CBS News Correspondent Jan Crawford Apologises Over El-Sayed Post
CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford has apologised for a social media post about Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and deleted it.
The row centres on a town hall meeting on Saturday night in Michigan. A town hall, meaning an open question-and-answer session with voters, where a young man named Tommy asked El-Sayed if he would “disavow the Muslim brotherhood,” according to Variety.
Crawford then posted about the exchange. She wrote that El-Sayed spent just a “nanosecond” on disavowal, followed by a “subsequent uninterrupted three-minute diatribe” that proved the questioner’s “exact point.” She called it “the kind of spectacular self own most ppl only dream about triggering” and added “congrats.”
By Sunday afternoon on 18 October 2026, that post was gone. Crawford, who posts on X under the handle @JanCBS, issued a short apology on the same platform.
“Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall,” she wrote. “I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize.”
Her deletion and apology followed heavy backlash, as reported by Mediaite. CBS News declined to make executives available for comment on the post.
Crawford is a long-serving Washington correspondent. She joined CBS News in 2009 after work for ABC News and analysis contributions to PBS NewsHour. Earlier, after graduating from law school at the University of Chicago, she covered the legal affairs beat for the Chicago Tribune.
El-Sayed is running as a Democrat for the US Senate. As background, PolitiFact reported on 1 October 2026 that he had condemned the Michigan synagogue attack, and that he apologised in response to a question asked while speaking to a group of Jewish Democrats.
What makes this stand out for viewers is the line it draws. Correspondents often post in their own voice online. Newsrooms still hold those posts to newsroom standards.
