Should CNN really host a Donald Trump town hall?

Well here’s something that you probably didn’t see coming.

Former president and current Republican candidate for president Donald Trump is going to do a town hall … on CNN.

It will be Wednesday, May 10 at 9 p.m. from Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. “CNN This Morning” co-anchor and former White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins will moderate. Trump will take questions from Collins as well as a live audience of New Hampshire Republican and undeclared voters who say they intend to vote in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.

Initial thoughts: first, CNN. Should the cable news network have on the former president even though Trump has often been critical of CNN and all nonconservative media? Should they have Trump on even though he’s liable to say anything, even if it doesn’t come close to resembling the truth? Should they host someone who is known to spread dangerous misinformation and disinformation?

Absolutely. This is a no-brainer. Of course CNN should have on Trump. As of this moment, he’s the Republican Party favorite to be the presidential nominee in 2024. That makes him newsworthy. Assuming they agreed to no preconditions, CNN is in charge of the evening.

And the rest of the media observers and critics — as well as news consumers — should be OK with this. We can’t criticize Republican politicians for never (or rarely) agreeing to TV interviews outside of Fox News or Newsmax and then stomp our feet when one agrees to go on CNN.

But, of course, it comes with a caveat.

Many are already upset with CNN for “giving Trump a platform.” But if Collins does her job, Trump won’t have the freedom to ramble on with the nodding approval of a sycophant anchor like we’ve seen conservative news hosts do. If Collins does her job, she will push back on any of Trump’s lies.

It’s all up to Collins.

This is a big moment for Collins. She is well experienced in Washington politics and knows Trump well, having covered him when he was president. She and Trump have had their share of run-ins. But this will be a test unlike any she has ever faced: trying to corral Trump in a room that is more likely to side with Trump if there are any confrontations. And fact-checking someone who spews out such many falsehoods in such a short period of time is not easy. She will need to do her homework and have some fast-thinking producers and fact-checkers in her earpiece.

Collins had been co-hosting CNN’s morning show with Poppy Harlow and Don Lemon until Lemon was fired last week. Now it’s just Collins and Harlow, but there have been rumors that the morning show, which is struggling to get good ratings, might get an overhaul. There already is buzz that Collins could end up with a prime-time spot on CNN and a good performance in the town hall certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, the co-host of “The View” who used to work in the communication department in Trump’s White House, tweeted, “@kaitlancollins is one of the toughest interviewers out there. Anyone thinking Trump will get away with lying without being called out needs to watch her past interviews. Honestly surprised he agreed.”

So why did he agree? A Trump adviser told CNN’s Oliver Darcy, “Going outside the traditional Republican ‘comfort zone’ was a key to President Trump’s success in 2016. Some other candidates are too afraid to take this step in their quest to defeat Joe Biden, and are afraid to do anything other than Fox News.”

That sounds like a shot (or a dare) at other potential Republican candidates. (Uh, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?) Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reports that this is all a part of a new aggressive media strategy from Trump. Isenstadt writes that Trump has been in talks with other networks, including NBC. In addition, going on CNN could be a poke at Fox News.

Isenstadt says it was CNN that reached out to Trump “several months ago.” Again, I have no problem with that. CNN is a news outlet. Trump is newsworthy.

But to be clear, the most important person on the stage next Wednesday won’t be Trump. It will be Collins.

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A must-read story

Nobody writes more passionately and thoroughly about a topic than The Washington Post’s John Woodrow Cox on the impact of gun violence on children. His latest story: “A school shooting left a 7-year-old terrified to go back. … At 13, she found a way.”

This is a “Deep Read” investigation that Cox has been working on since 2017 when he first met 7-year-old Ava Olsen, who survived a school shooting at Townville Elementary in South Carolina.

To try and capture the story in just a few sentences here would not do it justice. So I encourage you to read this amazing work.

Viewership down

Washington Post media news reporter Jeremy Barr notes that Fox News has been bleeding viewers at 8 p.m. Eastern since firing Tucker Carlson a week ago. The network has gone from around 3 million viewers a night at 8 p.m. with Carlson to an average of about 1.65 million viewers in the first week without him.

Two things: That’s a significant drop. Yet, Fox News continues to attract more viewers overall than MSNBC and CNN.

So what about replacing Carlson? Brian Kilmeade filled in as host last week and Lawrence Jones will host this week. Fox will continue to rotate in guest hosts for now.

At some point, for the sake of ratings, Fox will need to find a permanent replacement. But it also doesn’t want to rush into anything. Replacing a huge and popular host such as Carlson won’t be easy, and the 8 p.m. slot is, arguably, the most valuable real estate in cable news. Giving it a little time probably is the smart move.

Meanwhile, the short-term winner in all this is ultraconservative Newsmax, which has seen a nice bump since Carlson’s firing. It had typically drawn fewer than 150,000 viewers in prime time, but got up over 500,000 one day last week. Don’t be surprised if that is just a temporary surge. A couple of days of curiosity might have helped, but maintaining a larger audience on a consistent basis is a much tougher task.

Speaking of Carlson …

George Skelton, the Capitol Journal columnist for The Los Angeles Times, has a new piece out: “Tucker Carlson’s ludicrous falsehoods have no place in journalism.”

Skelton writes, “It’s one thing for a politician to stretch the truth. But the nation’s founders inserted freedom of the press into the 1st Amendment for a reason: Journalists were regarded as essential to a democracy by keeping the public informed about what was happening around them and serving as an independent crosscheck on government. When journalists lie — bellow falsehoods about rigged elections — it ultimately undermines the public’s confidence in not only journalism but also democracy itself.”

