Surprisingly, CNN Stood Up
There’s no doubt that CNN is generally hard to watch because of their blatant “both- sides-ism”, but the other day, something different happened. They banned Ryan Girdusky from ever appearing on CNN again.
He was on a panel with Medhi Hassan, who is a Muslim journalist, and made the crack “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.” This was obviously an allusion to the pagers that blew up in Lebanon, and he insinuated that Hassan was associated with a terrorist organization. Abby Phillips had him immediately removed from her program. Later, CNN backed her up.
In a statement, CNN said there is “zero room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our air” and that Girdusky “will not be welcomed back at our network.”
“We aim to foster thoughtful conversations and debate including between people who profoundly disagree with each other in order to explore important issues and promote mutual understanding,” CNN said in its statement. Source.
There are a lot of inappropriate jokes that start with “What do you call <inappropriate>?” and all have the response of “A good start.” Here, it applies.
The question is why there are so many Rethuglicans on the networks, and in print articles, who are so, um, insane?
Matthew Sheffield has a good perspective on this. In his own words:
Before I started Flux, I was a writer and producer for The Hill, where I worked on multiple shows, one of which was “Rising,” a bipartisan news opinion show. Like most mainstream media shows, we were constantly trying to have balanced panel discussions. But we always had a problem: It was very difficult to find Republicans who weren’t crazy.
The sheer difficulty in identifying qualified, respectful conservative voices without ties to extremism was astonishing.
His quote is from an article he wrote, you can see it here, and he points out that Rethuglicans are the biggest beneficiaries of a program they fight against - affirmative action. The MAGA mouthpieces end up on the air because they are the LEAST offensive, and MSM needs “balance.”
Personally, I find this to be unacceptable. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a vidiot. I work from home, and if I’m not working, there’s at least one television set on in the house.1 While it’s often just for background noise, when I watch, I mostly watch the news: straight news, the weather when appropriate, talking heads. When I need to take a break, I watch episodic crime shows. Used to be that a good evening dose of Keith Olbermann, followed by Rachel Maddow, was enough to bring me up to speed, and sate me until the next day. During election season, I love Steve Kornacki.2 But things have really changed: Keith has left broadcast for podcast, and Rachel is a once-a-week host, for the most part. There are people that I cannot bear to listen to anymore, like Ari Melber, who’s a smart and competent lawyer, even though almost once lost his law license because he forgot to pay the renewal fee. But for some inextricable reason, he likes to platform Peter Navarro, and other malcontents all in the name of “balance.” That’s MSNBC, which used to be reliably on the side of truth and light, and which now has hosts who are GOP-apologists. While Katy Tur is there for now, the worst offender, Andrea Mitchell, is leaving her show after the inauguration. One of the most offensive things about Andrea is that she was one of the people, earlier this year, pushing President Biden to step down because of his age, and she’s 77. As an aside, her husband, Alan Greenspan, is 98.3
You watch these people over the years and wonder how they can go over to the dark side.
As I’ve written before, the heads of the MSM, in part, think that by not directly taking on the Convicted Felon, he’ll grant them some sort of grace if he wins. (He won’t.) But they have another problem, which makes them want to have the right-wing bat-sh*t crazies on air: “media” is a business that must make a profit to survive, they make their ad money on viewers, and their viewers are OLD. While the population over 65 is the fastest growing age group, older people are closer to death. Meaning, over time, the TV news model is unsustainable.
And so they try to play to as many of their dying audiences as they can, meaning “both sides”. As Pew will tell you, most registered voters over 60 are Rethuglicans4. And so, to attract them, the networks need to include some crazies.
Think I’m joking about the age split? This is from Chat GPT:
The median age of MSNBC viewers is 70 years old, which is older than the median age of viewers for other cable news networks and broadcast networks:
CNN: Median age of 67 years old
Fox News: Median age of 69 years old
CBS: Median age of 64 years old
ABC: Median age of 66 years old
TNT and Bravo: Median age of 56 years old
HGTV: Median age of 66 years old
MTV: Median age of 51 years old
Did you see that? EVEN MTV isn’t attracting the youth of America.
TV news is a dying industry, and there is no current revenue model that can compete with social media platforms. (The social media platforms are all making serious money except Twitter5.) For all its money, the social media platforms refuse to fact-check, balance, and reasonably attract high caliber journalists. And so on the one hand, we have professional journalists who have the ability to investigate, evaluate, and produce important segments. On the other hand, we have “influencers” who become “important” because of the number of pairs of eyeballs that spend a minute a day with them. The dumbing down of the US is terrifying and incredibly disheartening.
The networks and cable networks have cut their once robust dedicated news bureaus and replaced a lot of them with talking heads. It’s much cheaper to have people on-set/via Zoom, than sending reporters out, and funding bureaus in far-flung locales. They strive with their talking heads for balance. And as we’ve seen earlier in this post, they can’t get it because one side is severely mentally disordered.
My guess is that most of you have cut the cord, and no longer watch the networks/cable networks. Only clips. It’s not just that I’m a vidiot that makes me bemoan the state of media, but because it directly contributes to the fracturing of American society.
If you watch a true news program, like the 6:30 (ET) network news shows, or a streaming pure news station, you’ll get FACTS. This natural disaster occurred, and here is video, and we have a reporter on the ground. Today in Congress, Bill 12345 was passed, meaning XYZ and now it will go from the House to the Senate. So and so was convicted in the crime of _____. FACTS. With the fragmentation of media (TV/Video/Online/Print) people are more likely to fall prey to disinformation, and potentially think of what they see/read as “fact” when it is no more than opinion.
We need truth. We need facts. We need platforms that can provide those things, and be trusted to do so on a continual basis.
End rant.
In the interest of full disclosure, if there is something really important on, like an Orange Menace trial, or an important Congressional hearing, I turn the TV on, on my personal computer, while working on my work computer, with sound off/closed captions on during meetings.
I have told my husband that if Steve was 30 years older and not gay, if he’d have me, I’d leave my husband in a millisecond just to be able to talk numbers 24/7. Props to my husband, who listens to me spout off numbers virtually every evening, often correcting the people conveying them, albeit sometimes even Steve.
Full disclosure: I met Andrea once in 2008, and we had a nice chat about the then-ongoing contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. The conversation was between her, the incredible, remarkable, late Tim Russert (several months before his passing), and me. At the time, I was one of the owners of Democratic Convention Watch, and we were the source for the delegate chase. Tim pointed out that their count team checked our numbers first thing every morning, and we discussed some of the fence-sitters we were still trying to nail down. Andrea was only interested in the numbers themselves, while Tim was interested in how we were getting our data, getting the data CORRECT, and how we were able to beat out the networks and the major papers for more obscure delegates. But she was polite and interesting, and at the time, a solid Democrat. Or at least an unbiased journalist.
However, this year, more people over may well support the Democrats over the Rethuglicans, we’ll know once all the votes are in.
I really rely for timely news on NPR radio. Bu even here, there is some shading and selective reporting. An uninformed electorate puts us on the road to perdition. "Send in the Clowns". Scary Halloween.