“CNN topper Jeff Zucker’s plans for the network might be summed up by the following: Everything needs to change, but much of it is going to remain the same,” Variety reports with a lede — topper?! — that’s straight out of 1923 (speaking of of everything remaining the same):
Despite the announcement that CNN has hired noted Republican Newt Gingrich as part of its new team for a revived “Crossfire,” Zucker stated he saw value in the network staying objective in its presentation of news and opinion. The idea that CNN “didn’t have enough conservative points of view was probably a valid criticism,” the executive said, though he does not expect CNN to lose abandon [sic] its positioning as a down-the-middle presenter of news.
Fox News Channel and MSNBC have both chosen more partisan presentations in their lineup, he said, which “does leave room for somebody to be objective, and that’s the path we’ve chosen.”
Sounds good. But CNN has been threatening to become an objective news presenter for nearly twenty years now, and yet that worldview never seems to materialize, as its latest train wreck moment yesterday highlights, neatly paraphrased by Newsbusters’ Randy Hall as, “CNN’s Don Lemon Thinks Non-Blacks Cannot Fairly Report on Blacks, So Why Can All-Liberal Media Report on Conservatives?”
When does the Bold New Experiment in objectivity at the oldest and increasingly least watched cable news network finally begin?
Update: “Man-made extinctions have even happened before. I guess we hunted the dildo into extinction.” This! Is! CNN!
[jwplayer config=”pjmedia_eddriscoll” mediaid=”65606″]
Join the conversation as a VIP Member