CNN Gave Over 90 Minutes in One Day to Now-Retracted Hydroxychloroquine Study
4th June 2020
When Jeffrey Zucker’s CNN settles on a narrative, they flood the zone with employees singing from the same sheet music; seeing as how they have a President to hate.
Such was the case on May 22 when CNN shows spent 90 minutes and 54 seconds heralding a now-debunked study that originally claimed taking hydroxychloroquine while battling COVID-19 could be fatal. Over on MSNBC, the total clocked out at a smaller but still sizable total of 19 minutes and 19 seconds.
For this count, the MRC looked at every hour of live programming from CNN and MSNBC May 22, and, in the case of CNN shows and MSNBC primetime, backed up by Nexis transcripts. Since the study went live just before 9:00 a.m. Eastern, each of the 10 subsequent CNN shows covered the study. On MSNBC, nine shows featured it.
How about coverage of the retraction? As of this study’s publication, MSNBC has ignored it while CNN has only given it one minute and 45 seconds during The Lead with Jake Tapper. So much for Jim Acosta’s claim last week that journalists correct their mistakes.