Connecting the Dots: What’s behind CNN's turn to the right?

Billioinaire investor John Malone.

ANALYSIS

If you're like most Americans and you depend on TV for your news source, you might have noticed a change on CNN, the mother of the all-news format.

Some wary viewers say the new CNN is a wolf  (or Fox) in sheep's clothing but the ongoing transformation of CNN from a moderate news outlet to a network with a more conservative bent is but the tip of a more troubling trend changing the world of journalism.

Already gone from CNN are John Harwood, Jeff Tobin and Brian Steiter, who pulled no punches in criticizing the Trump administration's extremist policies. 

Some staffers have confided to the Daily Beast that it may be only a matter of time before Don Lemmon and Jim Acosta, CNN mainstays and whose criticism of Donald Trump and his ultra-right allies are well known, fall victim to the transformation.

Most journalists and media watchers are aghast at the sharp right turn that's happening at CNN, but the firings of the key on-air personalities sent a clear message to staffers: soften criticism of the right or you'll be next to lose your job.

The question floating over one of the world’s largest and arguably the most important news organizations, is why the network is changing. Is it because the new CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, its new owner, wants to right (pun intended) the network's leftward list? Or is it a conservative billionaire John Malone, and friend to Fox's Rupert Murdoch, flexing his muscle as an investor?

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Malone's reputation and his fortune was built in the cable TV business. He has deep and longstanding ties with David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Zaslay says the changes at CNN were implemented for business and editorial reasons, not because of his relationship with Malone. To further distance himself from any controversy, Malone picked Chris Licht, former Discover CEO, to head the new CNN.

Formerly sitting on the board of the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, and donating $250,000 to Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee says something about his conservative/libertarian bent. Additionally and more telling, at one point, he owned 32% of Fox. It should be noted, however, two years later, Malone told CNBC that Trump generated too much chaos and shouldn’t have a second term. However, he tempered his pivot when he said, “Look, I think a lot of the things Trump has tried to do — identifying problems and trying to solve them — has been great. I just don’t think he’s the right guy to do it."

It is no secret what Malone wants as an influential investor. He has repeatedly voiced in public his preference for CNN to remake itself. His dream CNN, not so coincidentally, syncs with the new CNN's plan to steer the network away from what Malone and his allies  call a "liberal bias" they say muddles opinion and news and shift it toward a more moderate and a less biased presentation.

“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” he said in a CNBC interview, in which he also suggested a model: “Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have ‘news’ news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.” 

The CNN newsroom is changing.

Are you kidding me? Malone is holding up Fox News as an example of "actual journalism?" For the sake of brevity, let's just say that what's broadcast from Fox is not news. It is propaganda.

The world has changed since CNN's birth in 1980. Back then, objective reporting was the norm and idealistic goal from which news outlets barely wavered. With the emergence of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News is just one of the media that he has under his thumb. The Wall Street Journal, the Times of London and the New York Post are all part of the Murdoch media empire.

Objective, politically neutral reporting would be fine if everyone played with the same rules. Fox's impact as a journalistic poseur is so great that the journalistic ideal of objectivity and "balanced" reporting of the news doesn't effectively counter the Fox network's unrelenting right-wing bias. It is like bringing a knife to gunfight.

For a long time, conservative news outlets have been perpetuating the myth that mainstream media is owned by liberals. That is far from the truth. Studies show the majority of the media are owned by Republicans.

In today's media landscape, the burden of ferreting out the truth falls on the viewer, who is more often than not, too inattentive to change the channel, content to feel the outrage spewing forth instead of listening to the pesky complicated details.

Today, media operates in a 24/7 environment, not the one-on-one media rivalries of the last century epitomized by the NY Times competition vs. the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal.

What may seem like a liberal bias to business investors like Malone, is the traditional media trying to present verifiable evidence-backed facts vs the outright lies and disinformation screaming from Fox. Based on Maline's statements, using Fox as his North Star, anything left of Fox is liberal.

Like the Murdochs, Malone calls himself a libertarian, someone who prefers minimizing government (except the military) and letting corporations run rampant over the country (re: consumers) as long as it brings in the dollars.

CORPORATE MEDIA

Like so many mainstream media, CNN is a victim of the new ownership who like Malone, view media as investment opportunities instead of providing news to the public, a perhaps romanticized vision that may be on its deathbed.

A study, "The Politics of CEOs," published by the National Bureau of Economic Researcher, researchers found that 18.6% of CEOs consistently donated to Democrats, while 57.7% donated to Republicans, with the rest leaning toward neither party.

That may not be surprising to progressives who have long railed that conservative ownership of media are increasingly calling the shots on news coverage.. They calim that big business tends to benefit more from conservative policy goals like lowering taxes and easing up on regulations. Labor unions donate heavily to Democrats, who tend to support more worker-friendly policies.

“Public corporations have massive financial resources, and directing even a tiny fraction of them to politics could have a profound impact,” say the researchers. “In particular, because our evidence indicates that public companies are disproportionately headed by Republican CEOs, the emergence of such a scenario could have a significant impact on the balance of power and advantages between the two main political parties.”

FOX IS NOT A NEWS NETWORK

It is wrong to equate CNN to Fox as Malone does. CNN, at least to date, presents reports that have been verified, once, twice, perhaps three times, with evidence and allows viewers to digest the information.

Fox's defenders say it is just another view of the same news as presented by the mainstream media.  In my view, Fox should not be equated with CNN. Fox is not news. It presents propaganda with an agenda.

Real news organizations do not twist the news to fit their purposes. For Fox, the information they spew is to support the GOP and criticize the Democrats. Another way of saying the same thing, Fox favors that information that helps corporate interests, ie. and is not interested in dispensing information that might help the nation's citizenry make decisions.

CNN, and even the more liberal MSNBC, may present opinions but fundamentally, they adhere to the facts. Fox does not.

Investor-owned media, steers away from news that may be harmful to corporate interests, such as climate change, mass incarceration rates, racism and basically, anything good Biden has done to help the economy, strengthen infrastructure, or provide affordable health care.

The changes at CNN are likely not done.

Like many unknown billionaires who prefer to stay out of the public's eye and immune to their scrutiny, Malone claims he had nothing to do with CNN's transformation. Even if Malone didn't directly order the firing of CNN staffers, Zaslav and Licht, are aware of Malone's wishes and like good lapdogs, they did their owner's bidding.

That's how things are done in the rarified air of the 1%. Malone's hands remain clean. Let the minion millionaires do the dirty work.

Aware of the pending changes coming to CNN, on Stelter's last show he said: “It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.