China Censors CNN Report on Chinese Censorship Live on Air: ‘That Is Wild!’

The censors in China have a quick trigger.

That much is clear after CNN was censored live on air on Monday right, immediately after the channel ran a story on how China’s censorship operation was allowing critical AI-generated content of President Donald Trump to flourish online since the start of the Iran war.

“Beijing’s heavy-handed government censors are allowing videos like this to spread, magnifying the narrative that President Donald Trump is evil and dishonest,” CNN correspondent Will Ripley reported from Taipei. CNN showed an AI clip of Trump and cartoon monsters — who apparently represented members of his cabinet — hitting a big red “Lie” button as Ripley reported.

Host Elex Michaelson then brought on Beijing-based correspondent Mike Valerio to talk more about it. That’s when things went sideways.

“We’re being watched right now, so if we say anything that they deem problematic they will put color bars up and say, please stand by,” Valerio explained.

He then said a moment later, “Anddd we’re being censored right now, just so you know. Color bars are up.”

Michaelson got a kick out of it.

“So I just asked a question about how the Chinese censors work, and the Chinese people that were monitoring that decided we do not want people to hear that and they started to censor that discussion,” Michaelson said while smirking. “Wow, that’s amazing.”

You can watch that clip at the top of the page.

And the same thing happened the following hour, when Michaelson asked Valerio if CNN was back on the air.

“Ohh! I was just going to say we’re back on the air but apparently we’re not!” Valerio told him. CNN then split the screen to show the multi-colored sign that read “No Signal, Please Stand By” that viewers in China were now seeing.

“Whenever there’s discussion about Chinese censorship in Western media, sometimes you see this,” Valerio explained.

Michaelson again got a chuckle out of the whole ordeal.

“That is wild. At least they’re watching,” Michaelson quipped. “They’re watching very closely.”

CNN is not available to most people in China, but is available in certain locations that cater to travelers and diplomats.

You can watch that clip above, via CNN.

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