CNN admits leading interview guests 'before they even open their mouths'

 

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the spin room of the 2012 CNN/Tea Party Debate in Tampa, Florida. (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas on Wednesday released the second installment of its undercover video investigation of CNN, revealing how the network tells interview subjects what to say.

Caught on hidden camera, CNN technical director Charlie Chester said: “Any reporter on CNN – what they’re actually doing is they’re telling the person what to say… It’s always like leading them in a direction before they even open their mouths. The only people that we [CNN] will let on the air, for the most part, are people that have a proven track record of taking the bait.

“I think there’s an art to manipulation…Inflection, saying things twice — there’s little subtleties to how to manipulate people. … I mean, it’s enough to change the world, you know?”

He also disclosed how CNN has used the COVID-19 pandemic to keep viewers hooked.

“It’s fear. Fear really drives numbers – [TV ratings],” Chester said. “Fear is the thing that keeps you tuned in.”

He described COVID as “gangbusters with ratings, right? Which is why we [CNN] constantly have the [COVID] death toll on the side.”

He said CNN President Jeff Zucker would call the newsroom and order that the death toll be promoted.

“The special red phone rings and this producer picks it up. You hear [murmurs] and every so often they put it on speaker and it’s the head of the network being like, ‘There’s nothing that you’re doing right now that makes me want to stick, put the [COVID death toll] numbers back up, because that’s the most enticing thing that we had.’ So, put it back up.”

He said no one “ever says those things out loud, but it’s obvious based on the amount of stories that we [CNN] do.”

“The fact that we have a segment called ‘The Good Stuff’, which is a feel-good thing, but it’s a dedicated moment at the end to almost be the ice cream to alleviate everything that you’ve been through. Something sweet to end it with because everything else is doom and gloom.”

See the new Project Veritas video:

In the previous installment, Chester boasted the network used “propaganda” to get President Trump voted out of office.

“Look what we did, [CNN] got Trump out,” Chester said. “I am 100% going to say it, and I 100% believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out … I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that.”

Chester boasted of bringing in “medical people to tell a story that was all speculation” about Trump’s health – “that he was neurologically damaged, and he was losing it.”

He said: “We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about. That’s what — I think that’s propaganda.”

CNN’s coverage was entirely the opposite for the noticeably aging Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who repeatedly has flubbed speech lines, forgotten names, forgotten institutions such as the Defense Department and mixed up the names of his grandchildren.

For him, Chester said: “We would always show shots of him jogging and that [he’s] healthy, you know, and him in aviator shades. Like you paint him as a young geriatric.”

The next agenda item for CNN, he said, is global warming.

“They’ve already announced in our office that once the public is — will be open to it — we’re going to start focusing mainly on climate,” he said. “It’s going to be our [CNN’s] focus. Like our focus was to get Trump out of office, right? Without saying it, that’s what it was, right? So, our next thing is going to be for climate change awareness.”

See the first Project Veritas video:

Chester admitted “that his network engaged in propaganda to benefit Biden’s candidacy during the 2020 election to the detriment of then-President Trump.”

He said “COVID-19 media coverage” should be coming to an end soon and the network will focus on “climate.”

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