Originally published at: CNN fires CEO Chris Licht after a pretty bad, Trump-friendly year | Boing Boing
…
9 Likes
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
37 Likes
He’ll be just fine over at Newsmax or some other right wing propaganda network.
8 Likes
Good. Maybe it’s a sign that they finally realise pandering to right-wingers is not a formula for building an audience and a reputable brand (the DNC should also take note).
He’s too much of a coastal librul elite for them or O(n)AN. He might end up at Faux, though. Whatever happens, there are enough people invested in him that the glass floor will prevent him from a complete fall.
23 Likes
Jesus fucking Christ can we stop pandering to the most fucked up deranged 20% of the goddamned country at my given time because it’s opposed to something somewhere? Not everything has to be balanced by its opposition. If 99 people want to live today and one guy wants them dead we do not need to give 50% of the airtime to him to figure out what percentage of the people he can kill to make it fair.
Every executive at every media company who doesn’t get the problem here needs to be fired.
44 Likes
political axiom #17: Everything touched by trump (and touching trump) eventually goes down. Why can’t these ‘gentlemen’ stay aware of that? (“I’m so cunning it won’t affect me!” --anthony scaramucci)
16 Likes
19 Likes
Maybe Warner Brothers Discovery Chief will wake up and see that there is one person well suited for the job already inside the CNN orbit…
10 Likes
Wait, I thought going woke caused you to go broke???
5 Likes
Licht used to work on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Colbert once explained that “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” He said that as a joke, but the ‘reality’ is that conservatives have strayed so far and so often from the truth, that there is no way to lean to the right without stepping off the edge of the truth. Licht must have known that. He was chasing dollars for his masters. I don’t expect the next CNN leader will be different.
16 Likes
If he had the slightest bit of introspection, he wouldn’t have made any of the boneheaded moves he has.
7 Likes
Do they not learn anything from the Dominion lawsuit that lie doesn’t pay in long term. I puzzle me why these people keep getting hired as CEO. They can’t do simple math even from the perspective of profit driven. It’s all narcissist assholes all the way down.
He probably follows the mantra of any coverage is a win. Which is true for Tr*mp but CNN will not benefit from that considering its audience.
the executive’s fixation on his own press coverage
Why the fuck a CEO need his/her own press coverage? He can go to FauxNews as a guest for that. Freaking narcissist psychopath.
12 Likes
Yes, I don’t expect that Licht leaving will cause a dramatic change in the direction CNN is heading. The approach might be a little different, but Licht was attempting to do what he was hired to do.
6 Likes
I hope so, but I rather suspect many will avoid coming to that conclusion - Licht was trying to do multiple, contradictory things, so there’s a lot that someone could latch onto to “explain” what happened. Plus, even if it were a viable strategy, CNN wasn’t going to be able to pivot to that while Trump et al. were still actively labeling it “the enemy of the people.” That is, there were so many layers of idiocy at play here with Licht’s strategy, it’s easy to ignore even the biggest one.
Unfortunately that isn’t true (yet). Fox’s settlement not only wasn’t cripplingly large, but it was also covered by their insurance, so the combined impact of the lawsuit, the damning internal communications revealed by the lawsuit and the firings was one quarter where they had a $50 million loss - but in the previous four quarters they made over a billion dollars thanks to those lies, so in balance they’re still doing very well. The next lawsuit might make a bigger dent, but right now I’m sorry to say they’re very much profiting off lies in the long term.
7 Likes
I’d reallllllly love to have an unbiased news media source. Just reporting the goddam facts and leaving it up to viewers to interpret/warp/misunderstand/understand/apply etc. No panels, no talking heads, no entertainment. Just what’s happening in the world.
Is that too much to ask?
1 Like
The problem is that what matters and why something is happening is often up for debate. How you think about the facts shapes how you present them… and we’re all part of society, and none of us are entirely objective actors. Facts might seem “neutral” but they rarely are…
12 Likes
Maybe worth remembering what was happening at the time of that joke too. The Republicans had started an illegal war on transparently false pretexts and with no sensible plan beyond selling off what they take, resulting in the predictable deaths of countless civilians and destabilization of…well, that part just keeps going. But at the time, media like CNN just kind of accepted their narrative without any real question.
12 Likes
Yeah - I get that it’s more complicated.
I generally get my international news from the BBC World Service - which itself has been accused of bias.
Surely there are better places - would love to hear about some.
1 Like
That is impossible.
There is bias in which stories are covered and which ones aren’t. There aren’t enough hours in the day to cover everything. Even the language used to state just the facts can be biased.
Just have the news sources be open about their biases, and admit that centrist and moderate are biases too.
15 Likes
We all have biases, and the search for perfect objectivity isn’t helpful, I don’t think.
Well… it is! 
I generally get my news from NPR, and I understand that they are biased as well. BBC is going to have a slant based on their mission and funding, and same with NPR. I think that as long as you’re aware of what those biases might be, you’ll be able to sort of what’s happening in the world…
What do you imagine a purely objective news outlet to be? Like, how would they report on something contentious like the current public attacks on trans people or the war in Ukraine, which are highly contentious, and hotly debated events as they are happening. What gets reported and what gets left out of those 2 stories to make it “objective”? Because with the former, it’s be allowing dehumanizing language about trans people in the name of “objectivity” despite the fact that terfs are promoting dehumanizing language… Do you neutrally report Putin’s words as you would Zelensky, and ignore the longer history of Putin’s views on Ukraine and how it relates to Russia? Do you just report that and ignore the way to flies in the face of most historical narratives about Ukraine outside of the Russian one?
11 Likes
