Media Watch 21 May 2025
Anchor Abby Phillip moderated a 15 May discussion on CNN in which panelists criticized a college student’s graduation speech against the Gaza genocide.
SIPA USAThe trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs is taking most of CNN’s crime headlines from Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is faced with an International Criminal Court arrest warrant.
Israel’s reputation is the clear winner. Less attention on its bombing and starving of Palestinians helps to limit popular outrage and any resulting diplomatic pressure.
CNN’s Abby Phillip on 15 May did, however, speak to Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz about the graduation speech at New York University given by student Logan Rozos criticizing the genocide in Gaza and US complicity in it.
Phillip asked Moskowitz, who is now developing a reputation for bullying Palestinian students and students of color, for his view of the speech and whether Rozos, chosen by his fellow students to deliver it, had a right to say what he did.Moskowitz responded that Rozos “lied to the university [about the content of the speech]. Second of all, he lied to everyone listening. There’s no genocide going on in Israel. There is a war. It’s unfortunate. And there are people in harm’s way because of what Hamas did. And, yes, there are situations that I wish would improve, like, you know, getting food – more food into Gaza.”
The congressman, who represents a Florida district, then added, “But at the end of the day, that’s up to the university whether they give him his diploma or not. You know? In fact, they could give him his diploma. It’s not going to matter. Good luck getting getting – getting a job. That was a stupid, selfish thing. He ruined the ceremony for – for a lot of families.”
There’s a lot of ugliness to unpack here directed at a young college almost-graduate finding his voice and speaking out against horrors that too many university administrators and politicians are assisting directly or indirectly.
First, it’s a throwback to the 1950s Democratic Party where Southern politicians would have been similarly enraged at a student speaking against Jim Crow segregation.
Moskowitz wants to police speech. So, too, does CNN conservative political commentator Scott Jennings who claimed in the same segment that genocide in Gaza is just a “conspiracy theory (though he promotes the conspiracy theory that there may be a genocide occurring against white people in South Africa). Jennings asserted: “What this kid said is a total, uninformed conspiracy theory. And I just think he should not be using the platform because people believe it.”
They believe it because they have access to alternative news sources and because it’s true.
But what kind of university is it where graduating students know that they must fib in order to speak publicly at a graduation ceremony against atrocities and genocide carried out by the Israeli military?
Second, Moskowitz could say a great deal more to get food into Gaza, but it’s not a priority to him. After 19 months of Israeli war crimes, he still finds he can easily get away with saying it’s all the fault of Hamas, knowing that there will be no serious follow-up about dispossession, occupation, apartheid and genocide committed by Israel.
Third, he happily takes a Canary Mission-type of response intended to close off future employment, joyfully suggesting that Rozos now won’t be able to get a job for what he calls a “stupid, selfish” action.
Perhaps most importantly, he says, “There’s no genocide going on in Israel.”
Does Moskowitz think Gaza is part of Israel?
His office did not respond to questions emailed from The Electronic Intifada about whether he regards Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights as part of Israel.
There is a genocide wing of the Democratic Party and Moskowitz is firmly in it.
His office also did not respond to a question about whether Israel is committing war crimes with American weapons.
Hypocrisy
CNN political commentator Van Jones, who previously worked for President Barack Obama, also took his shots at Rozos after first acknowledging the student had shown courage.
“What you can’t do is say, ‘I am going to lie to my administration. I am going to give a speech that I know is going to be inflammatory. I’m going to do it as a matter of conscience, but I want no bad thing to happen to me. I wanted – I want all my cookies and all my cake and all my candy, too.’ That’s not how it works.”
Phillip responded that “We haven’t heard from the student. We don’t know whether he is complaining about, I mean, he clearly knew there would be consequences because he was incredibly – you could see there shaking as he was delivering the speech.”
Jones then proceeded to raise the usual both sides concern that’s broached whenever a pro-Palestinian point of view is voiced, but not whenever a pro-Israeli point of view is exclusively put forward.
“There are other people who feel quite differently, and they were not allowed to speak. They were not allowed to talk about the pain that they feel about what happened on October 7th and the rockets that are still being fired.”
This is rich coming from a CNN commentator. He should know better than most how much Palestinian guests have been frozen out at CNN.
Israeli voices are routinely heard about 7 October 2023 and about Israelis being held in Gaza or what it’s like now that they’re out of Gaza. Viewers are told their names and they’re regularly interviewed.
Palestinians are mostly not named and are rarely – very rarely – invited to speak about the war crimes they face.
Finally, seeking added credibility, Jones mentioned his recent trip to “the Holy Land” without specifying where exactly he went.
“I was just in the Holy Land. There were rockets being fired out of – out of Gaza and out of Yemen every day. Those people [on the receiving end] were not allowed to speak.”
Trying to remind of long-gone left-wing bona fides, Jones claimed he was on the “left side of Pluto as a student.” He then mentions the rare rocket out of Gaza or Yemen, but to the CNN audience says nothing about what Palestinians are being subjected to by the Israeli military with American weapons.
Furthermore, we know a bit about Jones’ trip to the region. He hobnobbed with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who tweeted that the two men “don’t agree on a lot but agree on support for Israel,” an apartheid state waging a genocidal assault on Palestinians, many of them refugees, in Gaza.
It’s particularly disturbing as just weeks earlier Huckabee had displayed a cavalier attitude toward hunger in Gaza. And he’s been on record for years disparaging Palestinians and their rights, including claiming that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
He also once told CNN that “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria [the territory’s biblical name]. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
The anti-Palestinian racism in CNN’s coverage is severe. I know of no other way to put it.The network should look very closely at its practices, but I have little confidence an internal review will occur. There clearly needs to be more diversity of viewpoints, allowing for guests, including Palestinian guests, to make a powerful case for Palestinian freedom and rights and not just citing how they were leftists in the previous millennium.
CNN transcript subject line
I also wrote to Abby Phillip and others with news standards and practices asking whether CNN would fix its erroneous description of its transcript about what Logan Rozos was protesting at New York University.
That description claims “NYU Suspends Issuance Of Diploma To Student Who Talked About Genocide In Israel In His Graduation Speech.”
This completely reverses what Rozos said. He didn’t say there was a genocide in Israel, but in Gaza as that is what has been transpiring for over a year and a half.
No correction has been made to that CNN transcript following my email.
Completely reversing what the student said and the on-the-ground reality is a significant error, but doesn’t appear to be a matter of concern to CNN.
Nor, for that matter, are Palestinians of sufficient concern to CNN that viewers should see what’s happening to them and hear directly from them.
The network has a serious problem with an anti-Palestinian bias it doesn’t seem interested in fixing.
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