CNN wants to move on from the recent scandal that revealed one of its paid contributors had shared questions from presidential forums in advance with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The network is declaring itself in the clear of any wrongdoing, though it is not addressing some key issues.
“I can confirm we did an internal review,” a high-ranking source at CNN told the Washington Examiner on Thursday. “The results are: Nobody at CNN did anything wrong.”
A recent dump by WikiLeaks of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s hacked emails showed that longtime Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, then with CNN, had told the campaign ahead of a primary town hall forum in March, “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”
That forum was co-hosted with TV One’s Roland Martin and an analysis published by Politico suggested it was likely he who shared the question — it concerned the death penalty and it was asked at the forum — with Brazile ahead of the forum. Martin has denied he shared any questions with Brazile.
Another email from the Podesta hack showed Brazile did the same thing ahead of a debate between Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“One of the questions directed to [Clinton] tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” the email said. Brazile said the woman would ask, “What, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the [people] of Flint, [Mich.].”
That woman did ask that question at the debate.
CNN announced Monday that it had severed ties with Brazile but it said it did so Oct. 14, more than two weeks before it announced that step. Brazile had already had her contract with CNN suspended in July when she took over as the head of the DNC.
CNN did not say why it had not announced the separation at the time it supposedly occurred.
News reports have said that CNN head Jeff Zucker told staff on a conference call that Brazile’s question sharing was “disgusting,” but CNN also didn’t say how Brazile got the question about the woman with the rash in the first place.
“No one from CNN ever gave Donna or anyone else anything,” the CNN source told the Examiner. “We’ve said that publicly multiple times. And as you know, Donna resigned on Oct 14.”
A spokesperson for CNN would not comment on whether the network was making any changes to prevent such incidents in the future.
New York Times media critic Jim Rutenberg said in his column on Tuesday that the matter was “scandalous.” Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple also described it on his blog as a “scandal.”
