BAD NEWS FOR ALL OF US AT THE CRETIN NEWS NETWORK

Ever since Head Crook Richard Nixon and his Even-More-Criminal Vice President Spiro Agnew went to war against the media for reporting honestly about the crimes the two were committing in office and the media recoiled at being called “liberal” for telling the truth, it has become increasingly clear that the elite political media flinches when the conservative beast twitches.

This makes it hard to report political news unlike any political news ever needing coverage before in the country’s history.

Chris Stirewalt, the Fox News elections guru who called Arizona for Biden on election night and was ultimately fired for telling the truth, recently wrote in Politico: “Unable to sell large, diverse audiences to advertisers, news outlets increasingly focus on developing highly habituated users. To cultivate the kind of intense readers, viewers or listeners necessary to make the addiction model profitable, media companies need consumers to have strong feelings. Fear, resentment and anger work wonders. It helps news outlets create deep emotional connections to users not just as users of a product, but as members of the same tribe.”

Here's elite political media’s problem: To cover the anti-democratic authoritarian threat to the republic truthfully means they have to write/broadcast things that benefit the Democratic Party, since it is the one party still committed to democracy with a small “d.” There is no way around that fact.

What the media has to do is not to worry about that. It is not necessary when covering the crazy people to get a quote from the crazy people denying that they’re as obviously crazy as they are.

And that runs head on into the old “Democrats say earth is round, opinions differ...” form of “fair and balanced” reporting that these morons have embraced ever since Spiro Agnew called them the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Today, the old rules of the past 50 years are an impediment to the media’s responsibility to protect the republic that protects them with the First Amendment.

“Objectivity” now conforms to Flann O’Brien’s assessment of of blasphemy: if there is no god, it’s stupid and unnecessary and if there is one, it’s dangerous.

The old rules have been broken and the vandals responsible for breaking them are in plain sight.

CNN’s political purge of its news staff in the wake of the merger of Warner Brothers (which owns CNN) with Discovery Channels, the home of “reality” TV bullshit for the mouthbreathers, concocted by David Zaslav, who is now considered a “genius” for transforming Discovery Channels from a company intending to elevate the national intellect to a purveyor of crap that contributes to the general moron stupidity, and making himself a pile of money as a result of having proven once again that Mencken was right back 98 years ago during the Scopes Monkey Trial when he observed that “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

Zaslav continues the tradition of Wall Street “geniuses in their own minds” who - as the beancounters they are - “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Knowledgeable observers in Hollywood give this latest outsider genius two years before he runs the SS Warner Brothers Discovery onto the rocks. I for one have told my new literary agent not to take the new book proposal to any publisher associated with the company, since whatever promises they may make about how they will handle things will be so much smoke (forget the mirrors) when Gunnar The Goon (Zaslav’s accountant executioner) comes calling looking for “savings” to be made to jack up the falling WBD stock price in the face of their $53 billion in debt created in the takeover from ATT.

Most importantly for people not selling movies, TV shows or books to these guys, but rather the viewers of CNN, it’s important who is calling the shots at WBD regarding news media. That would be top shareholder and Trump donor John Malone, the CEO of Comcast, who has a reputation here in the City of Lost Angles as “Hollywood’s favorite Nazi.” Malone, while telling everyone that he is not telling Zaslav what to do, has “let it be known” he believes shareholders will get “proper value” on their investments when CNN becomes “less partisan” and “more centrist.” Zaslav may be a moron operating 10 points above his Peter Principle point, but he can hear and understand his master’s voice. Increasing stock valuation is the only road he has out of his self-created quagmire.

Knowing this, recent events at CNN demonstrate that what’s happening is that the company is now under Republican management, specifically that of Malone, who issues “observations” and “informed opinions” rather than actual orders.

Chris Licht, who was picked to “De-Zuckerfy CNN” certainly knows which side of the bread has the corporate butter on it. The first on-air personality to get the boot was Brian Stelter, the host of “Reliable Sources,” who has become known as a sharp critic of the bullshit spewing from Conservatism Inc. and specifically from Faux Snooze. Stelter got told by Licht that CNN didn’t need to waste an hour on Sunday looking at “ourselves” despite having recently signed a multi-year/multi-million contract renewal.

Yesterday, repsected CNN White House reporter John Harwood revealed that he is no longer eployed by CNN. The word is he had learned he was next around the same time Stelter got his five minutes with Licht and got the news yesterday morning that it was his last dayt.

There’s a deeper structural issue at play in all this that is also important to keep in mind.

