CNN’s Coverage of the NYC Terror Attack Has Been an Absolute Mess

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On Saturday, two young men inspired by ISIS hurled an explosive device at far-right protesters in a failed terror attack outside of New York City’s Gracie Mansion.

Why is it that so many journalists making big money at prestigious institutions can’t find these words?

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, host Abby Phillip erroneously stated that the bomb-throwers had carried out “an attempted terror attack against New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani” while reading from her teleprompter heading into a commercial break. It was an understandable error given the logistics of the television news business, but one that nevertheless ought to have been corrected on-air that evening.

Instead, CNN senior political commentator Ana Navarro repeated the falsity just a few moments later.

“Supposedly some of these comments are as a result of the attempt against Mayor Mamdani in New York, who was raised Muslim, was he not?” asked Navarro during a discussion about Rep. Andy Ogles’s (R-TN) deplorable declaration that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”

The host, always quick to interject when she perceives a conservative panelist articulating an untruth, let that one fly through the strike zone without so much as blink. Fortunately for the to-that-point misinformed audience, former New York City councilman Joe Borelli stepped up to the plate to set the record straight.

Phillip apologized for her own error on Wednesday morning, albeit in a tortured manner.

“The bombs thrown in New York City over the weekend by ISIS inspired attackers was thrown into a crowd of anti-Muslim protestors and not specifically targeted at Mayor Mamdani,” she explained.

Specifically targeted? Was he generally targeted? What about metaphorically?

Just a few hours later, lightning struck yet again at the “This is an apple” channel.

“Investigators are digging into the background of the two terror suspects accused of throwing homemade bombs near New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home. Authorities say this attack was ISIS-inspired,” explained Wolf Blitzer at the top of the 10:00 a.m. hour of The Situation Room on Wednesday. He went on to repeat the characterization later in the program.

Technically true? Sure. Artfully constructed to give the impression that Mamdani was the principal victim? You bet.

All this after the network was forced to delete a roundly-mocked tweet lamenting that “Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather…”

The relentless avoidance of the hard facts about what happened in Manhattan in favor of noting the proximity of Mamdani’s residence to those events, and resulting errors from this Kafkaesque process has been something to behold.

Mistakes happen, and their occurrence is not an indictment of one’s integrity. But you don’t make the same mistake time and again for several days unless, institutionally, your commitment to and belief in The Narrative™ trumps your commitment to telling the truth.

It’s not that there’s a conspiracy afoot to conceal the latter, it’s that there’s a consensus about the way the world works that compels them to put out a worse, and sometimes totally dysfunctional product before they acknowledge inconvenient facts. And among the truths they hold self-evident is this one: violence is something perpetrated by the Right against the Left. They employ Donie O’Sullivan to explain this from time-to-time in new and uninteresting ways.

To admit that right-wing protesters with noxious views, not Mamdani, were the targets of Saturday’s attack is just too great an ask.

Somebody, anybody in a position of authority at the network ought to blow a gasket over the systemic, ideologically-driven incompetence that’s torpedoed its credibility. But until then, we’ll have to settle for Phillip’s interruptions of Scott Jennings and the stunning-and-brave gripes about him from anonymous staffers — contrived assertions of their allegiance to accuracy, rather than demonstrations of it.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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