(LibertySociety.com) – The CNN of 2021 is not the CNN of the past. Its hosts are well known for their political biases, and critics often call them out for the way they report the news. It’s so bad that former President Donald Trump called the network “fake news.” Recently, it came under fire again after the way one anchor reported on Golf legend Tiger Woods’ recent car accident.
Woods was in a one-vehicle accident on Tuesday, February 23. The rollover crash was so bad firefighters had to use the “jaws of life” to extricate him from the car. He suffered multiple leg fractures and was rushed to surgery. When news of the accident broke, CNN’s Andy Scholes said he wasn’t “entirely surprised” because of the golf star’s history with surgeries and “painkillers.”
It quickly backfired on him. People were quick to call him out for his assumptions:
@AndyScholesCNN can you not at least give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s turned his life around and not on pain killers. But instead it is the first thing you bring up and say you aren’t shocked about his accident because of his past use of them pic.twitter.com/E8cFc70VEX
— shawn clounch (@shawn_clounch) February 23, 2021
If @AndyScholesCNN was a Fox Sports person and said this on Fox News Channel, CNN's Brianna Keilar and her colleagues would be losing their minds. You wouldn't hear the end of this https://t.co/SbXDkV9IBm
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 23, 2021
Scholes assumed Woods was intoxicated without any proof. His baseless assumption sounded even worse after police officers said the crash was just an accident and Woods was not impaired. The CNN anchor later apologized, but the damage was already done. As a journalist, he had a responsibility to report the facts. He failed.
Copyright 2021, LibertySociety.com