Skelton also writes about Tucker Carlson’s father, Dick Carlson. The elder Carlson worked at UPI and was a colleague of Skelton in the state capitol bureau in California. Skelton wrote, “I remember Dick Carlson as an energetic young reporter who was always talking up some sensational expose he was working on. But I can’t recall him ever delivering.”

He added, “Dick Carlson married a rich heiress, and Tucker grew up in opulence. Through Reagan administration connections, Dick became director of Voice of America. Tucker Carlson embarked on his own journalism career — and he proved to be short on ethical standards.

We’re supposed to expose liars like Trump, not parrot them.”

One more Carlson item …

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz with “Tucker Carlson slammed Fox Nation in behind-the-scenes video.”

Fox Nation is Fox News’ streaming service. Carlson had a show on Fox Nation. In the leaked video, Carlson said “nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks.” At the time, he is believed to be talking on his cell phone with controversial, misogynistic (among other things) social media influencer Andrew Tate. The two appear to be talking about a landing spot for a Carlson interview of Tate.

This is likely to have occurred last August when Carlson interviewed Tate on “Tucker Carlson Today” — Carlson’s Fox Nation show.

Around the clock

With all the media news last week, this fell through the cracks: The cable news station NewsNation has gone 24 hours Monday through Friday.

NewsNation, which is owned by Nexstar, is the cable news network that includes news anchor Elizabeth Vargas and prime-time hosts Dan Abrams, Chris Cuomo and Ashleigh Banfield.

The new schedule includes a four-hour daytime block called “NewsNation Now.” A rotation of journalists will anchor from 1 to 3 p.m. Eastern with Nichole Berlie anchoring from 3 to 5 p.m.

Guest artist

The latest cover story for The Atlantic is by staff writer Anne Applebaum and editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. They reported from Ukraine, including frontline Kherson, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, and other cities and military bases across Ukraine for “The Counteroffensive.”

In addition, the art on the cover, which you can see above, was a sketch of Zelenskyy drawn by rock star Bono, the frontman of U2.

The Washington Post’s Elahe Izadi reports that one of Bono’s hobbies is sketching fake covers of magazines, including The Atlantic. Goldberg learned that when visiting Bono’s home in Dublin last year.

In an email, Bono told Izadi, “I learned to draw and paint on photographs from my father, who put color to black and white polaroids of my mother.”

Bono added that he has “drawn and painted over The Atlantic covers before … defaced is another word for this, but it’s with great affection. I’m a fan of their long form journalism.”

So Goldberg asked him to do it for real.

About his sketch that was used for the cover, Bono said in his email, “We have burdened (Zelenskyy) with impossible expectations — and impossibly, he has not let us down. I suppose that’s because President Zelenskyy is not now one person, he’s the Ukrainian people. How do you draw that? Well, you can’t. So I tried to make an icon of his visage instead. A few squiggles and I just got out of the way.”

The result, as you can see above, turned out rather well.

Dress of the night

If you’re a fan of the movie, “Broadcast News,” (and, hey, who isn’t?) you’ll love this item. Do you remember in the movie that Holly Hunter’s character went to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and wore a black-and-white dress with polka dots?

For this year’s dinner, NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith had that dress recreated.

Keith, who is president of the WHCA, told Elle magazine that she always felt a kinship with Hunter’s character, Jane, from “Broadcast News.” Keith said, “Re-watching ‘Broadcast News’ planted a seed in my mind: I should wear the same dress that Jane wore to the White House Correspondents’ dinner in the movie.”

Check out the story in Elle for all the details.

Media tidbits

• Uh oh. This sounds ominous. The New York Times’ ​​Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin with “Vice Is Said to Be Headed for Bankruptcy.”
• The Associated Press’ David Klepper with “Americans fault news media for dividing nation: AP-NORC poll.”
• For The Washington Post, Wesley Lowery with “How Roy Wood Jr. aced the toughest room in comedy.”
• I just mentioned U2’s Bono here in the newsletter. Here’s more. Theodore Kim, director of career programs for The New York Times, with “U2’s Music Shaped My Life. Then It Helped Save It.”
• My Poynter colleague, Angela Fu, with “A boat containing 14 bodies appeared in the Caribbean. The AP set off to learn their identities.”
• The New York Times’ Cade Metz with “‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead.”
• The NFL Draft, held over three days, garnered pretty good ratings. An average of 6 million viewers watched on ABC/ESPN, the NFL Network and on digital. That’s up over last year’s average audience of 5.3 million.
• ABC/ESPN is taking heat for showing old stock footage of New York City before Sunday’s Knicks-Heat NBA playoff game. It starts as a shot of the Statue of Liberty, and the network might have gotten away with it had it not been for something else seen in the frame: the Twin Towers. Awful Announcing’s Michael Dixon has more.
• Another interesting sports item. Late in the third period of Game 7 of the NHL playoff series between the Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers, TNT quickly put up the score bug that said, “GOAL” for the Panthers. The Panthers did, in fact, tie the game — and then won in overtime. So what’s the problem? The bug announcing the tying goal actually flashed up on the screen 25 seconds before the goal was scored. Conspiracy theorists are having a ball today.

Hot type

• In an essay for CNN, ​​John Blake with “What a Black man discovered when he met the White mother he never knew.”
• The New York Times’ Michael Wilson with “He Bombed the Nazis. 75 Years Later, the Nightmares Began.”

More resources for journalists

• Subscribe to Poynter’s Friday newsletter, Open Tabs with Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme, and get behind-the-scenes stories only available to subscribers.
• Telling the Stories of Faith and the Faithful — New York City, May 12 (Seminar) — Register by April 21.
• Transform your newsroom’s reporting on crime and criminal justice with our 24-week online seminar. Apply by April 21.
• Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative — (Sept. - April, 2024) (Hybrid) — Apply by May 15.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].