The Biggest Controversies in CNN History

CNN made history as the television’s first 24-hour news channel when it debuted in 1980 and has been offering ’round-the-clock coverage of U.S. and world events since then.

As the news cycle keeps turning, though, CNN hasn’t been able to escape the kinds of disgraces that have plagued competitors MSNBC and Fox News. Here are some of CNN’s biggest controversies so far.

1998: CNN retracts Tailwind story

In 1998, the results of an independent investigation led CNN to retract and apologize for a NewsStand: CNN & Time report that claimed the United States military used lethal sarin nerve gas to kill American defectors during a 1970 mission in Laos codenamed Operation Tailwind, per The New York Times. Two staffers were dismissed over the inaccurate story, and one resigned.

“We acknowledge serious faults in the use of sources who provided Newsstand with the original reports and therefore retract the Tailwind story,” Tom Johnson, then chairman of the CNN News Group, said in a statement at the time. “We apologize to our viewers and to our colleagues at Time for this mistake.”

2008: Jack Cafferty sparks protests with talk about China

Hundreds of protestors gathered outside CNN’s Los Angeles offices in 2009 to complain about commentator Jack Cafferty’s remarks about China on The Situation Room, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export … jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Walmart,” Cafferty had said on the show. “So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.”

Protestors accused Caffery of attacking all Chinese people, but CNN insisted Cafferty was “offering his strongly held opinion of the Chinese government,” per the Times.

2009: Lou Dobbs draws ire for coverage of Obama conspiracy theory

On his CNN show in 2009, Lou Dobbs repeatedly gave air time to unfounded claims that then-President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, though CNN reporting had confirmed Obama was American-born, per NPR. Dobbs told viewers he believed Obama was a U.S. citizen but still wanted to see Obama’s birth certificate.

FactCheck.org director Brooks Jackson called the episode “an embarrassment to CNN,” per NPR, and the Southern Poverty Law Center urged CNN to fire Dobbs for trading in “racist conspiracy theories,” per the Los Angeles Times, but then-CNN President Jon Klein said Dobbs’ coverage of the birthplace question had been “legitimate,” the Times added.

2013: Hundreds of thousands complain about CNN’s Steubenville rape coverage

More than 290,000 people signed a petition demanding an on-air apology after CNN personalities in 2013 seemingly expressed more sympathy for the teenage boys convicted of the rape of a fellow high school student in Steubenville, Ohio, than they did the victim.

CNN’s Poppy Harlow, for one, said on air it was “incredibly difficult” to watch “as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart,” as WUSF reported.

The resulting Change.org petition criticized the network for “paint[ing] the tears of the convicted Steubenville rapists in a sympathetic light and say[ing] how their lives were ruined — while completely ignoring the fact that the rape victim’s life is the one whose life was ruined by these rapists’ actions.”

2016: Donna Brazile resigns following leaks to Clinton campaign

In 2016, political strategist Donna Brazile resigned from her post as CNN contributor after the revelation that she sent questions from CNN-sponsored candidate events to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign ahead of time, as The New York Times reported at the time.

CNN said in a statement it was “completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor.”

Brazile wasn’t sorry, though. “My conscience — as an activist, a strategist — is very clear,” she said in a SiriusXM interview at the time, per The Washington Post. “If I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity.”

2021: Chris Cuomo is terminated amid involvement in brother’s sexual harassment case

CNN terminated anchor Chris Cuomo in 2021 after an investigation into his efforts to help defend his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, against accusations of sexual harassment, as CNN Business reported at the time.

“Chris Cuomo was suspended earlier this week pending further evaluation of new information that came to light about his involvement with his brother’s defense,” the network said in a statement. “We retained a respected law firm to conduct the review, and have terminated him, effective immediately. While in the process of that review, additional information has come to light.”

Amid that controversy, employment lawyer Debra S. Katz told CNN that a client of hers, who was a junior colleague at another network, had accused Chris of sexual misconduct, per The New York Times.

2022: Jeff Zucker resigns after not disclosing his relationship with employee

In 2022, two months after the Cuomo controversy, Jeff Zucker resigned as CNN Worldwide president after failing to disclose his romantic relationship with Allison Gollust, who was then CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

“As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Zucker said in a memo to employees, per CNN Business. “I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began, but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”

Weeks later, Gollust resigned, with then-WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar saying an investigation “found violations of company policies, including CNN’s News Standards and Practices, by Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust, and Chris Cuomo,” CNN Business reported at the time.

2023: Don Lemon loses job after series of offensive comments

CNN ousted Don Lemon in 2023 after months of controversy around his comments about women, according to the Associated Press. In one such remark, Lemon said the U.S. men’s soccer team should be paid than the women’s more because the men were “more interesting to watch.” In another, he said that presidential candidate Nikki Haley was not in her “prime,” which he defined as a woman’s “20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”

Lemon’s exit, which he said was a firing, also came weeks after a Variety report Lemon demonstrated “troubling treatment of women and unprofessional antics, dating back nearly two decades.”

2023: CNN staffers decry Trump town hall

CNN was criticized from within and without in May 2023 after the network’s town hall with Donald Trump, then running for another term as U.S. president. With CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as moderator, Trump once again called the 2020 presidential election rigged and called legal opponent E. Jean Carroll a “whack job” as a Republican-heavy live audience cheered him on.

“We did it wrong,” a CNN on-air personality later told The Washington Post anonymously. “We treated him like a normal politician who could be fact-checked. We ended up dancing around a demagogue.”

Another CNN staffer told the Post that network leadership who approved the event should resign. But Chris Licht, then CNN’s chief executive, told staff in a meeting that America “was served very well by what we did last night,” the newspaper reported.

If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network‘s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.