12 ms·

[Discovery CEO] Zaslav and mentor and investor John Malone have been public about their push to bring CNN back towards hard news coverage, and away from progres

• BitwiseFool 4y ago
  >" push to bring CNN back towards hard news coverage, and away from progressive commentary." I'd be weary about this. I don't sense CNN was somehow compelled to present progressive commentary and they now want to confront that market pressure, but rather, they employ mostly progressive journalists and that is how they choose to cover the news. I suspect the execs will try to tone it down but progressives aren't known for wanting to be neutral or muted about their causes. Activism and "everything is political" are fundamental aspects of their worldview.
  • colinmhayes 4y ago
    • BitwiseFool 4y ago
      I make personal observations and share them, you are correct!
  • linkingday 4y ago
    seeing CNN and "progressive" in the same context befuddles me - these guys are center-right in almost every sense. I guess that's just where the Overton window is nowadays
    • zmgsabst 4y ago
      If you think CNN is “center right”, you’re revealing your own far left biases.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • JaimeThompson 4y ago
        How are you using "far left" in this instance?
        • upsidesinclude 4y ago
          To the left of progressive Democrat and then farther still Edit: clearly the down votes don't seem to see the context wherein OP has described the commenter. My post is not an opinion, it's the contextual position given by the OP. But by all means downvote away per your bias. Thanks Mods
          • linkingday 4y ago
            what if I told you that Democrats aren't even on the left, when it comes to the rest of the world?
            • teakettle42 4y ago
              It’d suggest that you’re viewing the world from a radically far left perspective.
              • linkingday 4y ago
                or...from the perspective that much of Europe views it. American politics is bunk, bought and sold by corporations that think of nothing but profit, by design. literally a country where bribery is legal and encouraged
              • 4y ago
  • jvanderbot 4y ago
    Then they'll diversify their reporters, a most welcome change.
  • ShamelessC 4y ago
    • rajup 4y ago
      How exactly is this flamebait?
      • colpabar 4y ago
        turn on showdead and just vouch the now-flagged-and-dead comment. people who flag stuff like that aren't interested in discussion.
  • jchw 4y ago
    I vouched for this comment when it was flagged. I assume it’s flagged because of the last couple sentences? but I don’t find them all that inflammatory and frankly, it seems kinda accurate to me. Whether or not the assertion is correct overall? Dunno. I don’t find CNN “progressive” but I suspect the term is being used to refer to more sensational, polarized content, not actually very progressive content.
    • BitwiseFool 4y ago
      I wasn't trying to be inflammatory or derogatory towards progressives or progressivism in general. I wanted to go back and edit my comment with a little more detail, mainly that I sensed the "progressive commentary" as mentioned in the article itself is likely a result of CNN having hired so many progressive journalists, rather than some directive to cover the news with more progressive commentary that is now being walked back. By extension, progressives by-and-large tend to be very active and vocal. This is, I believe, a key component as to why their positions and worldviews are so well known and so frequently seen. Activism is a virtue for progressives, and they place a serious emphasis on making sure their voices and perspectives are heard. I don't think it's wrong or disparaging to say that and I suspect I'm not the only one with this observation. I'm commenting on their approach, not condemning them for it.
      • suture 4y ago
        This is very weird comment. You are talking about progressives as if this is the only large grouping that is vocal or active. Insert conservatives, environmentalists, fundamentalists, jihadists, etc. and the statements remain equally valid. Your point essentially boils down to saying water is wet. Your comments pertain to all politically, philosophically, and religiously motivated groups.
        • BitwiseFool 4y ago
          >"You are talking about progressives as if this is the only large grouping that is vocal or active. " I'm surprised it is being received this way, mainly because I specifically tried to avoid making comparisons to other groups so that the topic doesn't get more heated. I also wanted to avoid having my observation about progressive vocality and activism invalidated or diminished because [group xyz] is perceived as more vocal and active.
  • heleninboodler 4y ago
    > progressives aren't known for wanting to be neutral or muted about their causes. Activism and "everything is political" are fundamental aspects of their worldview. I'd agree with this 100% if it didn't pretend that this is only true of progressives. This is undeniably true about the hard right as well.
    • Karunamon 4y ago
      Indeed it is, but the 'hard right' doesn't exist on CNN. I wouldn't expect people to bring up the problems with progressive commentators on a thread about, say, Fox News, because they don't exist over there. To me, in this thread with this topic, this reads as whataboutism.
      • heleninboodler 4y ago
        The GP presented these properties as if they are unique to progressives. It's not whataboutism to point out that they aren't. If they'd simply attributed activism and an "everything is political" attitude to CNN, that would have been reasonable since this discussion is about CNN, but they decided to expand this attribution to to "progressives", which is a very different thing.
        • SllX 4y ago
          Only if you flatly ignore the context. BitwiseFool’s original commentary was not just about progressives, it was also about CNN’s staffing choices.
        • BitwiseFool 4y ago
          >"The GP presented these properties as if they are unique to progressives. " I genuinely wasn't trying to do that. The article, and discussion, was around progressives when I shared my observation and thoughts about them. Wanting to stay in focus, I kept my comment and observation about them only. I'm genuinely surprised that by not bringing up a contrast with other political ideologies I'm perceived as believing it is unique to them.
