CNN played a song called “Stupid Girls” ahead of a segment about Sarah Palin visiting a Texas Chick-fil-A restaurant, NewsBusters.org reported.
CNN anchor Randi Kaye teased the segment by saying, “Sarah Palin is apparently hungry for chicken and controversy,” as a photograph of the former Republican vice presidential candidate and her husband at Chick-fil-A flashed on the screen, NewsBusters.org reported.
Late Sunday, CNN told Reuters the use of the song was unintentional and not meant as a commentary on the former Republican vice presidential candidate.
"The music selection was a poor choice and was not intended to be linked to any news story," CNN said in a statement to TheWrap. "We regret any perception that they were planned together."
Before and as the photograph appeared, the song could be heard playing. The lyrics of the song by the artist Pink heard were: “Aha, aha. Stupid girl, stupid girls, stupid girls. Maybe if I act like that…” The music starting fading out as Kaye introduced the segment.
It mirrors an incident last November when Rep. Michele Bachmann, a former Republican presidential candidate, was greeted with the song "Lyin' A-- B--ch" during her appearance on NBC's “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”
The CNN segment featured the former Alaska governor visiting a Chick-fil-A restaurant to show support for the embattled company, NewsBusters.org reported.
NewsBusters.org wrote on its website, “Imagine such a song being used to introduce any female Democrat. The outrage would be deafening. Will CNN and Kaye be asked to apologize?”
CNN has been in a steep ratings slide of late. Its president, Jim Walton, who presided over the once-dominant cable-news business as it lost viewers to Fox News, will resign after almost a decade in the job, saying the network needs “new thinking.”
CNN’s prime-time viewership has dropped 8 percent to 627,000 on average this season through mid-May, compared with a year earlier, according to Nielsen. CNN now ranks far behind News Corp.’s Fox News, which drew an average prime-time viewership of 1.85 million in the same period.
In recent years, the network struggled to find a formula that connected with viewers. It also made a major gaffe last month, reporting incorrectly that the U.S. Supreme Court found a central piece of Obamacare to be unconstitutional.
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