A Pennsylvania school district is banning CNN from its classrooms.
The Norwin Star reported that the Pittsburgh-area Norwin School Board voted 5 to 4 on Monday to halt daily broadcasts of CNN 10 during middle school homerooms. Banning CNN 10 was among the campaign promises made by new school board members Christine Baverso, Alexander Detschelt, and Shawna Ilagan, whom parents voted into office in 2021.
Parents have objected to the bias of the program. One said broadcasting it gave her son the message “that CNN is a label you can trust.”
“This community voted for change,” Tammy Marino of Irwin told the Star. Another parent said school boards “should not be about politics or which political party controls the school board.”
Some teachers who attended the school district meeting said they think the board overstepped its bounds in banning CNN 10. One eighth grade social studies teacher said the program “supports the school district’s mission statement of civic engagement by the students,” according to the Star.
TVs will now be shut off unless they are needed to watch commemorative broadcasts such as “Veterans Day or the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.”
CNN 10 is a digital news program that produces the “big stories of the day, explained in 10 minutes,” according to its website. The show is anchored by Carl Azuz, a self-described gym rat and purveyor of bad puns. At the beginning of each broadcast, he promises to give a “down-the-middle explanation of world news.”
Recent topics covered by CNN 10 include “chimpanzee empathy” and “crude oil, gas prices, and inflation are rising: Are they connected?” After noting that inflation hit “its highest level since 1982” last month, Azuz attributed the rise to Russian aggression.
“One big reason is uncertainty about the situation in Ukraine, which we discussed on yesterday’s show,” Azuz said, adding that what “remains to be seen is whether things will stay that way or normalize in the days ahead.”
