IT’S FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2026. This week marked the sixth anniversary of Tom Hanks testing positive for COVID-19. What happened next wasn’t entirely his fault, but he’s far from blameless. It’s March, and my three-year-old son is still requesting the “Hot Chocolate” song from The Polar Express—a vaudevillian pastiche of weapons-grade nasality “sung” by Hanks himself. I’ll forgive him eventually. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KSNu!,w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff82e4e92-49f2-4c47-a3a8-18762813e22e_736x484.jpeg SPEAKING TRUTH TO NO ONE Journalists are heroes, obviously. They risk their lives every day defending democracy on the front lines. They’ve earned the right to be respected and admired, but they still goof up from time to time. Mistakes happen, even in a prestigious industry dedicated to exposing “the truth” and fact-checking Republicans. Typos go unnoticed, dates get mixed up, children get defamed. Rioters setting fire to a city can be misidentified as “peaceful” protesters. Occasionally, an entire news network will make a series of false statements about a recent terror attack. In the heat of the moment, they might accidentally sympathize with the (alleged) terrorists—happens all the time to the best of us. This is CNN. The once-reputable network committed a handful of whoopsies while attempting to report on the failed bomb attack in New York City over the weekend. First they published a story describing the terror suspects, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, as frolicsome teens enjoying enjoying the effects of global warming before getting carried away and—in a moment of youthful exuberance—lofting some artisanal explosives into a crowd of anti-Muslim protesters. They did this while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and pledged allegiance to ISIS under questioning. CNN revised the story, which was written by a Los Angeles-based correspondent (they/them) who attended Columbia Journalism School and majored in gender studies at the University of California, Berkeley. It failed to “reflect the gravity of the incident,” the network said, and violated their “editorial standards.” CNN media reporter and unofficial spokesman Brian Stelter praised his employers for “quickly” correcting the otherwise “solid” story, then returned to complaining about the conservative reporters asking questions at the Pentagon briefing. Many were shocked to learn that CNN had standards and that those standards were at odds with the media’s longstanding tradition of valorizing (alleged) terrorists from marginalized communities who try to blow up people they don’t like. In fairness, it seemed as though no one at CNN knew whom the terror suspects were trying to blow up—probably because they were getting their news from CNN. The initial version(s) of the story about the whimsical scallywags said they’d been arrested for “throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home,” appearing to suggest the bomb-makers were participants in the protest and were targeting the Muslim mayor. Hours later, CNN primetime host Abby Phillip referred to the “attempted terror attack against New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani,” while introducing a segment on Republicans who hate Muslims. Liberal commentator Ana Navarro, a guest on the show, also referenced the “attempt against Mayor Mamdani.” Phillip apologized the next day for her “inaccurate” wording and set the record straight by explaining that the mayor was not “specifically targeted” in the attack—whatever the hell that means. Phillip didn’t write the line she mindlessly read off the teleprompter. It’s entirely plausible that whoever did (he/she/they/it) genuinely believed that Islamophobes had racistly attacked the Muslim mayor. Some liberals are still convinced that Charlie Kirk was shot by a Trump supporter (or Israeli assassin). Journalists are supposed to know better, but they are unusually susceptible to flubbing the facts on a story that threatens their worldview. The offending prompter scribe probably heard Mamdani and his fellow Democrats rush to condemn the “vile displays of Islamophobia” from the protesters who had bombs thrown at them. They must not have seen the video of the (alleged) terrorist screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he chucked a flaming device over the head of a left-wing influencer with a bullhorn babbling about the benefits of mass immigration. It was a scene straight out of your MAGA uncle’s fever dream—like the time a Muslim illegal immigrant in a sanctuary city firebombed a Holocaust survivor in front of a courthouse flying the trans-inclusive pride flag. CNN’s in-house “extremism” reporter would’ve covered it, but he was attending a UFO conference in the desert. Hours after Phillip apologized, CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere described Mamdani as a “target of political violence.” Many observers were left wondering what the f— was going on and whether it might be best to shut the whole thing down until we could figure that out. Dovere deleted the post and became the second CNN journalist (so far) to publicly apologize for spreading misinformation. Whoopsie! Final thoughts: Bless their hearts. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer network, and just as Paramount is set to acquire CNN. The new owners will almost certainly clean house before folding it into CBS News. When that happens, feel free to ignore the shrieking about how American democracy will surely perish without CNN’s fearless truth-tellers manning the barricades. What they’re saying: “They should give Bari Weiss access to napalm,” Dan Foster mused. In the company of fiends: There is a certain logic to thinking the “ISIS-inspired” terrorists could have been targeting Mamdani, who is more of a Hamas guy. ISIS is a Salafi-jihadist group that views Hamas as a bunch of apostate hooligans who are insufficiently devoted to the global caliphate. This would assume the NYC suspects were hardened ideologues rather than dimwitted incels or Tucker Carlson fans—excuse the redundancy. In any event, Mamdani has been celebrating Ramadan with Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia activist who said “we couldn’t avoid” slaughtering Jews on October 7, as well as Abdullah Akl, a Harvard grad who has publicly encouraged Hamas to “strike Tel Aviv.” He’s also been hanging out with his wife, Rama Duwaji, who liked a bunch of Instagram posts celebrating the October 7 attack—redefining “slay queen” for the next generation of Democratic leaders. ///...