Washington Examiner columnist Joe Concha slammed CNN for airing the Iranian state media’s televised address of someone reading a speech from the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
The remarks were the first time the public heard from Khamenei since he was elevated to supreme leader after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed by United States and Israeli airstrikes. The younger Khamenei did not appear or release an audio statement in his address.
“[CNN] aired a four-minute, completely unrefuted so-called newscast from state TV as the first public comment of the supreme leader without seeing him onscreen,” Concha said Thursday on Fox News’s Hannity. “This is not journalism, it’s providing an evil regime a world stage to push its propaganda, and an American news organization is doing it, go figure.”
Concha said there is “less than zero” news value in televising the address since Khamenei wasn’t seen or heard in the address.
“You would think that if this guy was alive, the son of the ayatollah, he would get in front of a camera. It’s not like you need a studio,” Concha said. “You literally just pick up your phone and film the guy if he was alive or at least not severely injured, as many are reporting.”
“So why don’t we just call it INN, the Iranian New Network, instead of CNN,” Concha added.
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Concha argued CNN wanted access to Iran “so badly” during the war that the network was willing to give up its credibility. CNN was the first network to report from inside Iran since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury.
“It’s amateur hour every hour over at that trainwreck of a news network,” Concha said. “I would ask anyone out there to argue against this: Is CNN amplifying what is left of the regime there? And the answer is absitively.”