A group of CNN personalities, instead of examining whether the network has fueled violence against conservatives, Christians and Republicans by labeling them Nazis and fascists, appeared to insinuate that a lack of censorship is the reason for Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
CNN Media Analyst Sara Fischer tried to assert on CNN This Morning that Big Tech companies’ decreased censorship fuels violent rhetoric online. This, she suggested, led to the spread of video of Kirk’s killing. Podcast co-host Noel King doubled down, insisting that social media, not the legacy media, fuels extremism.
Asked about how Big Tech is dealing with censorship, Fischer insanely claimed, “So following the 2020 election and following COVID, quite frankly, a lot of Big Tech platforms started to pull back on their content moderation efforts in order to avoid scrutiny around censorship.”
This assertion is patently false, as illustrated by the Twitter Files and MRC’s unique CensorTrack database. In fact, censorship coordination between the government and Big Tech increased under the Biden administration, with 57 separate censorship initiatives as exposed by an MRC study.
CNN host Audie Cornish followed up with a clip from Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) blaming the legacy media rhetoric for violence. In response, Fischer accused Big Tech of not having sufficient censorship tools to address content following an assassination.
“And so when there's breaking news like this, the implementation of how they're going to input some of those rules is very, very sticky, and their AI algorithms are not necessarily trained to distinguish,” she said in reference to Kirk’s killing.
Cornish asserted that the media has no guilt whatsoever because they are losing viewers, trying to put all of the blame on social media.
Republican strategist Brad Todd pointed out extremist Democrat rhetoric against Republicans: “I think what Congressman Van Orden is talking about is sort of the encouragement of all the — ‘this is the end of, the end of history. This is the end of the Constitution. You're Hitler.’”
King scoffed at the proposition that the media is at fault as “honestly nonsense.” She added, “There is a lot of radicalization on[line] in this new media, on TikTok on, you know, on YouTube, on Twitter, on X, and that is the stew, unfortunately, that young people are swimming in.”
The panel’s overall ignorance of the facts was shocking. In fact, CNN has repeatedly smeared Kirk and Turning Point USA over the years.
In 2019, CNN’s Oliver Darcy used Kirk as an example in a piece claiming Twitter amplified “extreme political rhetoric.”
In 2023, CNN listed Kirk among Republicans who allegedly “espoused incendiary views, pushed dangerous conspiracy theories and told outright lies about the 2020 election.”
In June 2024, CNN News Central tried to make school choice in Arizona look problematic by claiming Dream City Christian School, affiliated with TPUSA, pushed “a far-right Christian viewpoint.”
Even after news of the attack on Kirk, CNN was still bashing him. Senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes vilified Kirk as “a controversial figure,” while host Laura Coates labeled Kirk a “lightning rod” before whining that Trump might somehow use the tragedy as an excuse for cracking down on crime.
Kirk is not the only Republican who has faced reckless attacks from CNN and other legacy media outlets. This is illustrated in a video titled "Yes, Calling Trump a ‘Threat to Democracy’ Is Incitement," compiled by the Media Research Center and featured below:
