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Chris Licht’s tumultuous year-long tenure as CEO of CNN has ended in disgrace, but the real story, the important story, is why. The answer is that the left-wing activists on the staff will not tolerate anything that calls into question the progressive orthodoxy.
The irony, of course, is that when Warner Brothers/Discovery head David Zaslav picked Licht for the job, he specifically said he wanted a more middle-of-the-road CNN. “Journalism first,” he said brazenly last summer, adding, “America needs a news network where everyone can come and be heard; Republicans (and) Democrats.”
As billionaire Warner Bros. board member and confidant of Zaslav, John Malone, put it last August, he wanted “the news section of CNN to be more centered.” Pretty clear.
CEO CHRIS LIGHTS OUT AT CNN
Less than a year later, on Wednesday, Licht was kicked out, largely because he repeated those statements in an article in Atlantic magazine and because he had given the go-ahead to a networked town hall featuring Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
CNN CEO Chris Licht has disappeared from the network after a town hall with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and an unflattering feature in The Atlantic. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)
Think about that. Trump is the most likely GOP candidate for president right now, and Licht thought viewers might need to hear from him. For his trouble, half of the on-air talent at the low-rated outlet grabbed the fainting couch and threw a freak about Trump’s “platforming.”
It is not so much the inmates who run the asylum as the censors who run the newspaper.
Pick any issue, any issue, Trump, the 2020 election, Hunter Biden, the trans issue, COVID-19, any of them, and you can bet that the bobbleheads on CNN will be in sync with their chorus of left talking points .
It was Licht’s predecessor, former CEO Jeff Zucker, who changed CNN’s mission from breaking the news to saving America during his tenure. He was a vision of activism, brave journalists, at least in his mind, covering the evil orange man’s lies as St. George slays dragons.
The only problem was that apart from a captive audience at the airport, no one wanted to watch it. Zucker’s favorite project, the doomed streaming service CNN+, was such an unmitigated marketing disaster that the makers of New Coke broke out champagne at the new low tide.
Isn’t this exactly what Licht needed to change, by trying to bring in a more ideologically diverse audience? And his efforts were quite frankly milquetoast. He fired a few personalities who were considered biased, but it’s not like he gave Steve Bannon a weekend show or advertised My Pillow.
The lesson here is clear: No true conservative voices, the kind that reflect the views of the vast majority of right-wing Americans, will be tolerated by the weeping left-wing idiots in the CNN newsroom.
What is less clear is why Zaslav and The Powers That Be allow the employees to bombard the network with this ideological veto. Who’s in charge, Zaslav or Jake Tapper, and who the hell would want to pretend to be CEO when the staff are really in control? It’s no mystery why CNN is about as popular as BBQ ribs at a PETA convention, it’s because everyone knows that despite their claims to be neutral, the network doesn’t accept the views of tens of millions of Americans as valid.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav chose Chris Licht for the job with a “journalism first” vow. It wasn’t the first. (Boston University)
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Whatever his faults, however bad of a boss he was, Licht understood what the problem was and at least modestly tried to solve it. No one will be crazy enough to try that again after seeing it panted by both their employees and employers.
Until CNN gives up on the ludicrous claim that most conservative ideas are so dangerous they shouldn’t get airtime, nothing, nothing will change.
It’s a real shame because CNN could and should be an important voice in American discourse, but it isn’t anymore, and that’s not Chris Licht’s fault, it’s the talent on the network’s fault that, just like petulant children, only demanding to hear their own favorite story.
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It’s also the fault of the Warner Brothers/Discovery leadership who, like the New York Times, failed both literally and figuratively when the awakened newsroom brought out the guillotine for Light.
In the end, CNN will reap what it sowed here: declining viewership, declining revenue, and most detrimentally, declining relevance. It turns out that CNN employees really enjoy hearing their own opinions and voices, unfortunately they are very quickly becoming the only people doing that.
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