CNN Promotes Jim Sciutto to Anchor After Fake News Scandals

jim-sciutto-cnn-screenshot
CNN / YouTube
Justin Caruso

CNN has promoted Jim Sciutto — a reporter at the center of two recent fake news scandals at the network — to an anchor.

AdWeek reports that starting next week, Jim Sciutto will co-host CNN’s 9-11 a.m. weekday program CNN Newsroom along with Poppy Harlow.

This promotion comes after Sciutto was involved in two high-profile incidents of inaccurate or misleading reporting.

Last month, Sciutto inaccurately reported that Trump failed to consult Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats about his decision to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance.

“Breaking: DNI Coats – the nation’s senior-most Intelligence official – was NOT consulted on Trump decision to revoke Fmr CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance – a source with knowledge tells me,” Sciutto tweeted.

However, this claim was contradicted by other reporting which Sciutto has never addressed, and he has never retracted the disputed claim.

Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs wrote, “Trump did discuss the matter of Brennan’s security clearance with Dan Coats, I’m told. He was in the room. And there were multiple discussions with top officials, WH aides say.”

Sciutto was also involved in the now-infamous CNN story from July that reported that Michael Cohen would be willing testify to Robert Mueller that Trump had advance knowledge about a meeting with Russians in Trump Tower in the summer of 2016.

Weeks later, it appeared that the reporters of that story, CNN’s Jim Sciutto and Marshall Cohen, along with veteran reporter Carl Bernstein, seemed to have not only seriously bungled the facts but outright lied to their readers.

A source for the story was Michael Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis, who later backtracked and said that he could not confirm that Cohen had advanced knowledge.

CNN still stood by their story, saying that it had “more than one source.”

As I wrote last month:

Now, this could be true. If CNN actually has another solid source or sources for their story, then Davis changing his story–which he might have done simply to save his client, Michael Cohen, from possible legal trouble–may not necessarily prove the story false.

However, that is not the only issue. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald points out, it may well be the case that CNN lied to readers completely by writing that Lanny Davis did not want to comment in its original story, when he was, in fact, a source.

Even the left-wing Washington Post noticed CNN’s original article from July reported that Lanny Davis had refused to comment, despite the fact that he was a source for the story.

“Contacted by CNN, one of Cohen’s attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment,” the CNN article reads.

And despite this huge black eye for the network, CNN President Jeff Zucker has rewarded him.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.