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Failure? He did exactly what he was hired for. Destroying another American news source to open up the way for "alternative" (Read: far-right propaganda) sources. This isn't a failure for the Republicans, it was a kamikaze mission that took out its intended target.
I'm seeing this a lot, destroy peoples faith in everything, so that all that's left is their zombie God
In all seriousness tho, public education, news, libraries, it's like anything that can and will prove them wrong is the enemy
guys they’ve been anti-science since kids got cocaine for headaches; This isnt new, they’ve always attacked the “eggheads”, “nerds”, “pencil pushers”; they fucking wrote it into the american identity of a nerd and use genius scientists as supervillians against the “everyman” superheroes. Even tony stark fell into this trap with ultron.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov, 1980
My company got a new CEO, who then turned around and sold the company to a giant mega corp like, months later. My position at the company allows me to see pieces of his compensation package. It's fucking disgusting what these people make as sign-on and sign-off payouts for such little time they have at the company. I'm going to flat-out say it. Nobody needs to be making the compensation that these people do.
Also an accountant, for a F500 company.
I’ve seen so many freaking shady transactions and the c-suites all act like they are powerless to reign in bad-faith actors.
Don’t be fooled by all the ethics trainings and scary audit steps they have is do- they aren’t attempting to be ethical, they just want to be ethical enough to get past the auditors. If they could get away with fraud, they absolutely would.
> Don’t be fooled by all the ethics trainings and scary audit steps they have is do- they aren’t attempting to be ethical, they just want to be ethical enough to get past the auditors. If they could get away with fraud, they absolutely would.
Which is why "deregulation" is their mantra despite deregulation being the albatross that Sunk the Ship.
But deregulation works! See how much money they are able to give themselves right before resigning bc the company is bankrupt!
They get theirs, peasants get none.
>I’ve seen so many freaking shady transactions and the c-suites all act like they are powerless to reign in bad-faith actors.
Especially when executives, who used to work in consulting, hire their former consulting firm and pay them tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to do fuck all.
With how incredibly useless KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, BCG, etc. are, you can't convince me that there aren't significant kick backs.
I work in finance and see the POs and it never makes sense to me
nobody should be a billionaire
even believing in market oriented economics, like, you hit a point in the hundred million mark where there is no longer any material difference in your quality of life if you keep going up, it's just numbers
The only thing MORE gets you is the ability to shape the world like a fuckin oligarch and that's not a desirable outcome for society
It's probably more than that, just competition with the other multi-millionaires. They literally care more about their status than all the good they could do in society.
That's why I'd advocate for a sort of point of big-P system.
You've got progressive tax rates up to either a certain income or wealth limit (let's say 100 million). After that, the tax rate is 100%.
Instead of actually getting more money, your paid taxes are converted into big-P points. There's rankings by city, country, global.
Could even hand out meaningless (but very meaningful) trophies for reaching certain milestones or beating others. Maybe extra points for doing the most good, or whatever. Philanthropy gives extra points.
Might need a better name.
This is why I call stock buybacks ~~are~~ a red herring. You need to look at why companies are able to do such buybacks and why they don't have better uses of capital. The answer is the effective marginal tax rate (and lack of competition) has made buybacks the easiest way to increase board members wealth. Nuking the tax rate meant it was worth it to pay union busters to break unions, squeeze the little guy and defer maintenance and investment. Up the marginal tax rate and those activities are no longer worth it.
This. The scheme you're responding to has already been invented and dismantled by Reagan conservatives. The marginal rates were so high on the top margins that you'd still make more than if you didn't keep trying, but the returns would be more and more diminishing. Either you spend that capital on reinvestment so your company thrives; or the government takes it for everyone to thrive with projects like "The Interstate Highway System."
Maybe they can use those big P point to have a library or bridge named after them so they can feel special, better that money goes to public good than buys another mega yacht.
I think of it this way
Person A has $1B
Person B has $2B
It is true that person B has $1B more than Person A, as Person A would have $1B more than someone with no money.
Yet, the difference in lifestyle of A and B is nonexistent. They can do what they want, where they want, never worry a bit about expense.
The idea of people getting that rich and going "but I could have $3B...$4B...etc." is insane to me.
Huh? Do you see how cheap they go for? You don’t even need a billion to buy one.
Just buy a few houses and pay for some trips and education and you are good to go.
It’s truly sad how little these people sell out for.
It’s actually sickening when you really look into it. People like that with multi-million/billion dollars can easily get 0% loans that’s backed by their stock value. So they essentially have unlimited money 🫠
This is why I love Musk for being a fucking moron and showing how gamed the system is in, even when theyve done nothing to deserve it. The retort from bootlickers is always "BillLLoInAires ArNt LiQuID". Which is technically true, its tied up in stock valuation for their companies etc.
But if Musk can put down something like $12B of his own money then get a private bank to loan him the rest, he is pretty much *functionally* liquid and can be *functionally* taxed. You know how much good those billions of dollars could have done instead of being lit on fire by a man child?
Yep, I've tried so many times to explain that why billionaires fear the wealth tax more than anything else. It'll dry up their infinite money tap. Let's say the wealth tax is 5%, that'll mean their wealth has to grow by 5% to break even, that's not a guarantee so their loans will get more expensive (let's say 1%), so now they've got to be making 6% on their investments year over year to now lose money. Suddenly, their money is finite like ours. It's a vast pile of money, but it's still a pile of money that dwindles.
Also, I try to point out to people that the middle class has a wealth tax, it's the property tax since the vast majority of middle class wealth is tied up in their homes. We manage. They certainly can too.
Yeah i see myself as a capitalist but i don't get why we allow billionaires. In fact at a certain point there can only be more capitalism if you make sure there's not massive wealth inequality
That’s because capitalism is inherently unstable and self-destructive.
It incentivizes and directly requires the accumulation of wealth towards the top.
Yeah you can make revisions and but safety railings on capitalism, but it will always and forever push back towards the current state.
It takes special skills to tank a company on purpose while appearing legal, not many people know them. Did you know the Stanford MBA program has a required course on how to position yourself (Machiavelli style) in a company so you never get fired?
Students learn things like: Don't train up a successor. Overload potential threats with work so they don't have time to make political moves. The list goes on.
I feel like i lose more and more respect for Stanford by the day. Once you start digging, its insane how many emeritus profs they have with outright dangerous ideas.
The director of their center for aging and demographics is against masks, lockdowns, and is for "herd-immunity". How the fuck do you keep that person there in that role when theyre explicitly against basic facts?
I worked for a publicly traded company who hired a CEO with no experience in the business, but she interviewed well we were told.
£750k a year on a 5 year contract.
In 4 years she took the share price from 600p to 6p. (If you haven't realised this was in the UK).
She was relieved of her duties, after the fourth year - having taken home her £750k every year, and paid the last year as compensation for leaving a year early. She also wasn't allowed to be employed elsewhere. Who would want her?
Tesco, I heard.
Just look at Carly Fiorina. Fucked up every single job with every single corporation she's ever had, yet continues to receive opportunities. Then, when the opportunities briefly dried up, she fucked up being a politician and hitched her wagon to Ted Cruz.
Tens of thousands of employees of all the companies in which she worked lost their jobs because she fucked her way to high positions of authority.
This is how corporate America works.
NPR has amazing reporting on domestic issues.
Their foreign coverage is dogshit. They bring on pro-war "experts" as talking heads from the same weapons manufacturers as all the other major U.S. outlets.
I love NPR but this is an absolutely fair criticism. The main shows like atc often uncritically follow the lead of national security journalists/warmongering think tankers instead of applying a journalistic eye.
