Scandals That Completely Rocked CNN

When television first launched, the idea of round-the-clock news simply wasn't on anyone's radar. You got the news at a set time each night, and that was that. CNN, however, changed things. The cable channel launched in the 1980s; by the end of the decade, when they brought minute-by-minute coverage of "Baby Jessica" trapped in a well to millions of households, everything had changed. "The news" became something that was always happening, and you could turn on your television and get up-to-the-minute reports about whatever was happening.

Several competitors have cropped up in CNN's wake, including MSNBC and Fox News. While Fox News is understood to be right-wing and MSNBC doesn't hide that it presents news with a liberal slant, CNN is supposedly more objective ... depending on who you ask. President Donald Trump calls the network "Fake News CNN," "The Clinton News Network," and more, while left-leaning commentators have pointed out that CNN's attempt to appear nonpartisan has objectively meant leaning further to the right in recent years.

Regardless of your opinion of the network, CNN can seem to make headlines as often as they write them. 2021, for example, was a scandal-ridden year at CNN. From their controversial on-air personalities to their behind-the-scenes meddling in politics to accusations of blackmail, read on for some of the biggest scandals that completely rocked CNN.

2020 was a terrible year for just about everybody, and commentator Jeffrey Toobin is no exception. That fall, he was fired from his longtime gig at The New Yorker after he exposed himself and engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior on a Zoom call, evidently unaware that his colleagues could all see him. In a statement to Vice, Toobin tried to explain himself. "I believed I was not visible on Zoom. I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video," he said. "I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera. I apologize to my wife, family, friends, and co-workers."

Toobin wasn't just a writer, though; he was a frequent on-air personality on CNN, too, ever since he joined the network in 2002. The Zoom incident happened on a New Yorker call, but CNN was made to answer for his actions anyway, and they decided to place him on leave. Only a few months later, however, he was back on television. In an appearance on "CNN Newsroom," Toobin apologized to the network's audience for the damage he'd done to his reputation. "I'm sorry to the people who read my work and who watched me on CNN who thought I was a better person than this," he said, promising to work on himself. In 2022, however, he finally left the network for good.

In 2017, comedian Kathy Griffin criticized Donald Trump by posing for a photo with a prop of his bloody, severed head. In a post on X (via BBC News), Griffin wrote, "I caption this: 'There was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his ... wherever.'" It was a reference to Trump's controversial comments about Fox News host Megyn Kelly, but many viewed the photo as a call for the president's death. "OBVIOUSLY, I do not condone ANY violence by my fans or others to anyone, ever! I'm merely mocking the Mocker in Chief," Griffin clarified, but the damage had been done.

She faced a wave of pushback, including not just criticism and lost jobs but actual investigations by the government over whether to charge her with a crime. On Jesse Tyler Ferguson's "Dinner's on Me" podcast, she explained, "It was seismic, the way it was handled because it wasn't really a cancellation. It was an investigation by the Department of Justice ... the notion that anyone thought I was serious."

She also lost her CNN gig. For years, Griffin had anchored the network's New Year's Eve coverage, appearing alongside Anderson Cooper on a raised platform in Times Square. The two had been close friends for quite a while, but after the criticism his friend had received for her political stunt, Cooper ended his friendship with Griffin, and she never forgave him.

We live in a surreal world these days, where we always seem to be encountering the most horrifying news imaginable alongside the most mundane, silliest, most disposable content. Scroll through TikTok, for example; you'll get dancing videos and silly cat videos alongside videos of tragedies in Gaza, El Salvador, and more. (Just me?)

In 2022, CNN offered up one of the most head-spinning examples of this fact of modern life. On the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, CNN aired live footage of air raid sirens blaring out over the rooftops of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital city. Then, with the eerie video footage still on the screen under a giant banner reading "RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE," CNN aired an Applebee's ad. There were smiling families dancing to Zac Brown Band's "Chicken Fried" right alongside images of a major European city under attack for the first time since World War II.

Understandably, viewers weren't the only ones rattled by the unsettling juxtaposition. Applebee's itself was annoyed by the situation, and the company pulled all ads from the channel. In an email to Business Insider, a spokesperson for the chain said, "We are deeply concerned about the situation in Ukraine. It should never have aired, and we are disappointed in the actions of the network."

