The problem is that a lot of people do mistake them for an unbiased news source, which they’re not. They think that CNN is the middle ground when, in fact, they’re just as liberal as MSNBC. The difference is that MSNBC is at least open about its biases.

Now, though, it looks like CNN let their neutrality mask slip a bit.

Regular CNN viewers will have noticed that since Tuesday, CNN’s New Day and a number of other CNN shows have been displaying an on screen tabulation of the number of mass shootings and deaths from mass shootings so far this year, in much the same style the network had been using to keep track of COVID death statistics.

This latest wave of liberal activism on the gun issue may have been the result of the liberal network’s law enforcement analyst, retired police chief Charles Ramsey, who recommended such media activism to pressure politicians on the issue, as he appeared on CNN, Memorial Day afternoon.

On Friday’s CNN Newsroom with Victor Blackwell and Alisyn Camerota, the show utilized the on screen display as it gave a forum to gun control activist Fred Guttenberg to praise Democrats and slam Republicans as he called on moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to move left on the issue.

The graphic should be taken as all the evidence one needs that CNN is trying to push an anti-gun agenda.

Of course, there will be those that simply argue that the graphic is just tracking an issue and doesn’t convey any opinion on the matter, but that’s hardly accurate. Especially since most of those numbers represent shootings that most people would agree aren’t really mass shootings.

Gang shootouts, for example, get tracked by anti-gun groups as mass shootings, but they’re not. Not really. A mass shooting generally assumes that the shooting isn’t in conjunction with any other criminal activity and gang violence fails that test. What’s more is that as members of the national news media, they should know that.

Either they don’t and they’re just lazy or they do and they’re hacks.

Plus, there’s the recurring theme of having someone like Fred Guttenberg on to say whatever he wants to say with absolutely no pushback, but you get someone like Larry Pratt from GOA on there and you’re going to see all kinds of pushback. Time and time again, we see anti-gun voices get nothing while pro-gun voices have to be on the defensive the whole time they’re on the air.

That gives a very different view of the issue than if both sides got equal treatment. They know this, of course, which is why they do things this way.

At the end of the day, we know where CNN stands on the gun issue. We’ve never been deluded into thinking otherwise, but a lot of people have. My hope, though, is that this graphic will make them sit up and start to recognize that CNN can play like they’re a neutral news source all they want, but if they expect people to continue believing it, they have to at least make a show of being neutral. Pushing an anti-gun agenda over and over and over again just isn’t how you do that.

CNN is as anti-gun as MSNBC, but at least MSNBC doesn’t pretend to be anything but what they are.