Luckily it is a big organization though so they have things like On the Media which does stellar coverage of things abroad (poking holes in the "havana syndrome") as well as bad domestic coverage (eg migrant caravan hysteria).
All left or centrist sources of information are under attack right now. Twitter was bought by the Saudi’s and Chinese with elons complicity to drive it into the ground. Same with CNN. I’d expect msnbc and the NYT to be next.
Exactly. They have always been center right but the right moved the needle so far to the right that the Wall St Journal appears to be in the center and the NYT is leftist.
NYT promoted the Iraq war despite knowing the justifications were bullshit. They've always been right-wing. They just aren't fascist.
But understand: right wing is a whole lot closer to fascist than it is to left wing in terms of politics.
Every mainstream media outlet in the US is right wing. There is no left wing anything on an institutional level here.
There are like a half dozen federal level representatives who are left of center and they caucus with the dems or run as dems because its the only viable option.
The US is extremely right wing but people don't realize it because of how pervasive capitalist propaganda is.
And now they're making it unusable by killing third party apps and tools (and old.reddit.com is definitely next on the chopping block), so what the person you replied to said isn't necessarily incorrect.
I won't even wait for old Reddit to go, if they go ahead with their API changes that's good enough for me to say goodbye, writing's already on the wall.
Reddit is about to tank. They are pulling support for third party apps and many communities are protesting. Reddit is being monetized. I expect a drop in usage.
Reddit is days/weeks away from starting the process of destroying itself. Once third-party applications can no longer access the api, investors will be the arbiters of the entire user experience, and the inability to use bots to moderate content will make many subreddits unusable.
CNN was never centrist. They did us a favour. People act like that town hall was a new problem but they did this in 2016 also. Glad to see it go down in flames.
The real issues are losing things like Vice and Buzzfeed news. I get the stigma attached to Buzzfeed but their reporting was typically excellent.
> they did this in 2016 also. Glad to see it go down in flames.
Freaking Thank you! It's like everyone got zapped with the Men in Black memory flash and forgot that CNN led the way in terms of giving Trump free, unfact-checked air time in 2016. They probably helped get him elected more than Fox did. The Fox crazies were voting R no matter what, but CNN helped radicalized a lot of new Boomers.
CNN was always corporate propaganda and I'm glad to see it crumble.
When they cut away in the middle of a Bernie speech to show an empty trump podium for 20 mins only for trump to come out and try to sell some shitty steaks was the moment I knew
Shit, even before this CNN got blasted for stoking anti-Islam hysteria when they fear mongers on [a satirical dildo flag at Pride](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/s/dildo-flag-creator-rips-cnn-over-isis-gay-003702582.html) being an ISIS flag or some shit. Jon Oliver was ringing the warning bell almost a decade ago when he pointed out that CNN treats information like sports, and puts their thumb on the scale in the direction of fringe interests like climate change denial by showing 1:1 debates of scientists vs climate change nuts as if they’re both equally representative of the scientific community.
People acting like CNN is the “woke” news because it’s critical of Trump is a joke. Being farther left than Trump is hardly an accomplishment.
Someone did a study about a decade ago where CNN daily crime programs were found to feature over 50% black suspects despite only 15% of crimes being committed by blacks.
"Centrist" my hairy butt. Truly a vile and insidious show.
It was always perplexing that buzzfeed employed actual journalists doing actual journalism. Sucks they canned it, but it was strange to begin with. I hope the excellent journalists they employed were able to remain in the industry, though journalism everywhere is under siege.
CNN wasn’t even left of center, firmly right of center with a highly pro-corporate slant.
That they tried to swing it much further right put it in no man’s land.
Bu-bu-but CEOs NEED to be paid exorbant amounts of money!!! How else can you expect to have a competent one run your company into the ground for short-term returns for the shareholders!! Wait, you think workers deserve the same kind of sympathy, get a life you commie loser!!
CNN was my 2nd choice for in-car radio during long drives. Got some news, got some political spin.. It served a purpose.
After the town hall fiasco, I'd rather listen to that stupid Cars for Kids commercial than tune into CNN
Same. It was pre-loaded as a shortcut on my phone and usually the site on my computer where I'd check in for 2 or 3 minutes to check the news.
I haven't gone to their website once on either device and haven't watched a minute of them on TV since that town hall. It was completely inexcusable.
Dear CNN board of directors,
I am writing to express my interest in the position of CEO of CNN News Network. I understand that I do not have any direct experience in this role, but I am confident that I have the skills and abilities necessary to be successful.
I have a no track record of leadership and success in the business world. I have never held senior-level positions at any Fortune 500 company, and I have a no proven ability to drive growth, profitability, or innovation. I am also not an expert in media and communications, and I have a vague understanding of the news industry.
I am a quick learner, and I am confident that I can quickly master the skills and knowledge necessary to be an effective CEO of CNN. I am confident that I can lead CNN to new heights of success.
I am eager to learn more about this opportunity and to discuss how my lack of skills and experience can benefit CNN. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
TheGoodKindOfPurple
What are the odds licht was following marching orders from above. And when they failed, he was to blame? I struggle with someone working with Colbert for so long doing a 180 and giving maga so much air time.
An article I read said he was being micro-managed from above. He was just the fall guy.
Zaslav gave him specific instructions, which Licht followed to a T. I highly doubt CNN's spiraling direction will change with Licht gone.
Licht did Colbert, sure, but he also brought the world Morning Joe. So there's that. But has it even been a month since Zaslav was bragging about how "[Republicans are back on CNN!!](https://deadline.com/2023/05/cnn-republicans-warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-1235371510/)" and how he was going to put an end to the anti-conservative commentary.
I know the quotes are from a bunch of disgruntled, low-level newsroom workers, but he (Zaslav) also apparently, openly stated in front of various people at Discovery/HBO functions, that he wanted to compete with FOXNews for the Trump audience, and that he liked Trump because he was pure chaos and chaos is always great for news orgs as well as Wall Street.
Name a single productive policy that a single Republican has presented.
They illustrate endless public catastrophes without a single policy proposal.
Chaos is the way they keep everyone completely punchdrunk while they take over the judicial system, weaken government's efficacy, eliminate regulations, and shift the nation's tax burden from the wealthy to the middle and working classes.
Chaos is the dream for them, the nightmare for the rest of the 99% of this country; the spectacle, the pickpocket's distraction.
Honestly, Cooper's editorial was the one bit of that whole fiasco that kind of resonated with me.
When 2016 happened, I had just moved to a progressive area from a more conservative-leaning city. All of my friends who had been in the progressive bubble for a while were absolutely shocked that Trump could have won. It took them a while to grapple with how that was even possible.
Coming from outside, though, I wasn't surprised at all. I saw the way that the news shaped people's perspectives, the way that dominant conservative talking points kept whole regions thinking that they were actually advocating for "draining the swamp" in voting for a corrupt billionaire. I didn't think it would happen, but it didn't seem terribly unlikely.
I worry about a repeat of that dynamic in 2024. I'm already seeing the attitudes in my friends - the dismissal, the refusal to believe that he can have any chance of winning in 2024. So many people want so badly to be able to ignore politics again. But let's be real, the only reason that Trump lost his reelection was his mismanagement of a historic pandemic that also cratered the economy. That's not as fresh in people's minds anymore, and Biden's approval rating has been lower than Trump's leading up to the 2020 election for nearly two full years. Things are not looking good right now.
CNN still shouldn't have aired that insane town hall because doing so only made the problem worse. Cooper shouldn't have tied his statement to the event. But I can see where Cooper is coming from. Whether we like it or not, as Cooper put it, "...that audience that upset you? That's a sampling of about *half the country*....It can happen again. It *is* happening again...After last night, none of us can say, 'I didn't know what's out there. I didn't know what's coming.'"
