Asked to respond to the segment, Mark Feldstein, a University of Maryland broadcast journalism professor and former CNN journalist, tells Rolling Stone: “Shameful might be overstating it, but appalling isn’t.” Feldstein argues CNN should have ended the interview as soon as Corsi and Klayman veered off into conspiracy territory, but he says he’s not surprised the network didn’t cut away. “You have to have some journalistic judgment about credibility,” he says. “This isn’t about that; this is about ratings. This is about generating heat.”

Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor and widely read media critic, writes in an email that he sees a pattern in CNN’s choice of giving Corsi and Klayman a platform to peddle their conspiracies with only Cooper to hold them accountable. “It is CNN’s de facto policy that the spread of misinformation on CNN — as well as the strategic production of chaos in matters of fact — is OK with CNN, as long as a CNN person puts up a fight,” Rosen says.