CNN’s primetime lineup completely skipped a bombshell report on Wednesday night that embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed health officials to prioritize his family – including CNN host Chris Cuomo -- in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Albany-based Times Union newspaper reported Wednesday, prior to CNN’s primetime lineup kicking off, that "high-level members" of New York's Department of Health were directed to "conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor's relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration."
"Cuomo Prime Time" namesake Chris Cuomo is off this week, so he wasn’t around to address the scandal that he’s part of. However, none of his CNN primetime colleagues addressed it either.
Anderson Cooper, who has also taken over Cuomo's timeslot this week in addition to his own "AC 360" program, and Don Lemon both avoided the bombshell report.
A review of transcripts indicated that CNN didn’t cover the story about Gov. Cuomo giving priority access to his family at all from 7-11 p.m. ET on Wednesday evening.
But CNN didn’t stop censoring the damning report when primetime wrapped up.
A search of CNN’s coverage on Grabien Media doesn’t indicate the network has covered the story on its air through 9 a.m. ET on Thursday, either. As of this writing, the CNN website's front page included no mentions of Gov. Cuomo or the latest developments.
CNN is aware that the story is newsworthy, as the network’s media newsletter pointed out that it's on the front page of the New York Times, which makes the decision not to cover it on air even more noteworthy. CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"Members of Cuomo's family including his brother, his mother and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top health department officials — some several times, the sources said," according to the Times Union.
The "Cuomo Prime Time" anchor was diagnosed with coronavirus on March 31. As the paper noted, the diagnosis came "at a time when many members of the public struggled to obtain coronavirus tests."
It is unclear, however, whether Chris Cuomo himself, CNN, or New York taxpayers funded the test that showed the positive test results.
Once the CNN host was feeling better, he famously recorded himself exiting quarantine in a moment that was widely panned as "staged," as he had been previously spotted outside his home. In April of last year, the anchor reportedly got in a verbal confrontation on the lawn of another property with a cyclist who called him out for violating the governor's policies.
The CNN host has since told viewers he "obviously" could not cover his brother's political woes -- despite inviting the so-called "Luv Guv" onto his show for nearly a dozen chummy interviews in the early months of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the hyper-partisan network doesn’t seem to think Chis Cuomo did anything wrong by accepting a coronavirus test from his powerful brother when millions of regular Americans were unable to find testing.
A CNN spokesperson told the Washington Post, "We generally do not get involved in the medical decisions of our employees. However, it is not surprising in the earliest days of a once-in-a-century global pandemic, when Chris was showing symptoms and was concerned about possible spread, he turned to anyone he could for advice and assistance, as any human being would."
Andrew Cuomo is already under investigation after a senior adviser admitted to Democratic lawmakers that his administration covered up data on nursing home deaths during the pandemic. A separate investigation is examining allegations of sexual misconduct made against the governor by multiple women.