The Trump Town Hall “hate fest” made painfully clear the other night that this is no longer the Cable News Network that revolutionized the news world long before there were smartphones and websites in your pocket.
I write as someone with a decade of service as a senior executive with CNN in its second decade. We all know the world has changed, especially the media sphere, and the proof was on full display in a misnamed ‘Town Hall’ in New Hampshire that was clearly going to be a Trump Rally with all the vitriol such a description entails.
Trump provided his usual non-stop chant of lies, omissions, and boasts, leaving CNN host Kaitlin Collins the unenviable task of fact-checking in real-time. You cannot stop a Tsunami with a sponge.
There are two backstories worth explaining to help with comprehending what has happened, and maybe why?
At its founding, CNN was organized like a family business. Ted Turner, the founder, provided the cash and a simple concept: “Tell it straight and do it well.” Under Burt Reinhard’s direction, a team of producers and correspondents came to understand exactly what that meant. Bob Furnad, as the most senior executive producer, made it clear that this meant no fear or favor for anyone. Tom Johnson’s arrival as president, with Reinhardt becoming Vice Chairman, continued that approach. By the time of the Gulf War in the early 1990s, CNN was the world’s most widely watched news channel.
No so-called ‘Town Hall’ then would then have been possible without an audience balanced in political and ideological terms, nor would one single anchor have been tasked with both asking questions and fact-checking responses. CNN of that period would never have agreed to conditions such as those obviously set by team Trump, eager to have him at last on CNN, untethered by editing or fact-checking.
But that was then. CNN began to make serious money, post-1989, as the size of the cable television universe grew dramatically. In my opinion, Ted Turner was more motivated by doing what others had NOT done than by making money. Selling it to Time Warner changed the ethos of the place. Yes, Turner got $5 billion in the deal. Still, Time-Warner wiped out nearly 80% of that stock value in the worst mega-merger in media history when it merged a few years later with AOL, which was more mirage than media, as events proved.
This is where CNN editorial standards started going downhill. The original Time magazine leadership of Henry Luce was mystical, the Time-Warner leadership of Jerry Levin was marginal. Emphasis soon shifted to revenue and audience ratings, which was more difficult because so many competitors had launched into the 24:7 news space. Prime among them was Fox News, from its origin, treating all content as right-wing propaganda. Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch wanted it that way. Their style was a deliberate effort to stoke anger and hate as an emerging ideology within the conservative movement of that period. Neutral news, by comparison, was categorized by Fox as leaning left.
CNN’s preoccupation with Trump in 2015 and 2016 is directly attributable to Jeff Zucker, then CNN president. The irony is he knew what Trump was at heart, because he oversaw the production of the Apprentice TV show, a complete fabrication of “reality”, as a senior executive at NBC network. Zucker, more than anyone, understood what a malignant person Trump was, but decided to ride the ratings/revenue advantage of keeping him in the news spotlight,
One ego-driven showman helps another ego-driven showman. One as president harmed a network, the other as US president harmed the nation and the world.
The back story in this is actually a relatively common occurrence. A founding organization does well, is taken over by a huge corporation, and then at varying speeds, reduces itself to something more of an apparition than an acquisition.
The second backstory, in my humble opinion, is the $475 million defamation federal lawsuit filed by Trump against CNN in 2022 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It focuses primarily on CNN’s use of the phrase “The Big Lie,"--Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud — which Trump says shifted voters toward Joe Biden in 2020.
All of which leads me to the question: is this ‘Town Hall’ platform loaned to Trump early in the 2024 election cycle CNN’s argument against any claim of unfairness if that lawsuit ever gets to court?
Chris Licht, with his "What-Me-Worry" smirk, has propelled CNN into plummeting crisis. He's quoted as saying he "loved the way the Trump townhall turned out." Moreover, lacking any background in journalism, he continues to decimate what little remained of journalism at CNN, as ratings continue downward. In my view, Licht's desperation in wanting to save his job thought that the freak Trump townhall (Liarhall) would boost CNN's failing ratings: a vivid example of CNN's escalating crisis, "compliments" of Chris Licht!