On Friday, Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro taped a segment for CNN’s media watchdog show, Reliable Sources with host Brian Stelter. The interview played on Sunday was cut, however, to remove Shapiro’s direct accusation against Stelter of bias in his coverage of Arizona’s religious freedom bill.
The first question Shapiro was asked in the taped interview, Shapiro says, was about media bias; Stelter asked whether media bias had played a role in the general public perception of what Stelter termed Arizona’s bill that would have “given businesses the legal grounds to deny services to gay people.” Shapiro immediately stated that not only was media bias to blame for the public’s false perceptions about the bill, but that Stelter had engaged in just that sort of bias by mischaracterizing the bill in his question – the bill did not loosen legal restrictions on discrimination against gays and lesbians. That portion of the interview was sliced out.
Instead, the interview was edited to cut directly to a later portion of the interview, in which Shapiro explained that the media’s liberal bias “reflects L.A. and it reflects New York and it generates feeling elsewhere.”
CNN did leave in Shapiro’s statements about media bias more generally:
SHAPIRO: The press absolutely an opponent of religious freedom, because the press believes that, essentially, religious individuals should be forced to abide by whatever the press’ standards of morality are, and the press is happy to see the government enforce those standards of morality. You’ve seen people like Tony Kornheiser on ESPN suggest that this law would force people, gays in the state of Arizona, to wear yellow stars, or that gays and lesbians in the state of Arizona wouldn’t be able to attend NFL football games. This has nothing to do with the law as written and is specifically designated to create the perception that the American people are a bunch of pitchfork and torch-wielding religious bigots who are looking to crowbar gay people in the streets.
[…]