News organizations are putting themselves in danger when they hire famous commentators. Those people are asked to provide a specific viewpoint on air, but it's hard to do so objectively because they still have all sorts of ties to the very people they're discussing on television. In other words, it can be tough to separate journalistic objectivity from the desire to still be involved in the political process.

That's the issue that former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile ran into. She had appeared on CNN for many years in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, this time supposedly working for CNN rather than the DNC. Ahead of a town hall early that year, Brazile reportedly told the Clinton campaign about some of the questions she might face onstage, a fact that infuriated then-candidate Donald J. Trump when hacked emails revealed the conversation. Throughout that year, he would repeatedly tell his followers that Brazile had leaked questions for "the debate," suggesting CNN had rigged his own debate with Clinton in her favor, though that's not exactly what happened.

Either way, CNN cut ties with Brazile. "CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information, or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate," they insisted in a statement (via CNBC). "We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."

January 18, 2019, was a contentious day in Washington, D.C. The March for Life took place that day, meant to advocate for the end of abortion rights, whereas the simultaneous Indigenous People's March tried to raise awareness of the struggles still faced by Native Americans. Various viral videos captured a confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial, showing a smirking standoff between Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann — wearing a red MAGA hat — and a Native American man named Nathan Phillips playing a drum.

Initially, it looked like the younger boy might've been taunting the older man. Many news organizations, including CNN, reported it that way. As more videos were released, however, the situation became murkier than it initially appeared. There was a third group involved, a collection of Black Hebrew Israelites who didn't appear in the initial video, and it seemed that they were the ones who started it. Sandmann even told CNN that his smile wasn't meant to be a smirk. "[I smiled to show] that I was not going to become angry, intimidated, or be provoked into a larger confrontation," he insisted. 

Because of the way his behavior had initially been reported, Sandmann sued several organizations, including CNN. "CNN was probably more vicious in its direct attacks on Nicholas than The Washington Post," lawyer Lin Wood told Fox News (via The Hill). "And CNN goes into millions of individuals' homes." They settled out of court.

In 2017, we were getting used to having a Very Online president. Donald Trump spent much of his first term glued to X, then called Twitter, sharing memes from the darkest dredges of the internet. That June, he tweeted a GIF that had been edited from one of his wrestling appearances; someone had placed the CNN logo on a face. That person was then body-slammed by none other than Trump, suggesting that the president had violently defeated the news organization.

The GIF made headlines because it was a blatant attack on the press from a sitting president, but organizations like CNN were also interested in the origin of the clip; after all, despite the White House's denial, the current president seemed to have lifted it from Reddit. In fact, CNN tracked down the original user who made the GIF, who went by the name "HanA**holeSolo." Despite noting racist comments on his account, they chose not to reveal his identity, writing, "CNN is not publishing 'HanA**holeSolo's' name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology ... CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change."

That decision angered critics of the network, who claimed that encouraging the user to refrain from racism amounted to blackmail. #CNNBlackmail even trended online. "That's CNN stating that it will out the guy if he dares to defy their political perspective," wrote Ben Shapiro (via CBS News).

Rick Santorum began his career as a politician. He was a two-term United States Senator from Pennsylvania, and he even ran for president, but he lost reelection and didn't win the presidency. What's a guy to do except sign on to be a commentator for CNN? For several years after the end of his career in politics, Santorum shared his insights on the network, delivering conservative talking points to balance out the show's liberal guests. In April 2021, however, Santorum gave a speech at the Young America Foundation's Standing Up for Faith and Freedom Seminar, a conservative youth group event. He told the assembled youngsters (via YouTube), "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but ... candidly ... there isn't much Native American culture in American culture."

The blatantly offensive comments angered viewers, including the Native American Journalists Association. "NAJA calls on CNN to immediately dismiss Santorum from his position," they wrote in a press release, even encouraging Native journalists to avoid working for the network.

Santorum tried to defend himself on CNN, notably not apologizing as he explained, "I was talking about, and I misspoke in this respect, I was talking about the founding, and the principles embodied in the founding. ... The way we treated Native Americans was horrific." CNN did indeed dismiss Santorum from his position, ultimately parting ways with him a month after his remarks. 

