Well, this is disturbing:
CNN's new CEO, Chris Licht, has been attending to an audience neglected by the network for the past several years: Republican lawmakers.
The network boss camped out in mid-July in a room on the first floor of the Senate side of the Capitol, S-120, where he asked GOP lawmakers to come talk with him privately. That arrangement avoided alerting the reporters who stalk the halls of the Capitol, sources said, and accommodated Republican lawmakers who preferred not to be seen hobnobbing with him.
Licht's message, according to one of the lawmakers who sat down with him as well as to several sources briefed on the exchanges: "We want to win back your trust."
What this moron fails to understand is that this is not about “being fair” to one side and not the other. At one point, when the Republican party stood for something and wasn’t a cult, you could have real arguments over ideology, policy, and even values. However, as a journalist, one thing you CANNOT do is ever give credence to lies.
When one party embraces a conspiracy theory that claims thousands of election officials, poll watchers, Republican governors, and Trump-appointed judges conspired with Joe Biden to create millions of bamboo ballots that marked him as president---but simultaneously marked Republicans down-ballot to throw people off the scent—there is no debate. There is no debate that Hillary and Obama didn't run a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor in DC. There is no debate that the January 6th rioters weren’t tourists. There is no debate that climate change is happening. There is no debate that Trump wasn’t allowed to store nuclear secrets in his f’ing golf club basement.
Trump lied in office. Repeatedly. Yet news outlets were hesitant to call him out for lying. When he said Korean war veteran’s parents were “tweeting” him or that his inauguration was the largest crowd in US history, you have to call him out for lying. He is. You know it, and I know it. You don’t get to pretend that he has a valid point when you know damn well he doesn’t.
I get that CNN wants to be seen as “fair and balanced.” Yet the attacks from Trump and his cult didn’t happen because you were being unfair to him. They happened because you called him out on his B.S. You will never “regain trust” if you decide facts are partisan.
Do you really think having Sydney Powell or Mike Lindell on to rant without being challenged will save CNN? You will not convince one MAGA Republican to become a regular viewer without compromising your journalistic integrity. Period. What you will do is bleed the viewers you still have. If I want to be lied to, I can go to OAN, Newsmax, InfoWar, FoxNews, etc. They all have an agenda, and journalism isn’t it.
The GOP has devolved into a cult of personality that now justifies treason, insurrection and espionage. Promising QAnon and MAGA legislators a forum to spout nonsense and forbidding your hosts from challenging them serves no one, although that is what GOP legislators are asking for in return for considering to appear on CNN.
I know CNN’s ratings are suffering, but catering to right-wing extremists to feed their appetite for fake news won’t help you. Neither will killing shows like Reliable Sources. All you did was send a gift to your network’s worst critics that they were right about you. As Trump would say, “SAD!”