“Mainstream” news networks like CNN are not designed, purchased or run to be niche operations or only to serve a portion of the public as Stirewalt so accurately observed the media has become. CNN’s potential market is supposed to be everyone. One might say this is impossible in an era of polarization. There’s some truth in that. But, as Michael Jordan famously observed, “Republicans buy gym shoes too.”

In terms of audience to be reached, potential advertisers to be paid by, and to a lesser degree access to newsmakers to attract eyeballs, CNN wants to be playing for a national audience. The economic model is to make a play for everyone.

The problem is that one of our two political parties is now organized around making that impossible.

Fox and the GOP - both “mainstream Republicans” and Thousand Year MAGA - have defined CNN as the quintessence of the liberal “fake news” that makes life unfair for Trump, Republicans and all “real Americans.”

Thus, while CNN management tries to get out of that box by being more “centrist,” each new firing is greeted by Republicans as vindications of their claims of bias.

Conservatism Inc. has been invited to give Licht lists of other “bad guys” and “uppity wimmin” who need to be cashiered to shed the “fake news” label.

CNN has agreed to make Republicans themselves the arbiters of what is “lib’rul bias” and what is not. As they become more authoritarian and anti-democratic in character, they need coverage that says those things are more and more normal and that all is OK. That Licht’s job if he wants GOP approval as “real” news, that lets him rise in Malone’s approval and his personal financial advancement in the WBD heirarchy.

Republican claims of “media bias” has always been about “working the refs” to get either toothless or defensive coverage of Republicans. It’s particularly effective with national, mass-audience news networks because they cannot afford to be cut off from half the population.

The same thing is on view with Big Tech, which is under constant assault for their “liberal bias” and “unfairness to conservatives.” They can’t afford to be defined that way, because their business is based on mass audience appeal and access to friendly regulatory decision-making in Washington. The result is watching Facebook constantly on the defensive for “unfairness to conservatives,” with the result that the actions they take to mitigate this “offense” makes them simultaneously the biggest amplifier of conservative content while they constantly hire Republicans to guide them and appeal to Republican political leaders for love. Which they don’t get.

What CNN and Facebook - as well as ABC, CBS, NBC and the rest - fail to get is that the Thousand Year MAGA doesn’t want “fair and balanced” treatment.

They want to dance on these people’s graves.

People are frequently critical of “corporate” media with the assumption that as corporations they are in thrall to establishment, laissez-faire capitalist thinking. There is far more at issue.

When major news organizations are owned by big public corporations, all the incentives are to cater to Republicans to maximize the potential audience.

Paddy Chayevsky, who wrote “Network,” was once asked if he had written a “prediction” of where the news media was headed. He replied, “No, I was writing about today.” That was 44 years ago. “We’re as mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!” is now the battle cry of the Thousand Year MAGA.

CNN’s fate doesn’t really hang on who Licht chooses to host CNN’s new morning show, or who finally permanently replaces Chris Cuomo in primetime. Licht is really just figuring out which expensive piece of the puzzle he can remove without the entire edifice crashing into smithereens. Smart, non-polarizing programming anchored by charismatic hosts is what he wants, in order to win praise from friends in Manhattan and Brentwood, and have Malone recommend he get a multi-year, multi-million dollar long term contract. If the country goes down the tubes while that happens, hey - there’s always Gstaad, right?

Understand this: the American media isn’t a stakeholder in the existential battle underway for American democracy. The only “balance” they are interested in is the bottom line of the corporate balance sheet. All their “democracy dies in darkness” talk is marketing schtick. They don’t mean a word of it if it gets in the way of the real balance they seek.

The problem is the fascists mean everything that they say. Every. Single. Thing.

Among all the Republican backlash over Biden’s speech yesterday John Harwood made his last report, saying:

“The core point he made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true.

“Now, that’s something that’s not easy for us, as journalists, to say. We’re brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s not what we’re talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.

“Many, many Republicans are rallying behind his lies about the 2020 election and other things as well. And a significant portio - or a sufficient portion - of the constituency that they’re leading attacked the Capitol on January 6th. Violently.

“By offering pardons or suggesting pardons for those people who violently attacked the Capitol, Donald Trump made Joe Biden’s point for him.”

Then Harwood announced he was no longer with CNN.

The Thousand Year MAGA doesn’t want a “fair and balanced” CNN.

They want CNN dead.

And all the over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable trust fund babies of the Washington Press Corpse won’t get that till they’re forcibly pushed into the last seat in the last car on the train to Auschwitz.

As Billy Wilder told me of his experience in Germany, “I returned twelve years later to find all my friends were dead. Killed by the clowns.”

Thanks for your support. Please consider becoming a Paid Subscriber because writers who don’t work for billion-dollar corporations need support too.

Comments are for the paid subscribers.