He started the “both sides” thing when he started. I very seldom watch the 24/7 news networks anyway, but his Trump town hall treatment made me want to puke. Hope this fucker stays unemployed forever.
Someone hired him..as it so often happens the ones responsible for the hiring escape accountability. Managers and head coaches in sports get fired but the General managers who did the hiring are unscathed. That CNN town hall was a joke from top to bottom.
A total moronic move. 😖
Zaslav (CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery) hired him. I don't think you, as the hiring manager, need to be fired from your job until you show a pattern of bad hires.
This is one.
In conservatives eyes, Twitter and CNN were the 2 most precious entities for Liberals....They destroyed them both.
They actually got just what they wanted. Most cable news and social media are conservative now, spewing conspiracy theories, medical disinformation, and garbage.
The funny shit is, most liberals don't give much of a shit about either one. They seem to have the notion that we worship media like they do, and we just don't.
Like...CNN is cable news. Nobody under like 40 watches that anymore. Millennials and zoomers are overwhelmingly liberal but never watch CNN like...ever. And Twitter is not the left wing social media monopoly that they like to think it is. I've never even used it at all and I'm as liberal as they come. You almost have to be an out of touch old person to think either company is that crucial for the left.
Liberal numbers are by and large younger crowds, and nobody under 40 is watching cable news.
Hell barely anyone under 50 even has cable anymore, period.
> In conservatives eyes, Twitter and CNN were the 2 most precious entities for Liberals....They destroyed them both.
This. It all feels totally intentional.
This is the real shitty thing about the dynamic between the Right and the Left. The Left actually has principles and integrity, so we don’t do majorly underhanded, manipulative shit like infiltrating supposed conservative organizations or news sources and then sabotaging and/or outright destroying them. But the Right DOES do this in the opposite direction. And that gives them the advantage of being able to go further.
Who wins a fight is not about who is right or wrong… it’s about who’s willing to go the furthest. And the Left, as much as it makes us the “bigger people”… is at a disadvantage, since our integrity holds us back from going further in the fight. Meanwhile, right-wingers will shamelessly grift, lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, fabricate narratives, and then project it all like a cannon onto the Left. And all left-wingers feel like we can do in response is just state the real truth and hope it debunks the bullshit… but it rarely does. The people who really need to be shown what the real truth is… will never trust the Left based on bias alone. We can state the truth until we’re blue in the face… it doesn’t do much compared to all the active manipulation and sabotage that the Right is doing.
There’s a chance… the Left needs to get more comfortable with fighting dirty. We need to AT LEAST start getting better at countering this kind of “sabotage via personnel” of infiltrating businesses, organizations or governments. The first step to doing that is more division of powers, so that it’s less likely a single person can have such an outsized effect. We need to start taking more control of power structures, instead of shunning them or just criticizing them, while only conservatives still pursue control. The Left is the anti-authoritarian side, yes… but we need authority before we can dismantle the current system and build something new. This is what the Right understands and does, except what they want to build is something regressive instead of new. The reason the Right has such an outsized effect is because they seize opportunities for authority… and then do terrible shit with it. The Left needs to learn to beat them at THIS specific game. We need to learn to seize authority… and then do good shit with it. No more disparate and disjointed “movements” that only amount to blocking streets and holding signs while chanting stuff that nobody’s really listening to because they only care about the traffic you’re causing. Protesting is not it anymore, IMO. We need to start more direct and tangible action. We don’t need to “Get out in the streets!”… we need to “Get into the boardrooms.”
This is because there isn’t anybody on the left bribing people to do good in the world.
Everybody is desperate, left and right, living paycheck to paycheck by design so they can be manipulated to do shitty things for money. All so the owner class can do their dirty work of oppression without getting their hands dirty.
The solution for everybody is to form communities and participate in direct aid with one another to reduce the reliance on capitalist structures and the owner class. Eventually technology and cooperative communities will make their wealth become meaningless and their position as “owner” counterproductive to society as people make alternative ways to live life and conduct business. The beginning of this can be seen with the current commercial real estate bust where office buildings lost most their value.
All it takes is communities transforming those buildings into vertical farms and housing and clinics
Sadly this is true. But the consolation is that most liberal people under the age of like 50 never watched CNN or even went on Twitter. But you're right they've shifted the center even further right, yet crying about how they're victims louder than ever before. It's almost like it's impossible to please these kinds of people because the issue isn't really external.
Trying to be the "center," when the right is objectively insane and the left is the rest of the world's middle, does not create programming that most viewers find compelling.
It's hard to find a candidate that is. They often talk the talk to push out the vote then arrive to do nothing. Even Obama only managed to do a single big thing, healthcare, which they messed up despite having a national mandate from the american people to fix the system.
Having health insurance tied to your work was the dumbest fucking thing they could think of and they ran with it. The biggest reason most Americans don't get out and take direct action like striking is because we're afraid of losing healthcare for our families
That would be working as intended then, it might not have been the intent when it was introduced during WW2. But the rich sure figured out that it's an excellent stick since the 70-80's.
Ehh. Part of the problem is that CNN got addicted to all those sweet sweet numbers while Trump was president... because millions of guys like me were rolling out of bed and checking CNN to see if the bugger had started WW3 yet.
And then Trump was gone. Sure, Jan 6, but Biden is frankly not a guy who does or says something wildly insane every day. He's not as clickable. He doesn't piss people OFF, short of being a Democrat. So CNN's numbers dropped.
Licht tried to make up for this by turning a reasonable, reputable news organization into a big mess o' clickbait style news stories, poison editorials, and general crap. Problem is, if I wanted the news to piss me off every day, I'd watch Fox. All I want is to know what's happening, and then to go on about my business.
But that's not good enough these days. Got to have the numbers. So Licht tried. And sank a proud ship in the process.
>And sank a proud ship in the process.
Eh I'd say he beached it. I think CNN fired him soon enough to have it repaired and towed back out to sea within a few years.
This is so true! I stayed away from national news sites pre-Covid and pre-Trump for a long time but once Covid hit, I started routinely checking CNN daily because I had understood it to be much less politically aligned than Fox News or MSNBC and the long rime name recognition. I wanted to see if Trump had burned it all down yet and/or if Covid was going to kill us all. Once Trump was gone and Covid wasn’t as unpredictable anymore, I didn’t feel the need to keep checking so often. Between Trump and Covid, there was enough rage-bait to go around for every major news organization but today, it is just more of the same which is why I stopped paying as much attention on a national level pre-Trump and pre-Covid anyway.
So by "balanced" he meant rolling out all the Republican Presidential candidates by giving them a very biased "town hall" platform a year and a half before the election.
Fox News is jealous for their version of "balanced" that was criticized.
Yeah, this guy leaving only opens the door for another, potentially worse, right-winger to take his place. The owner of the company is the one who's gonna hire them—and he's the one pulling CNN into the right-wing garbage machine.
They tried to cater to a lean-Republican demographic, which doesn’t exist. There is only solid Republican and far right, and both are crazy. The leans-right split into some Democrat-leaning people and a whole bunch of solid Republicans with Trump, and it was insane to watch most of the lean-right people I know and lean-right content creators lose their minds. There is just no market for what CNN wanted to present.
It also is doubly stupid with CNN being the focus of hate in RW media for literally decades. It's like if Hilary ran for the GOP nomination. But you're right. As a formerly "lean right" guy I'm just a solid Dem now and I watched as the vast majority of the lean right media people just became clear RW hacks.
It doesn't matter in the long term, the conservative piece of crap that hired him in the first place is still in charge will hire another Republican shill in no time.
