While sitting in as a co-host on “The View” today, CNN’s Don Lemon fielded an onslaught of questions from the chat show’s ladies about his network’s nonstop coverage of missing Malaysia Flight 370.
“You’ve covered this more than any other story that I can remember,” Barbara Walters said. “CNN would not do this if it were not for the ratings.”
“Well, I don’t know if we would do it just for the ratings; we do a lot of things that don’t rate well, but we still do it,” Lemon responded, adding that CNN is giving the audience what it wants.
Co-host Jenny McCarthy asked how Lemon finds the words to continue talking about the missing airliner, day after day. Lemon tipped his hat to a great group of CNN aviation experts. “I rely on them, I don’t pretend that I’m an expert,” he said.
“We [CNN] may not have taken the plane, but we might certainly find it,” Lemon concluded.
Lemon’s colleagues, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, and Wolf Blitzer echoed his sentiments while speaking to TVNewser last week. Cooper conceded the network has covered the story a lot, but called it a very “human” story involving “239 souls.” Burnett pointed to security concerns the story raises, while Blitzer raised the still-unknown question of whether criminal activity or mechanical failure was the reason behind the plane’s disappearance.