While Americans were criticized for attacking outspoken Florida high school students for pushing for gun control and attacking the NRA as “child murderers,” CNN finds itself locked in an all out tussle with one student who doesn’t fit that bill.
Colton Haab, a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps member at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 17 people died in last week’s massacre, said he declined to attend CNN’s stacked town hall Wednesday when he was expected to ask a scripted question.
The network responded by effectively calling Haab, who was hailed as a hero after he shielded his classmates from the crazed gunman in Parkland, Fla., a liar.
CNN has since doubled down, implying that he’s also a fraudster.
An email from CNN executive producer Carrie Stevenson appeared to support Haab’s assertion that he was told to “stick” to the script, but the network countered with its own version of the exchange that contradicted the email, saying the Haab family “doctored” their version, Business Insider reported.
The key words included in the CNN version that was missing from the Haab email being: “that he submitted.”
Business Insider reporter Eliza Relman tweeted copies of both emails, reporting that the student’s copy “appears” to have been manipulated.
Because the Fake News Network would never do such a thing – or something like that.
“The family of a Parkland shooting survivor appears to have provided doctored emails to Fox and HuffPost in an attempt to support their claim that CNN ‘scripted’ its Wednesday town hall,” Relman tweeted.
https://twitter.com/eliza_relman/status/967214553858822144
Relman made that determination based on what a CNN spokesman told Business Insider.
“It is unfortunate that an effort to discredit CNN and the town hall with doctored emails has taken any attention away from the purpose of the event,” the spokesman said.
“However, when presented with doctored email exchanges, we felt the need to set the record straight.”
The town hall has come under fire for the way it was handled, as seen in a series of tweets from Peter J. Hasson, associate editor at The Daily Caller:
Has CNN publicly explained yet how other questioners were allowed to give monologues? Seems pretty clear that either A) the standard was different for Haab or B) The town hall went off the rails and they won't admit it https://t.co/KEByQdsILG
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) February 24, 2018
Also it's been noted that CNN allowed the sheriff to give a rally-style speech before the town hall. The sheriff railed against the NRA as a "special interest" and suggested they were culpable for the shooting. Why did CNN allow that? https://t.co/Gas86ePhZ6
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) February 24, 2018
The kerfuffle caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who rarely passes on an opportunity to slam CNN.
“Just like so much of CNN, Fake News. That’s why their ratings are so bad! MSNBC may be worse,” the president tweeted on Thursday.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/966846679784837120
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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