If you’re old enough, and you have to be quite long in the tooth to do so, you can remember when CNN under owner, Ted Turner ruled the TV news world. They were in airports, hotels on ships all around the world, in all languages. If you wanted clear, concise, straight reporting, you tuned to that channel on your black and white TV. Since then, it has sunk like a Titanic and now rests on the bottom of all cable channels and appeared doomed for extinction. Along came Chris Licht, a few months ago, and he’s attempting to resurrect the sinking ship with major changes to its staff and its contents.
A few weeks ago, longtime legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was canned indicating a serious attempt to take a new direction for the network under its new direction. Now Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media correspondent, his show, “Reliable Sources,” together with its entire staff have all walked the plank and are no more. The show was CNN’s longest running program, debuting 30 years ago, with Bernard Kalb as host, to scrutinize the media’s coverage of the first Gulf War. It and its entire crew are now gone because over the years it tilted to the Left, supported the radicalization of anyone on the Right and opinionated the programs’ contents, openly and brazenly. It killed itself.
Licht had bad news for the remaining staff and their features. This past week he warned that the shakeup or tidal wave of changes was just beginning. “This is a time of change and I now that it’s unsettling. There will be more changes and you might not like it all.” We hope he was talking to Don Lemon, Jake Tapper, Alisyn Camerota and Jim Acosta. They need to be shown the door.
And Licht has heavy-weight supporters in his purge of former CNN media stars in the form of John Malone, a major Warner Bros. Discovery shareholder, who has his blinders off, indicating a major philosophical/political move for the network. He called for the outlet to return to a non-partisan coverage. He spoke openly that he wanted “the ‘news” portion of the network to be more centrist,” though he added he would be hands off.
However, he’s an influential force at the top and his words sound a warning signal to the rest of the mainstream media who have lost their way in reporting and analyzing the news. “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,” he said during an interview with, of all stations, CNBC in November. Stelter and Toobin who were the first to go in this eventual housecleaning had developed and openly espoused a left-leaning slant. And they were open about it. Not good news for the radical/progressive Left.
MSNBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NPR and local channels associated with or subscribing to these major news sources, had better take notice. Competitors espousing opposing political and social stances, such as Fox News and Newsmax are booming, winning over the viewing numbers and advertisers. We call on all media outlets, print, radio, TV or electronic, to heed the warning set by the new leaders of CNN and start reporting news in an unbiased, evenhanded fashion. We’d like to suggest a good start: Send your best professional journalists out to research and get to the bottom of the Hunter Biden Laptop story. This major news potential has remained untouched by them for over 3 years. We call on CNN to start off its new claim to being an unbiased news source to cover the story, as would the CNN of old, under Ted Turner would have professionally and competently done. And be proud of it.
