CNN suspended anchor Chris Cuomo indefinitely because he helped his brother, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, try to combat charges of sexual harassment and inappropriate touching.

Journalists are asked by their employers to disclose conflicts of interest. If you write a story about your family, or have a financial interest in something that you are writing about, you have to disclose it.

Look at this column by Gail Collins in the New York Times. It is an opinion piece not a news story.

OPINION

GAIL COLLINS

Chris Cuomo Has a Funny Idea About What Doing His Job Means

Dec. 1, 2021

Welcome to Cuomo-free America.

Well, at least temporarily.

We’ve been working up to this for a while. Andrew Cuomo was, of course, compelled to resign the governorship of New York in August, approximately one second ahead of likely impeachment for what we can perhaps describe as verbal harassment and pathological grabbiness.

Now Chris Cuomo has been suspended by CNN, where he is a top-rated news host. There’s no question that he was trying to help with his brother’s defense even as he was assuring his viewers and bosses that it was more or less hands off.

(In a happier time, when everything wasn’t so depressing, we might have noted that “hands off” would also have been a policy that could have saved Andrew Cuomo’s career.)

Our job today is to decide how bad Chris Cuomo’s Andrew-related activities have been. It’s very easy to sympathize with his desire to protect his older brother. Their bond was evident in a series of joint, jibing TV appearances they did, some while Chris was recovering from Covid early last year, quarantined away from his family.

“Rule 1 is never hit a brother when he’s down, and you’re literally in the basement,” the governor pointed out.

The banter went on and on. Including one unfortunate episode in which Chris called Andrew the “love guv.” (At a later date, CNN shared “the very moment” Chris finally emerged from his below-ground exile — which was problematic only in that he’d reportedly been out for days.)

As a journalist, Chris had a terrible conflict of interest when Andrew fell into headline-making disgrace. The obvious answer was to keep clear, steeling himself against a very natural desire to protect a brother and a very Cuomo-like impulse to take control of the situation.

Now we know how he really responded.

“On it,” he said, when his brother’s most powerful staff member, Melissa DeRosa, asked him to find out from his “sources” whether Politico was working on a new damaging Andrew story.

In a more perfect world, this sort of temptation wouldn’t have come up because Andrew would have fiercely ordered his younger brother to stay away from the whole mess. Directed the staff to leave Chris alone and maybe organized a family intervention. It does say something that our former governor didn’t try to protect him.

Almost everything in this saga goes back to family. You have to wonder if the brothers’ impulse to take action — even action that objective minds would instantly discern as a really bad idea — is a response to the defects of Dad, who was once nicknamed “Hamlet on the Hudson.”

Mario Cuomo, in a moment that must be seared into the minds of his offspring, was expected to fly to New Hampshire and file, at the very last minute, for the presidential primary in 1991. But he left two chartered planes waiting at the Albany airport, claiming that he needed to go back to work with the Republicans on a state budget.

Not surprising that his sons are action-oriented. Not necessarily always to their advantage.

Chris Cuomo told state investigators — lately state investigators seem to be omnipresent in family life — that he was obsessed with thinking of ways to protect Andrew, and the question of how he should protect himself “just never occurred to me.” Hmm.

One of the things Chris was worried about was an article he had heard Ronan Farrow was preparing for The New Yorker. His paranoia certainly made sense. If you had ever once for a single second worried that a prominent member of your family was pathologically grabby with female employees, Ronan Farrow is one of the last people in the world you want around asking questions.

What did Chris do? Well, according to his own testimony to state officials, he went poking around — sort of like an investigative reporter — trying to find out what Farrow was up to. It was precisely what he’d promised not to do.

“Please let me help with the prep,” he told DeRosa around the time when the team was getting ready for the gubernatorial defense. Many, many text messages and email chains followed.

Then he took on Anna Ruch, who had accused Andrew of trying to kiss and fondle her at a wedding reception in 2019. “I have a lead on the wedding girl,” he reported to DeRosa.

The story, as Chris told it, was that a friend called to express concern that said wedding girl had been “put up to it.” This is very possibly true — the part about the call, that is. If somebody claimed your brother had made inappropriate moves at a public event, a pal or two might let you know they were on his side. Even if they secretly … wondered.

One big problem with Chris’s reporting is that it’s at best pretty useless. And at worst — which is also in reality — pretty wrong.

Where do you draw the line between journalism and family? Maybe at the point where you, the prominent news anchor, start thinking that your job is running down rumors for your brother.

Editors’ Picks

C

Boy, 13, shoots and wounds Snapchat rival, also 13, in Bronx playground — mom turns suspect in after seeing wanted poster

By BRITTANY KRIEGSTEIN, ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, THOMAS TRACY and LEONARD GREENENEW YORK DAILY NEWS |OCT 13, 2021 AT 2:19 PM

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-boy-shoots-snapchat-rival-bronx-playground-20211013-qhmv3pbay5cqbd4fctvb5nf5wm-story.html

A 13-year-old boy wanted for shooting a rival his same age over a Snapchat feud was arrested after his mother saw a wanted poster and hauled him into a Bronx NYPD stationhouse, police said Wednesday.

The two boys had been sparring in messages to each other on the popular phone app — and on Oct. 6 the suspect sent a message threatening to shoot the victim, police said.

The next day, the argument moved from online messages to the street, with the 4-foot-11, 110-pound teen allegedly shooting the victim in the left knee inside Hunts Point Playground about 5:35 p.m., police said.

“You just shake your head,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said on PIX11 Wednesday morning. “It’s terrible all the way around. We have to do better as a society.”

EMS took the victim to Harlem Hospital in stable condition.

“It went in and it came out, so that’s good,” the victim’s mother, Suleykie Rivera, said. “They caught it in time, they called 911 in time. He was really lucky. If the bullet would have went in and stayed that would have been tragic.”

The boy was still recovering in Harlem Hospital on Wednesday. He had also tested positive for COVID-19, the mother said.

Rivera, 33, said she didn’t know the shooter or anything about the Snapchat feud.

Social media is really a bad thing for these kids. They shouldn’t even have social media,” she said.

Snapchat allows users exchange pictures and videos — called snaps — that are meant to disappear after they’re viewed. The app, which is particularly popular among teens, has about 293 million daily active users worldwide, according to the company.

She learned of the shooting from one of her son’s friends.

“I was just shocked,” she said. “I couldn’t think, I couldn’t feel, nothing, you know. He’s 13!”

The teen shooter ran off but was captured on surveillance video, gun in hand. A second suspect, still being sought, also appears on the video, clad in a red sweatshirt and riding his bike behind the shooter, police said.

Cops released the video Sunday and asked the public’s help tracking down the suspect, known to police by his nickname Chulo.

The suspected shooter’s mother, who declined comment, saw a wanted poster with her son’s image, took him to the 41st Precinct stationhouse Tuesday afternoon and asked for a lawyer, police said.

The pint-sized suspect was charged with attempted murder, assault and harassment. His name was not released because he is a minor. The Daily News is not naming the 13-year-old victim because of his age.

Cops said that the teen shooter was processed through Family Court and returned to his mother’s custody.

Shea said that the NYPD has been trying to get to children “before they get into the violence” but more needs to be done.

“What do you do with a 13-year-old in this circumstance?” Shea asked. “There is no right answer. The courts will figure it out and you hope. You feel for the victim, but you also think about the side of the family of the child that pulled the trigger here. There are no winners.”

Amanda Palermo, 30, said she heard the shots.

“I was sitting right next to the basketball court. Four shots,” she said. “A bunch of kids came and then all you heard was four shots and he got shot in his leg. “

She said the boy fell to the ground and the shooter dashed off.

“When that happened the other kids in the park ran away,” she said. “The only ones that stayed were (the victim’s) friends.”

Local parents said the suspect and his crew have slashed tires of cars, thrown beer bottles at mothers and scared little kids with threatening looks. One of the menacing boys has a black dog that he sics on smaller kids, they said.

“Last year, they stole my son’s bike,” a local mother said. “I called the police and they never came. ”

She said parents have to take more responsibility.

“These boys have been making this a violent area,” she said, adding that one of the boys punched her son in the stomach during the robbery.

“These young boys know that the police will never come” she said. “It’s a huge problem. And as an adult, I can’t do anything against minors.”

Scared neighbors said there are also mischievousgirls who egg the boys on to fight.

“They’re really aggressive,” one of the mothers said. “They’re always alone, they’re never with their parents. One time we asked about their parents and they laughed at us.”

The parents said one of the boys flashed a knife when they threatened to call the cops but they were unaware of any of the boys carrying guns.

Michael Greene, 63, a painter who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1960s, said locals have worked to improve the area. The shooting didn’t help.

“It was kind of disturbing, a 13-year-old shooting a 13-year-old in a public park,” Greene said. “This neighborhood is trying to clean up and it’s like we’re right back where we started.”

Greene praised the mother who turned in her own flesh and blood.

“Well, that was a good thing,” Greene said. “That’s what parents are supposed to do. The kids, they so-called don’t want to snitch.”

“I feel for the young kid because he’s so young,” Greene said of the suspect. “He’s got his whole life in front of him and you’re making decisions like that. You’re supposed to run around, play fighting, playing PlayStation, eating candy. Not doing stuff like that.”

Rivera said her son is focused on his recovery, hoping to get back on the field to play football again when his knee heels. She said the doctors have given him a good prognosis for his recovery.

“I’m so thankful. He’s gonna be good. He can go back to football. He can go back to school. He’s in shock right now, so right now he isn’t really talking. Right now, he can’t even believe he got shot,” she said.

“And it’s just sad. Kids are kids. Kids trying to kill each other. It’s sad for my son who got shot, but it’s sad for the little boy that shot my son, because he’s also a kid.”