Your intrepid blogger’s search for more and more cites of intelligent commentary on the John Cena/CNN controversy led me to yet another columnist at Pro Wrestling Torch: Bruce Mitchell. I commend to one and all the “Mitchell’s Memo” headlined “The Truth About Cable News, John Cena, and WWE” from PW Torch Newsletter #997/#998.
Unfortunately, I can’t point you to the web link because the Mitchell piece is not at the newsletter’s free site but is behind the premium-content wall. And if I ran the full text, Brother Mitchell and Brother Wade Keller might sue me — or, worse, tell Cena that I’d quoted him out of context, just like CNN, thereby leaving me vulnerable to a possible vicious clothesline from the currently one-armed superstar.
However, I do feel free to share with blog readers these scoop paragraphs from Mitchell’s column:
On the day [CNN reporter Drew] Griffin’s team was scheduled to come to Wrestling Observer editor/writer Dave Meltzer’s house to interview him for the story, Meltzer got a call.
Vince McMahon wouldn’t allow any interviews with anyone in WWE, including himself, if CNN put Meltzer in their documentary.
Was there a legitimate reason to remove Meltzer from the documentary? Did he blow a story, or take a critical quote out of context, in his reporting about WWE? Did CNN, based on what WWE told them, vet Meltzer’s work and discover something that completely made them change their opinion of his knowledge of the story they were covering? Did they tell WWE that no reputable news organization would give the tainted subject of scandal any say over how they would covered, and that if WWE pulled their previously promised cooperation, America’s Number One Cable New Source would note that, and the reasons why, in their documentary.
Nah, nothing like that. CNN let a wrestling promoter dictate the terms of his coverage, then gave him the opportunity to righteously show them up by disingenuously editing the interview with his most popular star to make their show sexier.
As I did with an earlier item on this blog, I am forwarding this one to the CNN producer who had interviewed me in July. Previously I’d withheld his name because I didn’t know if he was even the decision-maker in the final version of Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling. But at this point I see no reason not to ask: What say you, Brian Larch — or any of your colleagues at CNN?
Irv Muchnick