CNN/Business is faced with an unpalatable choice:
Vice President Mike Pence’s office has declined to allow the nation’s top health officials to appear on CNN in recent days and discuss the coronavirus pandemic killing thousands of Americans, in an attempt to pressure the network into carrying the White House’s lengthy daily briefings in full.
Pence’s office, which is responsible for booking the officials on networks during the pandemic, said it will only allow experts such as Dr. Deborah Birx or Dr. Anthony Fauci to appear on CNN if the network televises the portion of the White House briefings that includes the vice president and other coronavirus task force members.
On the face of it, it sounds like Pence is demanding equal face time for himself. But I don’t think so:
CNN often only broadcasts President Donald Trump’s question and answer session, which sometimes includes the health care officials, live on-air.
After Trump leaves the podium, CNN frequently cuts out of the White House briefing to discuss and fact-check what the President had said. A CNN executive said that the network usually returns to such programming because of the extensive length of the full briefing that includes Pence, which can run in excess of two hours.
My bold. It appears to me that the Administration would prefer not to have the President fact-checked by one of the bigger cable news sources around.
Also note the length of Pence’s part of the briefing – two hours! Time on any live news source is going to be at a premium, so perhaps VP Pence should squeeze it down to 45 minutes, or even less, and accept that he’ll be on a tape delay while the real-time fact-checking – or humiliation, if you will – of his boss takes place.
