Prominent Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) said she warned the White House to take Healthcare.gov offline until the site was fixed, but the administration wouldn't do it. CNN made no mention of her claim, made on Sunday's Face the Nation, and didn't ask her about it when she appeared on Monday's The Situation Room.
"I felt, and I said this directly to the President's chief of staff, they ought to take down the website until it was right," Feinstein said of the site's technical problems. "They believe that they need to keep it running and that they can sort out the difficulties," she added.
Wolf Blitzer
By Matt Hadro | November 4, 2013 | 6:21 PM EST
By Matt Hadro | October 29, 2013 | 4:15 PM EDT
CNN's Joe Johns wouldn't call President Obama's "you can keep your health care plan" promise a lie or a broken promise, on Tuesday. According to him, it "might have been an oversell."
This despite a report that the administration knew millions would lose their insurance under ObamaCare. Johns, in his deep benefit of the doubt for the White House, gave this ever-so-slight criticism of the administration's promises: "they do appear to have made some statements at the outset while they were selling the program that appear to have been over broad."
By Matt Hadro | October 9, 2013 | 4:41 PM EDT
[UPDATED BELOW] Highlighting "major problems" with the website of ObamaCare's federal exchange, CNN's Wolf Blitzer said the administration should have accepted the Republican proposal and delayed implementation of the health care law for a year.
"Yeah. If they had three years to get this ready, if they weren't fully ready, they should accept the advice that a lot of Republicans are giving them, delay it another year, get it ready, and make sure it works," Blitzer said on Tuesday.
By Matt Hadro | October 4, 2013 | 1:18 PM EDT
CNN boosted President Obama's message on Thursday by taking his challenge to Republicans and pressuring them to get on board with a bill that would fund ObamaCare.
After the President called on House Speaker John Boehner to hold an up-or-down vote on the funding bill, CNN took that talking point and pressured Republicans to accept it. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux hailed it as a "very good point."
By Matt Hadro | October 3, 2013 | 4:26 PM EDT
Not 90 minutes after CNN first reported that Capitol Hill was on lockdown on Thursday, anchor Wolf Blitzer brought politics into the breaking news coverage.
"An incident like this which clearly scares everyone up on Capitol Hill, staffers, workers, members of Congress. You think it's going to propel you guys up there, Democrats and Republicans, to say you know what, enough is enough, let's get back to work and end this government shutdown?" Blitzer asked Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.).
By Matt Hadro | September 10, 2013 | 5:02 PM EDT
In his Monday interview with President Obama, CNN's Wolf Blitzer failed to ask any tough questions of the President. In contrast, Fox News's Chris Wallace grilled Obama over the administration's handling of the Syria conflict.
For instance, Wallace brought up the lack of popular support for a military intervention, Secretary of State John Kerry's comment that a military intervention would be "unbelievably small," and Republican criticisms that the administration has failed to make a convincing case for military action. Blitzer mentioned none of these things, though, simply teeing Obama up with soft questions.
By Noel Sheppard | August 6, 2013 | 3:45 PM EDT
Here's a headline I doubt many Americans imagined ever seeing:
"CNN Schedule Changes: Less Wolf Blitzer, More Newt Gingrich"
Such appeared at The Wrap Tuesday.
By Matt Hadro | August 1, 2013 | 2:44 PM EDT
[UPDATED BELOW] CNN's Arwa Damon scored an exclusive interview with a suspect in the Benghazi attacks, yet CNN chose to air it only once. Aside from a brief mention of it on Thursday morning, the network has dropped its own scoop that it broke on 5 p.m. Wednesday on The Situation Room.
None of the three networks mentioned the story on their Wednesday evening news casts, and only CBS talked about Benghazi on Thursday, though they didn't mention Arwa Damon's report.
By Matt Hadro | June 27, 2013 | 3:16 PM EDT
CNN really showed its bias in reacting to two very different Supreme Court decisions this week. On Tuesday, the Court struck down a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; in the hours that followed, CNN's coverage included four times as many critics of the decision as supporters (8 vs. 2).
Then on Wednesday, the Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and permitted the nullification of California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage. This time, CNN's coverage skewed in favor of the Court, with roughly three times as many on-air guests supporting that decision as opposing it (20 vs. 7).
By Noel Sheppard | June 26, 2013 | 10:30 PM EDT
Piers Morgan normally gets around 500,000 people to watch his pathetic show on CNN.
Despite this, the man few Americans actually know by name had the nerve to say Wednesday that conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh is “too old and too boring” to be a regular on CNN’s revival of Crossfire (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
By Noel Sheppard | June 2, 2013 | 4:25 PM EDT
He's been at CNN for 23 years, and one could make the case at times the face of the network.
Yet according to a report by the New York Daily News, Wolf Blitzer's air time is going to decline until he's finally replaced by a "younger, hipper host."
By Matt Hadro | May 20, 2013 | 4:54 PM EDT
CNN's scrutiny of the Obama administration's scandals has fallen sharply from last week. From 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. ET on Monday, CNN spent about as much time on Obama's "triple trouble" of controversy as it did on Saturday's Powerball-winning ticket.
CNN spent 12 full minutes reporting that one single ticket won the $590 million Powerball jackpot over the weekend, and had yet to be claimed. In comparison, three Obama administration scandals merited about the same coverage, 12 minutes, 21 seconds. Yet over three minutes of that coverage focused on the President's rising approval ratings amidst the controversies.