CNN Staffers 'Demoralized' by Hiring of GOP Operative Sarah Isgur to Edit 2020 Coverage

[DirtEdonE]

24. CNN Can't Stop Pandering to the People Who Despise It Most

This is very disheartening. It's starting to feel like a 2016 redux.

GQ

CNN Can’t Stop Pandering to the People Who Despise It Most


"No media outlet has found itself more frequently in the crosshairs of the president's war on the press than CNN, which has alternately been barred from the White House grounds, smeared at press conferences as "fake news," and featured prominently in an old WWE clip in which its logo is superimposed over the face of a man who gets clotheslined by Donald Trump. Threats against its journalists and facilities are disturbingly commonplace, while Republican politicians, following Trump's lead, have become openly contemptuous of its reporting.

Today the network responded to this broken fire hydrant of malevolence by hiring Sarah Isgur—a longtime GOP strategist and occasional cable-news talking head who boasts no other experience in journalism—to "coordinate political coverage for the 2020 campaign." Through 2018, Isgur served as spokesperson for former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who needs no introduction; before that, she worked in various capacities for the failed presidential candidacies of Mitt Romney, Carly Fiorina, and Ted Cruz.

As the old saying goes: If you can't get them to stop launching vicious attacks as part of a cynical, coordinated effort to discredit your journalistic bona fides, hire those people to help determine the future of your journalistic enterprise instead.

CNN realized long ago that in the Trump era, trafficking in vapid, both-sides infotainment would prove to be a profitable investment. This hire, however, is different in kind: A person who has spent her professional life working to get Republican politicians elected is now tasked with helping to steer a major network's treatment of an election in which a prominent Republican politician will be a principal contestant. It is roughly the equivalent of hiring Tim Cook as a new "tech-industry editor" and then assigning him to cover the next iPhone announcement."

https://www.gq.com/story/cnn-sarah-isgur-hire