The behind the scenes people for television companies don’t always stay in the same place for their entire careers. Since they aren’t exactly the faces of the company it is a heck of a lot easier for them to move from job to job.
A good producer is worth their weight in gold. They can keep a show moving along, which in live television you definitely need. Don’t believe me? Watch a locally produced morning show that only airs in one market sometimes.
Now, a star using their star card on some local show and saying something horrible is bad enough. When you have someone on TV all around the world saying some of the horrible things that Don Lemon is saying, you could have a complete disaster on your hands.
A former CNN producer called on the network to stop one of its hosts, Don Lemon, from using “dangerous” rhetoric surrounding his coverage of the Monday mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado.
In the aftermath of the shooting that killed 10, Lemon used his platform on CNN to advocate for gun control and slam Republicans for resisting such measures by Democrats. The CNN host also insisted that Americans are playing the “odds” that they will not be killed in a mass shooting by not supporting gun control measures.
“Every single one of us is just playing the odds at this point. The odds that in a country of 325 million souls that we won’t be the ones who get hit by the next bullets that start flying. We won’t be the one that gets that phone call about someone you love who did. That phone call that changes your life,” Lemon said.
“But with every deadly shooting in this country, the odds get worse and worse. Are you really willing to keep playing those odds? Haven’t we learned after this year of pandemic, a year of loss of life, isolation, mass death of nearly 550,000 Americans that life is just that precious? If not now, when? When will we ever learn? I don’t want to have to say those words again,” the host added.
Media critic and executive producer of “The Megyn Kelly Show” Steve Krakauer, who formerly worked for CNN as a producer, called on his old network to “step in” and stop Lemon from using “dangerous” rhetoric to advocate for gun control.
“Someone at CNN needs to step in. This hyperbole isn’t just offensive, it’s actually dangerous,” Krakauer said.
Krakauer had quote-tweeted a post by NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck saying, “As someone who’s struggled with depression and suicide, it’s offensive for Don to so callously say in this chyron that ‘every single one of us is just playing the odds at this point.’ Before a break, Don brings up the National Suicide Prevention Line … absolutely insulting.”