CNN called out for tone shift on Biden reopening schools, compared to Trump coverage

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Brett Giroir: States are causing ‘irreparable harm' to kids by keeping schools closed

The Former Assistant Secretary for Health slams states that refuse to reopen schools.

CNN's tone on school reopening appears to have taken a different tone with President Biden leading the call for it, instead of former President Trump.

CNN published a story Feb. 28 on the difficulties Biden is facing from localities and teachers' unions in his effort to reopen the nation's schools by the spring.

Drew Holden, a conservative commentator, noted Biden was quoted in September by the CNN Politics account demanding Trump negotiate a deal for emergency school funding. Unlike many of its tweets that veer into the editorial, this one did not include a snarky aside about the difficulties involved.

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CNN also published a series of scathing stories and headlines about Trump's push to reopen schools in the summer of 2020, where his calls were portrayed as nakedly political.

"Donald Trump's mind-bending logic on school reopenings," read one July 2020 headline by Maeve Reston, who published a fawning profile of then-Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., in 2017 and provided positive coverage for several 2020 Democratic contenders.

"Trump inaccurately said during a briefing this week that children don't transmit the virus easily and don't bring it home easily, two claims that are still being investigated by the scientific community," she wrote.

CNN's Chris Cillizza wrote the same month on the "very clear dangers" of Trump trying to reopen schools.

"He desperately wants to kickstart the economy and needs people to feel as though they are returning to 'normal,' and getting kids back to school is, he believes, one of the best ways to do just that," Cillizza wrote.

"'Normally, people don't play with kids' lives': Trump's push to reopen schools becomes another partisan fight," CNN wrote in another July news story.

"President Donald Trump's attempts to strong-arm schools into reopening has turned a national challenge into another chaotic partisan debate, pitting his loyalists against teachers, health care professionals and more cautious political leaders wary of rushing the process," reporter Gregory Krieg wrote.

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CNN's liberal White House correspondent Jim Acosta quoted then-Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany out of context in a tweet at the time, portraying her as suggesting at a briefing that "science" did not jibe with schools reopening. In reality, she said the science was on the side of opening schools, but Acosta omitted the full quote from his tweet.

The tweet went viral.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics released guidelines in June about the dangers of students facing extended isolated learning and encouraged schools to find safe ways to reopen. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last summer it would work with every school district to create safe environments for school reopening.

A January study published by the CDC found COVID infection rates were lower in 17 schools opened in Wisconsin than in the surrounding community.