On Friday afternoon, Fox News and the HuffPost reached out to CNN to verify emails between the Haabs and Stevenson that they received from Colton.attachment 1[3].docx by Michelle on Scribd
A CNN source provided Colton's version of the emails, as well as their versions of all of the communications between the Haabs and CNN, to Business Insider.
In CNN's version of one email, Stevenson told Glenn that Colton needed to stick to a question that he and Stevenson "discussed on the phone that he submitted." But in the version of the email provided by Colton to Fox and HuffPost, the phrase, "that he submitted" is deleted.
According to the metadata of the Word document containing the email that was provided to Fox, it appears that Glenn last edited it.
"It is unfortunate that an effort to discredit CNN and the town hall with doctored emails has taken any attention away from the purpose of the event," a CNN spokesman told Business Insider. "However, when presented with doctored email exchanges, we felt the need to set the record straight."
Glenn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
0299_001[6] by Michelle on Scribd
0300_001[1] by Michelle on Scribd
Yet, CNN is not out of the woods yet. They still need to explain Andrew Klein's accusation that the network only wants people who push gun control. Klein's daughter survived the shooting as well. While the CNN producer who spoke with Klein didn't mention guns, he took "the espouse a certain narrative" as a reference to gun control (via Washington Examiner):
The father of a survivor of last week's school shooting in Parkland, Fla., said Thursday night that a CNN producer "insinuated" to him that the network was looking for people to interview that would "espouse a certain narrative."
Andrew Klein, whose daughter survived the school shooting, told Laura Ingraham on Fox News Thursday that he spoke to a CNN producer the day after the shooting, Feb. 15., and he took away from the conversation that they wanted to interview people that wanted to talk about the "policy implications of what happened in terms of preventing future mass shootings."
[...]
"The producer insinuated to me they were looking for people to espouse a certain narrative, which was taking the tragedy and turning it into a policy debate. And I read that as being a gun control debate," Klein said.
Comment: See also: Florida shooting survivor Colton Haab doubles down on claim that CNN's entire town hall was scripted. Haab insists it was scripted, but in this case it looks like the truth probably lies in the middle. Haab had provided a question CNN deemed acceptable. Once they saw what other questions he wanted to ask, they told him to stick to the script, i.e., the original question. While not quite as sensational as Haab makes it seem, it does show that CNN only wants to present a certain narrative, as Mr. Klein confirms above.