September 12, 2022

"New ‘objective’ CNN appears to be making itself objectively rightwing."

That's the headline for a column in The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi.
Earlier this year Chris Licht became the new CEO of the cable network and... met with lawmakers who had become wary of cable news and promised them that CNN was moving away from “alarmist” programming towards more neutral, objective reporting.... 
The way CNN is going I wouldn’t be surprised if they make Trump their new election integrity analyst next week.

36 comments:

RideSpaceMountain said...

It's important to realize that for these people, anything right of their pie-in-the-sky Gramscian Narnia is 'rightwing'.

pacwest said...

Objective reporting? Whoa! Next thing you know CNN will require facts. It's a nightmare.

Jupiter said...

https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/meet-arwa-mahdawi-the-guardian-columnist-who-has-turned-into-a-joke/

Roger Sweeny said...

Ah, I remember when right-wingers called peace people "objectively pro-Communist". They were, of course, laughed at.

RMc said...

"New ‘objective’ CNN appears to be making itself objectively rightwing."

And, of course, we can't have that...!

RMc said...
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RMc said...
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Jupiter said...

It must be terrifying for poor Wawa Mardawa, to have the eternal verities crumble beneath her like that. CNN!

Mason G said...

"promised them that CNN was moving away from “alarmist” programming towards more neutral, objective reporting.... "

If they're moving, there's not really anyplace further to the left for them to go, so...

Amadeus 48 said...

This is silly.

I am sorry the lefties are losing CNN, if indeed that is happening. They put out garbage for the entire Trump administration, and now the walls are closing in. John Harwood and Tater Stelter are gone, and Brianna Keilar suggested that Joe "Blood Red" Biden was off base to use US Marines as props in his Third Reich speech. Boo-hoo.

Some character from The Guardian is all over it, and he has the sadz.

Jamie said...

Well, that would be a black swan indeed. But I'm going to require a pretty extensive catalog of examples. A couple of weeks is unconvincing.

Not that I'm hoping for CNN to turn "right wing." It would be great to have a news station that actually recognizes that biases have to be guarded against and action has to be taken, effort made, not to allow them to creep into what we call "straight news."

It may not even be possible. In which case - I prefer that news providers be out and proud, so I know their biases and don't have to wade through too much content looking for the tells.

I shouldn't complain. It doesn't take that long. When every reference to one guy is peppered with "falsely claims" and "refused to" and "sources who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal," and every reference to the other guy speaks of his "quiet dignity/unassuming mien," "understandable" anything, "commitment to" this or that - you know where they stand. And when one guy's ability to connect with a stadium audience is "angry populism" and the other guy's (if he had any such) to connect with a school gym's worth of people is "everyman appeal," well, you can name that tune in one phrase.

Jamie said...

Well, that would be a black swan indeed. But I'm going to require a pretty extensive catalog of examples. A couple of weeks is unconvincing.

Not that I'm hoping for CNN to turn "right wing." It would be great to have a news station that actually recognizes that biases have to be guarded against and action has to be taken, effort made, not to allow them to creep into what we call "straight news."

It may not even be possible. In which case - I prefer that news providers be out and proud, so I know their biases and don't have to wade through too much content looking for the tells.

I shouldn't complain. It doesn't take that long. When every reference to one guy is peppered with "falsely claims" and "refused to" and "sources who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal," and every reference to the other guy speaks of his "quiet dignity/unassuming mien," "understandable" anything, "commitment to" this or that - you know where they stand. And when one guy's ability to connect with a stadium audience is "angry populism" and the other guy's (if he had any such) to connect with a school gym's worth of people is "everyman appeal," well, you can name that tune in one phrase.

Big Mike said...

No doubt it depends on where you think the center is. If you write for The Guardian you probably think the center is way to the left of where it really is.

takirks said...

It's a major "tell" with these idiots that they think that being "objective" means being objectively right-wing. As if...

Fox News isn't "right wing"; at best, they're left-of-center. CNN heading to where they're at is only going to mean that they're somewhat closer to the center than they were, which looks to them as though they've gone totally right only from within their leftoid bubbles.

It's a sad joke that anyone thinks that any part of our media is "right-wing", because they're all in lockstep reporting the same stories with the same words, time after time. The real deal isn't in what they report, or the slant they put on it. The reality is in what they don't report; and that's the telling thing. Every single story on Fox is an echo of that which is reported elsewhere, and they all kowtow to the same partisan gods when it comes time to decide what gets reported and "emphasized" for the national audience.

If you think I'm mistaken, go back and look at the coverage of the Channon Christian and Cristopher Newsom murders. Outside of the Knoxville area, those gruesome killings got precisely zero national coverage. Fox barely mentioned them, but you know damn well that if they'd been blacks murdered for racial reasons by whites, the Fox News types would have been all over it, just as they were for the death of our sainted George Floyd.

It's not what they cover; it's what they all chose not to cover that is the telling thing. With regards to race, you never, ever hear what you'd be hearing from actual "right-wing news sources", which would be filled with all the various and sundry examples of black-on-white and black-on-asian racial violence. You never hear any of them talk about that, because that wouldn't be in line with all the Kumbaya bullshit they've been pumping out since I was a kid--Which is the actual source of a lot of the racial animosity prevalent today. Everyone knows there are two standards, one for blacks and one for everyone else. If it's a black criminal, nobody mentions the racial background forthrightly, 'cos that'd hurt someone's feelings.

