Thursday may have been a rough day for CNN’s event department after both the cable network and ABC News with WMUR-TV announced they would be hosting a Jan. 21 Republican presidential debate at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, for CNN, college officials when asked about the CNN event said they were only aware of the planned debate with ABC.
According to The Associated Press, earlier in the day, CNN had announced that it would host a debate on Jan. 10th at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa five days prior to the caucuses as well as the New Hampshire debate in question. Later that day ABC News and WMUR-TV announced their planned event which Saint Anselm College confirmed to reporters.
The Executive Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, Neil Levesque went on record with the AP that he was unaware of any CNN event in the offing. “I have no idea about anything with any other network,” he told the wire service. Levesque was directly quoted in the ABC-WMUR press release, however, he was not in the CNN release the same day.
According to a CNN spokesman on Friday the network is still “moving forward with our…
Read the full article here