In a discussion about the media’s coverage of the 2016 campaign, specifically cable news coverage of Donald Trump, former NBC News and CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien argued cable news’s over-coverage of Trump allowed “hateful speech” to enter into news reporting.
“If there’s any lesson to be learned, it’s wow, over-the-top hateful speech brings a really interested angry audience, this is genius, we should do this more often,” O’Brien said, echoing what she believes is the thought process inside many newsrooms. O’Brien said news executives will “have to figure out a way to rile people up and make them angry because that’s something that cable news can cover really well.”
“I find it very frustrating,” she said during the segment on Reliable Sources. “I believe he was over-covered at the beginning, but now it is ‘he said she said’ all the time. We have lost context. We just cover the back and forth of it.” As the panel discussed Trump, CNN had a clock counting down to a Trump documentary airing in 34 hours. WATCH:
This morning on Twitter, O’Brien wrote that her comments on Reliable Sources ended up riling up some of those very same Trump supporters:
So far this morning I’ve been called a c**t, a b**ch and a whore by the good folks on twitter! (And it’s 730 am) Happy Labor Day everybody!!
— Soledad O’Brien (@soledadobrien) September 5, 2016
Last month O’Brien announced she would be hosting a new Sunday public affairs show that will air on Hearst TV stations.