On Sunday, CNN issued a formal condemnation of one of their own freelance journalists after he posted a tweet praising former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, as reported by the Daily Caller.
The tweet came from Adeel Raja, a journalist based in Islamabad, Pakistan, who has contributed freelance work to CNN in the past. On Sunday afternoon, in response to the escalating tensions between Israel and Palestinian terrorists who resumed unprovoked rocket attacks on the country, Raja simply tweeted: “The world today needs a Hitler.”
Social media users took screenshots of the controversial tweet, and subsequently began digging back through his older tweets to find similar remarks. In addition to a tweet last week in which he referred to Israel as “terrorists,” Raja had also posted two tweets similarly praising Hitler back in 2014. Commenting on Germany’s advancement to the final round of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Raja said that “the only reason I am supporting Germany in the finals is Hitler was a German and he did good with those Jews!” He then posted a follow-up tweet simply reading “Hail Hitler.”
Raja, according to his LinkedIn page, had been working as a freelance contributor for CNN since 2013. In response to the fallout over his tweet, the news network issued a statement from Matt Dornic, Head of Strategic Communications, who tried to distance the network from Raja. Describing him as having “never been a CNN employee” and admitting that his work in the past had “contributed to some newsgathering efforts from Islamabad,” Dornic confirmed that “in light of these abhorrent statements, he will not be working with CNN again in any capacity.”