RUTHFULLY YOURS

Is CNN a news network or a public relations agency?

What else can one conclude but the latter, now that we learn that CNN did a 41-minute interview with Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris, but only released 18 minutes of it to the public, both in its broadcast and in its transcript.

That was its big news scoop, the first major interview of Kamala Harris since Joe Biden was forced to pull out of the race last month.

For a news agency to withold … the news … is strange stuff indeed, given that news is supposed to be what it does, and its bread and butter.

What’s more, experienced journalists, such as Catherine Herridge, have arched their eyebrows over that strange aversion to releasing the news they had actually gathered.

Herridge noted that this was what credible news agencies do, they release the full transcripts, even if their final broadcast doesn’t include all the news gathered. The New York Times has called it all the news that’s fit to print. 60 Minutes does an after-hours show for those interested in all the parts of its newsgathering that didn’t make it into their shorter news segments.

They’re in the news industry, after all — CBS knows they need to monetize what they gather, and the more they release, the more money they make.

CNN doesn’t seem to want to make that money.

That doesn’t sound normal.

Now we get a purported leak as to the reason why:

So we learn that Harris’s undoubtedly mangled and contradictory responses to questions about fracking were a mess, meaning, CNN was running cover for her in order to make her look better than she really was.

Worse still, CNN apparently gave Harris veto power over what went into the CNN interview and what didn’t. That’s the biggest no-no in news. That’s not news, that’s serving a client. That’s public relations, and if the charge is true, CNN will have a lot to answer for.

Can you imagine CNN or any news network giving President Trump veto power over what went into his interviews with reporters after the fact? It’s not done and it should not be done, and with Trump, it will never be done, but Democrats are something different.

The other thing is: If Kamala had to have editorial control of her interview with reporters serving as her handmaids, what does it say about her that she had to cut so much out? This is clearly amateur hour from her side.

Tom Bevan, a founder of RealClearPolitics, had exactly the right response.

It’s time to start asking questions about just how much power Harris had over that final CNN report and if it’s found to be true, then it needs to be listed as a campaign donation on Harris’s and CNN’s disclosure forms for federal authorities, and the public needs to be told, too. Will it happen? Not so long as Democrats retain power, but this stands exposed as another problem with the Washington swamp that needs a good hosing out.