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Ex-CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin accused her former employer of ditching a live interview with a teacher on the heels of the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting to cover breaking news about then-President Trump when making a point about the media moving on too quickly after mass shootings.
Baldwin, who left CNN last year, penned a column for The Atlantic headlined "Don’t Let the Cameras Turn Away" that urged networks to continue covering the story of mass shootings.
"This week, for the first time in my career, I found out about a mass shooting in America just like most of you: not from a TV producer breaking into my earpiece on live TV, or a CNN internal email alert, or from someone shouting in the newsroom, but from a friend," Baldwin wrote, referring to the Uvalde, Texas massacre that left 19 children and two adults dead.
Baldwin then detailed her role in CNN’s coverage of the Parkland school shooting that occurred as the network had become known for dedicating the majority of its time to negative coverage of Trump. In the days immediately following the shooting, CNN producers made a decision to cut away and cover news about the former president.
Brooke Baldwin accused CNN of dumping a live interview with a teacher after the Parkland shooting to focus on then-President Trump.
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"One of my producers interrupted our broadcast from Florida and spoke into my earpiece. News was breaking about President Donald Trump and the FBI. My producer assured me that we’d return to coverage in Parkland, but that right then—I’ll never forget it—‘we have to break away to go live to Washington.’ But. But. But. Fourteen students were dead. I stood there dumbfounded," she wrote. "A teacher from the school was just out of camera range, waiting to join me for a five-minute live interview. I used the pause in coverage to tell her what was happening and told her that we’d get to her, that her story mattered. But I already knew then that they weren’t coming back to us."
Baldwin recalled waiting outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to continue her coverage of the shooting until CNN’s leadership team ordered her to leave South Florida and scrap the story.
"I waited to reappear on my own show, furiously emailing my producers back at CNN headquarters to fight for more airtime on what was happening at Parkland: Come back to me. The teacher! Soon after, I got my marching orders: Come back to New York. I knew what that meant. We were done," she wrote.
Baldwin went on to detail other mass shootings she covered during her time at CNN before making a prediction about media coverage of the tragedy.
"Let me tell you what will happen: The news media will be in Texas through this weekend, and then news executives will start paring down the coverage next week. The conversation has already turned to politics, as some pundits urge a focus on mental health and others on guns. Some journalists will try to hold our elected representatives’ feet to the fire. A segment or two will go viral. Americans will share their outrage on social media. And then another story will break next week, and the news cycle will move on," Baldwin wrote.
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Brooke Baldwin, who left CNN last year, penned a column for The Atlantic headlined that urged networks to continue covering the story of mass shootings on the heels of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. (Getty Images)
"After a week or 10 days, the outraged public grows tired of hearing about the carnage, loss, and inaction. The audience starts to drop off. The ratings dip. And networks worry about their bottom line. And while the journalists in the field have compassion for the victims of these tragic stories, their bosses at the networks treat the news as ratings-generating revenue sources. No ratings? Less coverage. It’s as simple as that," she continued before floating the idea of showing the bloodied victims on air in order to make the message hit home with viewers.
"Would minds change about guns in America if we got permission to show what was left of the children before they were placed in the caskets? Would a grieving parent ever agree to do this? I figured this would never happen. But perhaps now is finally the time to ask," she wrote.
People leave the Uvalde Civic Center following a shooting earlier in the day at Robb Elementary School, Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)
Baldwin also suggested making mass shootings a specific beat of a dedicated reporter, similar to the way news organizations have a particular person cover the White House, spending whatever it takes to tell the story and keep TV crews in impacted communities longer.
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"I know that keeping crews in the field is expensive, but 19 children and two teachers? There is no higher cost than that," she wrote.
Baldwin departed CNN when since-ousted boss Jeff Zucker was still in charge of the network, but he was forced to resign earlier this year ahead of a long-planned merger with Discovery. Zucker is known as the person who shifted CNN from it’s just-the-facts approach to news to an anti-Trump opinion network. His replacement, longtime TV executive Chris Licht, has publicly stated a desire to put a focus back on news.
CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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