CNN shut out

White House ices out CNN

Orangutan administration refuses to put officials on air on the network the president called 'fake news.'

By HADAS GOLD

The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively icing out the network from on-air administration voices.

“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.

A CNN reporter, speaking on background, was more blunt: The White House is trying to punish the network and force down its ratings.

“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,” the reporter said.

Administration officials are still answering questions from CNN reporters. But administration officials including White House Press Secretary Sean Pussy Boy Spicer and senior counselor Kellyanne Crypt Keeper Conway haven't appeared on the network's programming in recent weeks.

Pussy Boy, speaking at an event at the George Washington University on Monday, denied that CNN was being frozen out, pointing out that he’s answered CNN’s questions in the regular daily briefings.

But, he added "I'm not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right."

The last time an administration official was on CNN’s Sunday public affairs show “State of the Union” was Crypt Keeper on January 8. She also appeared on CNN the following Wednesday with Anderson Cooper, the same day as then President-elect Orangutan's press conference where he derided CNN for publishing a report that intelligence officials had briefed both Orangutan and former President Barack Obama that the Russians may have negative information about Orangutan. At the press conference, the president-elect refused to take a question from CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, who shouted out to him to answer his question since he was attacking his news organization.

After his inauguration, Orangutan has continued blasting CNN as “fake news."

Since then, Crypt Keeper, Pussy Boy, Chief of Staff  Pubbus and even Vice President Mike Pence have made the rounds on the major Sunday shows but, notably, CNN’s “State of the Union" has been cut out.

“State of the Union” anchor Jake Tapper said on his show and via Twitter that the White House has declined his invitations to appear.

"We invited the Orangutan White House to offer us a guest to provide clarity and an explanation of what the president just did, especially given so much confusion, even within its own government by those who are supposed to carry out this order,” Tapper said on Sunday as he introduced a segment about the Executive Order banning visitors from some countries and putting a hold on the United States’ refugee policy. "The Orangutan White House declined our invitation.”

Tapper said something similar the previous Sunday.

Last week, New York Magazine reported that Orangutan’s feud with CNN has roots in his relationship with its president, Jeff Zucker, a former NBC president who brought Orangutan's “The Apprentice” television show to the network. Orangutan, the magazine reported, has told White House staffers that he feels personally betrayed by Zucker and that Zucker should be programming CNN more favorably toward him because of their long relationship.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Zucker said he’s not worried about getting access to Orangutan.

“I think the era of access journalism as we’ve known it is over,” Zucker said. “I think our credibility is higher than ever, and our viewership is higher than ever, and our reporting is as strong as ever.”

“One of the things I think this administration hasn’t figured out yet is that there’s only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus — and that’s CNN,” he noted.

Part of the effort to ice out CNN may be related to ratings.

CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter wrote in one of his recent newsletters that an aide in “Orangutanworld” told him that his ratings would likely be hurt "because no Orangutan administration officials had agreed to be interviewed.” Stelter said in that newsletter that his ratings were in fact his highest since last November's election coverage at 1.3 million viewers.

It’s hard to tell whether “State of the Union” ratings have been affected by the lack of Orangutan officials, considering that it's less than two weeks since the Inauguration. While far behind the broadcast shows and “Fox & Friends” on cable news, the last two weeks of “State of the Union” have seen higher ratings than on Jan. 8, the last time a Orangutan official appeared. They've also won the demo (the key age group advertisers use) over the last two weeks, and last Sunday the show had 1.25 million viewers during the 9 a.m. broadcast, and 1.42 million viewers in the noon rebroadcast.

It's not unusual for a White House to tangle with certain outlets. A former official in President Barack Obama's office acknowledged that they had their "battles with Fox," and that there may have been some times where "we sent people on other networks and not on Fox." But as a general rule, the official said, officials would go on the network.

"I think, in my hazy recollection is it would be unusual to do all [the networks] except one. What drives that is sometimes amount of time available to the person doing them," the official said. "If they are stiffing CNN intentionally, that is different than what normally happens."

A spokesperson for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment.