Conservative "guerrilla journalism" enterprise Project Veritas has published new tapes exposing CNN president Jeff Zucker and several other CNN executives' political biases against those opposing the mainstream network's political views.
CNN, in particular, took special aim at President Donald J. Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and even Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, noted Project Veritas founder and CEO James O'Keefe.
"This is yet another investigation Project Veritas has conducted into CNN, and once again they've demonstrated their partisan political agenda and total disconnect with journalistic ethics", he depicted their latest batch of investigative data derived from the network's 9 a.m. rundown calls, which have been recorded and filed for months.
Prefacing the undercover recordings, O'Keefe said they revealed that CNN executives were literally plotting the daily news.
"These statements made by high-up executives at CNN prove that they are simply not interested in being unbiased when reporting on the news", O'Keefe said.
Among the cited claims are some by a person who has been identified on the recording as David Vigilante, CNN's General Counsel, who allegedly said Tucker Carlson is racist and that Fox News greenlights Carlson hosting "a white supremacy hour" daily.
"Yeah, I was just going to say, if you're going to talk about the story, I think it's unavoidable that you have to talk about the naked racism of Tucker Carlson. Because that's really what drove this anti-diversity push, you know, Trump watches Tucker Carlson's show and then reacts. And just as sort of the white supremacy hour they have on Fox News every night, I think it's the --- You can't disconnect the two", the man said to be David Vigilante recounted.
Separately, a person identified as CNN President Jeff Zucker was cited as saying the following about the incumbent president:
"This is a president who knows he's losing, who knows he's in trouble, is sick, maybe is on the aftereffects of steroids or not. I don't know. But he is acting erratically and desperately, and we need to not normalise that".
The latter remarks prompted O'Keefe to slam CNN over its "outrageous and unprofessional behaviour" notwithstanding the fact that they call themselves "the most trusted name in news".
CNN has for its part responded, saying its "legal experts" believe making the recordings may be a felony.
The rhetoric seems to have struck a chord on social media, with one user stating:
"I love how Project Veritas just fully exposed CNN as a propaganda network carrying water for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. We all knew it but it's good to hear it".
... whereas another cheekily remarked that Project Veritas had provided CNN with "a bombshell news story", admitting though that "it's about their network being fake news".
CNN finally has a bombshell news story, but it's about their network being fake news.
— thebradfordfile™ (@thebradfordfile) December 2, 2020
And Project Veritas broke it.
LMAO.
Others weighed in arguing that all the possible scepticism of the so-called "CNN tapes" vanished the moment CNN indirectly confirmed their validity by "threatening" the conservative journalism enterprise.
I was slightly skeptical of the #CNNTapes, that is until CNN confirmed the validity of the recordings when they responded with this threat lol. #ExposeCNN@JamesOKeefeIII @Project_Veritas https://t.co/NpE2vUipvS
— Lucía (@laluciagarcia) December 2, 2020
This is not the first time Project Veritas has revealed CNN's purported bias in internal editorial conversations and negotiations. Last year, in the wake of the publication of secretly recorded CNN executives discussing their network's blatant focus on anti-Trump coverage, US President Donald Trump's campaign threatened the network with legal action.
CNN has also been repeatedly targeted by POTUS himself and his team, who pejoratively refer to the mainstream media and CNN as "fake news outlets", suggesting they should be prosecuted for disinformation.
Trump Campaign's Recent Lawsuit Against CNN
In November, Trump's legal team filed a lawsuit against CNN for a 2019 opinion piece about former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into alleged collusion with Russia during Trump's 2016 campaign.
The op-ed, penned by Larry Noble, a CNN contributor and former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, claimed that soliciting dirt from a foreign government on a political opponent is a crime and that Trump officials should have been charged for it.
The Trump campaign's lawsuit argued that the statement was defamatory and false, and that CNN knew it to be false when it published Noble's opinion piece. The Trump campaign also argued that CNN had shown a pattern of bias against Trump. Yet, the judge in the case, Michael L. Brown of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, concluded that the Trump campaign did not plausibly allege that CNN had acted with malice in publishing the piece, and moved to dismiss the lawsuit.
