Malone is making his move
It looks like CNN will be an unwatchable “he said/she said” cacophony of political bullshit during the presidential campaign. And that’s if they don’t decide to steal Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham away from Fox and just go full bore wingnut:
CNN’s new boss, Chris Licht, is evaluating whether personalities and programming that grew polarizing during the Trump era can adapt to the network’s new priority to be less partisan.
Why it matters: If talent cannot adjust to a less partisan tone and strategy, they could be ousted, three sources familiar with the matter tell Axios.
Details: Licht wants to give personalities that may appear polarizing a chance to prove they’re willing to uphold the network’s values so that they don’t tarnish CNN’s journalism brand.
For on-air talent, that includes engaging in respectful interviews that don’t feel like PR stunts. For producers and bookers, that includes making programming decisions that are focused on nuance, not noise. CNN’s tone became more partisan and combative during the Trump era and under the leadership of former CNN president Jeff Zucker.
To conservative critics, some on-air personalities, like Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter, have become the face of the network’s liberal shift.
Licht doesn’t want to necessarily shy away from personality programming, especially in prime time, but he wants to ensure that partisan voices don’t dominate in a way that harms CNN, a source notes.
Licht took the helm at CNN last month, shortly after longtime CNN president Jeff Zucker exited the network in scandal.
His priorities are widely seen as aligned with the leadership of CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery.
Licht and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav haven’t been shy about their goal of dialing back on partisan and alarmist programming in favor of traditional journalism.
Last week, Licht told employees in a memo that the network has added a “Breaking News” guideline to its stylebook, to address overuse of the breaking news banner across its network and cable news writ large.
Licht said he agrees with complaints from “people both inside and outside the organization” that the network overuses the “Breaking News” banner.
“We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers,” he said in the note obtained by Axios.
Zaslav and mentor and investor John Malone have been public about their wish to pull CNN away from progressive commentary.
“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone told CNBC last year.
Yep. In case you were wondering if this is a ideological directive coming from above:
In the interview with CNBC’s David Faber, Malone also said:
Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.
Brian Flood of right-wing Fox News (11/19/21) said of Malone’s CNBC declaration:
Liberty Media chairman John Malone, who sits on the Discovery, Inc. board of directors, wants to see left-wing CNN revert back to nonpartisan journalism following the completion of a merger that would put the liberal network under the Discovery channel.
More Than a Board Member
Malone, in fact, is more than a Discovery board member; he’s its chair and largest shareholder. CNN, started by Ted Turner and now owned by AT&T, is part of an $85 billion acquisition by Discovery, expected to be finalized this year.
Malone’s links to politics include being an active supporter — he’s currently a board member — of the Cato Institute, the Washington-based libertarian think tank that espouses the privatization of numerous US government agencies and programs, including Social Security and the Postal Service.
His Liberty Media empire was among the big contributors to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration festivities in Washington, DC, with personal and corporate contributions adding up to $1 million.
He has since said that he thinks Trump was a great president but he would vote for Bloomberg because Trump had too many people who hated him. I don’t know if he voted for Biden in the end but I doubt it. He is a dyed in the wool wingnut. And he’s calling the shots.
The future of democracy in the United States is at stake amid the polarization and deadlock of the political process in Washington. Media are increasingly under the control of right-wing zealots like Rupert Murdoch and those behind Newsmax, etc., who are poisoning communications.
Critically needed now is an independent, honest, credible press providing, yes, aggressive accountability journalism — a light to enable people to find their way out of this mess. Instead, the nation’s oldest cable news channel will soon be under the control of someone who appears to want it to follow the “interesting trajectory” of Fox News.
It’s a white, nationalist propaganda arm of the Republican Party that was too right wing for Jonah Goldberg, Stephen Hayes and Chris Wallace. What does that tell you?