Whether it’s “wrong” depends on the scope of the context you want to look at. I am absolutely under no illusions that I could convince Chris Licht to follow this advice, and nor could anybody else. But the problem runs much, much deeper than just Licht and CNN. But, just for starters, CNN is neither privately held nor publicly traded; the former might potentially give it substantial autonomy, the latter a more constrained kind. But instead, CNN is owned by a gigantic media conglomerate, and is regarded by its corporate owners as just another media company expected to contribute its fair share to the profits of the conglomerate. Chris Licht’s job is to deliver on that expectation. To make matters worse, despite his educational background in journalism, some of his comments in defense of this farcical “town hall” suggest that he either doesn’t understand what journalism is, or that he doesn’t care because all his bosses care about is profits, and therefore so does he.
Which brings us to the much deeper problem. News in US media has always been plagued by the bias of commercialism, profit-seeking, and sponsor appeasement. But with the advent of Fox News – and more recently, Trumpism – mere sensationalism, shallowness, and commercial bias is being augmented by the even worse phenomenon of mass-media disinformation. Meaning known flat-out lies – total bullshit – being disseminated as “news” because it brings in viewers/listeners, advertisers, and profits.
This has created a nation heavily populated with ignoramuses, precipitating a race to the bottom in pursuit of the most profits to be gained by catering to the largest demographic of idiots. Which is exactly what Fox News excels at, and is what I fear might be happening with CNN under Licht, albeit in much more nuanced ways.
One of the primary ways (not the only way) that other industrialized countries have avoided this trap is through relatively generous funding of public broadcasting. I’m sure there are many here who love PBS and NPR, and I do, too, but take a look at the chart below. The per-capita funding for public broadcasting in the US is so pathetically small that it can basically be rounded down to zero. And Republicans would like to shut it down completely (I wonder why?). And as we so often hear, a large swath of the nation are Trump supporters – by golly, many of our friends and neighbours, co-workers, and even our own family members might be Trumpists. Again, no real need to wonder why. The chart below offers part of the explanation, and if CNN completely goes to shit (it’s already about three-quarters of the way there) that will be another part.
