Scott Jennings is arguably the most important figure at CNN. I made that very argument a year and a half ago, and it holds true today.
Not just because he’s the one contributor the network can’t replace, but also because he’s a major reason NewsNight grew in ratings while the rest of the schedule didn’t. He’s the closest thing CNN has to a conservative that its conservative or centrist viewers trust. That’s why what happened Tuesday night isn’t something CNN can hand off to somebody else.
And yet? That’s what appears to be happening. As of publication, CNN has not mentioned this story on air. Its only coverage on CNN.com is 64 words that aggregates Variety’s reporting for the Reliable Sources newsletter.
Hasan Piker sued Jennings in federal court in Washington for $72.5 million Tuesday. The complaint focuses on an episode of Jennings’s Salem radio show from August, in particular, a 42-second clip of Piker that the NRSC had posted five days earlier. Jennings told his audience Piker was “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched.”
The lawsuit alleges that the clip was misleading. It was cut from three streams that crucially omitted “He said,” which would have made clear that Piker was mocking somebody else’s argument and instead sounded like it was his own. The clip also included a captioned sentence in quotation marks that Piker never actually said. Snopes reviewed the video in August and found that the clip presented Piker's words out of context and out of order.
Nobody has proven what Jennings knew about the clip before he aired it. It seems entirely likely he just played the NRSC-posted clip without fact-checking it first, which is a mistake. And Hasan Piker is very much a public figure, so he has to prove Jennings knew the claim was false or didn’t care whether it was, for this lawsuit to win. That’s an intentionally very high standard to meet, as it should be. Jennings has not yet commented on the suit as of Wednesday morning.
This story is different than the usual “controversies” surrounding Jennings’ on-air hyperbole and critiques. He gets clicks because he knows how to troll a largely left-leaning viewership. But the alleged misrepresentation of what another person said? That’s a serious and reputation-damaging charge for a commentator whose job is arguing facts on live television.
CNN has extensively covered Piker for the better part of the last year, often as a progressive problem for Democrats. He’s unquestionably become a major political figure, as has Jennings, so the complete lack of coverage of a lawsuit Piker filed against its own contributor is conspicuous at best.
I reached out to CNN for comment on why they have not covered a significant story featuring one of their most prominent commentators. They have not replied.
CNN has been asked about this before. Status reporter Natalie Korach asked the network about the segment in August, and a spokesperson referred her to Jennings and Salem Media. Around the same time, Kasie Hunt handled a different Piker issue on her own show. After Jonah Goldberg made a claim about Piker on her panel, she returned to it on air, called it an unexpected comment, and noted that Piker denied it. This reveals where CNN draws the line. If a contributor says something on CNN’s air, the network deals with it. If he says it on his radio show, CNN refers you to the radio network.
I get it. Jennings is a CNN contributor, not an anchor, and the network pays him for the hours he’s giving click-friendly hot takes. Salem pays him for his radio show and should be held responsible for what it airs. Networks increasingly feature panelists better known from other platforms, where the incentive is to be the most provocative version one can be. Networks get livelier panels, but don’t take responsibility for what the panelists say elsewhere. Television shows are watched, and headlines are clicked.
Fox News has the same arrangement. Harris Faulkner repeated the same claim about Piker on her show in August, and Fox News didn’t respond to questions about it either. Fox & Friends mentioned Piker eight times Wednesday morning, all about Ilhan Omar, and never mentioned his suit against Jennings. Wonder why.
This situation is much harder to dismiss because Jennings isn’t just your run-of-the-mill CNN panelist. The network effectively built a show around him and relies on his point of view for every debate, convention, and major speech.
A federal lawsuit accusing one of the network’s most prominent conservatives of inventing a quote is a big deal. Entirely ignoring it on air feels like a failure.
Jennings will be back on a CNN panel soon, and before he is, the network should say whether it thinks he made up that quote.