What is wrong with CNN these days? Has it lost all standards distinguishing news from opinion?
There are plenty of us who decry President Trump’s frequent descent into name-calling. Some of us even think it’s obvious he is a virulent bigot. We may even think that racial animus or racial provocation underlay Trump’s nasty weekend tweets about the city of Baltimore.
But those are opinions. They are not irrefutable. They are not hard news.
Yet I am watching CNN right now as it runs a chyron on the bottom of the screen labeled “Politics of hate.” Its subhead is “Trump using racism as a political strategy in new rhetoric.”
The chyrons do not contain question marks. They do not say that some people say these things about Trump. The chyrons state these judgments as fact. They state them as incontrovertible. They brook no disagreement. They make a bald assertion, unmoored to either objectivity or dispassionate reporting.
This is not fact-based news. This is not straight reporting. This is bias, pure and simple. It is why Trump benefits so much from railing against “fake news” and “the enemy of the people.” Viewers do not like to be browbeaten. They do not like supposedly straight news shows to draw conclusions for them, much less preach to them or hector them.
Leave that to the opinionators. Don’t call it news. Rename the organization the Cable Opinion-Spewers Network, and then the current CNN would be fine. Until then, cool it. Get some professionalism. Let viewers think for ourselves. Get a grip.