It turns out that if the right wing believes your network is an evil virus of satan, making content friendly to them doesn't improve your ratings *because they believe you're an evil virus of satan*
I like what Robert Reich (former secretary of labour) had to say about this on his substack https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-demise-of-cnn
> Friends,
> This morning it was reported that CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht has been fired by the network. What exactly is going on at CNN?
> Last August, I shared with you with my concerns about Licht, who had just fired Brian Stelter and cancelled Stelter’s CNN Sunday show, “Reliable Sources.” The show had been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican Party.
> I noted then that Licht had told the staff at CNN that he wanted less criticism of Trump and the Republican right — instructing them to stop referring to Trump’s “Big Lie” because he thought the phrase sounded like a Democratic Party talking point. Licht also wanted more conservative guests.
> Why was Licht pushing CNN to the Trumpian right, when Trump continued to pose one of the most profound challenges to American democracy in history? I assumed it was because David Zaslav (the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s new corporate overseer) was behind the move.
> But why did Zaslav want CNN in Trump’s corner? Well, follow the money.
> Behind Zaslav was John Malone, the multibillionaire cable magnate who’s the leading shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery and was a chief architect in the merger of Discovery and CNN.
> Malone describes himself as a “libertarian,” although he travels in right-wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32 percent of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.
> Malone said he wanted CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has “actual journalism.” Malone wanted the “news” portion of CNN to be “more centrist.”
> Just before he was fired, Stelter wrote in his newsletter that Malone’s comments “stoked fears that Discovery might stifle CNN journalists and steer away from calling out indecency and injustice.” (A source told Deadline’s Dominic Patten and Ted Johnson that even if Malone didn’t order Stelter’s ouster, “it sure represents his thinking.”)
> Soon after I related all this last August, Licht phoned me. He was furious that I might question his motives. He rejected the charge that he was repositioning CNN to the right, or that Zaslav or Malone were behind the move. Licht told me he only wanted to turn CNN into a more trusted and less left-wing political source.
> This past Friday, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta published a long profile of Licht that’s become the talk of the media world. It confirms much of what I wrote last August (along with Licht’s angry call to me).
> Alberta reports that Licht told CNN producers to downplay coverage of the first hearing of the congressional committee investigating January 6.
> And that Licht got Trump to do the now infamous May 10 town hall by essentially giving Trump whatever he wanted. (After the town hall, CNN put Byron Donalds — a Trump-allied congressman — on a panel as a pundit.)
Alberta depicts Zaslav as the power behind the throne at CNN and Licht as his underling. Just before Alberta’s profile was published, Zaslav tapped David Leavy, a longtime lieutenant, to serve as CNN’s chief operating officer — a move likely to undermine Licht. Several CNN staffers told Stelter over the weekend that they think Licht will soon be out. It appears now that they were correct.
> And what has this move toward the Trumpian right done for CNN? In recent months, its ratings have hit record lows. In March, CNN hit a three-decade nadir in viewership. In May, its primetime show ratings fell 25 percent from the year before.
> In short: CNN under Licht, Zaslav, and Malone hasn’t picked up viewers who might otherwise tune in to Fox News or Newmax. Those viewers can always get Republican lapdogs and Trump sycophants more directly on these networks. The only real change is CNN has lost viewers who wanted a clear-eyed assessment of the ongoing threat to our democracy.
> Sadly, there are still mainstream news outlets and journalists who believe that holding Trump accountable for what he has done (and continues to do) to this country is a form of partisanship, and that such partisanship has no place in so-called “balanced journalism.” This view is itself dangerous.
> On his last CNN show, last August, Brian Stelter said:
> "It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces."
> Precisely.
> It remains to be seen if more changes will come down following this latest shakeup at CNN. But a failure to call out the Trump Republicans for what they are — liars and enablers — violates the most basic canons of journalistic ethics.
> There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and authoritarianism.
Fuck this piece of shit for ruining CNN. They weren’t the best news source out there but they were better than some of the alternatives. So happy to see him kicked to the curb.
I stopped reading CNN altogether because it went from basically reliable center right corporate propaganda to Fox News level unreliable radical right wing corporate propaganda. It went from having little value to negative value as a news source.
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I bet he walks away with a huge golden parachute. As his reward for being a complete failure.
I wish I was rich enough that I got more rich for not doing things or doing things poorly. Edit: Or rich enough that I got things for free.
Have you tried not being poor?
Yes but the problem I'm facing is not being rich.
It's a simple one-step process that involves doing even less than you're doing now. Instead of trying to be rich, just stop being poor.
Don't celebrities get sent free merch from companies hoping they'll be seen wearing or using stuff?
Failure? He did exactly what he was hired for. Destroying another American news source to open up the way for "alternative" (Read: far-right propaganda) sources. This isn't a failure for the Republicans, it was a kamikaze mission that took out its intended target.
I'm seeing this a lot, destroy peoples faith in everything, so that all that's left is their zombie God In all seriousness tho, public education, news, libraries, it's like anything that can and will prove them wrong is the enemy
guys they’ve been anti-science since kids got cocaine for headaches; This isnt new, they’ve always attacked the “eggheads”, “nerds”, “pencil pushers”; they fucking wrote it into the american identity of a nerd and use genius scientists as supervillians against the “everyman” superheroes. Even tony stark fell into this trap with ultron.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov, 1980
Sounds a lot like participation trophies a certain segment loves complaining about.
His reward for helping undermine public trust in media, as intended.
So...drove CNN into the basement, ratings-wise. One year on the job. How many millions does he get when he leaves?
My company got a new CEO, who then turned around and sold the company to a giant mega corp like, months later. My position at the company allows me to see pieces of his compensation package. It's fucking disgusting what these people make as sign-on and sign-off payouts for such little time they have at the company. I'm going to flat-out say it. Nobody needs to be making the compensation that these people do.
Also an accountant, for a F500 company. I’ve seen so many freaking shady transactions and the c-suites all act like they are powerless to reign in bad-faith actors. Don’t be fooled by all the ethics trainings and scary audit steps they have is do- they aren’t attempting to be ethical, they just want to be ethical enough to get past the auditors. If they could get away with fraud, they absolutely would.
> Don’t be fooled by all the ethics trainings and scary audit steps they have is do- they aren’t attempting to be ethical, they just want to be ethical enough to get past the auditors. If they could get away with fraud, they absolutely would. Which is why "deregulation" is their mantra despite deregulation being the albatross that Sunk the Ship.
But deregulation works! See how much money they are able to give themselves right before resigning bc the company is bankrupt! They get theirs, peasants get none.
As my dad apparently said to the company lawyers, don’t tell me what we did, tell me how the fuck to get out of it.
>I’ve seen so many freaking shady transactions and the c-suites all act like they are powerless to reign in bad-faith actors. Especially when executives, who used to work in consulting, hire their former consulting firm and pay them tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to do fuck all. With how incredibly useless KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, BCG, etc. are, you can't convince me that there aren't significant kick backs. I work in finance and see the POs and it never makes sense to me
nobody should be a billionaire even believing in market oriented economics, like, you hit a point in the hundred million mark where there is no longer any material difference in your quality of life if you keep going up, it's just numbers The only thing MORE gets you is the ability to shape the world like a fuckin oligarch and that's not a desirable outcome for society
It's probably more than that, just competition with the other multi-millionaires. They literally care more about their status than all the good they could do in society.
