(Via Mediaite)
CNN host Michael Smerconish spoke with former cable news executives Phil Griffin, who ran MSNBC from 2008 to 2021, and Jeff Zucker, who ran CNN from 2013 to 2022, for an in-depth conversation on the state of media today and its impact on political polarization.
The conversation took place at the Un-Convention, held last week in Philadelphia, billed as “an exploration of political reforms to improve our election systems and policy ideas to govern a divided country.”
At one point during the fascinating conversation, Smercornish grilled both Griffin and Zucker about their network’s limited coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop ahead of the 2020 election – a topic now used by the right to declare the media both un-trustworthy and in the pocket of the Democrats.
“I think that the Hunter laptop was worthy of more airing than it received right before the election,” Smerconish began, setting up his question.
“Either of you agrees with me on that? Do you regret? How about if I ask you this way, specifically, do you regret not dealing with it before the election?” he then asked Zucker.
“Well, I mean, I think I think we, the question is, we did deal with it. But to the degree that, you know, you would have thought was appropriate. I think the answer is in the final two weeks, you know, it was looked at. We did not know enough about it,” Zucker answered.