Oh yeah, it was completely insane for CNN to try to steal some of Fox’s audience, even if Fox’s approach works for Fox. Not only is CNN the Great Satan for MAGAts, Licht thought he could win them over with “neutral,” “fact-based” journalism - when facts and actual journalism are the very things the Fox audience does not want. In fact, that’s the opposite of what they want - what they want is confirmation of their prejudices and beliefs. Licht didn’t recognize that lies are what the Fox audience wants, but even if he had, he didn’t realize CNN wasn’t the one from which they wanted to get their lies.
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It has become very apparent to me over the years that CEOs are especially a job where who you know means more than what you know. To the point that what you know seems entirely irrelevant to the process. I wouldn’t trust 95% or so of CEOs to know how to tie their own shoelaces.
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You mean “pulling their own bootstrap”. Joke aside, I agree that the whole thing is a racket that reeks of nepotism. I remember going through interviews after interviews while these people keep failing up because of who they/their parents know.
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Having worked at a small enough company to actually interact with the CEO, it was clear his connections were what made him so valuable. Time after time things looked done but he’d somehow find the funding it badly needed to keep going. I don’t think it could have gotten by without him.
…It’s just a shame he was also the one making any decisions about what to do.
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Ahh the awful media chart. Just some sanity check values, Joe Rogan is roughly as balanced as the AP, Vanity Fair is roughly as left leaning as Unicorn Riot, and the conservative ‘comedy’ show Gutfeld! is less variable or opinion driven than Rolling Stone.They have NBC as more partisan than Reason, an explicitly ideological outlet. Quantifying partisan balance is difficult, but these aren’t analysis by serious people.
But beyond the cherry picked values is the obvious shaping of the placement to fit a narrative. Does it seem even plausible that no outlet is both hyper-partisan and driven by fact and analysis based reporting? None, in either direction? Ad Fontes media was explicitly founded to argue that the distribution looks like that and their methodology is designed to do that. They use three raters of three self described political opinions and have them rate it on both accuracy and skew, rather than perhaps looking at factual errors or measuring anything about the coverage.
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As an example of unconscious bias, nothing in your post mentions that “a lot of cities” only applies to the continental United States. The smoke has no immediate impact to us here in Australia [1].
We all have biases, and we don’t even realise how much and where they exist.
[1] not denying that Climate Change is totally a thing, because it is!
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That’s exactly my point.
We’ve seen the final form of the MAGAts. They are extreme right-wing ethno-Christian nationalists who believe in book burning, lies and violence as methods to get what they want. Yet we are not comparing them on the spectrum against the Khmer Rouge, we are comparing them against the Progressive Wing of the Democrats, a party which would be considered mildly right-wing in many European countries.
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Let’s hope it’s their final form. Because if they ever get any significant power, they’re not going to stop at burning books.
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CNN has been shifting hard to the right in the past year and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Things like splashy prime time town halls with Glenn Youngkin, Mike Pence (on multiple occasions), Nikki Haley, and of course that recent debacle with Trump. These things serve no legitimate journalistic purpose other than to give CNN something to report on. These people don’t deserve that prime time platform to spew their brand of garbage. We already know what they will say.
Just last night Mike Pence used his time to go on a transphobic tirade (parents always know best…unless a kid wants to transition), say climate change isn’t a big deal, and repeat the usual misogynistic anti-abortion talking points. His solutions to solve gun violence? Forced institutionalization for those in crisis, better trained armed guards in schools, and death penalty within one year for mass shooters. Just like Jesus would have wanted. It was absolutely disgusting.
Then there’s the recent prime time hour long puff pieces on Chris Christie and Chris Sununu. Panels often are stacked with right-wing Republican cheerleaders whose only real bonafides are “they aren’t Trumpers” (never mind they are often former cabinet members).
CNN of late has been trying so hard to chase that Fox News demographic but is too stupid to realize they will never win that demographic no matter how hard they try. It’s a real shame too. CNN has some superb reporters and anchors and they don’t deserve this.
Licht may be out, but I don’t see things changing — certainly not with the upper management that’s running things at Warner Discovery AOL Coors or whatever unholy abomination they are these days.
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According to a BBC documentary, 42.
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355/113 
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According to 1 Kings 7:23, π = 3.
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Quite an ethical fall from grace. I wouldn’t mind a moderate CNN, but they took a long walk off a short TFG pier.
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