Black media outlets are calling out CNN for not granting them access to cover tonight’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The much-hyped presidential debate will be held at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters on Thursday, June 27. About 600 national and international media outlets received media credentials, but none of them are Black-owned.
More than 50% of the population in Atlanta is Black, but CNN did not approve The Atlanta Voice, a Black-owned newspaper.
“It was disrespectful. I thought it was very tacky not to invite the Black newspaper. I thought that was just cheap and typical of CNN,” Atlanta Voice editor-in-chief Donnel Suggs told Atlanta Black Star in a phone interview.
Via Atlanta Black Star — According to an email from CNN, there was a June 7 deadline for members of the media to request credentials to attend and cover the event, but Atlanta Voice and Atlanta Black Star were unaware of the deadline until editors from both publications individually reached out to a CNN representative in the past week, who stated that the mainstream media outlet is “unable to accommodate any additional credential requests” past the deadline.
“(CNN) never reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, June 7, you guys better have this thing in.’ Had they told me that, we would have done that, right? So, right, that’s messed up,” Suggs added.”
