Chris Cuomo never missed an opportunity to tell his “luv guv” big brother what a great job he was doing. “Obviously, I think you’re the best politician in the country,” the CNN host told Andrew Cuomo last year in one of their hokey interviews a few months into the pandemic. “But I hope you feel good about what you did for your people, because I know they appreciate it.” By that point, the brotherly love act had lost the little charm it had to begin with, and the ethics of a journalist using his primetime program to lavish praise on his powerful sibling had gone from murky to simply bad. But the younger Cuomo apparently had good reason to show his appreciation: It turns out, the CNN host may have meant “your people” more literally than it initially seemed.
The Albany Times-Union on Wednesday reported that, while COVID-ravaged New Yorkers struggled to find testing in the early days of the pandemic, the now-embattled governor instructed his top health officials to give members of his family and others close to his administration priority access to testing. That preferential treatment included dispatching an epidemiologist to Chris Cuomo’s home in the Hamptons to administer a test on the journalist, who was sidiagnosed with the virus last March. The Cuomo administration denied any “devious intent,” calling reports in the Times-Union and Washington Post “insincere efforts to rewrite the past.”
“We were absolutely going above and beyond to get people testing…to take samples from those believed to have been exposed to COVID in order to identify cases and prevent additional ones,” Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, said in a statement. “Among those we assisted were members of the general public, including legislators, reporters, state workers and their families who feared they had contracted the virus and had the capability to further spread it.” But those close to or related to the governor appear to have received top priority: Their tests were referred to as “critical samples,” a source told the Times-Union.
“We referred to them as ‘specials,’” a person familiar with the governor’s directive recalled to the Post.
Already facing calls to resign over accusations of sexual misconduct, which Cuomo denies, and an apparent cover-up of nursing home deaths, the alleged preferential treatment only adds to the scandals swirling around the governor. It also shines a harsh light on his younger brother and CNN, which has faced intensifying scrutiny for airing the Cuomo Brothers Show in the first place. Chris Cuomo and his network chief, Jeff Zucker, had previously defended the interviews, arguing that the pair needling each other about not calling their mom enough was what the country needed. But while journalism ethics were loosened last year to allow for the ratings-boosting fraternal banter, they’ve been curiously tightened back up now that the governor is drowning in controversy, as my colleague Charlotte Klein pointed out earlier this month. “Obviously, I am aware of what is going on with my brother,” the CNN host said, referring to the misconduct claims rocking Albany that he hadn’t reported on. “And obviously I cannot cover it because he is my brother.”
Covering Cuomo when he’s “America’s Governor” but not when he becomes a pariah obviously raises significant ethical concerns. But revelations that Chris Cuomo was benefitting from special treatment while he was helping to build that mythology is even worse. In fact, it’s why such ethical boundaries are drawn in the first place. CNN on Wednesday defended the anchor, with a spokesman saying in a statement that “it is not surprising that in the earliest days of a once-in-a-century global pandemic…he turned to anyone he could for advice and assistance, as any human being would.” But that’s not really the issue, at least for Chris Cuomo and his network—it’s that he used his platform to help turn his personal hero into a national hero, without ever “getting after” all the reasons he might be inclined to do so.
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