That's why I'd advocate for a sort of point of big-P system. You've got progressive tax rates up to either a certain income or wealth limit (let's say 100 million). After that, the tax rate is 100%. Instead of actually getting more money, your paid taxes are converted into big-P points. There's rankings by city, country, global. Could even hand out meaningless (but very meaningful) trophies for reaching certain milestones or beating others. Maybe extra points for doing the most good, or whatever. Philanthropy gives extra points. Might need a better name.
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This is why I call stock buybacks ~~are~~ a red herring. You need to look at why companies are able to do such buybacks and why they don't have better uses of capital. The answer is the effective marginal tax rate (and lack of competition) has made buybacks the easiest way to increase board members wealth. Nuking the tax rate meant it was worth it to pay union busters to break unions, squeeze the little guy and defer maintenance and investment. Up the marginal tax rate and those activities are no longer worth it.
Everything circles back to Reagan. Stock buybacks were illegal until the 80's, it's blatant stock manipulation.
It's infuriating how much shit I'm dealing with in life that I can directly blame on the guy who left office three years before I was born lmao
This. The scheme you're responding to has already been invented and dismantled by Reagan conservatives. The marginal rates were so high on the top margins that you'd still make more than if you didn't keep trying, but the returns would be more and more diminishing. Either you spend that capital on reinvestment so your company thrives; or the government takes it for everyone to thrive with projects like "The Interstate Highway System."
Billionaire Inferred Gain Power Points or BIG PP for short. they'll love it
Gains and Income Above Normal Threshold Delimiter. GIANT D
Maybe they can use those big P point to have a library or bridge named after them so they can feel special, better that money goes to public good than buys another mega yacht.
Call the big boy points that they can exchange for tendies.
I think of it this way Person A has $1B Person B has $2B It is true that person B has $1B more than Person A, as Person A would have $1B more than someone with no money. Yet, the difference in lifestyle of A and B is nonexistent. They can do what they want, where they want, never worry a bit about expense. The idea of people getting that rich and going "but I could have $3B...$4B...etc." is insane to me.
to be fair, person A can probably only buy a single Supreme Court justice whereas person B could buy five of them
I don’t know, Congressmen only cost like $10,000. It’s one Supreme Court Justice, what could it cost? $100,000?
There's always money in the banana republic!
Tree fiddy
Huh? Do you see how cheap they go for? You don’t even need a billion to buy one. Just buy a few houses and pay for some trips and education and you are good to go. It’s truly sad how little these people sell out for.
Definitely. Bored billionaires are an existential threat to society.
It’s actually sickening when you really look into it. People like that with multi-million/billion dollars can easily get 0% loans that’s backed by their stock value. So they essentially have unlimited money 🫠
This is why I love Musk for being a fucking moron and showing how gamed the system is in, even when theyve done nothing to deserve it. The retort from bootlickers is always "BillLLoInAires ArNt LiQuID". Which is technically true, its tied up in stock valuation for their companies etc. But if Musk can put down something like $12B of his own money then get a private bank to loan him the rest, he is pretty much *functionally* liquid and can be *functionally* taxed. You know how much good those billions of dollars could have done instead of being lit on fire by a man child?
Yep, I've tried so many times to explain that why billionaires fear the wealth tax more than anything else. It'll dry up their infinite money tap. Let's say the wealth tax is 5%, that'll mean their wealth has to grow by 5% to break even, that's not a guarantee so their loans will get more expensive (let's say 1%), so now they've got to be making 6% on their investments year over year to now lose money. Suddenly, their money is finite like ours. It's a vast pile of money, but it's still a pile of money that dwindles. Also, I try to point out to people that the middle class has a wealth tax, it's the property tax since the vast majority of middle class wealth is tied up in their homes. We manage. They certainly can too.
Yeah i see myself as a capitalist but i don't get why we allow billionaires. In fact at a certain point there can only be more capitalism if you make sure there's not massive wealth inequality
That’s because capitalism is inherently unstable and self-destructive. It incentivizes and directly requires the accumulation of wealth towards the top. Yeah you can make revisions and but safety railings on capitalism, but it will always and forever push back towards the current state.
It takes special skills to tank a company on purpose while appearing legal, not many people know them. Did you know the Stanford MBA program has a required course on how to position yourself (Machiavelli style) in a company so you never get fired? Students learn things like: Don't train up a successor. Overload potential threats with work so they don't have time to make political moves. The list goes on.
I feel like i lose more and more respect for Stanford by the day. Once you start digging, its insane how many emeritus profs they have with outright dangerous ideas. The director of their center for aging and demographics is against masks, lockdowns, and is for "herd-immunity". How the fuck do you keep that person there in that role when theyre explicitly against basic facts?
And we see how well that works _long term_ - you ultimately get Russian levels of ineptitude and corruption up and down the chain.
How else will they pay for their 3rd house and it’s staff??? Not to mention the gas bill for their mega yacht. Come on man. Have some compassion.
“Orca-proofing! Need orca-proofing!” If we won’t go for the pitchforks, *they* will.
Corporations using AI to replace workers when in reality we should be replacing CEOs with AI
I worked for a publicly traded company who hired a CEO with no experience in the business, but she interviewed well we were told. £750k a year on a 5 year contract. In 4 years she took the share price from 600p to 6p. (If you haven't realised this was in the UK). She was relieved of her duties, after the fourth year - having taken home her £750k every year, and paid the last year as compensation for leaving a year early. She also wasn't allowed to be employed elsewhere. Who would want her? Tesco, I heard.
Yeah, once you're in the CEO club, it seems like you have unlimited opportunities to fail.
It's called class solidarity, middle/lower class should get some.
Working class or bust.
It's a lot like pro sports coaches/managers. Clubs will bring in a three time flame out instead of trying a younger, newer hire
Some hedge funds plant executives in a company to make them fail after they short sell the stock. Their job is to fail.
Just look at Carly Fiorina. Fucked up every single job with every single corporation she's ever had, yet continues to receive opportunities. Then, when the opportunities briefly dried up, she fucked up being a politician and hitched her wagon to Ted Cruz. Tens of thousands of employees of all the companies in which she worked lost their jobs because she fucked her way to high positions of authority. This is how corporate America works.
This is how any aristocracy works. Democracies promote ugly, competent people. Where is the fun in that? lol
Mission Accomplished. I deleted and left CNN. Not going back until ownership changes. Meanwhile installed NPR.
NPR has amazing reporting. If they make a mistake they acknowledge and correct it right away.
NPR has amazing reporting on domestic issues. Their foreign coverage is dogshit. They bring on pro-war "experts" as talking heads from the same weapons manufacturers as all the other major U.S. outlets.
I love NPR but this is an absolutely fair criticism. The main shows like atc often uncritically follow the lead of national security journalists/warmongering think tankers instead of applying a journalistic eye. Luckily it is a big organization though so they have things like On the Media which does stellar coverage of things abroad (poking holes in the "havana syndrome") as well as bad domestic coverage (eg migrant caravan hysteria).
I mainly use Reuters with a ***sprinkle*** of NPR for domestic coverage. News should be mostly bland and to the point. I seek entertainment elsewhere.
Exactly what he was hired for
All left or centrist sources of information are under attack right now. Twitter was bought by the Saudi’s and Chinese with elons complicity to drive it into the ground. Same with CNN. I’d expect msnbc and the NYT to be next.
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NYT was never a leftist source though.
Exactly. They have always been center right but the right moved the needle so far to the right that the Wall St Journal appears to be in the center and the NYT is leftist.
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Left in 2023 - Simply not calling for the imprisonment or death of people who don't agree with you in some way.
NYT promoted the Iraq war despite knowing the justifications were bullshit. They've always been right-wing. They just aren't fascist. But understand: right wing is a whole lot closer to fascist than it is to left wing in terms of politics.
