In May, CNN’s Kyung Lah cornered Karen Fann, the Republican president of Arizona’s Senate, in a parking lot. Fann had recently commissioned a bogus “audit”—since more accurately dubbed a “fraudit”—of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County, where Joe Biden won and Trump lied about having won, and Lah wanted to ask her about it. CNN said that Fann had declined a dozen interview requests; when Lah finally pinned her down, Fann repeatedly insisted that the fraudit was nothing more than a good-faith response to voters’ concerns about “election integrity.” Lah put it to Fann that the process was actually “raising more questions” by indulging “conspiracy theories” about the election; Fann replied that she was “answering questions,” then tried to turn the interview back on Lah, asking if she could say with confidence that no dead people voted. Lah pointed to data showing that there was no widespread fraud. “I didn’t say there was fraud,” Fann retorted. Later, Fann touted the “transparency” of the process, which was streamed live online. When Lah pointed out that the cameras were controlled by One America News, a pro-Trump network, Fann asked if she was saying that “OAN is not a credible news source.”
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Source: How triumphant media coverage fell into the Arizona ‘fraudit’ trap | Columbia Journalism Review