While ABC, CBS, and NBC have shown scant interest — just three minutes and 43 seconds — on their lead morning and evening shows in covering University of Loyola Chicago student Sheridan Gorman’s brutal March 19 murder, CNN and MS NOW have been even less interested in reporting on the murder allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien from Venezuela as neither has dedicated a single on-air story to this crime.
While there hasn’t been a single news report or dedicated segment to Gorman and the case, she has been either directly or indirectly mentioned 11 times on CNN and once on MS NOW in live remarks from the White House or Capitol Hill, or statements by Republican guests. In other words, Gorman’s name has not once been uttered by a host, reporter, or even paid network contributor.
Media Research Center analysts searched CNN’s transcripts page, Nexis, and Snapstream closed captioning searches from the evening of March 19 (specifically 8:00 p.m. Eastern, the first full hour after news broke of the suspect’s identity) through March 30, looking for mentions Sheridan Gorman (including separate searches for her first name, last name, and both), Chicago, and Loyola.
As of this story’s publication, these searches spanned 186 possible hours of news programming on CNN and 151 hours on MS NOW.
The only time MS NOW viewers might have been inclined to research for Gorman’s case came Friday afternoon when it carried remarks from Speaker Mike Johnson about Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding:
In the last several days, we have recent examples of dangerous criminals in this country killing innocent Americans. We had an 18-year-old college student in Chicago, a young lady, who was shot in the back by a dangerous criminal who had been released in that sanctuary city and first, released at the border under Joe Biden. They opened the border wide for four years.
That was it. Three sentences in a press conference that, if they had known Gorman’s case would be mentioned, they might not have carried it.
Over on CNN, they too aired that Johnson press conference, along with March 25 and 30 White House press briefings in which Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned Gorman by name, a March 26 White House cabinet meeting where President Trump alluded to Gorman three times, and a March 27 when Trump cited Gorman when speaking to reporters after landing in Miami.
Thankfully, two CNN guests had the courage last week to bring up Gorman during segments about the partial government shutdown over DHS.
First, Congressman Mike Lawler (R-NY) paid tribute to Gorman last Wednesday on The Arena when host Kasie Hunt asked him about the state of funding negotiations (click “expand”):
Well, let me show you the consequences of lax immigration enforcement. A 18-year-old girl in my district, Sheridan Gorman, was brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant that was allowed to enter into the country during Joe Biden’s administration, captured at the border released. He was arrested for shoplifting in Chicago, released. And he went and brutally murdered an 18-year-old innocent girl. And Hakeem Jeffries yesterday couldn’t even be bothered to say whether or not that type of individual who is arrested for murder, who is in the country illegally, should be deported. So, this is what the Democrats are fighting back against, Kasie. They don’t want immigration enforcement. They don’t want ICE to be able to do their jobs. That individual never should have been in this country. And the reason we passed the Laken Riley Act was specifically because you have cases where people are arrested for things like shoplifting and local jurisdictions are not cooperating with immigration enforcement. And so. innocent Americans are being killed in the streets. And so, yes, there is a debate to be had on immigration enforcement. There is a debate to be had on sanctuary jurisdiction policies that the Democrats have continually supported.
The second instance was on the March 27/28 edition of CNN’s The Story Is when former Trump campaign deputy communications director Caroline Sunshine invoked Gorman on four separate occasions while debating far-left influencer and podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen about the DHS shutdown.
When Cohen brought up the deaths of far-left Minneapolis protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Sunshine said she was “glad you bring up killing people on the streets” as a segue to asking: “So, what would you say to the family of Sheridan Gorman who was killed last week by an illegal immigrant who entered our country in 2023 and had a detainer out and an arrest warrant that wasn’t fulfilled?”
“What would you say to her family as to why it’s okay to not fund ICE? Whose job it would be to make sure that, one, he was never here, and two, we’ve gotten rid of him? What would you say to her family,” she added.
Cohen wouldn’t engage, only to say he’s “sad for anybody who passes away or who is tragically killed,” but pivoted back to ICE “slaughtering people in the streets.”
The second time came when Cohen claimed President Trump has “leverag[ing] Americans’ pain” at airports to ensure passage of the SAVE America Act that Sunshine again jumped in (click “expand”):
SUNSHINE: But on the fact of leveraging pain, let’s talk about the pain again of Sheridan Gorman, who just last week in our country. I just want everybody to picture this. She is an 18-year-old woman who is out watching the Northern Lights with her friends, taking selfies, thinking about what she is going to post on social media, and instantly a bullet rings out, hits her head. She is killed instantly by an illegal immigrant who should have never been here in the first place. Again, came in 2023. ICE’s whole job is to get people like that out of our country. It is not morally defensible to defend a nation that allows criminals like that to stay in our country. That’s not morally —
COHEN: But — but ICE is funded.
Notice how, on both occasions, host Elex Michaelson didn’t engage on Sunshine’s argument about the need to fund immigration enforcement.
That said, Michaelson briefly asked Cohen — who had just dismissed Gorman’s murder as “fear porn” — to address one tangential point Sunshine raised: “But don’t you agree that ICE is itself important, and the idea of taking out criminal illegal aliens that have convicted of other crimes is a good thing?”
Cohen only said “the idea of immigration enforcement is important” because “ICE, as it stands right now, is beyond repair” and “fundamentally broken.”
Sunshine clapped back amid some Cohen stammering: “Who’s supposed to save Sheridan Gorman? It’s a good thing that we allowed her killer to stay in our country? Is it a good thing that she is dead? You want to talk about exploiting pain? Is it a good thing that she is dead? Yes or no? She would not be dead if an illegal immigrant had not been in our country.”
The last time was towards the end of their lengthy tussle, starting with Sunshine wondering: “And what about the pain of Sheridan Gorman’s family again?”
With over 300 hours of news programming since news broke about the suspect, CNN and MS NOW have had more than enough time to muster even a single news report about the suspect’s arrest or his first court hearing.
Thus, their decision to remain silent has been more than just bias, but a choice to suppress an inconvenient narrative surrounding the very agency at the center of this latest shutdown.
