(FiveNation.com)- Last week, CNN host Anderson Cooper got choked up by a report that Ukrainian children in hospice care were being evacuated to safety in Poland.
CNN reporter Arwa Damon, reporting from Warsaw, explained that children from palliative care facilities near the city of Kharkiv had been evacuated by train into Poland with some of their families.
In her report, Damon abandoned objective reporting and opted to play up the emotional aspect of the story, saying the train car was “filled with the sort of emotion that is too intense, too incomprehensible for words.” Damon’s emotional manipulation continued as she described the “love” and “tenderness” from strangers and the medical team, noting the “whispered words of ‘you are safe now.’”
War correspondents certainly have changed over the years, haven’t they?
But given CNN’s spike in ratings, the manipulative, emotionally-driven reporting must be appealing to some audiences.
Damon’s report also featured an interview with one of the mothers traveling to Poland with her sick child who said after hearing her hometown was bombed, she tried to reach her family, but couldn’t get through.
Not to be left out of the emotional manipulation, anchor Anderson Cooper told Damon that he knows “this is a cliché, but I mean if moms ruled the world, things would be a lot different.”
That seems a rather odd conclusion to draw from that report, but it was sure to appeal to the suburban wine moms who still tune in to CNN.
Cooper laid it on thick, recounting what his viewers just heard about the desperate mother not being able to reach her family and praising her strength.
The emotive CNN anchor described the “train hurling in the dead of night,” adding “I mean, Jesus. This is, it’s just, this is just awful.”
Watch HERE.
