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The precipitous fall of Chris Licht is simply this sort of tale that lately’s cable-news surroundings is easiest at protecting: dramatic, messy, lurid, and in the end missing in a lot substance.
Licht used to be driven out of CNN lately, 5 days after my colleague Tim Alberta wrote a deeply textured, moderately thought to be, and fully damning profile of the CEO. Licht’s clumsiness and tone-deafness within the tale—he sniped at his team of workers, obsessed over his predecessor, and in most cases appeared feckless—had been astonishing for somebody in his place, they usually’re the fast context for his firing.
However the true reason why Licht failed used to be now not the way in which he achieved his process however the way in which he conceived it within the first position. He sought after to show CNN again into the impartial arbiter of fact that it as soon as used to be (or looked to be) with out working out that the sort of position is unattainable in lately’s fractured, polarized cable-news surroundings. “He used to be dealt a nasty hand, after which he performed it badly,” as one in every of his buddies instructed the media reporter Brian Stelter.
Licht used to be now not fallacious to look critical issues at CNN. Right through the 2016 presidential marketing campaign, the community unwittingly boosted Donald Trump through offering wall-to-wall protection. As soon as Trump used to be in place of work, CNN switched gears, turning into fiercely crucial of the president. Most of the criticisms had been proper, even though now and again they had been additionally histrionic and self-absorbed, as I famous in 2017. However with many CNN personalities setting up themselves as adversaries of the president—striking on a jersey, as Licht put it—the community appeared much less just like the fearless news-gathering operation of Gulf Warfare repute and extra like a milquetoast reproduction of the liberal MSNBC.
Licht used to be having a bet that through neutralizing essentially the most fiercely anti-Trump voices at CNN—firing other people comparable to Stelter and John Harwood, and clamping down on Jim Acosta and Don Lemon—he may go back the community to the impartial heart. CNN wouldn’t hesitate to name out Trump’s lies, but it surely wouldn’t pose because the resistance both. This now not handiest could be excellent for its journalism, he wagered, however would additionally reclaim the large, underserved heart within the media target market.
However Licht’s research misconstrued the cable panorama. No such target market seems to exist—or a minimum of, it doesn’t appear to exist amongst cable-news audience, night time in and night time out.
CNN’s viewership nonetheless booms every time there’s a significant information match, as a result of audience handle a vestigial sense of the community as a spot for critical information in some way that Fox Information and MSNBC don’t seem to be. However breaking information merely doesn’t occur that a lot—despite the fact that you slap BREAKING NEWS on a chyron all day, each day. (Slicing again on that apply used to be one in every of Licht’s unequivocally proper selections.) The individuals who watch cable the remainder of the time have a tendency to be information junkies and political junkies. As American politics has grow to be sharply polarized, so have they.
The usa in reality does have a considerable centrist heart, and is the reason why Joe Biden is president lately, but it surely’s composed of ordinary other people. Not up to 10 million other people watch cable information nightly; 155 million voted within the 2020 election. There merely aren’t sufficient rabid information customers who’re additionally staunch centrists to maintain a community. Even Fox Information is bleeding audience who to find it insufficiently conservative to networks additional to the precise, like Newsmax.
Licht’s makes an attempt to marketplace CNN to this imaginary target market simply dragged the community down additional, maximum vividly demonstrated through the disastrous Might the town corridor with Trump, the place the previous president bullied CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and pumped out nonsense. Licht’s makes an attempt to win over conservatives didn’t paintings; they had been nonetheless gazing Fox (or Newsmax), however they took the overtures as an indication of weak point and a option to tug CNN additional proper. In the meantime, the liberal and centrist audience whom CNN had retained had been appalled through the spectacle and misplaced allegiance. He made different mistakes, too, like raising Lemon, handiest to fireside him when a brand new morning display flopped and Lemon’s sexist remarks alienated his co-hosts.
Licht fell sufferer to the similar fallacy as many different media figures, from moguls to journalists to critics: They overestimate the facility of the click, believing it to be the dominant drive shaping American society. TV, magazines, and on-line retailers all put across the nationwide discourse, however too steadily arrogantly think they’re growing it out of skinny air. One easy instance suffices: The nice mass of the click detested Trump, and and if the media had the kingmaking (or -breaking) energy that it presumes, he would by no means have grow to be president.
Licht’s catastrophic tenure is a disgrace, now not handiest as a result of CNN is without doubt one of the biggest and maximum vital reporting organizations within the nation, but additionally since the position it used to play within the American media used to be treasured. Having a community this is extensively seen as dependable and principally faithful through a large swath of the general public is sure, and the partisan lean—now and again open, now and again much less so—of a lot of the click lately is helping provide an explanation for declining consider within the media. However Licht may not more rebuild the previous CNN in lately’s surroundings than he may flip again the clock to 1993. That point has expired, and now, so has Licht’s.
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