Far-left Media Matters president praises CNN's shift toward editorializing

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Media top headlines May 12

White House reporters allowing the Biden administration to edit their quotes and more round out today's top media headlines

The president of far-left media watchdog Media Matters for America praised CNN for its shift to what the Washington Post called "more opinionated journalism," saying it had moved away from so-called false equivalence in its reporting.

In a lengthy feature on the increased tendency by CNN newscasters and reporters to emote and editorialize, Angelo Carusone told the Post it was a positive development after CNN received criticism from liberals for hiring pro-Trump commentators and dedicating extensive airtime to Donald Trump's rallies during his 2016 campaign.

"From that standpoint, many critics on the left see CNN’s shift to a more opinionated journalism as a corrective," the Post's Jeremy Barr wrote.

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"They’re moving in a direction away from false equivalence, false balance, mollifying bad-faith critics from the right — and focusing instead on what the story is," Carusone said.

CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, whose "Reliable Sources" newsletter often cites Media Matters, also praised fellow anchors and reporters this week for delivering what he called "first-person monologues" on the air.

Anchors like Stelter, Brianna Keilar, Jake Tapper, and Anderson Cooper, as well as left-wing opinion hosts like Don Lemon, Jim Acosta and Chris Cuomo, are known for their liberal commentaries on the news.

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"Welcome to the new CNN, where journalists and anchors, traditionally restricted by industry-wide standards of impartiality, have been given the green light under network president Jeff Zucker to say what they actually want to say — even if it strikes some as opinionated," Barr wrote.

Barr avoided using the word "liberal" to describe CNN in his piece, but he acknowledged examples of hosts tipping their hands on the air, such as Tapper celebrating the end of a "long national nightmare" for millions of Americans with President Biden's election victory, as well as Chris Cuomo's maligned interviews with his older brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

CNN President Jeff Zucker, a former friend of Trump's after producing NBC's "The Apprentice," said he had given the go-ahead to CNN personalities to offer their opinions on the air in the name of being more "human." He took over CNN in 2013, and the network has notably shifted to the left during his tenure.

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"One of the things that I’ve tried to encourage is authenticity and being real," Zucker told the Post. "If we pretend not to be human, it’s not real."