CNN Reporter Suspended Over Editorializing The Refugee Bill Vote

Media bias at work, folks.

If you missed it, CNN Reporter Elise Labott tweeted this immediately after news broke that the House voted for a bill that would limit the number of refugees taken in by the U.S. –

House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish @CNNPolitics https://t.co/5RvZwVftgD

— Elise Labott (@eliselabottcnn) November 19, 2015

 Ugh. I really don’t have the time or the space to debunk this stupidity right now (but if you want, you can go back and look here and here for a place to start. Short answer: We can’t take in refugees if there’s a security risk in doing so). And, honestly, Elise could have been tweeting about anything. The point is that this is liberal bias on full display. And Elise got caught (and, by extension, so did CNN).

Later in the day, CNN released a statement saying that Elise had been suspended for two weeks for letting her liberal bias show in such an irresponsible and idiotic way (okay, that last part was me editorializing – but I never claimed to be a journalist, let alone an unbiased one) –

CNN source informs me that Elise Labott has been suspended for two weeks for tweet about House vote on refugees: https://t.co/XTKTabRade

— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) November 20, 2015

Elise’s mistake was that she was tweeting from her work-related Twitter account (and that she doesn’t work for MSNBC – this kind of thing would have gotten her a pay raise over there). She was representing CNN as an “unbiased” news organization (I’ll give you a minute to get over your laughing-fit that statement inevitably sent you into) and she blew it. If she’d been tweeting from her “I’m a normal person with normal-person-opinions” personal account, she probably wouldn’t have gotten so much backlash. But she screwed up, she made her employer look bad (I mean, worse than they already do on their own), and she should be disciplined for it. I think a two-week suspension is a reasonable punishment – and maybe she’ll come back with a better understanding of how to disguise her biases in the future.

(h/t Twitchy)