CNN Promo Video Backfires When Viewers Point Out a Very Big Problem: 'You Are Bragging About Your Lying?'
As a marketing metric, it doesn’t get much worse than scorn across the board.
But a CNN promotional post published on Twitter over the weekend managed to provoke virtually unanimous mockery after the network chose to highlight its supposedly superior news-reporting abilities by focusing on a story where it disgraced itself on a nearly daily basis.
And if CNN executives have a different memory of May 2020, there were hundreds of social media users who were more than willing to remind them.
The promo that went public Saturday featured a scene from CNN’s archives on May 30, 2020, in Minneapolis, ground zero of what became a months-long carnival of horror across the United States over the death in police custody of George Floyd, a known drug addict with a long criminal history who’d just been arrested on suspicion of using counterfeit money.
“When history is being made, we hit record. Unflinching, unrelenting, uncut. This is CNN,” the tweet declares pompously.
The video is apparently part of CNN’s campaign to regain Americans’ trust and come back from its leftward lurch during the Trump administration. Unfortunately for the brains behind this piece of marketing genius, the video really just underscores the perception that the network is willing to skew its coverage regardless of the history being made.
“That is peaceful protesting,” the voice of correspondent Omar Jiminez comes on as the viewer is treated to a scene of tear gas canisters exploding among a throng in the streets, with a barricade spraypainted with the words “Viva la revolution.”
When history is being made, we hit record. Unflinching, unrelenting, uncut. This is CNN. pic.twitter.com/6BoU1nW9EV
— CNN (@CNN) June 3, 2023
Jiminez’s words after that didn’t get any better:
“Our producer got hit by some sort of projectile right there,” he said.
“We’re going to back up here … We gotta move … We’re going to move back … We’re in a brisk jog right now.”
It’s not exactly Sunday dinner at the vicar’s.
And for Twitter users, that jarring juxtaposition of a CNN correspondent’s words about “peaceful protesting” with the scenes on the ground pretty much described the network’s approach to “covering” news — forcing events to fit CNN’s preferred narrative.
As of late Monday morning Eastern Time, the post had been viewed more than 313,000 times but “liked” only 313 times. Of the nearly 700 comments, virtually none was positive.
As a backfire for a supposedly promotional post, it doesn’t get much worse.
In fact, it reminded all the people who know anything about CNN why they can’t stand CNN in the first place.
Here are a few samples:
So you are bragging about your lying?
— Joe Biden’s sniffer (@bshaver70) June 5, 2023
“So you are bragging about your lying?” the user asked. With CNN, that’s an excellent question.
The question is not being there, but reporting accurately on what you are witnessing without bias.
— Charlie Bedgood (@CharlieBedgood) June 3, 2023
“The question is not being there, but reporting accurately on what you are witnessing without bias,” wrote another.
True, but this is the CNN that agreed to keep quiet about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s torture and murder of his own citizens in return for access to the country during the Gulf War three decades ago, then earned the disparaging sobriquet of “Clinton News Network” for its liberal bias during the Bill Clinton White House. Being there is one thing, but reporting “accurately” and “without bias” just isn’t in its DNA.
And then there was the mockery:
Ah yes, it is well known that one has to find cover during a peaceful protest.
— Jeremy That Old Fart (@JerOHMee) June 4, 2023
Ah!! The Summer of Love and Mostly Peaceful Protests! I miss those days of staying up late and watching buildings being burnt and looted. The anarchists formations and the black umbrella squads. The ones that don’t exist, they told us. Good times
— Salem Poor (@salempoormusic) June 4, 2023
He flinched. Right after he declared it a peaceful protest and decided he needed to run from all the peacefulness.
— Kaiser Angepöpö (@KaiserDad) June 4, 2023
But this one might have been the most devastating:
I thought this was a CNN parody
— 9mmSMG (@9mm_smg) June 4, 2023
CNN became a parody of a news organization during the years when former President Donald Trump was in the White House.
Who can forget then-White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s virtually daily performances as a caricature of the over-inflated ego of a television talking head? Or then-prime-time host Don Lemon’s nightly attacks on Trump and his supporters and the ratings boosts they meant for CNN?
It’s worth noting that this wasn’t the last time Jiminez was linked to the “peaceful” line to describe obviously violent images for CNN’s gullible viewers.
He was a key part of one of the most infamous CNN images of the George Floyd era, when he stood on camera in front of buildings literally engulfed in flames during rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020 while a chyron below him displayed the words: “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting.”
Fiery but mostly peaceful protests!!! pic.twitter.com/4OHvKnh63u
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) August 30, 2020
If CNN’s marketing department wanted to remind Americans of how badly the network disgraced itself and betrayed its journalistic mission, it could hardly have done better than its choice of videos to use in the tweet it published Saturday.
If it truly wanted Americans to think it was attempting to become an honest source of news heading into the 2024 election years, it could hardly have done worse.
Because as a product promotion, this one backfired about as badly as it could.
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