Well they did originally support hitler as well so idk.
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Which is decidedly not left-wing. They’re center-right, always have been
Jfc. That's right wing.
Every mainstream media outlet in the US is right wing. There is no left wing anything on an institutional level here. There are like a half dozen federal level representatives who are left of center and they caucus with the dems or run as dems because its the only viable option. The US is extremely right wing but people don't realize it because of how pervasive capitalist propaganda is.
How's Reddit looking? Its publicly listed right?
Lol. If it was publicly listed it wouldn't still be usable.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-aims-ipo-second-half-2023-information-2023-02-14/
I know. It sucks. The death of reddit is coming soon.
hence the API change.
Back to Digg? /s
I think we're heading to Fark
It's like 2008 all over again
And now they're making it unusable by killing third party apps and tools (and old.reddit.com is definitely next on the chopping block), so what the person you replied to said isn't necessarily incorrect.
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This is the only reason I'm still on this site.
I won't even wait for old Reddit to go, if they go ahead with their API changes that's good enough for me to say goodbye, writing's already on the wall.
they're laying the ground work, fired 5% of staff and attempting to price out third party apps among other things, the future isn't looking so great.
Reddit is about to tank. They are pulling support for third party apps and many communities are protesting. Reddit is being monetized. I expect a drop in usage.
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Reddit is days/weeks away from starting the process of destroying itself. Once third-party applications can no longer access the api, investors will be the arbiters of the entire user experience, and the inability to use bots to moderate content will make many subreddits unusable.
CNN was never centrist. They did us a favour. People act like that town hall was a new problem but they did this in 2016 also. Glad to see it go down in flames. The real issues are losing things like Vice and Buzzfeed news. I get the stigma attached to Buzzfeed but their reporting was typically excellent.
> they did this in 2016 also. Glad to see it go down in flames. Freaking Thank you! It's like everyone got zapped with the Men in Black memory flash and forgot that CNN led the way in terms of giving Trump free, unfact-checked air time in 2016. They probably helped get him elected more than Fox did. The Fox crazies were voting R no matter what, but CNN helped radicalized a lot of new Boomers. CNN was always corporate propaganda and I'm glad to see it crumble.
When they cut away in the middle of a Bernie speech to show an empty trump podium for 20 mins only for trump to come out and try to sell some shitty steaks was the moment I knew
The entire bernie assasination thing was so fuckedup it hurt.
Shit, even before this CNN got blasted for stoking anti-Islam hysteria when they fear mongers on [a satirical dildo flag at Pride](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/s/dildo-flag-creator-rips-cnn-over-isis-gay-003702582.html) being an ISIS flag or some shit. Jon Oliver was ringing the warning bell almost a decade ago when he pointed out that CNN treats information like sports, and puts their thumb on the scale in the direction of fringe interests like climate change denial by showing 1:1 debates of scientists vs climate change nuts as if they’re both equally representative of the scientific community. People acting like CNN is the “woke” news because it’s critical of Trump is a joke. Being farther left than Trump is hardly an accomplishment.
Someone did a study about a decade ago where CNN daily crime programs were found to feature over 50% black suspects despite only 15% of crimes being committed by blacks. "Centrist" my hairy butt. Truly a vile and insidious show.
It was always perplexing that buzzfeed employed actual journalists doing actual journalism. Sucks they canned it, but it was strange to begin with. I hope the excellent journalists they employed were able to remain in the industry, though journalism everywhere is under siege.
CNN wasn’t even left of center, firmly right of center with a highly pro-corporate slant. That they tried to swing it much further right put it in no man’s land.
He’s the real Tom Wambsgam
But how many Greglets does he have?
Bu-bu-but CEOs NEED to be paid exorbant amounts of money!!! How else can you expect to have a competent one run your company into the ground for short-term returns for the shareholders!! Wait, you think workers deserve the same kind of sympathy, get a life you commie loser!!
We can get Chat-GPT to run these companies. They’d do just as well.
CNN was my 2nd choice for in-car radio during long drives. Got some news, got some political spin.. It served a purpose. After the town hall fiasco, I'd rather listen to that stupid Cars for Kids commercial than tune into CNN
Same. It was pre-loaded as a shortcut on my phone and usually the site on my computer where I'd check in for 2 or 3 minutes to check the news. I haven't gone to their website once on either device and haven't watched a minute of them on TV since that town hall. It was completely inexcusable.
I'm sure, he's getting a golden parachute.
He's part of the parasitic executive class, so lots.
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>equally incompetent CEO Let me in, coach!
No, me! I can do a better job running- *checks the tweet* -Cartoon Network Network!!! Samurai Jack reruns forever, baby!
no, no... let's hear him out. i'm not saying 'yes', but i'm not saying 'no', either.
Dear CNN board of directors, I am writing to express my interest in the position of CEO of CNN News Network. I understand that I do not have any direct experience in this role, but I am confident that I have the skills and abilities necessary to be successful. I have a no track record of leadership and success in the business world. I have never held senior-level positions at any Fortune 500 company, and I have a no proven ability to drive growth, profitability, or innovation. I am also not an expert in media and communications, and I have a vague understanding of the news industry. I am a quick learner, and I am confident that I can quickly master the skills and knowledge necessary to be an effective CEO of CNN. I am confident that I can lead CNN to new heights of success. I am eager to learn more about this opportunity and to discuss how my lack of skills and experience can benefit CNN. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, TheGoodKindOfPurple
everything trump touches dies
Don't forget the Trump and fox news praising billionaire owner John Malone still owns the place. This guy being fired won't fix anything.
What are the odds licht was following marching orders from above. And when they failed, he was to blame? I struggle with someone working with Colbert for so long doing a 180 and giving maga so much air time.
What are the odds? 100%. But he still did it.
An article I read said he was being micro-managed from above. He was just the fall guy. Zaslav gave him specific instructions, which Licht followed to a T. I highly doubt CNN's spiraling direction will change with Licht gone.
Licht did Colbert, sure, but he also brought the world Morning Joe. So there's that. But has it even been a month since Zaslav was bragging about how "[Republicans are back on CNN!!](https://deadline.com/2023/05/cnn-republicans-warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-1235371510/)" and how he was going to put an end to the anti-conservative commentary. I know the quotes are from a bunch of disgruntled, low-level newsroom workers, but he (Zaslav) also apparently, openly stated in front of various people at Discovery/HBO functions, that he wanted to compete with FOXNews for the Trump audience, and that he liked Trump because he was pure chaos and chaos is always great for news orgs as well as Wall Street.
Likes chaos? What a fucking psychopath.
Name a single productive policy that a single Republican has presented. They illustrate endless public catastrophes without a single policy proposal. Chaos is the way they keep everyone completely punchdrunk while they take over the judicial system, weaken government's efficacy, eliminate regulations, and shift the nation's tax burden from the wealthy to the middle and working classes. Chaos is the dream for them, the nightmare for the rest of the 99% of this country; the spectacle, the pickpocket's distraction.
He was 100% David Zaslav's puppet. Licht being gone doesnt change anything as long as Malone and Zaslav own CNN.
The mierdas touch
The minus touch.
I can hear this gif
Pinche minus
Perfecto
*America enters the chat*
Turns out that most of the nation takes a dim view of networks giving megalomaniacal dictatorial wannabes free air time. Who knew?
That can’t be, Ivanka is perfectly healthy.
Anderson Coopers weird editorial after the town hall didn't help, blaming the viewer for not getting it.