So, yeah... Call any of these jackasses "right-wing", and all I'm going to do is laugh. They're all totally captured by the leftoid touchy-feely types, and totally incapable of calling anything what it actually is. All news must be filtered through their J-school mindsets, and regardless of who they say they're wanting as an audience, the real truth about anything is anathema.

Day is coming, however. They're not going to like what comes when nobody believes a word they say, on anything. Bankruptcy of the major news cartels is only the very start of it all.

Howard said...

Good. The press in lockstep with the DNC hurts democratic candidates and fuels the opposition. Autophagy is how the body heals itself.

Michael K said...

"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Nobody is allowed to leave the left.

rcocean said...

Funny how the Left/right are the ying/yang of each other.

If you're a liberal/leftist and Move one mm to the right, and the Left will label you a "rightwing extremist" and a "traitor". Meanwhile You can vote for Biden and the Rightwing won't attack you. Just believe in 10 percent of conservativsm, and they're happy. Hell, they'll make you their leader if you believe in 51 percent.

JAORE said...

So long as that (racist) ignoramus Don Lemon is on the air, CNN is not very far right.

(There are others.)

n.n said...

Right-wing? Libertarian? What of conservative centrists? Next show, perhaps.

PB said...

It's a fake-out. They'll move rightward, but only to claim they now are the objective channel, while still tilting almost horizontally to the left.

Biff said...

The idea of Elon Musk buying The Guardian just popped into my head, and I admit that I enjoyed thinking about that idea quite a lot.

Michael said...

Why is the term left wing never used in the world press.

Kevin said...

“In a woke media environment, it is not enough to be non-conservative, we must be anti-conservative.” - Angela Y. Davis

OK, Angela didn't really say that, but I'm sure she'd approve.

Kevin said...

The fear of other media outlets is if CNN moves to the center people will begin to notice how non-centered the rest of them are.

Imagine a CNN that truly reports the news objectively.

Then imagine a suburban mom switching over to The View...

Joe Smith said...

Not even Fox is rightwing these days...

wildswan said...

" firing anyone who is critical of Donald Trump or Republicans"
I like the way she talks about how CNN is "firing anyone who is critical of Donald Trump or Republicans" and then mentions only two firings. It would be everyone on CNN news, opinion, sports, arts, documentaries, chyron making, weather and traffic if CNN fired "anyone critical of Trump or Republicans." They can't form three sentences over there at CNN without attacking Trump or the Republicans. "Rain is expected early tonight possibly during rush hour. Rain used to come late at night when it didn't matter but that was before Trump caused global climate change." "Traffic is flowing well on Route 94 since Trump is not in town rallying with his dirtbag, deplorable, misogynists."

n.n said...

she talks about how CNN is "firing anyone who is critical of Donald Trump or Republicans" and then mentions only two firings

Her handmade tale of a black swan event full of babies in gay parade.

MikeR said...

"to woo the Fox News crowd" They say that Fox News found a niche market - half the country. CNN doesn't need to become Fox News to be successful. They can try to reach the niche market of the 99% of the country that didn't trust them any more.

Sebastian said...

"CNN appears to be making itself objectively rightwing."

This is honest progspeak. Anything not actively pro-prog is anti-prog. In the prog cold civil war there is no neutral ground. So again, this is plain honesty.

Lurker21 said...

It's strange that a "former New York police department (NYPD) deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism" is regarded as "extremely polarizing" and Brian Stelter isn't. Maybe "polarizing" has just become another "civility bullshit" word that we only apply to people we disagree with.

Newsreaders and reporters will still have biases. They might just not be so obvious or blatant. And that's not a bad thing. However biased Walter Cronkite may have been, he at least had to pretend to hide it.

Gk1 said...

Hilarious. How fragile are liberals they lose it when one of their beloved channels dials back the propaganda 10%? Talk about hothouse flowers. Yeesh.

traditionalguy said...

Somebody tip off the FBI quick. They can send the FBI Secret Police to CNN, break in the studio doors and confiscate all their iPhones and computers and subpoena all the videotapes they ever made. Another battle in the war on American Terrorist Cells. Who knows, the Feds might finally crack the Gretchen Whittier kidnapping case.

We always knew CNN was an enemy of Democracy hiding behind Ted Turner’s cable news operations.

Gojuplyr831@gmail.com said...

"The way CNN is going I wouldn’t be surprised if they make Trump their new election integrity analyst next week."

Any worse than making Psaki a fact checker?

Gojuplyr831@gmail.com said...

"The way CNN is going I wouldn’t be surprised if they make Trump their new election integrity analyst next week."

Any worse than making Psaki a fact checker?

Michael said...

Well, the Guardian. They couldn't find the center with a map and both hands.

John Fisher said...

Of course the 'new' CNN looks right wing to the Guardian. With the 80 million deplorables having been pushed out of the Overton window as domestic terrorists, they have to position the right wing somewhere.