“New Day” anchor Chris Cuomo defended himself against scrutiny that he shouldn’t have interviewed his older brother New York Governor Andrew Cuomo this morning about yesterday’s tragic train derailment in New York City.
“Obviously I did the intv because it was non political, and frankly, I invite the criticism—because it exposes the hollowness of a lot of what is out there,” Cuomo emailed The Daily Beast. “Critics say my intv was no diff than any other and then criticize anyway,” adding, “Think about that. I get the obvious suspicion, but the media has to do better than simply cater to the obvious…and pawn off negativity as a proxy for insight.”
Among those catering to the obvious…
call me old fashioned but I feel like CNN ought to have had someone not named Cuomo interview Governor Cuomo
— alex pareene (@pareene) December 2, 2013
No other journalists available? RT @thomaskaplan: .@ChrisCuomo interviewing his brother, @NYGovCuomo, on CNN pic.twitter.com/cLkF60Rrak
— Ken Ericson (@kenericson) December 2, 2013
On CNN earlier today as @Chris Cuomo interviewed @NYGovCuomo. Tricky to balance familiarity with impartiality. pic.twitter.com/GGONyI3dEy
— Pat Kiernan (@patkiernan) December 2, 2013
Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren came to Cuomo’s defense, blogging that Cuomo’s disclaimer of on-air familial ties put any issues to rest.
“Now obviously to those who don’t know, we are family, so we’ve been talking about this a lot,” Cuomo said early on during the segment.
This isn’t the first time a TV news personality interviewed a high-profile family member. WNYW’s Greg Kelly interviewed his dad—NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly—on-air in 2011 about the arrest of a terror suspect in New York City.
Here’s the interview with the brothers Cuomo