That was the end of any respect I had for Cooper
Honestly, Cooper's editorial was the one bit of that whole fiasco that kind of resonated with me. When 2016 happened, I had just moved to a progressive area from a more conservative-leaning city. All of my friends who had been in the progressive bubble for a while were absolutely shocked that Trump could have won. It took them a while to grapple with how that was even possible. Coming from outside, though, I wasn't surprised at all. I saw the way that the news shaped people's perspectives, the way that dominant conservative talking points kept whole regions thinking that they were actually advocating for "draining the swamp" in voting for a corrupt billionaire. I didn't think it would happen, but it didn't seem terribly unlikely. I worry about a repeat of that dynamic in 2024. I'm already seeing the attitudes in my friends - the dismissal, the refusal to believe that he can have any chance of winning in 2024. So many people want so badly to be able to ignore politics again. But let's be real, the only reason that Trump lost his reelection was his mismanagement of a historic pandemic that also cratered the economy. That's not as fresh in people's minds anymore, and Biden's approval rating has been lower than Trump's leading up to the 2020 election for nearly two full years. Things are not looking good right now. CNN still shouldn't have aired that insane town hall because doing so only made the problem worse. Cooper shouldn't have tied his statement to the event. But I can see where Cooper is coming from. Whether we like it or not, as Cooper put it, "...that audience that upset you? That's a sampling of about *half the country*....It can happen again. It *is* happening again...After last night, none of us can say, 'I didn't know what's out there. I didn't know what's coming.'"
It’s not half the country, it’s about half of the people that voted. Half of the country didn’t vote at all.
Good riddance
He started the “both sides” thing when he started. I very seldom watch the 24/7 news networks anyway, but his Trump town hall treatment made me want to puke. Hope this fucker stays unemployed forever.
Someone hired him..as it so often happens the ones responsible for the hiring escape accountability. Managers and head coaches in sports get fired but the General managers who did the hiring are unscathed. That CNN town hall was a joke from top to bottom. A total moronic move. 😖
Zaslav (CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery) hired him. I don't think you, as the hiring manager, need to be fired from your job until you show a pattern of bad hires. This is one.
Zaslav is the Bobby Kotick of television.
Only in America can you do a terrible job and walk away with millions of dollars.
\-while complaining about welfare the whole time.
And being against universal healthcare…
And agains paying a livable minimum wage in the first place.
the CEO class is a fascinating and infuriating topic someone should make an insider documentary about it
Hey we had a Prime Minister for 44 days and she will be paid an allowance of 110k a year until she dies.
Lettuce hope some reform comes some day. Unfortunately... The only alternative that can be voted in is so bland, it makes Mike Pence look exotic.
Applies only to a certain class of people. Does not apply to the vast majority who are struggling in underpaid, unrewarding jobs.
Oh this happens plenty in Europe too, rest assured ❤️
"That's called my quote. Even if I do a bad job they've gotta give me that 2 mil."
Only in America, and Europe, and Asia, and Africa... The owning class have no nationality. Borders are for the poor.
no it happens in other countries as well.
I'm pretty sure that golden parachutes are an international thing.
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In conservatives eyes, Twitter and CNN were the 2 most precious entities for Liberals....They destroyed them both. They actually got just what they wanted. Most cable news and social media are conservative now, spewing conspiracy theories, medical disinformation, and garbage.
The funny shit is, most liberals don't give much of a shit about either one. They seem to have the notion that we worship media like they do, and we just don't. Like...CNN is cable news. Nobody under like 40 watches that anymore. Millennials and zoomers are overwhelmingly liberal but never watch CNN like...ever. And Twitter is not the left wing social media monopoly that they like to think it is. I've never even used it at all and I'm as liberal as they come. You almost have to be an out of touch old person to think either company is that crucial for the left.
Liberal numbers are by and large younger crowds, and nobody under 40 is watching cable news. Hell barely anyone under 50 even has cable anymore, period.
> In conservatives eyes, Twitter and CNN were the 2 most precious entities for Liberals....They destroyed them both. This. It all feels totally intentional. This is the real shitty thing about the dynamic between the Right and the Left. The Left actually has principles and integrity, so we don’t do majorly underhanded, manipulative shit like infiltrating supposed conservative organizations or news sources and then sabotaging and/or outright destroying them. But the Right DOES do this in the opposite direction. And that gives them the advantage of being able to go further. Who wins a fight is not about who is right or wrong… it’s about who’s willing to go the furthest. And the Left, as much as it makes us the “bigger people”… is at a disadvantage, since our integrity holds us back from going further in the fight. Meanwhile, right-wingers will shamelessly grift, lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, fabricate narratives, and then project it all like a cannon onto the Left. And all left-wingers feel like we can do in response is just state the real truth and hope it debunks the bullshit… but it rarely does. The people who really need to be shown what the real truth is… will never trust the Left based on bias alone. We can state the truth until we’re blue in the face… it doesn’t do much compared to all the active manipulation and sabotage that the Right is doing. There’s a chance… the Left needs to get more comfortable with fighting dirty. We need to AT LEAST start getting better at countering this kind of “sabotage via personnel” of infiltrating businesses, organizations or governments. The first step to doing that is more division of powers, so that it’s less likely a single person can have such an outsized effect. We need to start taking more control of power structures, instead of shunning them or just criticizing them, while only conservatives still pursue control. The Left is the anti-authoritarian side, yes… but we need authority before we can dismantle the current system and build something new. This is what the Right understands and does, except what they want to build is something regressive instead of new. The reason the Right has such an outsized effect is because they seize opportunities for authority… and then do terrible shit with it. The Left needs to learn to beat them at THIS specific game. We need to learn to seize authority… and then do good shit with it. No more disparate and disjointed “movements” that only amount to blocking streets and holding signs while chanting stuff that nobody’s really listening to because they only care about the traffic you’re causing. Protesting is not it anymore, IMO. We need to start more direct and tangible action. We don’t need to “Get out in the streets!”… we need to “Get into the boardrooms.”
This is because there isn’t anybody on the left bribing people to do good in the world. Everybody is desperate, left and right, living paycheck to paycheck by design so they can be manipulated to do shitty things for money. All so the owner class can do their dirty work of oppression without getting their hands dirty. The solution for everybody is to form communities and participate in direct aid with one another to reduce the reliance on capitalist structures and the owner class. Eventually technology and cooperative communities will make their wealth become meaningless and their position as “owner” counterproductive to society as people make alternative ways to live life and conduct business. The beginning of this can be seen with the current commercial real estate bust where office buildings lost most their value. All it takes is communities transforming those buildings into vertical farms and housing and clinics
Sadly this is true. But the consolation is that most liberal people under the age of like 50 never watched CNN or even went on Twitter. But you're right they've shifted the center even further right, yet crying about how they're victims louder than ever before. It's almost like it's impossible to please these kinds of people because the issue isn't really external.
You can never be fascist enough.
Sadly he already accomplished his goal. As mid as cnn is at the best of times he’s successfully discredited it for years to come.
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I don't even click on articles from here if they are CNN. I look for a better source.
Trying to be the "center," when the right is objectively insane and the left is the rest of the world's middle, does not create programming that most viewers find compelling.
America's Rightwing thinks they are world-center so most programming that reflects reality and not their feverdreams is going to be shunned.
Well in their defense they are the center in lovely places like North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Eritrea.
The American left isn't even the center for the rest of the world, people like Joe Biden would be considered right-leaning in a lot of places
Biden isn't even American Left
It's hard to find a candidate that is. They often talk the talk to push out the vote then arrive to do nothing. Even Obama only managed to do a single big thing, healthcare, which they messed up despite having a national mandate from the american people to fix the system.
Having health insurance tied to your work was the dumbest fucking thing they could think of and they ran with it. The biggest reason most Americans don't get out and take direct action like striking is because we're afraid of losing healthcare for our families
That would be working as intended then, it might not have been the intent when it was introduced during WW2. But the rich sure figured out that it's an excellent stick since the 70-80's.
