From a Wall Street Journal story by James Freeman headlined “How Many Cuomo Brothers Work at CNN?”:
By CNN custom, anchor Chris Cuomo provided favorable coverage of his brother Andrew Cuomo’s New York governorship. It didn’t always come across as journalism. But CNN anchors with other surnames also provided highly favorable Cuomo coverage. The network says it has launched a “thorough review” of Chris Cuomo’s role in helping his brother, who is now a disgraced ex-governor. But given CNN’s fawning 2020 coverage of then-Gov. Cuomo, some viewers may be wondering if Chris really is the only CNN employee related to Andrew. Didn’t everyone treat him like family?
This week CNN’s Brian Stelter, Oliver Darcy and Sonia Moghe write: CNN said Monday that it will evaluate new information that sheds light on how anchor Chris Cuomo sought to help his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, amid a flurry of sexual misconduct allegations earlier this year….
Mr. Stelter’s name in the byline of the CNN dispatch is bound to raise more questions. Some viewers might have suspected that only a brother could offer the kind of commentary Mr. Stelter served up on March 29, 2020, when he gushed:
“It’s incredible the leadership we’re seeing from governors, including Andrew Cuomo—trying to explain to the country what’s about to happen. Because as we see, the disturbing data on the corner of the screen, showing us the case count and the death toll, Cuomo and other governors are telling us, this is going to get worse, but we can get through it together. You look at the words Cuomo puts up on screen during his pressers; words like strength and stability.
“He is trying to reassure people that most, all, many, many people who are getting sick will survive this and come through this and he’s trying to free up the hospitals, take care of as many people who get sick as possible. So he’s sending all the right messages. And doing it in a calming way, that makes New Yorkers, I think, feel better, but also makes people around the country feel better and more confident in this crisis situation.
“We still are not seeing Cuomo-style briefings from the federal government. But maybe later today. Every day we know that the White House is watching Cuomo very carefully and learning from him. But I think it’s important that the federal government be saying the same things that Cuomo is.”
A week earlier, here’s how Mr. Stelter closed his program:
‘Dealing with hardship actually makes you stronger. That’s what Governor Cuomo said earlier today. That’s what I am going to teach my kids right now at home.”
Perhaps Mr. Stelter might now consider telling his kids that sometimes hardships can make you weaker, for example if you live in a nursing home and the state government orders the home to accept Covid-positive patients—and then spends months covering up the results, fights a legal battle to prevent the facts from being disclosed, and in the process misleads the scientific community by releasing inaccurate data about a new virus doctors are struggling to understand—while simultaneously crushing the state economy by locking down healthy people who were never at great risk.
As for the other scandal that ended up inspiring Andrew Cuomo to resign as governor, the Journal’s Benjamin Mullin reports:
Chris Cuomo said during the interview with investigators that he didn’t conduct opposition research on the women who accused his brother of misconduct and said he made inquiries only at the request of his brother’s advisers.
The records include text messages between Chris Cuomo and Melissa DeRosa, who was then one of his brother’s top aides. Chris Cuomo suggests possible statements to the press in the aftermath of stories about sexual misconduct involving Andrew Cuomo, at one point annotating his brother’s response in detail. In another text, Chris Cuomo told Ms. DeRosa that he had information.
“I have a lead on the wedding girl,” Chris Cuomo texted Ms. DeRosa on March 4. The text came days after the New York Times published an article that included an interview from a woman who accused Andrew Cuomo of inappropriate touching at a 2019 wedding reception. It couldn’t be learned whether Chris Cuomo’s text referred to that article.
Throughout the interview with investigators, Chris Cuomo said that he was only peripherally involved in his brother’s response to the allegations, adding that Andrew Cuomo’s advisers had relationships with the press.
“There is no division between politics and media,” Chris Cuomo said, according to the transcript. “We all know each other.”
Former CNN viewers might say that Mr. Cuomo has neatly summarized the problem.
James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”
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