CNN chose to ignore over one thousand Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporters who protested outside its Hollywood studios on Sunday against a perceived anti-Sanders bias in its coverage of the presidential election.
The breaking news was trending for hours on social media, under the hashtags #OccupyCNN and #BernieBlackout. CNN’s slogan on Twitter reads: “It’s our job to #GoThere and tell the most difficult stories.”
However, CNN seems to have ignored the protest in its ongoing news coverage. A review of CNN stories Sunday using media monitoring tools reveals coverage of a protest in Brussels, but not Los Angeles.
US Uncut pointed to a tweet CNN sent out during the protests, featuring a man sitting in an office with his eyes closed, blocking out the noise around him with the headphones plugged into his ears playing music.
The tweet was interpreted by US Uncut as perfectly personifying “CNN’s response to the entire Sanders campaign thus far: that of a media corporation with its eyes and ears closed, lazily basking in its own sense of self-importance while a revolution occurs outside. For a company that brags about its willingness to #GoThere, it seems one place they won’t go is right outside their front doors.”
Some of the peaceful protesters held up signs that referred to CNN as the “Clinton News Network” as they called for more coverage of Sanders over the Democratic frontrunner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
A photo posted by Jose Hernandez (@josejr67) on Apr 3, 2016 at 4:17pm PDT
The first candidate to earn 2,383 delegates will automatically win the Democratic Party’s nomination. So far, Clinton has 1,712 delegates and Sanders has 1,011.
On Saturday, it was announced that Sanders had, in fact, won the contested Nevada caucuses after a confirmed final delegate count revealed he had won Clark County, the state’s most populous county.
The exact number of delegates Sanders has picked up as a result of that victory will be decided at the state convention in May.
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz.