Via Newsbusters, what’s gotten into these two? First they defend the cop in the Bryant shooting, then they call out the media for egregious bias — totally appropriately.

Is CNN trying to win over some conservative viewers now that ratings among their regular audience have completely tanked?

Whatever. I’m just glad that there’s some sanity somewhere on television about this case. Besides Fox, of course, which interviewed Bryant’s neighbor yesterday:

“The video doesn’t lie,” [Donavon Brinson] said. The police officer “did what he thought was best,” given he had only seconds to react, the neighbor asserted…

Brinson then ran through the possible situations: “He could have either not fired and the young lady in pink could have got stabbed in the neck or would have been fatally injured and then responded and shot and that would have been two young ladies possibly dead, or he could have responded the way that he did and unfortunately one lady lost her life in the incident that probably could have been avoided.”

Meanwhile, in Columbus, activists desperate to treat Bryant’s shooting as some sort of hate crime are now openly threatening the police:

BLM activists call for assassinations of police in response to the Columbus shooting of an armed teenager. pic.twitter.com/U5TWhyI0iZ

— Mr. James (@TheElefentGamer) April 22, 2021

Other activists on social media have moved from complaining that the police should let teenagers with knives fight each other rather than intervene to complaining that the cop actually put the girl in pink in greater danger by firing at Bryant, never mind that he almost surely saved the girl’s life:

Yes! Are we sure the pink sweatsuit’s parents want a panicked cop shooting 4 times near their daughter’s head? She came inches away from getting murdered. https://t.co/9mGs6LzCkl

— Young Daddy (@Toure) April 22, 2021

She came inches away from being murdered because she was about to be impaled on a blade, buddy. The cop took a chance by firing at her assailant in order to spare her from certain death.

A simple “thanks” will suffice.

As a companion piece to the chitchat between Lemon and Cuomo, read Drew Holden’s lengthy, example-rich Twitter thread of just how misleading the coverage of Bryant’s death has been. It started out politically motivated, aimed at turning Bryant into a martyr killed unjustly by police because of her race, but increasingly the narrative-building may have been driven by simple ass-covering. Having jumped to conclusions early about the facts, some media and activists didn’t want to admit error. They never do. That’s malpractice, just as Lemon and Cuomo say.