By Bill Chapman 

Colton Haab, a junior at Marjorie Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida; went to school on February 14, 2018 having no idea how his life and many of the students and faculty at the school would be changed forever that day. A young man named Nikolas Cruz allegedly entered the school with an assault rifle and began sending rounds downrange and taking the lives of 17 people. The eyes of the world were immediately focused on the tragedy at a school with an enrollment of 3000 plus students. The mainstream media scrambled to put together facts. The general public rushed to develop theories and conclusions about what happened based on facts put out by the media. The days after the shooting would be filled with a volley of information bombs sent back and forth over the heads of the public at large between the media and the truther movement as to what really happened and who was really responsible.

Soon after the shooting, key politicians including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and major celebrity figures including Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney, came to the assistance of the students wishing to speak out about gun violence in schools. These students, expressing genuine concern and fear about going to school and not knowing if someone might show up and start killing them, became the conduit for a larger entity to push a narrative of gun control and attack the organization that advocates for the protection of the 2nd Amendment; the National Rifle Association. Immediately within one day of the shooting, Wasserman-Schultz had organized a field trip for a select group of students and chaperone’s to attend and address the Florida state legislature to vocalize the students concerns about gun control.  Twitter and other social media platforms immediately elevated several of the students to celebrity activist status, the ones being most vocal about gun control, with Twitter going as far as awarding blue check verification marks to a handful of students while seemingly ignoring students at the same school who were not as vocal or held opposing opinions to the narrative of the day.

CNN soon scheduled a Town Hall, televised on February 21, 2018 a week after the shooting. At the town hall, we saw students, teachers, and parents ask many questions of members of Congress, the sheriff of Broward County Scott Israel, and Dana Loesch, spokesperson for the NRA.  The students questions were direct and seemed to be laser like in wording with the emphasis that the NRA was responsible for the tragedy.  Student Emma Gonzalez can be shown here reading from a small sheet of paper that appears to have her name printed on it.

The town hall and the aftermath that followed was globally discussed by media pundits, print journalists, posters on Internet forums, and pretty much anyone with a social media account. The words of the students and teachers became the overwhelming voice of a movement solely dedicated to reduce the power and protections of the 2nd Amendment.  

Colton Haab was one of the students originally selected to be in the group of students on stage asking questions of the guests. CNN Executive Producer for Special Projects, Carrie Stevenson, took on the task of assembling the students and developing the format for the town hall.

In an interview on Fox News with Tucker Carlson the day following the town hall, Colton described that Ms. Stevenson, in a series of emails, had advised Colton’s father Glenn Haab to ask Colton to ask more questions instead of a “speech” and instead “stick” to a singular question that according to Colton, would not have been the one question he wanted to ask. Also in the interview, Colton described the pre-written questions on small pieces of paper like the ones Emma Gonzalez stumbled to read from at the town hall as evidence the questions were rehearsed and planned ahead of time. Colton refused to participate in the town hall and immediately people wanted to know why.

We can speculate on the steps and motivation Ms. Stevenson utilized for this process of gathering students and preparing the content and agenda for the town hall. However, when Colton Haab refused to participate in the town hall because he felt his genuine questions were being modified into a singular question that was formulated by CNN; compiling his originally submitted question regarding the arming of teachers with information from an interview he had previously done on the Fox network, little did know he would become the center of a national controversy.

After the interview on Fox in which Colton basically outed Ms. Stevenson and her employer, the Time Warner owned CNN, as having scripted the questions for the students involved, CNN obviously had to go on the attack to defend its reputation as “the most trusted name in news.” Mind you, CNN has been in the fake news conversation going all the way back to the Gulf War and the infamous segments being done from a war zone or the more recent compilation of blatant misleading and hypocritical coverage of current events.

The Haab family is not alone in their claims that CNN crafted the narrative for the town hall. Andrew Klein, and his daughter Ariana who is also a student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglass, also declined to participate in the town hall because according to Klein, the CNN producer that contacted them was looking for participants that “espoused a certain narrative.”  Klein did an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News, and said “As I recall, the producer said, ‘We’re looking for people who want to talk about the policy implications about what happened,’” making it obvious that CNN had an agenda for the town hall before it even started.  Organic conversation with students, teachers, law enforcement, and policy makers was not the intent.  A well-crafted storyboard of statements and questions meant to drive the policy agenda of gun control was the goal.  According, to Glenn Haab in a phone interview conducted by the author on March, 3 2018, he stated that Ms. Stevenson explained that the questions needed to be submitted ahead of time to give the lawmakers ample time to “formulate their answers”.  A recap of this interview is available on YouTube.

Soon after the “scripted questions” controversy began to gain traction, CNN produced their version of the story. The emails from CNN and the email presented by Glenn Haab appeared on numerous news sites including AOL formerly a Time-Warner owned company now owned by Verizon, to show that some alterations had been made to one of the emails presented by Mr. Haab.

It appears that the only alteration made in the Haab email presented as evidence of the “scripting” committed by Ms. Stevenson and CNN,  is the omission of three words. “That he submitted” was omitted from the email that Haab brought forth and was not in the email that Ms. Stevenson and CNN shared with news sites across the spectrum.

“That he submitted” referring to the fact that Colton had indeed submitted questions to Ms. Stevenson prior are a moot point and do not show some type of malice or an attempt to falsify the narrative in anyway.  In an email between myself and Mr. Haab, he quotes “Thinking back, I unintentionally let [sic] “left” it out because it wasn’t accurate.” Later during the phone interview referenced earlier, Mr. Haab would state “When I put the information out on my Facebook to explain why we were not at the town hall, I omitted those three words because it was not true that Colton submitted what CNN had asked him to read.  They had crafted together a combination of his interview and his questions.” This is an indication that Mr. Haab was asserting that the omission of the words “That he submitted” was meant to correct the record in his mind that CNN was alleging that Colton had submitted the question or questions that CNN supplied. Mr. Haab was correcting CNN’s version of the story.  He omitted the three words to defend his son, and in doing so, CNN now claims the whole thing is an attempt to make them look bad, and the media giant set the Internet on fire with their version of the story which perpetuated numerous articles, blog posts, and an army of trolls on social media set to slander Mr. Haab and call him and son a liar.  Bob Eller from the Associated Press did an interview with Mr. Haab, asking such questions as “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and “Do you own a gun?” Do either of these questions have anything to do with school safety? No.  This is a textbook case of media spin and it appears an innocent father from Florida is clearly the victim of media tricks and double speak.

The selected emails that CNN chose to provide, can be seen in a opinion piece by Erik Wemple of the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post.  along with the author’s comments that “debunk” the allegation that CNN scripted the questions to be presented by the students at the town hall.  The full email chain between CNN and Mr. Haab and Colton, to include a demand letter to CNN requesting a retraction of accusations of the Haab’s lying and doctoring emails are available in a .PDF here.

There are also inconsistencies in the story that CNN is telling, in that Ms. Stevenson alleges that she spent time on the phone debating back and forth with Colton about his questions during the day on February 21.  Mr. Haab denies this, and has the phone records to prove that Colton called Ms. Stevenson around 5:00 pm that day because he had not spoken to her all day. The Haab’s received an email from Ms. Stevenson at 5:47 pm stating that Colton needed to ask the question seen below, and that his proposed questions and statements were “too long” and “He needs to stick to this.”  Mr. Haab also stated that Ms. Stevenson said “Even the dead kids parents do not get that much time.”

We have to examine the two parties in this situation. Who is motivated by what and what agenda is being pursued by the parties? On one hand we have a media powerhouse. An institution that for three decades has ruled the airwaves as the “standard” for 24 hour news.  This is just one of the outlets to include MSNBC, FOX, etc., that spew out information that they have carefully massaged and crafted in order to create emotional reaction and subsequent actions by the viewer to maintain a narrative that supports a globalist agenda. On the other hand we have a father of a teenager who attends school where a shooting took place. We have a teenager who refused to be coerced into toeing the line and regurgitating the talking points. We have two men, one young and one old, who are being painted as liars by the king of all media liars, CNN. Who has the most to gain here? Who has the most to lose here? I think the answer is obvious.  CNN cannot afford to lose anymore viewers.  The network has basically been clowned by the President for over two years. They are the laughing stock of the airwaves now.  They have been branded as the Clinton News Network by millions of people.  They have been forever linked to the catchphrase “Fake News.” Who are you going to believe? A failing network that made billions promoting false and shady story lines over the decades to generate support for chosen political figures and their agendas and policies? Or do you believe a father and his son who refused to be pawns in a carefully crafted global gun grab? I believe the latter,  and that is not a lie.