Friday, July 07, 2017


CNN in odd role as censor: The Fascism peeps out

CNN has been accused of blackmailing the man who created a meme of President Donald Trump tackling CNN by threatening to reveal his identity. USA TODAY

It's the antithesis of journalism for a news organization to monitor speech and decide whether someone is crossing a line and should be ruined.

What is curious is that CNN has withheld the creator's identity while making a thinly veiled threat that it will release his name if he posts anything CNN finds disturbing or offensive. That is an odd role for a news organization. The news media do not usually put citizens on probation for exercising their free speech.

CNN, however, stated that it has decided to withhold his name … for now. He is a private citizen, the network said, who apologized, took down the offending posts and said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

“CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”

The last statement is particularly jarring. It sounds like CNN is putting a citizen on a type of media probationary status — threatening to reveal his name if it deems any posting as constituting “ugly behavior.” It puts a news organization in the position of monitoring free speech and deciding whether to ruin someone if he crosses some ill-defined line with CNN. It is the antithesis of what a news organization is supposed to be about.

SOURCE

Senator Ted Cruz suggested CNN may have broken the law by threatening the video-maker.

8 comments:

Bird of Paradise said...

CNN the Communists News Network or lets just replace the C with a F and its the Fake News Network which would be more approaiate

Anonymous said...

CNN has lost all credibility with those that believe in free speech. Only the left will be joyous at their corruption of the news.

Anonymous said...


Ironically, the response to CNN's hubris is the equivalent of what the video showed. They have gotten taken down, and hard.

Anonymous said...

Doxing is dubious when done by individuals.
Having a major media source threaten to do it is worrying.
And when that threat is conditional on doing or not doing something - then it is possibly extortion.

Anonymous said...

This actually makes me want to create a meme targeting CNN just to poke the bear.

Anonymous said...

Not a peep out of CNN or the other liberal media about the mayor of NYC going to Hamburg to give a speech at a G20 protest.

Spurwing Plover the fighting shorebird said...

CNN has lost its credits its rating have plunged to 13 points

ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N said...

I'm with Anons 7:12 and 12:18..

What CNN did could well be considered extortion and blackmail in a civil suit. I wonder what CNN would do if 100,000 of us did the same thing. Poke the bear? Nah.. Run it over with a train.