CNN is having a bad week.
It still hasn’t addressed reports anchor Chris Cuomo lied this year when he said he’d stop advising his brother, disgraced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on how to navigate allegations of sexual misconduct. The governor announced this week he is resigning. Chris Cuomo, meanwhile, has disappeared from the network’s airwaves for a supposedly planned vacation.
Now, CNN has to answer for its botched reporting on Dasha Kelly, a Las Vegas “mom” who raised a boatload of cash after the cable network reported that she and her three children were going to go homeless unless Congress or President Joe Biden extended the COVID-19 eviction moratorium.
The word “mom” is in quotes because, as it turns out, Kelly is not a mother, and the children who appeared with her when she went on CNN to tell her sob story aren’t even hers. They’re her sister’s.
Kelly simply babysits the children, she eventually admitted to CNN. But the public didn’t know this until after CNN had already uncritically shared her tall tale and promoted her GoFundMe campaign. Generous but duped people had chipped in nearly $200,000 for Kelly after CNN aired the story.
Her fundraising page, by the way, still reads, “My name is Kelly and I have 3 daughters living in Nevada. … As you all know it is entirely still to hot to be homeless. My daughter’s are aged 5, 6, and 8. Please help with anything you can.”
Along with Kelly’s in-person appearances last week on CNN, in which she was flanked on both sides by her three “children,” ages 5, 6, and 8, the cable news network also published a report on Aug. 3 originally titled “More than $170,000 raised in 24 hours for mother and three kids facing eviction.”
The headline has been amended so that it now reads, “More than $170,000 raised in 24 hours for Las Vegas woman facing eviction.”
The story’s opening paragraphs also initially read, “On Monday, Dasha Kelly was facing eviction and didn’t know how she was going to pay her back rent. A day later, thanks to strangers, more than $170,000 has been raised so far for her and her three daughters. … The mom of three was left speechless as CNN’s Erin Burnett told her the amount.”
Those passages have been edited to read, “Last Monday, Dasha Kelly was facing eviction and didn’t know how she was going to pay her back rent. A day later, thanks to strangers, more than $170,000 has been raised so far. … She was left speechless as CNN’s Erin Burnett told her the amount.”
Most shameful of all, the CNN story now bears a lengthy editor’s note, which reads:
Earlier, before CNN figured out how badly it had bungled the story, the network credited Kelly’s impressive fundraising haul on her television appearances, bragging the interviews “generated a lot of interest.” However, as we know now, this “interest” was premised on the falsehood that a whole family was going to go homeless. The children’s mother, Shadia Halo, emerged later to dispute her sister’s claims.
“And yes,” CNN’s somewhat sheepish Nick Watt, who contributed to the network’s original false reporting on the matter, said this week, “Shadia Halo is their mother. We have seen the birth certificates. And now we know that Dasha Kelly is dating the girls’ father.”
Kelly clearly lied, though she doesn’t see it that way. She defends her original false claims, saying she referred to herself as a “mother” because she is a maternal figure to the children.
Halo was “understandably upset” by this characterization, CNN reports now.
You think?
Last week, after Biden unilaterally extended the eviction moratorium, Kelly appeared on CNN to thank Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri personally.
“I’m just so fortunate right now. This is beyond me,” Kelly told Bush. “When I put that up, I never thought that anybody would have reached out, especially CNN, and to hear that a congressperson — my story reached you — this is just amazing.”
Bush told Kelly, “And so this is the least that we can do for you is to step up and make sure that you get to stay in the safety and the comfort of your home while we work on other things to help make sure that your life and the lives of your children are better. This is the least we can do for you.”
Kelly’s GoFundMe page has been updated to include a note clarifying she is not the children’s “biological mother” but rather a “mother figure.” (“Birthing person figure”?)
As for the children, they are going to live with their actual mother when the school year begins, CNN reports.
Here’s a crazy thought, but maybe CNN should verify stories before reporting them.
