Although CNN’s Don Lemon was briefly back at CNN headquarters for a townhall, as soon as it was over he returned to Ferguson to resume coverage of the protests there. Lemon hasn’t had it easy in Ferguson considering he’s been roughed up by police already, but things got even worse when rapper Talib Kweli, who is in town for the protests, laid into the news anchor over the network’s coverage of unrest in the city. Kweli bristled at Lemon over CNN’s coverage of the protesters and criticized Lemon for not allowing him time to finish his answers. Kweli, a celebrity in his own right, said he understood that he only has a limited amount of time to make his case, but insisted that Lemon could allow him a few more seconds to respond to questions. Lemon answered by saying that he had, against his producer’s wishes, already gone over the allotted time for the segment so that Kweli could offer his point of view. At one point, Kweli seemed ready to walk off set because Lemon had interrupted him while he was talking. Lemon responded by saying that his job was to ask questions so that viewers could better understand the story. Kweli said he “felt it was important to control the narrative because the media has been doing a horrible job of making sure that the stories get out in the right way.” Lemon disagreed, noting that Kweli couldn’t have seen all of CNN’s coverage so he couldn’t accurately assess it. As evidence, Kweli used an article up at CNN’s website that characterized one incident as “calm until the bottles fly.” Kweli says he was there and “that’s not what happened.” By the end, the two men had made up but the tension was still thick in the air.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 14:10:28 +0000