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“We are doomed.”
“Everybody is reeling about the obvious things.”
“The mood is horrific. People are very upset.”
“A mix of despair, apprehension, and curiosity.”
That’s what staffers and insiders are telling various news outlets regarding the frame of mind inside CNN following news that Warner Bros. Discovery’s board has chosen Paramount’s takeover bid over a competing offer from Netflix — a deal that would put CNN under the control of Paramount CEO David Ellison. The sale would include CNN, which means it would be run by Ellison, who recently installed Bari Weiss as head of CBS News.
“The majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based,” Ellison said recently.
And this echoes what Warner Bros. Discovery chairman emeritus John Malone wrote in his upcoming memoir regarding CNN’s direction in the post-Ted Turner era, calling the network “a shadow of what its founder had envisioned” and stating his anchors, reporters, and hosts are “left of center,” who “express their opinions too much in their news.”
Malone isn’t wrong. CNN became the crown jewel of journalism during the first Gulf War in 1991 after it outsmarted and out-hustled all of the broadcast networks in providing live coverage of the U.S. bombing of Baghdad. The little cable news network emerged from the conflict as a major player, likely prompting the creation of Fox News and MSNBC after ratings soared even higher during the 1994-1995 O.J. Simpson murder investigation and trial. Fox News and MSNBC both launched in 1996.
But during the Trump era, the network veered hard to the Left, and provocatively so. Anchors and reporters seemed far more interested in going viral on social media or being invited onto late-night shows than in doing the kind of objective and honest reporting that made the network what it was under Turner.
“[Trump] is the most powerful person in the world and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun,” Anderson Cooper once said of Trump on the air in 2021. Much of the legacy media cheered the comment.
And then there was Jake Tapper attacking Lara Trump in 2020 for her (correct) observation that Joe Biden was suffering from cognitive decline:
“Joe Biden, as we all know, has worked to overcome a stutter,” Tapper shot back in scolding fashion.
“I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline,” Lara Trump maintained.
“You have no [evidence of] … a cognitive decline,” Tapper said. “I think you were mocking his stutter. And I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose someone’s cognitive decline.”
The irony of all ironies is that Tapper went on to write a book about Biden’s cognitive decline and how the media “missed” the story.
Former anchor Don Lemon also frequently let his biases show.
“This is CNN Tonight. I’m Don Lemon. The president of the United States is a racist. A lot of us already knew that,” he once said at the top of his “news” program.
There are hundreds of other examples of opinion being presented as news, but studies also back up Malone’s contention.
Harvard University, not exactly a bastion of conservatism, conducted a study in 2017 showing that CNN led the way in covering the first 100 Days of the Trump administration negatively. In contrast, Fox News’s coverage of the 45th president was 52% negative. And CNN has continued that overwhelming negativity throughout Trump’s first term and into his second, unabated.
Can CNN actually change? We’ve seen this movie before in 2023 when Warner Bros. Discovery tapped Chris Licht to run the network as the successor to Jeff Zucker. Licht was given a mission: to bring CNN back to a facts-first organization and bring more independents and conservatives into the fold.
In May 2023, CNN announced Trump would be attending a town hall with Kaitlan Collins serving as moderator. Given Trump was a former president and was likely going to be the Republican nominee for a third time, this invite was completely justified. Until it wasn’t.
“This thing was madness, total madness,” New York Times media reporter and CNN contributor Bill Carter tweeted at the time. “Like giving a microphone to Drunk Uncle and saying: go for it!”
“This is CNN’s lowest moment as an organization,” the Atlantic’s James Fallows declared.
“THIS is the 2024 Republican presidential primary,” CNN Senior Media Correspondent Brian Stelter wrote. “Look away if you choose, but this is what it’s going to be like. Should news outlets sanitize it or stare it in the face?”
How does one “sanitize” a live broadcast? Was there a need to sanitize Biden on CNN when he falsely stated he inherited 9% inflation from Trump or that the Covid vaccine prevented infection and death? Of course not.
After the Trump town hall, Cooper took it to the extreme by calling Trump’s appearance on CNN “disturbing.”
“I get it. It was disturbing,” he said directly to viewers. “The man you were so disturbed to see last night, that man is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president. “You have every right to be outraged today, angry, and never watch this network again, but do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?”
Cooper was never reprimanded. Licht, however, would be fired less than a month later following a mutiny.
With that backdrop, who’s to say that CNN under Ellison and Weiss will even come close to accomplishing its mission of “news that is balanced and fact-based”?
In order for true change to come, CNN will need to undergo the same overhaul as the Indiana Hoosiers college football team. A new coach and his staff were brought in a few years ago. New players out of the portal and recruitment were brought in. IU was the worst Division 1 football program in history two years ago. But its leadership, players, and culture were completely changed, and they miraculously captured the national championship last month.
KEIR STARMER TAKES ANOTHER LEAP TOWARD POLITICAL OBLIVION
The same goes for CNN. As long as the “left of center” culture is prominent, and as long as anchors and hosts believe they can say and do whatever they want, nothing will change.
And if the mood of feeling doom and despair following the announcement that Paramount and Ellison will be taking over is any indication, that change will be virtually impossible barring a major internal overhaul.
