The fallout from the firing of Brian Stelter and the cancellation of Reliable Sources continues this week.
CNN insiders tell Confider that staffers cannot shake the feeling the shocking move was made to appease John Malone, a right-leaning billionaire, close friend of the Murdoch family, and key Warner Bros. Discovery board member who has made it well-known that he would like CNN to be more “centrist”—whatever that means.
While Malone has denied he is “directly involved” in any decisions about CNN, multiple current and former staffers who spoke to us relayed a fear that the libertarian mogul is indirectly dictating an agenda to newly installed CNN boss Chris Licht.
Sources further suggested that internal fears about future changes stem from how Licht has kept his cards close to his chest, with members of his own management team being left in the dark about next moves.
The news of Stelter’s axing was actually supposed to be announced Friday with a carefully managed story placed with NPR, sources told Confider, but the news leaked early, including—perhaps curiously—to two conservative outlets, the Daily Mail and the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller, which were both tipped off on Thursday morning.
Stelter had been an antagonist of right-wing media for much of his time at the Reliable Sources desk, but other similarly vocal CNN stars like Don Lemon and Jim Acosta are safe for now, sources familiar with the matter told Confider.
Instead, these insiders said, Licht will next turn his attention to “blowing up” CNN’s ratings-challenged morning show New Day, having brought on his old buddy Ryan Kadro from CBS to help rework it.
Nevertheless, staffers fear further cutbacks and more layoffs as Licht, who has told friends he speaks to David Zaslav on a daily basis, seemingly carries out the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and his board’s wishes to make CNN less controversial and, in the words of several current and former CNN staffers, “more vanilla.”
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CNN at one time was a channel that you turned to for the News but it has become a propaganda rag for the Democrat Party and has lost viewer ship. It needs to go back to honest reporting with a lot less left wing opinion and spin. It needs to be more like Joe Friday on Drag Net “The facts and Nothing but the facts.”
Some “news” institutions encourage an attitude of not merely seeking to accurately report news of value, but to engage in activism even at the expense of the truth. Think of the NYT as an example. Others, while still far from conservative, are a bit less eager to pander to one-sided polarization (USA Today, maybe). CNN has been pretty one-sided for a couple of decades, and its one-time owner Ted Turner was certainly left-leaning.
On the the other hand, your typical billionaire didn’t inherit their entire fortune, but built at least some of it themselves, typically NOT by buying something only to destroy it. So change, probably overdue; but CNN was closer to being objective once, and would be better if it returned to that.
While I’m inclined to regard centrists as too willing to compromise what should not be compromised, a bit of return to centrism in media might help turn down the polarization temperature a little.
CNN=biased trash
NGN is too much, what a hilarious headline! Ever notice how everything that isn’t Left is always identified as Right Wing; never is the Left considered to be Left Wing when it invoves them – take a hike Lefties!
CNN IS FAKE NEWS