  • jonnycomputer 4y ago
    I actually think most reporters are fairly objective in their reporting. I think bias shows up in editorial decisions on what news to cover, how prominent it should be, and the headlines used to sell it (which journalists don't usually write, if I understand correctly). Also, the prominent place of opinion "journalism" and talking heads that try to rile people up, especially in visual mediums. Yes, I'm talking about Fox and Friends et al. and some of the hosts on CNN. People spend more time, I think, getting riled up on entertainment, than actually learning about the world. More hard journalism will be a good thing.
  • dymk 4y ago
    Why are you calling out this behavior like it's unique to progressives? Screaming that the sky is falling is the M.O. for Fox News executives. It's just how the mainstream media operates.
  • subsubzero 4y ago
    CNN has such a bad image for multiple reasons. Initially it was just poor news coverage and lazy reporting( I remember so many jokes on reddit bashing them), this was in the 2000's. Then for whatever reason in the 2010's they started to fork to the hard left and covering every story with a level of bias I would associate with Fox News(but left facing). Some of their news stories were so bad it was comical, ie. saying Joe Rogan had taken horse tranquilizer stands out as particularly egregious(a Dr. prescribed him ivermectin a perfectly safe drug with dubious effectiveness against covid). This change is like Jerry Springer leaving his trashy TV show and trying to run for Senator(and backing out), his reputation like CNN's is so tarnished that no one would ever take it seriously again.
• brentm 4y ago
  I agree that they could use improvement but compared to MSNBC and Fox they're still probably the nearest to the center out there.
  • egberts1 4y ago
    No, CNN is closer to National Enquirer than MSNBC is toward the left.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • upsidesinclude 4y ago
    This is wildly off the mark.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • daveslash 4y ago
    It's been a stretch for me to consider any Cable News as "News" for a while.
• drstewart 4y ago
  Unfortunately, this seems to be something that will go the way of the JCPenney CEO removing the constant never-ending sales banners. If this were a winning strategy, most organizations would be coalescing around it already. The question is whether CNN will be able to stay the course _despite_ the hits to revenue/growth/viewers they will take with this approach.
  • bink 4y ago
    There are a lot of people out there, myself included, that would prefer another option for traditional journalism. For now we're stuck with only a few options when it comes to television. I'd love it if they actually stuck to this principle and covered news in an unbiased manner (or as unbiased as possible). Maybe they could even invest in the dying art of investigative journalism. I don't have much hope that they'll make a ton of money doing this, but I also don't know how they're making money now. It seems all of their advertising is for snake oil.
  • xtracto 4y ago
    Even the BBC which used to be great on that kind of coverage, and is funded by the public has become a bit "propagandist" (alarmist) in tone.
• layer8 4y ago
  Maybe they’ll manage to un-break news.
  • mananaysiempre 4y ago
    The Correspondent used that pun when they promoted their ill-fated English-language edition.
• robonerd 4y ago
  But if they're moving away from commentary (progressive or otherwise), how are they going to fill their schedule with "hard news" while also not over-hyping? Lack of real news is the whole reason they started over-hyping and also why they pad out their schedule with commentary. The announcement reads like "We're going to have our cake, and eat it too." Sounds great! But is that actually possible?
  • tpmx 4y ago
    There's never a lack of relevant news. There is a lack of news that's interesting as a form of entertainment. That's why it would be such a challenging turnaround. I don't think a competent and serious news channel can work as a profit center. I guess CNN worked really well economically in the 80s/90s when there weren't many options for people to get news fast, and then gradually declined after people got online.
    • theonlybutlet 4y ago
      There's plenty of news sources internationally that provide interesting articles without "progressive" commentary, with instead say maybe an editorial and some explainer: Financial Times, The Economist, amongst other local sources. Or perhaps I'm just dull.
      • tpmx 4y ago
        They're primarily in text (print/web) though. I'd watch a news channel with FT/The Economist style content translated to TV, I think...
    • robonerd 4y ago
      > There's never a lack of relevant news. Some news is relevant to everybody, but I think most news is not relevant to most people most of the time. And most news that is relevant to some people won't be relevant to most people. "Six-car pileup on I-whatever" might be very relevant to me if I'm commuting on that road, but it's irrelevant to most people. There's nothing wrong with the media running this kind of news story, a story that's relevant to some but irrelevant to most. The problem occurs when the decision is made to sensationalize the coverage of the incident, to make it interesting to everybody it isn't relevant to. And since very little is relevant to everybody, just about everything ends up getting sensationalized.
• theonlybutlet 4y ago
  I hope they succeed too, I feel its vital to their success in the long term, although their success in the short term may be difficult.
• puffoflogic 4y ago
  That transition is not only impossible but absurd. Hell will freeze over before CNN will air bad coverage about, say, a Democratic Presidential nominee in October of an election year. But what do you think leads a "news" source to switch to commentary?! There's no distinction.
  • tpmx 4y ago
    Yeah, realistically they would need to replace a very large part of the people working there. Most of the people being hired the last 8+ years.