Chris Cuomo is an “anchor” at CNN. On Tuesday, with all the casualness of a lunch order he revealed a significant personal bias about one of today’s most contentious political issues.
Defending his performance in this absurd Monday segment with Christine Quinn, Cuomo fired off a tweet worth bookmarking. Although conservatives had been circulating the Quinn clip critically for hours, the critique to which he was responding actually came from the left.
Disingenuous? No. There is certainly a need to explain the medical realities of the procedures and the risks to women of losing access to care but this is about politics mostly – and the pro- life position is more about faith and feeling than fact. But I pursue both avenues https://t.co/iTO2VQZwhh
— Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 7, 2019
And there it is: “the pro-life position is more about faith and feeling than fact.” That’s obviously fine as the banal dorm room musings of a college freshman. As a prime-time news anchor’s stated position on abortion, it’s bananas (horrible pun intended).
The beauty of Twitter is that its immediacy tempts journalists like Cuomo into exposing these biases. If he insists on covering abortion, I’d rather know about his misguided condescension for the pro-life movement than wonder about it. Indeed, tweets like these help us understand why segments like the one that precipitated this debate happen the first place. It’s also perfectly fine for journalists to share their personal opinions—when they identify as opinion journalists.
Cuomo does not. His title at CNN is “anchor.” His bio on the network’s website reads, “Chris Cuomo anchors CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time, a 9pm nightly news program where Cuomo tests power with newsmakers and politicians from both sides of the aisle, and reports on the latest breaking news from Washington and around the world.”
He is not Rachel Maddow; he is not Sean Hannity. In fact, he openly distinguishes himself from both of them. “Maddow’s a professor, Hannity’s a preacher. … I was built for the battle,” he recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “You are rarely hearing my opinion on television,” Cuomo asserted to Rolling Stone last year, lamenting that “Politics was easier to cover when people weren’t so blatantly abusive of facts.”
Whatever your position, abortion, of course, is no minor issue. It’s one of the most important policy questions to both parties. Now we know an “anchor” at the “Facts First” network is completely biased against one side.
If you’re one of CNN’s few remaining viewers, remember Cuomo’s take on abortion next time he covers it. The conversation will probably make a lot more sense.