As a gay Black man who wasn't afraid to center his identity as he reported on stories about his communities, Don Lemon was long a target of CNN's conservative critics. Lemon was responsible for many controversial moments, including angering Donald Trump by laughing as a guest called his supporters "credulous boomer rubes," though much of the criticism was in bad faith.

In 2022, however, stories began to leak to the press about Lemon's off-camera behavior. His show "Don Lemon Tonight" was canceled, and instead, he anchored a morning show alongside Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. Lemon apparently didn't treat them well, including in a reported confrontation in December of that year after Lemon felt Collins interrupted him on-air. "Don screamed at Kaitlan, who was visibly upset and ran out of the studio," a source told The New York Post.

In early 2023, he caused controversy in a discussion about a presidential candidate when he claimed (via AP News), "Nikki Haley isn't in her prime, sorry ... Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just saying what the facts are." He issued an apology, but he was missing from "CNN This Morning" for several days afterward. In April, he was fired when CNN revealed on X, "CNN and Don have parted ways. Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years."

Journalistic objectivity is a confusing concept these days. The majority of our major national news networks treat the news as entertainment, not necessarily reporting facts but packaging the news as something to be consumed. While many on-air news personalities overcompensate to guard against accusations of bias, giving air time to partisans in order to "balance" things that are actually pretty cut-and-dried, other anchors don't pretend to be anything other than partisan.

That was the case with CNN's Chris Cuomo, who comes from a long line of Democratic politicians in New York. His brother Andrew was, in fact, governor of New York while Chris hosted "Cuomo Prime Time." Nobody really expected Chris to be an objective journalist, but at the same time, nobody would've expected the CNN personality to be quite as biased as he was.

In 2021, Andrew resigned from the governorship after multiple sexual assault allegations. While Chris didn't report on his brother's situation on-air to avoid bias, he was apparently advising his brother behind the scenes about how to handle the accusations from a PR perspective. That opened CNN up to considerable criticism, and they fired him from the network when the news broke. "Based on the report we received regarding Chris' conduct with his brother's defense, we had cause to terminate," CNN said. "When new allegations came to us this week, we took them seriously, and saw no reason to delay taking immediate action."

Look, we get it: It's tough to be asked on camera for your immediate reaction to something that's still unfolding, asked to give perspective into events about which you may not have all the context. Still, on-air reporters should probably be able to follow some simple rules of thumb, one of which might be: There's no need to be openly sympathetic to convicted rapists.

That's the trouble that CNN personalities Poppy Harlow and Candy Crowley found themselves in when they reported on a 2013 rape case in Steubenville, Ohio. Two football players were convicted of raping a 16-year-old, and the verdict played out live on television. Rather than focusing on the severity of their crime and the emotional scene involving the victim, Harlow and Crowley seemed moved by the rapists themselves. "[T]hese two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students," Harlow said (via Yahoo), "literally watched as they believe their life fell apart."

Crowley asked contributor Paul Callan for his reaction. "You know, Paul, a 16-year-old now just sobbing in court, regardless of what big football players they are, still sound like 16-year-olds," she said. "What's the lasting effect, though, on two young men?" Viewers were not happy. Variety editor Kate Aurthur tweeted, "Hey, @PoppyHarlowCNN, these young men raped a girl. Why are you so upset on their behalf? Your coverage is bizarre."

CNN was founded in 1980; in 1982, the network launched "Crossfire." The show pitted a liberal pundit against a conservative one, hoping to prompt debate that might be seen as productive. By the 2000s, however — amid the increasing polarization of the country — the show frequently devolved into partisan shouting. By 2004, the token liberal was Paul Begala and the token conservative was Tucker Carlson, who would later make a name for himself as one of the biggest personalities at Fox News. 

That year, "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart appeared on "Crossfire." Rather than bantering with the hosts, he laid into them, naming "Crossfire" one of the biggest drivers of the country's polarization, not merely a reflection of it. "I have privately amongst my friends, and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad," Stewart said. "I felt that that wasn't fair, and I should come here and tell you that it's not so much that it's bad as it's hurting America. So I wanted to come here today and say ... Stop. Stop hurting America." Carlson wasn't happy with the comedian's serious turn, telling him, "I do think you're more fun on your show." Stewart shot back, "You're as big a d*** on your show as you are on any show!"

"Crossfire" was canceled mere months later. CNN President Jonathan Klein told The New York Times, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise." For the record, Carlson's beef with Stewart is far from over.