6 May 2021: Biased News Outlets Limiting Coverage of Cuomo Scandals

CNN and MSNBC Provide Little Coverage of Bombshell Report on Cuomo Nursing Home Cover Up

On 28 April 2021, the New York Times published a report confirming the Cuomo administration's cover-up of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents began months earlier than they've acknowledged. This report finds that two of the big three broadcast news networks have largely ignored the story. One of those networks comes as no surprise, given its close affiliation with Governor Cuomo....

CNN and MSNBC have provided scant coverage of last week's New York Times bombshell on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) nursing home scandal, which reported that the effort to hide the pandemic death toll in nursing homes was far greater than previously known.

The Times' April 28 report alleged Cuomo's senior aides "engaged in a sustained effort to prevent the state's own health officials" from sharing accurate data last year about deceased nursing home patients with the public or with state lawmakers. A January report by Attorney General Letitia James (D) had previously concluded that deaths had been undercounted by as much as 50 percent, which has sparked an investigation by the FBI and U.S. attorney in Brooklyn.

However, the report about New York’s governor — who was viewed as a top Democratic contender for the presidency last year — prompted little interest from MSNBC. The network provided three minutes of coverage during a Thursday segment of Morning Joe, a fact first pointed out by Steve Krakauer and confirmed by a review of the network by Mediaite.

We review reports and stories from a wide array of news outlets in preparing entries for the timeline. We seek to curate our entries to capture and present both new and well-researched information, where we give greater emphasis to outlets that break news. Neither of the identified networks have distinguished themselves with high quality broadcast journalism throughout Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. We've described CNN as having shredded its journalistic credibility thanks to its clear conflicts of interest and bias.

The third major broadcast news outlet, Fox News has provided better coverage than the other two, though we would describe its coverage as sensationalized. The best coverage we've seen has generally come from written news sources, including the Albany Times-Union, the Associated Press, the New York Post, and ProPublica, each of which has contributed to breaking major news about the scandal.

Although the scandal is playing out in its back yard, the New York Times has generally lagged these other sources in its reporting, as its reporters and editors have been more keen to pursue Governor Cuomo's sexual harassment scandals. Never-the-less, its second-tier quality coverage has turned up documentation to support and validate the reporting of the other, higher quality sources we've tracked for months, so it's not a question of whether they are capable of conducting higher quality journalism, but whether they want to in covering the Cuomo nursing home deaths scandals.