CNN controversies

CNN (Cable News Network), an American basic cable and satellite television channel, has been the subject of multiple controversies. This article recounts controversies and allegations relating to both the domestic version of CNN, and its sister channels CNN International and CNN-News18. Allegations of bias CNN has often been the subject of allegations of party bias. The New York Times has described its development of a partisan lean during the tenure of Jeff Zucker. In research conducted by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the authors found disparate treatment by CNN of Republican and Democratic candidates during the earliest five months of the presidential primaries in 2007: "The CNN programming studied tended to cast a negative light on Republican candidates—by a margin of three-to-one. Four-in-ten stories (41%) were clearly negative while just 14% were positive and 46% were neutral. The network provided negative coverage of all three main candidates with McCain fairing the worst (63% negative) and Romney fairing a little better than the others only because a majority of his coverage was neutral. It's not that Democrats, other than Obama, fared well on CNN either. Nearly half of the Illinois Senator's stories were positive (46%), vs. just 8% that were negative. But both Clinton and Edwards ended up with more negative than positive coverage overall. So while coverage for Democrats overall was a bit more positive than negative, that was almost all due to extremely favorable coverage for Obama." In a New York Observer column entitled "Clinton News Network", political journalist Steve Kornacki criticized CNN's handling of the November 15, 2007, Democratic presidential debate, calling it biased towards Hillary Clinton. In September 2009, a Pew Research Center Poll showed that Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to rate the network favorably, while Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to see CNN unfavorably. A 2019 Pew Research survey showed that among Americans who named CNN as their main source for political and election news, 79% identify as Democrats whereas 17% identify as Republicans. Among major broadcast news networks, the CNN audience displays higher levels of partisanship than ABC, CBS and NBC, but lower than Fox News and MSNBC.