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TV station backs off accusation that CNN played politics

A U.S. Border Patrol agent rides a vehicle on the beach in San Diego, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019, seen through the border wall from Tijuana, Mexico. U.S. President Donald Trump walked out of his negotiating meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday - "I said bye-bye," he tweeted- as efforts to end the 19-day partial government shutdown fell into deeper disarray over his demand for billions of dollars to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

NEW YORK — An executive at a San Diego television station that accused CNN of rejecting the reporting of one of its journalists for political reasons now concedes he doesn’t really know why the network turned him down.

After CNN reached out to KUSI-TV to see if reporter Dan Plante would come on the air Thursday to talk about a border barrier in San Diego, the segment never happened. CNN said plans often change, but KUSI saw other motivations.

The station put out a statement saying its reporter was rejected because KUSI had aired stories concluding that the barrier worked, and that wasn’t what CNN wanted to hear.

But the station’s news director, Steve Cohen, tells The Associated Press he made his own conclusion about the rejection without talking to CNN.

The Associated Press