After its network did everything in its power to perpetuate a false Ferguson narrative and gin up racial tension, CNN boss Jeff Zucker claimed its Ferguson “reporting” helped reestablish CNN as the most trusted name in news.

“I believe we have reestablished the brand identity that this is the place for news,” Zucker told The Wrap. “When the Paris terror attacks happen, when war breaks out in Ukraine, when unrest happens in Ferguson, people know that CNN is the place to come.”

Addressing critics of the network’s scripted programming and game shows that CNN added because viewers were tuning out en masse, Zucker claimed that “news is our brand,” and claimed, “we doubled-down on news.”

CNN ended 2014 with all-time low ratings, and one of the network’s low points was the way in which it jumped to conclusions about Michael Brown’s death. Before evidence surfaced that Brown was engaged in a strong-arm robbery and confronted officer Darren Wilson before he was shot in the front (every autopsy report concluded that Brown was not shot in the back with his hands up), the network tried to lionize Brown as a “gentle giant” who was gunned down in cold-blood by an officer it implied was racist and working at an even more racist police department.

The low point in CNN’s Ferguson coverage was when the network’s own anchors were questioning the authenticity of an audio tape that CNN aired of Brown’s shooting to try and again further the “gentle giant’ narrative. As Breitbart’s John Nolte wrote at the time:

Even if the audio ends up being authentic, the fact that CNN is now concerned over its authenticity and laying the groundwork to claim they were always skeptical, tells you how irresponsible the network is. The prejudicial audio never should have been aired prior to authentication. But this is exactly the kind of incendiary behavior we have come to expect from the news network that disgraced itself more than any other during the George Zimmerman affair.

CNN’s timing of the release made perfect sense. The leftwing network dropped the audio the day after treating the funeral of Michael Brown as though he was a head of state. With the death porn concluded and the Ferguson streets quiet, CNN needed to fill the race-baiting vacuum with something.

This is the second time CNN has been unforgivably irresponsible with audio. Using unintelligible audio of George Zimmerman’s 911 call, CNN falsely claimed Zimmerman had described Trayvon Martin as a “fucking coon” before fatally shooting the teenager. CNN not only fabricated this evidence against Zimmerman, after it was proven Zimmerman didn’t use the racial slur, CNN continued to lie to its audience and claim he had.

Don’t tell that to Zucker, who believes CNN’s Ferguson coverage made the network more trustworthy.