CNN Applauds as Boos Rain Down During Trump Conference... Video Proves They Are a Fraud
When it came to the highly anticipated “fake news awards,” CNN didn’t take home first place, which was a surprise for those of us taking odds for the office pool. (Not that this writer would do such a thing, cough cough.) That honor went to Paul Krugman, which I thought was a bit of an upset — after all, The New York Times’ economist is simply wrong all of the time, not necessarily mendacious.
However for those of you pulling for a CNN win, you could at least take solace in the fact that CNN filled out four slots in the top 11, more than any other source. Nevertheless, the network is positioning itself for the 2019 edition of the awards early, and it’s decided the way to go about that is to go meta — fake news about fake news. Very “Inception”!
In this case, the fake news in question involved President Donald Trump’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. CNN took an excerpt from the president’s Q&A and labeled it “Crowd boos as Trump calls media ‘fake’ in Davos.”
The problem was that a look at the clip seemed to support the idea that the crowd was “oohing” at a certain part of the president’s remarks — and YouTube users seemed to think so, too.
“I’ve always seemed to get, for whatever reason, a disproportionate amount of press or media,” the president said during the clip in question.
“And as a businessman, I was always treated really well by the press. You know, the numbers speak, things happen, but I’ve always really had a really good press.”
“And it wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be,” the president continued. “As the cameras start going off in the back,” he joked.
It was after that last part — and only then — that people began “booing” or “ooing,” and it sounded like a small undercurrent at that. If one were to guess at which it was, one would almost certainly go with them “ooing” at the president throwing down the gauntlet at the media yet again.
This, dear reader, is what “The Most Trusted Name in News” thinks is news and ought to be reported, if not applauded. And CNN somehow gets insulted when people call the network “fake news.”
Somewhat unsurprisingly, over 21,000 YouTube users voted thumbs-down on the video, compared to just 6,000 who voted thumbs-up.
Some of the user responses — collected by Rare.us — show that users were as unhappy with the video’s labeling in the comments section, too.
“This is the stupidest video I have ever seen,” one user said. “Completely missed the rest of the speech. Not even booing.”
“People were booing the fake news media that’s who they were booing,” another noted.
“CNN just can’t help themselves with the fake news,” another noted. “Would somebody please change their diapers?”
While resorting to the scatological seems a bit much, there’s still a lot of truth in those remarks. How could it be so obvious to everyone else yet not obvious to people whose job it is to be discerning?
Surprisingly, CNN wasn’t the only media outlet to report this; The Hill also reported the boos, although it did mention when it happened and tried to contextualize it by the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, getting booed for saying that Trump’s leadership had been open to “biased interpretations.” The London Guardian, meanwhile, posted the video under mostly the same title, although it didn’t garner nearly as much attention.
All of them perhaps positioned themselves well for next year’s awards, but CNN definitely did the best job. Look out, Krugman — Anderson Cooper and company are gunning for you.
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