By Erick Erickson

They are good people and mindful that many journalists do lean left by virtue of experience, education, and upbringing, so most often they work hard to compensate for any personal biases their reporters might have. Chris Cuomo is such an egregious example of a leftwing hack inappropriately given the veneer of objectivity because he stands out as one of the few who makes no effort at actually being fair.1

Most everyone else at the network tries hard and CNN has earned a good international reputation because of it. But this is a bridge too far and terribly shameful of the network to do. CNN is running a propaganda piece from the Southern Poverty Law Center as a legitimate news story.

The SPLC routinely labels conservative groups with which is has disagreements as “hate groups.” Twice now, leftwing murderers who were fans of the SPLC have tried to assassinate conservatives. Floyd Lee Corkins admitted to coming up with the idea to assassinate the staff of the Family Research Council after seeing them on the SPLC’s website. James Hodgkinson had liked the SPLC on his Facebook page before his mass assassination attempt of Republican members of Congress.

The SPLC has shown neither remorse nor a willingness to reconsider what it does after those incidents and now CNN is amplifying and giving exposure to what amounts to a leftwing assassin’s hit list.

There are legitimate groups on the SPLC’s list, which makes it so much more noxious. The SPLC lumps in legitimate Christian organizations that do good with real hate groups. They view the KKK and the Alliance Defending Freedom as hate groups. The Alliance Defending Freedom is an organization that coordinates volunteer Christian attorneys helping Christians in need. The SPLC labels them a hate group because the ADF has helped Christian florists, bakers, and others who the state has tried to compel to provide goods and services to same sex weddings.

It would be akin to the SPLC labeling the ACLU a hate group for defending the rights of white supremacists to march in the streets, which the ACLU has done.

Notice how CNN gives the SPLC the veneer of credibility:

Some critics of the SPLC say the group’s activism biases how it categorizes certain groups. But since the FBI doesn’t keep track of domestic hate groups, the SPLC’s tally is the widely accepted one. [Emphasis added]

“Some critics,” CNN says. Who would those critics be? They’d be members of Congress, respected academics, and theologians who all note SPLC has become a leftwing activist organization over the years. And “widely accepted” by whom? Not the FBI. Not law enforcement groups. Just CNN and liberal reporters.

CNN should be ashamed of this and if a third leftwing activist goes off to assassinate those the SPCL labels hate groups, someone will need to ask how much blood should be on CNN’s hands. This is not a hypothetical. Floyd Lee Corkins sits in prison.