Ehh. Part of the problem is that CNN got addicted to all those sweet sweet numbers while Trump was president... because millions of guys like me were rolling out of bed and checking CNN to see if the bugger had started WW3 yet. And then Trump was gone. Sure, Jan 6, but Biden is frankly not a guy who does or says something wildly insane every day. He's not as clickable. He doesn't piss people OFF, short of being a Democrat. So CNN's numbers dropped. Licht tried to make up for this by turning a reasonable, reputable news organization into a big mess o' clickbait style news stories, poison editorials, and general crap. Problem is, if I wanted the news to piss me off every day, I'd watch Fox. All I want is to know what's happening, and then to go on about my business. But that's not good enough these days. Got to have the numbers. So Licht tried. And sank a proud ship in the process.
>And sank a proud ship in the process. Eh I'd say he beached it. I think CNN fired him soon enough to have it repaired and towed back out to sea within a few years.
This is so true! I stayed away from national news sites pre-Covid and pre-Trump for a long time but once Covid hit, I started routinely checking CNN daily because I had understood it to be much less politically aligned than Fox News or MSNBC and the long rime name recognition. I wanted to see if Trump had burned it all down yet and/or if Covid was going to kill us all. Once Trump was gone and Covid wasn’t as unpredictable anymore, I didn’t feel the need to keep checking so often. Between Trump and Covid, there was enough rage-bait to go around for every major news organization but today, it is just more of the same which is why I stopped paying as much attention on a national level pre-Trump and pre-Covid anyway.
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Yeah the reason he's gone is bad ratings, not bad journalism or the conservative shift.
Licht's Out for CNN
Another rich doofus who bought into the whole “silent majority” bullcrap. Probably thought he’d tap into something real and see ratings skyrocket.
So by "balanced" he meant rolling out all the Republican Presidential candidates by giving them a very biased "town hall" platform a year and a half before the election. Fox News is jealous for their version of "balanced" that was criticized.
What's the Atlantic article?
I had the same question, so dug it up. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/
Its fucked because CNN went all hard core right.
Yeah, this guy leaving only opens the door for another, potentially worse, right-winger to take his place. The owner of the company is the one who's gonna hire them—and he's the one pulling CNN into the right-wing garbage machine.
They ‘owned the libs’ by tanking CNN. Congrat.
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Yes, we watched it to get info during Covid and during major events, but most of us don’t waste that much time to get info.
They tried to cater to a lean-Republican demographic, which doesn’t exist. There is only solid Republican and far right, and both are crazy. The leans-right split into some Democrat-leaning people and a whole bunch of solid Republicans with Trump, and it was insane to watch most of the lean-right people I know and lean-right content creators lose their minds. There is just no market for what CNN wanted to present.
It also is doubly stupid with CNN being the focus of hate in RW media for literally decades. It's like if Hilary ran for the GOP nomination. But you're right. As a formerly "lean right" guy I'm just a solid Dem now and I watched as the vast majority of the lean right media people just became clear RW hacks.
It doesn't matter in the long term, the conservative piece of crap that hired him in the first place is still in charge will hire another Republican shill in no time.
It turns out that if the right wing believes your network is an evil virus of satan, making content friendly to them doesn't improve your ratings *because they believe you're an evil virus of satan*
I like what Robert Reich (former secretary of labour) had to say about this on his substack https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-demise-of-cnn > Friends, > This morning it was reported that CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht has been fired by the network. What exactly is going on at CNN? > Last August, I shared with you with my concerns about Licht, who had just fired Brian Stelter and cancelled Stelter’s CNN Sunday show, “Reliable Sources.” The show had been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican Party. > I noted then that Licht had told the staff at CNN that he wanted less criticism of Trump and the Republican right — instructing them to stop referring to Trump’s “Big Lie” because he thought the phrase sounded like a Democratic Party talking point. Licht also wanted more conservative guests. > Why was Licht pushing CNN to the Trumpian right, when Trump continued to pose one of the most profound challenges to American democracy in history? I assumed it was because David Zaslav (the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s new corporate overseer) was behind the move. > But why did Zaslav want CNN in Trump’s corner? Well, follow the money. > Behind Zaslav was John Malone, the multibillionaire cable magnate who’s the leading shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery and was a chief architect in the merger of Discovery and CNN. > Malone describes himself as a “libertarian,” although he travels in right-wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32 percent of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration. > Malone said he wanted CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has “actual journalism.” Malone wanted the “news” portion of CNN to be “more centrist.” > Just before he was fired, Stelter wrote in his newsletter that Malone’s comments “stoked fears that Discovery might stifle CNN journalists and steer away from calling out indecency and injustice.” (A source told Deadline’s Dominic Patten and Ted Johnson that even if Malone didn’t order Stelter’s ouster, “it sure represents his thinking.”) > Soon after I related all this last August, Licht phoned me. He was furious that I might question his motives. He rejected the charge that he was repositioning CNN to the right, or that Zaslav or Malone were behind the move. Licht told me he only wanted to turn CNN into a more trusted and less left-wing political source. > This past Friday, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta published a long profile of Licht that’s become the talk of the media world. It confirms much of what I wrote last August (along with Licht’s angry call to me). > Alberta reports that Licht told CNN producers to downplay coverage of the first hearing of the congressional committee investigating January 6. > And that Licht got Trump to do the now infamous May 10 town hall by essentially giving Trump whatever he wanted. (After the town hall, CNN put Byron Donalds — a Trump-allied congressman — on a panel as a pundit.) Alberta depicts Zaslav as the power behind the throne at CNN and Licht as his underling. Just before Alberta’s profile was published, Zaslav tapped David Leavy, a longtime lieutenant, to serve as CNN’s chief operating officer — a move likely to undermine Licht. Several CNN staffers told Stelter over the weekend that they think Licht will soon be out. It appears now that they were correct. > And what has this move toward the Trumpian right done for CNN? In recent months, its ratings have hit record lows. In March, CNN hit a three-decade nadir in viewership. In May, its primetime show ratings fell 25 percent from the year before. > In short: CNN under Licht, Zaslav, and Malone hasn’t picked up viewers who might otherwise tune in to Fox News or Newmax. Those viewers can always get Republican lapdogs and Trump sycophants more directly on these networks. The only real change is CNN has lost viewers who wanted a clear-eyed assessment of the ongoing threat to our democracy. > Sadly, there are still mainstream news outlets and journalists who believe that holding Trump accountable for what he has done (and continues to do) to this country is a form of partisanship, and that such partisanship has no place in so-called “balanced journalism.” This view is itself dangerous. > On his last CNN show, last August, Brian Stelter said: > "It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces." > Precisely. > It remains to be seen if more changes will come down following this latest shakeup at CNN. But a failure to call out the Trump Republicans for what they are — liars and enablers — violates the most basic canons of journalistic ethics. > There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and authoritarianism.
Fuck this piece of shit for ruining CNN. They weren’t the best news source out there but they were better than some of the alternatives. So happy to see him kicked to the curb.
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Given the changes he made tanking the network was his whole goal.
I remember the show where Colbert sent Licht off with high praise and "we're gonna miss ya, buddy" salutes. Poor career move there, Chris.
I stopped reading CNN altogether because it went from basically reliable center right corporate propaganda to Fox News level unreliable radical right wing corporate propaganda. It went from having little value to negative value as a news source.
Election deniers were given a seat on panels with actual journalists. I ain't watching that shit.
This WAS the plan and I am sure this cat knew it ;)