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She’s won Woman of the Year on several occasions. She’s been awarded multiple Emmy awards and a Peabody. When one thinks of CNN’s international coverage, she’s usually the first name that comes to mind.
Christiane Amanpour first burst onto the journalism scene on 60 Minutes in the 1980s. She would later go on to anchor ABC News and host programs on PBS while primarily doing war reporting for CNN.
THE CLOSING OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY MIND
So while the British-born star is decorated, she is anything but remotely close to being an objective, trustworthy reporter. For example, just a few months ago, she compared the United States to North Korea.
“I must say I was afraid. I’m a foreigner. I don’t have a green card. I’m not an American citizen. I’m fairly prominent, and I literally prepared to go to America as if I was going to North Korea,” she claimed. “I took a burner phone. Imagine that … not my mobile phone, not my iPad, nothing, and I had nothing on the burner phone except a few numbers.”
This is the definition of unhinged hyperbole. She also led the charge against the now-former CNN president, Chris Licht, by publicly blasting him for hosting then-candidate Donald Trump for a town hall in 2023 when he was easily leading in the polls for the Republican nomination.
Amanpour would later argue that CNN should have taped and edited the Trump town hall to craft the proper narrative. This is exactly what CBS News did with then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s infamous 60 Minutes interview last October. That stunt ended up costing the network $15 million after the network settled a lawsuit with Trump.
“So maybe less is more,” she said. “Maybe live [television] is not always right.”
Yes, because God forbid Trump says something even a liberal audience like CNN agrees with.
But matters really came to a head after Amanpour made the disgusting claim that Israeli hostages were actually treated relatively well during their two years in captivity under Hamas.
“It’s been a terrible, terrible two years for them because not only are they there — you know, they’re probably being treated better than the average Gazan because they are the pawns and the chips that Hamas had,” Amanpour said. “Now Hamas has given up all its leverage, by the way, by giving them all up. So that is a victory for the Israeli side.”
“…treated better than the average Gazan.” Uh-huh. Was the average Gazan forced to dig their own graves in tunnels underground? Was the average Gazan starved, electrocuted, or held in chains?
On Monday night, after overwhelming backlash, Amanpour apologized on social media for her remarks.
“It was insensitive and wrong. From speaking to many former hostages and their families, like everyone, I’ve been horrified at what Hamas has subjected them to over two long years,” she wrote.
One has to wonder about Amanpour’s future at CNN at this point because apparently, she doesn’t think she’s biased in any way, shape, or form.
“To be honest, Oliver, I never hear myself being called ‘partisan,” she told the hopelessly biased Oliver Darcy in an interview. “I am not an American, I don’t cover U.S. elections or domestic politics. I tell the truth and the stories from around the world, including what everyone over here thinks of America at any given time.”
She doesn’t cover politics? That’s weird, because besides publicly rebuking her own network for hosting Trump in a town hall setting in 2023, she also once defended Hillary Clinton after collapsing at a 9/11 memorial event before the 2016 presidential election, as her just having an “off day.”
“Surely this can’t be a case of a human being having an off day,” Amanpour said sarcastically. “No, like so many things, Hillary, the media are having a field day. Off to the races with another debilitating case of indignant outrage. This must be another typical Clinton conspiracy to fool them with a total transparency breakdown.”
Nope. No bias there whatsoever. And here’s Amanpour back in 2020 comparing the Trump administration to the Nazis.
“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” Amanpour said in a CNN monologue. “It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history, and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.”
Again, Amanpour said she didn’t cover U.S. elections, right? And similar to she did with the Israeli hostages, she apologized for these remarks. Sort of.
“I should not have juxtaposed the two thoughts. Hitler and his evils stand alone, of course, in history,” she explained. “I regret any pain my statement may have caused.”
But she just couldn’t leave it there. Instead, she defended the thought process in the most pious way possible.
“My point was to say how democracy can potentially slip away, and how we must always zealously guard our democratic values,” she warned.
Yes. Because nothing says saving democracy quite like the Democrats weaponizing the justice system or installing candidates at the 11th hour, as the party did with Kamala Harris, without one vote from the public
For CNN, cutting ties with Amanpour has little downside. The network is already hemorrhaging viewers at an alarming rate. In prime time, despite a dizzying news cycle largely thanks to President Donald Trump, CNN is only averaging 543,000 viewers, which is down 36% from one year ago. In contrast, Fox News averaged more than 3.3 million viewers in prime time, or more than six times the audience of CNN. Amanpour reportedly makes $5 million per year, and the return on investment is low ratings and constant PR headaches like the one she’s causing this week in again showing her anti-Israel bias.
I’m often asked if CBS News can be turned around by hiring Bari Weiss, a true journalist who created The Free Press from scratch to one of the most respected and read news sites in business. My answer is that the network can only change if the faces seen on it change. And until that happens, until the culture and presentation look and sound different, one person alone can’t change its failing direction.
The same goes for CNN. It tried to return to the center two years ago, but the inmates with microphones revolted against its network president in Licht. He was shown the door for having the audacity to give Trump an hour-long town hall.
“You have every right to be outraged and angry and never watch this network again,” alleged anchor Anderson Cooper told viewers the night after Trump’s appearance, which he also called “disturbing.”
Licht was ousted a few weeks later. Cooper kept his job.
DEMOCRATS WANT THE GOP TO DESTROY NORMS
If CNN truly wants to earn viewers and readers’ trust, it’s time to take out the trash.
And dumping Christiane Amanpour would be a very good start.
