INSIDE THE MELTDOWN AT CNN

[swag]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/

CEO Chris Licht felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism. How did it all go wrong?

By Tim Alberta
Photographs by Mark Peterson

Excerpt:

. . . But that had been under the old regime. When he took the helm of CNN, in May 2022, Licht had promised a reset with Republican voters—and with their leader. He had swaggered into the job, telling his employees that the network had lost its way under former President Jeff Zucker, that their hostile approach to Trump had alienated a broader viewership that craved sober, fact-driven coverage. These assertions thrust Licht into a two-front war: fighting to win back Republicans who had written off the network while also fighting to win over his own journalists, many of whom believed that their new boss was scapegoating them to appease his new boss, David Zaslav, who’d hired Licht with a decree to move CNN toward the ideological center.

One year into the job, Licht was losing both battles. Ratings, in decline since Trump left office, had dropped to new lows. Employee morale was even worse. A feeling of dread saturated the company. Licht had accepted the position with ambitions to rehabilitate the entire news industry, telling his peers that Trump had broken the mainstream media and that his goal was to do nothing less than “save journalism.” But Licht had lost the confidence of his own newsroom. Because of this, he had come to view the prime-time event with Trump as the moment that would vindicate his pursuit of Republican viewers while proving to his employees that he possessed a revolutionary vision for their network and the broader news media.

Trump had other ideas.

For 70 minutes in Manchester, the former president overpowered CNN’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, with a continuous blast of distortion, hyperbole, and lies. The audience of Trump devotees delighted in his aggression toward Collins, cheering him on so loudly and so purposefully that what began as a journalistic forum devolved into a WWE match before the first voter asked a question. Vince McMahon himself could not have written a juicier script: Trump was the heroic brawler—loathed by the establishment, loved by the masses—trying to reclaim a title wrongly taken from him, while Collins, standing in for the villainous elites who dared to question the protagonist’s virtue, was cast as the heel. “She’s not very nice,” Trump told the studio audience, pointing toward Collins while she stood just offstage during the first commercial break.

. . . more

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/

[ThoughtCriminal]

1. The idea that moving CNN rightward

would bring it closer to the "Center" is incredibly delusional.

The idea that "Fact-driven" journalism requires pandering to the alt-world fantasies and nutty conspiracy-theories of Trump voters is just insane.

[Martin68]

3. Sounds like Licht wanted to expand CNN's audience to include more Republicans - but his assumptions

in doing so were absurd. He assumed that "[CNN's] hostile approach to Trump had alienated a broader viewership that craved sober, fact-driven coverage." The problem is that coverage of Trump that was sober and fact-driven" would by definition be extremely negative. He is either a Trump-supporting liar or delusional.

[Hekate]

4. Amazing stuff