February 24, 2018

And of course, Fox's Tucker Carlson was more than happy to help him over on state-run TV. It seems one of the potential participants in CNN's town hall meeting this past Wednesday night was none too happy with the network for not allowing him to make basically what amounted to a very long speech during the event.

From Business Insider: Parkland shooting survivor's family shops doctored emails with CNN to media outlets:

  • The family of Colton Haab, a student at the Florida high school where a gunman killed 17 people last week, provided a doctored email between Haab's father, Glenn Haab, and a CNN producer to media outlets.
  • Colton told Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Thursday that a CNN producer rewrote a question for Haab to ask at the network's town hall-style event on Wednesday.
  • President Donald Trump tweeted about the interview on Thursday night, calling CNN "fake news."
  • CNN denies Haab's claims and said, "It is unfortunate that an effort to discredit CNN and the town hall with doctored emails has taken any attention away from the purpose of the event."

The family of Colton Haab, a student at the Florida high school where a gunman killed 17 people last week, provided a doctored email to media outlets in order to defend Haab's claims that CNN rewrote a question for him to ask at the network's Wednesday town-hall-style event on school shootings.

Haab told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday night that CNN executive producer Carrie Stevenson gave him a question to deliver to lawmakers and told him to "stick to the script."

But CNN says there is "absolutely no truth" to Colton's claims, which he first made on a Miami TV-news station.

"In my interview with CNN, I had talked about arming the teachers, if they were willing to arm themselves in the school, to carry on campus," Haab told Carlson. "And they had — she had taken that, of what I had briefed on, and actually wrote that question out for me."

CNN says that Stevenson and Colton agreed on one question that Colton would ask, but that Haab's father, Glenn Haab, intervened, sending a lengthy speech (see below) that he wanted Colton to read, which included three questions for lawmakers.

Stevenson responded that the speech was "way too long" and that Colton "needs to stick" to the question they agreed on. Glenn then responded that he and his son "are not actors" and that Colton would not participate in the town hall if he could not read the full speech.

On Friday afternoon, Fox News and the HuffPost reached out to CNN to verify emails between the Haabs and Stevenson that they received from Colton.

A CNN source provided Colton's version of the emails, as well as their versions of all of the communications between the Haabs and CNN, to Business Insider.

In CNN's version of one email, Stevenson told Glenn that Colton needed to stick to a question that he and Stevenson "discussed on the phone that he submitted." But in the version of the email provided by Colton to Fox and HuffPost, the phrase, "that he submitted" is deleted.

They have copies of all of the emails in their post where you can go read them for yourself. There are a lot of problems with CNN and their programming. Not giving lying Trump supporters time to pontificate on their network, unfortunately, is not typically one of them.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon