CNN’s Abby Phillip corrects comments on ISIS-inspired attack in NYC

Abby Phillip, one of CNN’s prime-time hosts, corrected comments she made on the air Tuesday night about what police say was an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New York City earlier this week.

As the host teased a segment going into a commercial break, Phillip said “Two [elected] Republicans say Muslims don’t belong here after an attempted terror attack against New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the House Speaker, Mike Johnson [R-La.], says nothing, really, to condemn those comments.”

In a social media post on Wednesday morning, Phillip wrote, “I want to correct something I said last night.”

“The bombs thrown in New York City over the weekend by ISIS inspired attackers was thrown into a crowd of anti-Muslim protestors and not specifically targeted at Mayor Mamdani,” she said. “That wording was inaccurate, and I didn’t catch it ahead of time. I apologize for the error.”

The correction came just hours after the outlet took heat from online critics over its framing of a story on the attack in a social media post it later deleted. CNN said its original framing “failed to reflect the gravity of the incident thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting.”

Some observers pointed out flubs like Phillip’s are common during live television broadcasts or breaking news situations.

“I’ve been out front and center on the media lies about the ISIS terrorists in NYC on Saturday. That’s not what happened here,” Batya Ungar-Sargon, a host on the cable news channel NewsNation, wrote in a post on X. “Abby read a badly written tease into commercial break. Teases can be the last thing written for a show, and someone here obviously miswrote something. Abby is reading these teases after wrangling a feisty debate for 10 minutes. Mistakes happen. It’s OK to show a little grace.”

CNN has for years taken flak from President Trump and conservatives who argue its coverage is bias against them.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sparred last week with Kaitlan Collins, another top host at the network, in the West Wing briefing room over the outlet’s coverage of U.S. service members killed as part of the ongoing war in Iran.

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