In recent months, I have been following the new CNN owners and their pledge to restore fair and balanced news to the left-leaning network. While they talked about getting back to more traditional news reporting (real journalism), their motives may have been more pecuniary than noble.
The once dominant news platform, CNN ratings descended into the proverbial toilet. It seems their audience was being stripped way on the right and left by FOX and MSNBC, respectively. The once self-proclaimed “most trusted name in news” fell to a distant third place among cable news services.
The new management team seemed to be moving in the right direction – literally and figuratively. They dumped such hardcore lefties as a media critic Brian Stelter, White House correspondent John Harwood and the morning team of John Berman and Briana Keilar. Don Lemon got demoted from his own primetime evening show to one of three co-anchors in the early morning slot.
More recently, the boys at the top of CNN seem to have reverted to the old placate-the-left format. Recently, they hired two of America’s most prominent Trump hating Republicans (or is it former Republicans?) – former Congressman Adam Kinzinger and gadfly former Congressman Joe Walsh. Both were Republican legislators who not only broke with Trump but became part of the cadre of false-flag Republicans who attacked the GOP brand and grassroots voters.
Personally, I think hiring them was a bad move for CNN. Just as Trump seems to be moving into the political rearview mirror, CNN decides to hire two of his most vociferous critics. Bringing Kinzinger and Walsh on board at this time seems to suggest that CNN’s effort to restore journalistic integrity and improve ratings is on hold.
CNN is continuing to use so-called documentary to sell left-wing propaganda. They recently produced a hit job on former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a “special” selling the Democrats’ – and the January 6th Committee’s – version of the Capitol Hill riot. In the many years, I have followed CNN, I have yet to see one of their documentaries that reflected favorably on the GOP or conservatives.
But giving Kinzinger and Walsh a platform to continue to spew their anti-Republican and anti-conservative rhetoric – and running endless left-oriented specials — are not the only indications that CNN’s shift to the center may be coming to an end. It is also what is not happening.
The replacement of the hardcore left-wing talent– and the even harder core folks in the back offices –seems to have come to a halt. As long as Jim Acosta, John Avlon, and discredited FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe are still the faces and voices of CNN, the talk about getting CNN back into the real news business will lack credibility.
Don Lemon’s replacement in the evening – Alysin Camerota and Laura Coates — are presenting issues with the same leftward spin – and the same panels of left-wing contributors — as Lemon.
Since it is safe to assume that the bosses at CNN monitor ratings like an emergency room physician monitors heart beats, the sudden reversal back to the old CNN may mean the new approach is not improving the ratings. Perhaps they cannot draw viewers from the FOX News that leans right — and has more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. In fact, Newsmax may be taking on more FOX viewers than CNN.
That leaves them one option – try to strip off some of the MSNBC audience. In my opinion, that would be more of a challenge than going after FOX. The MSNBC audience is composed of the most radical of the hardcore left. If there is any political cultism in America, you are likely to find it at MSNBC. As far as CNN taking MSNBC viewers, the latter has a much smaller pool of viewers from which to draw – and they are less interested in education than reinforcement of their extreme political views and narratives.
It will take time to know if my observation is the long-term outlook for CNN or a temporary course adjustment. For the sake of television journalism, I am hoping for the latter.
So, there ‘tis.
Original Article: CNN is Back to the Old Biases – The Punching Bag Post
