NEW YORK (AP): Some TV shows are a much better age than others.
For CNN, last spring’s brawl between Chris Cuomo and his older brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, has a worse retrospective, as the governor’s administration questions its role in not disclosing the true number of COVID-19 nursing homes. deaths.
CNN is covering this story, but not on Chris Cuomo’s show. The network said it had reinstated a ban on Cuomo interviewing or telling stories about his brother he had temporarily raised last spring.
The two brothers were the two protagonists last March. Chris Cuomo took COVID-19 and continued to anchor his program from the basement, while the governor treated the hellish days of New York as the nation’s first epicenter of coronavirus. Andrew Cuomo’s almost daily briefing was widely televised and, for some viewers, was adopted as a counterpoint to those of former President Donald Trump.
Nine times, between March 19 and June 24, 2020, the governor appeared on his brother’s program. The fraternal love and talking of rubbish between the two Queens Italians was fun though occasionally cheesy, as when Chris Cuomo teased his brother’s big nose with a giant cotton swab, he said it would be necessary to give him a COVID-19 test.
“I found these interviews very entertaining, and maybe Chris could ask his brother questions that other people can’t,” said Roy Gutterman, a law professor of media law at Syracuse University. “But from the beginning, I thought it was very inappropriate.
“It’s Journalism 101,” he said. “Let’s tell our students you shouldn’t interview your family and friends.”
Politics avoids a conflict of interest: Can one brother be expected to ask difficult questions to another? – or at least the appearance of a.
Through a spokeswoman, CNN said the first months of the pandemic were an extraordinary moment.
“We felt Chris talking to his brother about the challenges facing millions of American families had a significant human interest,” he told CNN. “As a result, we made an exception to a rule we’ve had in place since 2013 that prevents Chris from interviewing his brother and that rule is still in effect today.”
For many weeks under the radar, questions about Andrew Cuomo have been in the forefront in recent weeks. The New York Attorney General released a report saying the administration downplayed the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 excluding those who died elsewhere, usually a hospital.
This was significant due to a directive from the Cuomo administration in March that nursing homes should not deny admission or readmission to a patient because they had COVID-19. The policy was terminated two months later.
Keeping hidden the true number of nursing home residents who died would theoretically divert any blame for a bad political choice. The governor has blamed staff entering nursing homes for transmitting the virus to the vulnerable population and not to patients with COVID-19. He said it would be discriminatory not to let these patients into residences.
Last week it was revealed that an aide to Andrew Cuomo told New York lawmakers that the actual image of residential deaths was not revealed for fear of being used against the governor during an investigation by the Justice Department. of Trump.
The last time the governor appeared on his brother’s program, in June, Chris Cuomo asked him, “Nursing homes. People died there. They didn’t have to. It was mismanaged. And operators have received immunity. What do you have to say about that? “
The governor replied that some of his brother’s words were incorrect. “But it’s okay,” he said. “It’s your show. You say what you mean. “
He said it was a tragic situation “and that we need to figure out how to do it better next time”.
CNN has covered the latest news several times outside of Chris Cuomo’s show, including at least 24 times just last week. Two notable cases were a comprehensive report by Brianna Keilar on January 29th and Jake Tapper on Sunday’s “State of the Union.” Both anchors said they had asked Andrew Cuomo to appear on their show and that they had been rejected, dozens of times, in the Tapper case.
The governor “made a bad decision that may have cost his life and then his administration hid this data from the public,” Tapper said.
Although Chris Cuomo, following the policy of his network, has not addressed the latest stories, the game with his brother appeared just before the elections last October in an intense exchange on his program with the spokesman of the Trump campaign, Tim Murtaugh.
Murtaugh criticized Cuomo for asking “fair questions” about whether the Trump administration took COVID-19 seriously and referred to the giant swab.
“Looks like a couple of guys who took it seriously?” He said. “You had your brother in the Comedy Hour Comedy Brothers.”
“Yes, yes,” Chris Cuomo replied. “It was fun as hell.”
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Associated Press correspondent Marina Villeneuve in Albany, New York, and researcher Rhonda Shafner, New York, contributed to the report.