Media angry at CNN

Having rejoiced at Fox shutting down Tucker Carlson — which vaporized Fox’s audience — the media had ice cold water thrown on its face on Wednesday night when CNN broke the moratorium on giving President Trump live coverage. Axios reported, “CNN's controversial town hall with former President Donald Trump drew 3.3 million viewers Wednesday night, making CNN the most-watched cable news network of the evening, according to final ratings from Nielsen.”

That’s nearly five times the audience CNN drew the night before with Anderson Cooper. Audiences shun him but the media praises him as the heir to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

A clown business in which ratings and subscriptions no longer matter was upset that the third-place news channel dared give the former president more than an hour of airtime without the censorship of editing.

Axios said, “The event delivered a much-needed ratings boost for CNN, though at a cost. The network faced blowback from critics and employees who argued it gave the former president a platform to lie in real-time.”

I read that and laughed. Oh sure, CNN satisfied the audience but it drew the wrath of its competitors and fellow journalists. Impressing colleagues is more important than being objective.

Vanity Fair’s review began, “CNN’s decision to host a prime-time town hall with Donald Trump already looked like a terrible idea going into Wednesday night, and now it looks like, well, whatever is German for ‘letting an insurrection-inciting sociopath take a shit in your collective mouth on live TV—and get applause for it.’”

Journalists have odd fantasies.

Another Vanity Fair was headlined, “CNN’s Donald Trump Town Hall Was Essentially a Campaign Rally.”

The mean girls in the media did not get their way, and boy are they mad. They spurted article after article condemning CNN for letting Trump speak. At the same time they said it was not a news event, they covered it in plenty of news stories.

NYT said, “Five Takeaways From Trump’s Unruly CNN Town Hall.”

Unruly! How dare an audience cheer or laugh.

MSNBC said, “When future historians seek to explain how a failed businessman and reality TV star took over the Republican Party and held it in his grip for nearly a decade, the events of May 9, 2023, would serve as a useful starting point.”

By failed businessman, MSNBC means a multi-millionaire who has built towers bearing his name in city after city. By reality TV star, the news channel means fellow who hosted a hit game show. Left out were his status as a best-selling writer and oh yes, election as president.

It’s like writing off Iron Butterfly as a one-hit wonder without mentioning the one hit — Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida — sold 35 million singles and albums. The song is a legend. Right there with Louis, Louis by the Kingsmen and Wipe Out by the Surfaris. Everybody over 60 knows these songs.

For once, Trump was not the main object of the media’s wrath. CNN was.

The mossbacks at Rolling Stone wrote, “CNN invited Donald Trump to lie on its airwaves for over an hour on Wednesday night. The evening was billed as a town hall, but played more like a campaign rally for the former president, who steamrolled and repeatedly mocked moderator Kaitlan Collins, pushing a torrent of misinformation about the 2020 election, the multiple investigations into his conduct, and pretty much everything else he commented on.

“One CNN insider who spoke to Rolling Stone called the evening appalling, lamenting that the network gave Trump ‘a huge platform to spew his lies.’

“Collins tried her best to correct Trump as he spoke. And immediately after Trump went off-air, CNN anchor Jake Tapper led a parade of pundits and fact-checkers to counter his dissembling and pan his performance.”

Breitbart reported, “CNN Employees Publicly Disagree with Network Head on Whether or Not ‘America Was Served’ by Trump Town Hall.”

Get a list of names and send them to the unemployment line. Why pay people to hate you?

Before the show aired, Michael Fanone put down the idea of allowing a former president to speak in public. Fanone said, “CNN Is Hosting a Town Hall for a Guy Who Tried to Get Me Killed.

“Donald Trump tried to end American democracy. Why is CNN throwing him a rehabilitation party?”

Because it is news. The media covered the story.

Fanone wrote, “CNN is a major American cable news outlet whose viewers trust that they are being given accurate reporting of events to the best of the network’s ability. With this trust comes an obligation and commitment to their viewers. In the past, CNN has recognized the dangers of allowing election deniers a public platform and would not allow them on-air. Under new leadership, that policy has been discarded as evidenced by CNN’s decision to allow the chief election denier, former President Donald J. Trump, a prominent time slot in its evening lineup. As if Trump were a normal candidate who had not attempted to steal an election by force. In the wake of Jan. 6, Trump’s ability to communicate to the masses was essentially stripped away from him. Twitter banned him for life. No major media outlets would have him on. So what has changed?”

No, the question is what changed is journalism that allows the federal government and Democrat Party to impose a media moratorium on a former president.

The federal government spied on Trump in 2016 at the behest of Obama and in 2020 paid Twitter and others to hush the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. The post-presidential media silence of Trump is an unspoken rule of journalism now. CNN broke the silence. Journalists are livid.

The Jeff Bezos Post made a heroine out of the interviewer in a story named, “CNN’s Kaitlan Collins tried, and tried, to rebut Trump’s election lies.”

Lies, lies, lies was all the media said. Their fact-checking consisted of just labeling everything he said as a lie. Fact-checks stopped checking facts when PolitiFact began.

The Greta Thunbergs in the media demanded of CNN, “How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childish devotion to government.”

Wajahat Ali of the Daily Beast wrote, “CNN decided to reward Trump for his reckless and dangerous behavior by giving him a 70-minute Festivus to air his grievances and lies in front of a fawning cult of 400 sycophants in New Hampshire, which reflected the full spectrum of whiteness and cruelty.”

Once again, a liberal drags racism into his pathetic argument. Apparently to Ali whiteness is evil.

NYT was shocked that CNN’s chief defended the show.

It wrote, “The chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, issued a robust defense on Thursday of his decision to broadcast a live town hall with former President Donald J. Trump, an unruly and bracing event that has prompted criticism inside and outside of the network.

“On a network-wide editorial call, Mr. Licht congratulated the moderator, Kaitlan Collins, on a masterful performance’ before acknowledging the public backlash. ‘We all know covering Donald Trump is messy and tricky, and it will continue to be messy and tricky, but it’s our job,’ Mr. Licht said, according to a recording of the call obtained by the New York Times.”

Licht said, “I absolutely, unequivocally believe America was served very well by what we did last night. People woke up, and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way that they didn’t the day before. And if someone was going to ask tough questions and have that messy conversation, it damn well should be on CNN.”

The outcry from the media shows they live in a lie. Consider Joe Scarborough’s meltdown.

He said, “I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous for democracy because we passed that a long time ago, but it showed the corrosive effects of Trumpism over eight years. And I’ve got to say the most shocking part was an audience that cheered on a president who tried to overturn American democracy. An audience that mocked and ridiculed a woman who a jury of Donald Trump’s peers found had been sexually assaulted. Those Americans there last night turned that into a punchline. Laughed and dismissed cops getting the s*** kicked out of them on January 6th, getting beaten up over and over again. Calling a cop a thug who was actually trying to stop people on the House floor from being killed. I could just go on and on.”

Fact check: The cop was the only person who killed anyone. I don’t care what color he is, he is a thug who shot and killed an unarmed woman.

But media types believe if they tell a lie repeatedly, it becomes the truth. And so they lie repeatedly. The real threat President Trump and his supporters pose comes in telling the truth.

In an earlier time, a president hellbent on returning to the White House would be a major get (coup) for a TV show.

Then again in that earlier time, a sitting president accepting — through relatives — bribes from Ukraine, Red China and even Romania would bring cries of impeachment. And using the FBI to spy on political opponents would be a scandal bigger than Watergate.

Instead, news outlets defended that corruption. Now they are scandalized by CNN actually covering the news.