Inside CNN, a Debate Over Taking Trump Live

#1:Inside CNN, a Debate Over Taking Trump Live

Tensions within CNN over coverage of former President Donald Trump burst into the open Thursday during an internal call with the network’s journalists, as an executive candidly questioned the approach of the channel’s new chief executive, Mark Thompson.

CNN aired roughly 10 minutes of Trump’s victory speech after he won the Iowa caucuses Monday before cutting away. The decision to cut him off prompted derision from the former president and his allies, although critics on the left questioned why CNN had taken Trump live in the first place, given his tendency to spread falsehoods and conspiracies. MSNBC chose not to take any of his remarks live.

Thompson opened his morning conference call Thursday by acknowledging a debate within his newsroom, saying he believed the network had a journalistic obligation to broadcast the remarks of the leading Republican candidate for president.

After a period of silence, a senior vice president of programming, Jim Murphy, jumped in, telling Thompson that the network had given Trump too much airtime when it aired Trump’s live news conference last week after his civil fraud trial. Murphy said that CNN should cover Trump’s comments when he makes news, not when he is repeating political talking points.

The debate on the conference call, which was open to thousands of CNN journalists, was described by three people who either listened to the call or were briefed on its contents. They requested anonymity to avoid reprisal for sharing details of a conversation intended to be private.

The exchange between Thompson and Murphy, which lasted about 15 minutes, was lively but collegial, the people said. According to one account, Thompson said he believed that CNN had struck the right balance between allowing the public to hear from the Republican front-runner, while not allowing Trump an endless soapbox — and that he believed that CNN, at some points during the 2016 election, had granted Trump too much airtime. It is a criticism that the network’s president at the time, Jeff Zucker, has acknowledged.

The conundrum of covering Trump, who often rapidly unleashes incendiary and misleading remarks, has vexed news executives since the earliest days of his first presidential run. The tensions within CNN speak to continuing debates in journalistic circles even as Trump moves closer to clinching the Republican nomination.

On MSNBC, a network popular with left-leaning viewers, anchor Rachel Maddow told viewers on the night of the caucuses that she simply would not broadcast Trump live.

“It is not out of spite. It is not a decision that we relish,” Maddow said. “It is a decision that we regularly revisit and honestly, earnestly. It is not an easy decision. But there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.”

That approach earned mockery from a Trump ally, Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, later in the week. “What?” Hannity said on his Fox News program. “The audience is going to melt if they hear him?”