trump’s Falsehoods and Bluster Overtake CNN Town Hall.’ A subhead read, ‘Trump repeats litany of false claims on 2020 election, mocks sexual abuse accuser and dodges on abortion.’

“And a May 12 article on the Poynter Institute website by Tom Jones reported “Oh they got them all right: more lies about the 2020 election, revising history over the Jan. 6 insurrection, lying about the border wall, snaky remarks about the woman a civil trial jury said he sexually assaulted. Those were just the highlights (or lowlights) of the 70-minute town hall that played like a Trump rally.

“Trump surely chalked it up as a great night. CNN as a company… especially, tried to too. But this was a disaster from the start to finish. The lone highlight was moderator Kaitlan Collins, who tried her best but ultimately was buried under an avalanche of Trump lies and a starstruck audience that could not have been more supportive of the former president.” The Poynter Institute specializes in ethics and fact checking, in addition to other aspects of journalism.

My personal opinion is that it’s best to report on all demagogues like Mr. Trump. Not doing so will keep people who do not follow politics on a daily basis in the dark about what a candidate stands for, conceivably resulting in votes that otherwise would have gone to an opponent.

Below is my opinion of the Town Hall:

CNN’s Town Hall, on May 10 with former president Donald Trump, stands out as perhaps the sorriest journalistic political programming of the year. The 2020 election was not rigged, but the Town Hall certainly was. CNN admitted that it deliberately filled the “auditorium with citizens 

representing a range of conservative views” and the audience responded as you would expect Trump backers to. In my opinion, a big mistake was having Kaitlan Collins as the moderator. While she admirably corrected many of Trump’s lies, he just talked over her at will and, in many cases, her questions were sophomoric and  phrased in a manner that permitted Trump to answer them as if he had written them, (although her questions were probably crafted by others). It’s obvious that CNN has big plans for Ms. Collins but having her spar with a mud wrestler like Trump did the TV audience an injustice and gave the indicted former president an opportunity to spread his lies to more than three-million viewers. The logical and better choice would have been Jim Acosta, who was the network's chief White House correspondent during the Trump administration. Acosta gained national fame for his never backing down and challenging Trump’s comments at press briefings and was not afraid to go punch by punch with him. Two other hard-hitting CNN reporters, Chris Wallace or Jake Tapper also would have been better choices. “Mr. Trump’s first lie was told just seconds into the night,” said Tapper of the Town Hall “and the falsehoods kept coming, fast and furious.”

While the great majority of public relations practitioners will not get involved in the political aspects of PR, there were several valuable lessons that emerged from the Town Hall that apply to non-political clients.

• The more important a corporate leader is, the greater the fact checking on his or hers statements will be.

• Reporters are not cowed by the title of an executive.

• Just as CNN was criticized for granting air time to a known liar, journalists might no longer trust you if you attempt to whitewash the actions of a less than honest client.

• Just as CNN employees criticized their network for giving a platform to a known liar, don’t depend on your colleagues to back you up in a matter that they strongly disagree with you about,

• If a journalist agrees to interview a client, especially during a PR crisis, but not only during a crisis, be prepared for any negative aspects of the individual’s or entity’s past to be brought up during the interview.

• Never have a client deny past wrong doings unless there is proof that they were erroneous. Instead the client should say something like, “that was in the past. Here’s what we’ve done to correct the situation.”