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Fox News apparently rankled the sensibilities of the left-wing media analysts at Mediaite on Wednesday after the website took issue with Fox’s use of a CNN logo in a mugshot of a former producer recently fired after being charged with a series of disturbing child sex crimes.
CNN senior producer John Griffin, 44, of Stamford, Conn., was quickly fired after the Justice Department charged him with three counts of attempting to entice underage girls into sexual activities.
Griffin, who worked on CNN’s “New Day,” once also worked closely with former host Chris Cuomo, who was also fired recently for being overly involved in helping his brother, Andrew Cuomo, fend off allegations of sexual harassment as New York governor.
In a story building on the child sex allegations, Fox News claimed that Griffin was also having marital problems at the same time. In the story, the network created a graphic featuring a Vermont State Police mugshot of Griffin along with CNN’s logo.
“United States Marshals have dropped him off in Vermont to be arraigned on the sex trafficking indictment that could land him behind bars for up to life,” Fox News reported in an exclusive.
“But back home, the 44-year-old had already moved out of the $4 million house he shared with his wife Allyson Griffin and their three children, according to a man who has maintained their 44-foot Chris-Craft Commander yacht, named Eleanor after the wife’s middle name,” the network added.
In assessing the story and Fox News’ graphic, Mediate writer Alex Griffing acknowledged:
It’s one thing to add a logo or to alter imagery in a news story. It’s another thing to then pass off a mugshot as a state police image that has been altered. It’s not uncommon for major publications, especially magazines, to use images that are illustrative of a subject.
However, such images are generally captioned as “photo illustrations” or as “artwork.” In tying Griffin to CNN, Fox may have gone overboard here or simply made an error in captioning the photo.
Griffin was indicted last week by a grand jury in Vermont.
“According to the indictment, from April to July of 2020, Griffin utilized the messaging applications Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with people purporting to be parents of minor daughters, conveying to them, among other ideas, that a ‘woman is a woman regardless of her age,’ and that women should be sexually subservient and inferior to men,” said a press release from the Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office, District of Vermont.
“On these communication platforms, Griffin sought to persuade parents to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive. In June of 2020, Griffin advised a mother of 9- and 13-year-old daughters that the mother’s responsibility was to see that her older daughter was ‘trained properly,’” the statement continued.
“Griffin later transferred over $3,000 to the mother for plane tickets so the mother and her 9-year-old daughter could fly from Nevada to Boston’s Logan airport. The mother and child flew to Boston in July of 2020, where Griffin picked them up in his Tesla and drove them to his Ludlow house. At the house, the daughter was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity,” it added.
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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