Chris Licht’s tumultuous one-year tenure as the CEO of CNN has ignominiously ended, but the real story, the important story is why. The answer is that the leftist activists on staff will not tolerate anything that questions progressive orthodoxy.
The irony of course is that when the head of Warner Bros. Discovery David Zaslav plucked Licht for the job he specifically said he wanted a more down the middle CNN. “Journalism first,” he boldly pronounced last summer, adding, “America needs a news network where everybody can come and be heard; Republicans [and] Democrats.”
As Billionaire Warner Bros. Discovery board member and Zaslav confidant John Malone put it back in August of last year he wanted “The news portion of CNN to be more centrist.” Pretty clear.
Pick an issue, any issue, Trump, the 2020 election, Hunter Biden, the trans issue, COVID-19, all of them, and you can be sure that the bobbleheads on CNN will be in sync with their chorus of left-wing talking points.
It was Licht’s predecessor, former CEO Jeff Zucker, who changed CNN’s mission from reporting the news to saving America during his tenure. His was a vision of activism, brave journalists, at least in his mind, slaying the lies of the bad orange man like St. George slaying dragons.
The only problem was that aside from captive audiences at the airport nobody wanted to watch it. Zucker’s pet project, the doomed streaming service CNN+, was such an unmitigated marketing disaster that the creators of New Coke busted out champagne at the new low-water mark.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav picked Chris Licht for the job with a “journalism first” vow. It wasn’t first. (Boston University)
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Whatever his faults might have been, however bad of a boss he may have been, Licht understood what the problem was, and sought, at least modestly, to fix it. Nobody is going to be fool enough to try that again after seeing him pantsed by his employees and employers, alike.
Until CNN gives up on the ridiculous proposition that most conservative ideas are so dangerous that they shouldn’t get airtime, then nothing, not one thing will change.
In the end, CNN will reap what it sowed here — declining viewership, declining revenue, and most damaging, declining relevance. It turns out CNN employees really like hearing their own opinions and voices, unfortunately they are very fast becoming the only people who do.
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