A desperate tactic to stay relevant after the election threatens to squander the news network's remaining cable viewers, a viral video exposing CNN's hidden motives in the coverage of FBI Russia investigation receives major backlash from the public.
Locker room talk?
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, conservative speaker and activist James O'Keefe released a video of a conversation that he had with john bonifield (CNN Producer) in CNN's headquarters. In this video, Bonifield admits that the reason for the network's excessive coverage of Trump's collusion with Russia was based entirely on increasing their rating.
Bonifield goes as far as to say that CEO Jeff Zucker considered the "Climate Accord" a hindrance to their reporting on the Russia investigation and that he directed reporters to get back to the Russia story within two days after Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris g7.
"We don't have any big giant proof," John Bonifield obliviously acknowledged right at the camera. Later on in the conversation, he said: "So, I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the President is probably right to say, like, look you are witch-hunting me. You have no smoking gun, you have no real proof.”
CNN's official response to the video: “CNN stands by our medical producer John Bonifield.
Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong, we welcome it and embrace it.”
CNN losing credibility as ratings expect to plummet
It is clear that CNN is defending their producer, despite being under an accumulative amount of criticism over recent days. Just a few days ago, CNN imposed new rules on their coverage on the Russian investigation after retracting a poorly sourced story.
This further led to them accepting the resignation of three reporters whose single focus since the election was based on reporting on Russia
Within hours the video became viral, reaching the number one spot on Youtube's trending videos for most of the day. James O'Keefe promised in a separate video that part two of this undercover report on CNN will be released today (6/28).
In January, O'Keefe warned the entire mainstream media establishment that he was out to expose them. With CNN being the first victim, could we expect other news networks to face similar incursion?
President Trump turned to his Twitter account to express his thoughts, saying: "Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories. Ratings way down!"
Twitter seems to be the sole voice for both media personalities and politicians to have a go at the mainstream media, particularly CNN. Kellyanne Conway herself seemed to be unafraid to confront CNN during a broadcast, even though it ended up being more of a screaming frenzy.
