Things haven't been going well at American Pravda, also known as CNN. It probably didn't seem like it could get much worse after the utter disaster that was CNN+. The failed premium streaming service was more than just a professional backfire for former Fox News host Chris Wallace who left his highly rated Sunday morning program for the train wreck. It was a black eye for the entire network.
After being plucked from his role on progressive comedian Stephen Colbert's late night television program to fix CNN's reputation, new president Chris Licht has been ruthlessly jettisoning a great deal of the network's dead weight.
After anchor and then-face of the channel Chris Cuomo was fired for corruption and unprofessional ethics, an indictment that surprised precisely no one outside CNN's insular thought bubble, the network parted ways with cartoonish "media reporter" Brian Stelter, demoted low-information provocateur Don Lemon, and then kept going.
Stelter's apparent replacement, the surprisingly less-capable Oliver Darcy, recently chronicled the "grieving" atmosphere at the beleaguered network.
- Headline News is now toast along with host Robin Meade
- Chris Cillizza will no longer be collecting a company pay check
- Contributors Susan Glasser and Preet Bharara also received pink slips
It's all part of Licht's future plan for CNN to focus on "programming, news gathering, and digital." Call me skeptical, but CNN's problem isn't cosmetic. It's a fundamental disassociation with the people they are supposedly informing. First, they do not even understand the passions and preferences of the average Americans they pretend to serve.
Commenting on the depressed atmosphere in CNN's hallways, Darcy's newsletter included this head-scratching analogy:
In conversations with dozens of staffers and others close to the network, one thing was clear: The mood was grim. "It's like the rapture," one on-air correspondent candidly commented to me.
Umm what? The rapture? For believers, the rapture is an end-times interpretation of a glorious event where saints are summoned into the presence of Almighty God. There's nothing grim about it unless you are among those "left behind." Either that means no one at CNN understands basic Christian doctrine or they equate being fired from the failing network with an escape to paradise, and being retained with confinement in Hell.
But beyond the pervasive lack of understanding of religious citizens, CNN anchors and reporters consistently express a smug disdain towards those who don't share their blinkered worldview. Any news organization that so willfully and deliberately blends their news reporting with a transparent contempt towards the manner in which over half their potential viewership see the world, is not going to succeed no matter how they structure their business plan. Not with the abundance of news alternatives that now exist.
Take Darcy as a prime example. The man owes his professional start to Glenn Beck and the conservative Blaze media network. He, more than perhaps anyone there, should know the natural and reasonable distrust so many good people have in corporate media like CNN. Yet even with the benefit of that foundational awareness, Darcy didn't last more than a couple years at CNN before succumbing to the indoctrinating nature of its ideological echo chamber.
Pay attention to how it works: Darcy uses his "Reliable Sources" perch to promote the work of disgraced Media Matters propagandist and conspiracy theorist Matt Gertz. The most recent Gertz piece Darcy endorsed was one that accused conservative commentator Tucker Carlson of bearing responsibility for Kanye West's descent into Naziism. The next day, Darcy is dutifully regurgitating Gertz's talking points in a CNN on-air interview.
This, of course, isn't journalism. It's partisan hackery – the underlying disease that cripples CNN, and the one thing that it appears those remaking the news agency aren't planning to correct.
