In An Attempt to Attract More Right-wingers, "Liberal" CNN Tacks Even Further to the Right
This is like trying to maintain a relationship with someone who doesn't respect you but keeps stringing you along with promises he'll love you if you just change a couple things.
There’s a convenient “either/or” fallacy that many engage in when referring to the media.
There’s right-wing hate media that maligns everything not promoting faux grievance, outrage, and fear, pandering to a overtly republican base.
Fox so-called “news” is an example of this. So are One America News Network (OANN), Sinclair Media-owned stations, Murdoch-owned newspaper The New York Post, and scores of internet sites, like Breitbart; The Epoch Times; The Blaze; The Daily Caller; The Washington Times; The Washington Examiner; and Meta, the social media site formerly known as Facebook.
Joining them are 1,500 right-wing terrestrial radio stations that can be picked up coast to coast.
Millionaire-funded, they provide middle-class and poor audiences convenient scapegoats, usually minorities and Democrats, on whom to blame their problems so they don’t turn on the ultra wealthy and corporations guilty of shipping our manufacturing jobs overseas and exploiting tax loopholes.
Then there is the small pool of progressive media that exists mostly on the internet, satellite radio or certain streaming services like Roku.
Free Speech TV is an example of this, as is SiriusXM satellite radio’s Progress channel.
But there are the mainstream so-called “liberal” media outlets, like CNN and MSNBC, which are corporate owned like Fox, and in business to turn profits.
Corporations are by nature right leaning because the wealthy CEOs and boards of directors behind them don’t want their taxes raised, so they support republican policies that exclusively enrich them.
There are several serious problems at the core of this, stretching back several decades, across several federal administrations that relaxed telecommunications’ broadcasting and licensing regulations.
The result is the dearth of a truly progressive media infrastructure that can compete with the titanic infrastructure the millionaire- and billionaire-backed right-wing media has been able to construct.
These right-wing outlets have done such a successful job hammering home the lie that any other mainstream outlet not them is de facto “liberal” that the presumably “liberal” outlets tack further to the right to avoid being accused of it.
This obsession with placating their more truculent competitors has led The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others to adopt a more right-leaning bias.
So it should come as no surprise that CNN’s new president Chris Licht instructed staff to stop referring to Donald Trump’s discredited claim the 2020 election was stolen from him as “the big lie” because it sounds too much like a “Democratic Party talking point.”
That might offend republicans, after all, and we wouldn’t want that. They might want to start watching CNN.
Licht instead advised producers to state “Trump election lie” or “election lies” in banners and graphics.
A CNN insider reported to Mediaite:
“It’s worrisome that we’re being told how to talk about one of the worst things that ever happened to American democracy. We have to call lies, lies, whether they’re small lies or big lies. Is there any lie bigger than that lie?”
Some speculate this is coming from, where else?
The board of directors.
Board member John Malone of Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. — with which CNN merged this year — has criticized CNN in the past for its alleged migration away from “actual journalism.”
“We didn’t have this problem until John Malone was sitting on the board of this company,” the same unnamed insider stated. “It seems to indicate where things are headed.”
Where are things headed?
Last week, the network aired a documentary that seemed to imply “both sides” are to blame for anti-Semitism.
The network also cancelled the 30-year show “Reliable Sources” for apparently not being neutral enough.
During the last episode, host Brian Stelter used the show’s final minutes to rebuke the network’s rightward shift.
In his monologue, he stated:
“It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It is not partisan to stand up to demagogues — it’s required, it’s patriotic. We must make sure we do not give a platform to those who are lying to our faces.”
Let’s not ignore the fact that Chris Licht privately met with republican lawmakers for ideas on how to make CNN more amenable to them.
This is like trying to maintain a relationship with someone who doesn’t respect you but keeps stringing you along with promises he’ll love you if you just change a couple things.
Republicans are never going to start watching CNN.
As former labor secretary Robert Reich recently wrote for his Substack newsletter:
“But CNN is never going to be a network preferred by Republicans. Fox News has that sewn up. As Republicans move further rightward into the netherworld of authoritarianism, there’s even less possibility that CNN’s news coverage will be able to satisfy them, nor should CNN even try. If we’ve learned anything from Trump and his lapdogs at Fox News, it’s that facts, data, and logic are no longer relevant to the Republican base.”
Naturally, it comes down to money.
Robert Reich explained:
“When you follow the money behind deeply irresponsible decisions at the power centers of America today, the road often leads to right-wing billionaires.”
Chris Licht actually contacted Reich to criticize the former labor secretary’s claims.
Licht stated it wasn’t pressure from John Malone that motivated “Reliable Sources’” cancellation; it was because the show “didn’t make sense on Sundays.”
He said he wanted CNN staff to stop referring to “the big lie” because of “Nazi implications.”
Regarding his meeting with republican lawmakers, he explained he told them they will be treated “with respect” if they appear on CNN.
Reich wrote:
“When I offered that, as head of CNN, he occupies a pivotal role with regard to the future of American democracy, and what the public knows and understands, he said he wants to ‘reach people who can be reached.’”
Drifting further right is apparently “reaching people who can be reached.”
The same people who think they’re getting actual news from Fox or the other proudly partisan right-wing hate media?
In the alternative universe that is right-wing hate media, Russian president Vladimir Putin is justified in his attack on Ukraine; Joe Biden is not the legitimate president of the United States; “Socialists,” “ Communists,” and “woke” police de-funders have taken over the Democratic party; the climate crisis is a “ hoax; the January 6, 2021 attempted coup against the government was a “false-flag” operation; and Hillary Clinton is still guilty of…something.
People who believe this can be reached?
Through CNN?
Joshua Kalla, a Yale University researcher and co-author of a study titled “The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers,” explained:
“People who watch cable news tend to be very politically engaged and have strong opinions about politics, limiting the impact of the media. Similarly, they also tend to be strong partisans who might not trust any source not associated with their party.”
He added:
“A lot of people might expect this audience to completely resist what CNN had to say, but we see people learning what CNN was reporting and changing their attitudes, too. It is therefore surprising that watching CNN had any impact at all in this experiment.”
In 2010, a WorldPublicOpinion.org study out of the University of Maryland concluded that Fox News viewers were more inclined to be malinformed on numerous domestic issues than other news consumers.
We’ll see what the future holds for the never-been-liberal CNN in its quixotic quest for republican approval.
Hey, maybe your Uncle Racist will switch it on for a change. He could do worse.