Pennsylvania School Board Axes Daily CNN Broadcast from Middle School

A Pennsylvania school board has voted to end daily broadcasts of CNN 10 to middle school students. Instead, teachers will have the discretion to show students videos “from all sources, including videos pertaining to patriotic holidays,” a representative from the district said.

The Norwin School Board in southwest Pennsylvania voted 5-4 on Monday to do away with daily broadcasts of CNN 10, the Norwin Star reports. CNN calls the program “compact on-demand news broadcasts ideal for explanation seekers on the go or in the classroom.”

The school board agreed to give teachers the discretion “to use the television to show the special videos, after an initial resolution sought to eliminate the watching of any television during the homeroom period before classes begin for the day,” according to the Norwin Star.

A representative from the Norwin School District told Fox News the board voted to “remove watching TV during homeroom at the Middle School unless it is either student, teacher or administrator driven to allow students to socialize and interact with each other.”

“It was further clarified that the board will allow teachers to use discretion and broadcast videos from all sources, including videos pertaining to patriotic holidays,” the representative added.

CNN’s ratings sinking like a stone. https://t.co/WySz4DbcJK

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 5, 2021

Such patriotic videos entail programs regarding Veterans Day and the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Norwin Star notes.

In 2019, CNN 10 was selected to replace daily news programming from Channel One in the school district. 

The Norwin Star reports that a social studies teacher at the middle school “said CNN 10 supports the school district’s mission statement of civic engagement by the students.”

One mother, Ashley Egan of North Huntingdon, expressed her concerns about the daily broadcast of a CNN product in homeroom, saying that it was “feeding (her son) him every day that CNN is a label you can trust,” according to the outlet. 

She said that CNN 10 suggests viewers “visit our friends on CNN.com” and noted the news organization was “not unbiased.” 

Another mother, Tammy Marino of Irwin, did not understand why students were being shown the program every day. She noted that the “community voted for change” when it elected three school board directors in 2021, who ended up voting to end the daily broadcasts on Monday.