A large group of Bernie Sanders supporters protested in front of the CNN building in Hollywood on Sunday over the cable channel’s coverage of the 2016 presidential election, and what some said was unequal time on TV.
According to CBS Los Angeles, protesters at the building on Sunset Blvd. expressed concerns that presidential candidates are not getting equal airtime on the cable channel. Crowd estimates have gone as high as 1,000 people.
“Stop showing Trump so much,” said a man interviewed by a Periscope user Sanders Fangirl. “Stick to the issues.”
“There should be fair and equal coverage for all presidential candidates,” said a man also interviewed by the Periscope user.
Many had organized online under the #OccupyCNN and #BernieBlackout hashtags. The #OccupyCNN hashtag was for a time on Sunday the third top-trending topic on Twitter. Social-media monitoring service Trendsmap showed it’s not only a hot topic in the United States, with the #OccupyCNN hashtag trending globally, in Asia, Europe and South America.
BuzzTrends, another social-media monitor, said that this was the first time #OccupyCNN had ever trended on Twitter.
And at least one Twittizen suggested there’s more to come. Birdie Worldpeace (@darts89119) tweeted: “#OccupyCNN dry run done. Great Job to all next one will.be yuge yuger.”
For its part, CNN had no comment as of early Sunday evening; the only mentions of the protests on CNN’s Facebook page were those made by the protesters themselves.