Put another way, in a highly partisan environment rife with factual instability and motivated misinformation, there is great value in having one authoritative source that a plurality of people trust to report the news as it actually is, a source with credibility on both sides of the aisle. But new CEO Licht, who before coming to CNN was executive producer of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, doesn’t strike me as an obvious right-wing hack, and partisan capture isn’t the only possible explanation for the recent personnel shifts at the network.Īt the end of his final episode of Reliable Sources, Stelter expressed his belief that the world needs CNN to be strong. This take on the relative merits of Fox News and CNN indeed sounds like the sort of thing you’d expect to hear from a very rich man who gave at least $250,000 to Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration, and who is currently a director emeritus of the Cato Institute. But in its haste to renew its appeal with the sorts of old cranks who will be last in line to cancel their cable subscriptions, the network risks damaging its credibility as a news organization that can be counted on to tell the truth even when its viewers do not want to hear it. After the February departure of longtime network CEO Jeff Zucker, and the April merger of CNN’s parent company with Discovery, the network has been under a renewed mandate to build a stronger, more sustainable business in the cord-cutting era. So why does the new management at CNN seem so intent on pretending otherwise? The answer, of course, is because millions of Americans still support Trump and believe his obvious lies, and because CNN would like very much for some of these people to help boost the network’s flagging ratings. Journalists are supposed to report the facts, and Trump’s dishonest demagoguery is one of the plainest facts of the present day. Capitol in order to “stop the steal,” and is now using his political clout to support those midterm candidates who most aggressively subscribe to his election lies. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, pretended he didn’t, induced thousands of idiots to storm the U.S.
The statement is roughly as disputable as saying that fire is hot or water is wet. Calling Donald Trump a dishonest demagogue shouldn’t be the sort of thing that might get a journalist in trouble.
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