CNN is flailing between facts and fascism

Sucking up to right-wing disinformation is a foolish strategy.

CNN is in a tough position in cable TV news. MSNBC holds the left, and Fox News holds the right. So CNN is trying to find middle ground in an America where the middle ground has largely disappeared.

If CNN didn’t have to worry about making a profit, it could forget about market positioning and just work on telling the truth. But it wants to lure viewers from Fox, and Fox’s current audience enjoys being lied to. Those viewers have stuck with Fox even though it paid three-quarters of a billion dollars for spreading lies about the 2020 election.

So how does CNN attract those viewers? By trying to push popular anchor Jim Acosta into the graveyard shift to punish him for sharply confronting Republican lies. Acosta declined CNN’s demotion and left the network last week.

CNN also sucks up to the right by platforming “both sides” – even if one of those sides is lying. Fascist disinformation goes by the name of Scott Jennings these days. He’s paid by CNN to represent Trumpism, no matter how fact-averse it is.

I could spend this whole newsletter going through Jennings’ terrible takes, but here are some samples: He accused Jimmy Carter of “dabbling in antisemitism.” He blamed the devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires on diversity hiring policies in the fire department. He said Sen. Tim Kaine “sounded like a sex pervert” in his questioning of Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth. And after years of hammering Joe Biden for supposedly weaponizing the Justice Department, Jennings now says it’s OK for the president – Trump – to weaponize the Justice Department.

Jennings is the latest in a long line of dodgy right-wingers who have been paid by CNN to represent that spin. Others include:

• Jeffrey Lord, who was fired by CNN in 2017 after tweeting the Nazi salute “Sieg Heil!”

• Paris Dennard, who left CNN in 2018 after the Washington Post revealed that Arizona State University had fired him for sexual harassment. In an incident with an employee, Dennard “pretended to unzip his pants in her presence, tried to get her to sit on his lap, and made masturbatory gestures,” according to an ASU report.

• Rick Santorum, who “parted ways” with CNN in 2021 after saying "we birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. … I mean, yes, we have Native Americans. But candidly, that — there isn't much Native American culture in American culture."

The problem is that CNN thinks it appears more fair if it hires people to defend the indefensible. But who is that fair to? Right-wing authoritarians? Because it’s certainly not fair to the general public.

I understand the quest for fairness on issues like abortion, deficit spending, and health care. A variety of opinions should be welcome in a mainstream news report. But giving equal time to MAGA lies and hate speech is an entirely different matter.

Media writer Oliver Darcy, a former CNN reporter who now writes the Status newsletter, reported that CNN’s CEO Mark Thompson told his top journalists a day before Trump began his second term that they should (in Darcy’s words) “avoid pre-judging Trump” and should not ”re-litigate the past.” Indeed, Darcy’s review of closed captioning from inauguration day found that no one on CNN used the terms “twice-impeached” or “convicted felon.”

Darcy sized up the situation at CNN by writing:

“... Under the ownership of the David Zaslav-led Warner Bros. Discovery, which took over as the network’s corporate parent in 2022, CNN has noticeably softened its coverage of Trump. Gone are the days when CNN’ers like Acosta delivered stinging reports on the MAGA leader that went viral across the internet. CNN in 2025 is far more toned down and sympathetic to Trumpism. The network even pays a handful of Trump loyalists to appear on panels where they regularly mislead the public on key issues.”

Which is not to say there aren’t flashes of sharp truth on CNN. For example, after Trump’s racist rant in the wake of last week’s Washington, D.C. air disaster, CNN ran a chyron reading: “TRUMP BASELESSLY BLAMES DEMOCRATS & DIVERSITY FOR PLANE CRASH.”

But while CNN wants to be taken seriously as a news outlet, it’s increasingly undercutting its credibility to stay out of Trump’s crosshairs.

Anchor Jake Tapper is an example of CNN’s contradictory approach. Last week, Tapper took a baseball bat to the lies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But a week earlier during inauguration coverage, he said, “It's important to point out that the Trump/Vance campaign in 2024 was a very disciplined campaign” that presented Trump as “somebody who was within the realm of normalcy.” Disciplined? Normalcy? Really? Trump and Vance falsely accused immigrants of eating dogs and cats. Trump told a rally crowd that golfer Arnold Palmer had a large penis. I guess the word “normalcy” has a different meaning now. Or no meaning at all.

CNN’s ratings are dwarfed by Fox’s. In January, Fox averaged 2.8 million viewers in primetime vs. 734,000 for MSNBC and 522,000 for CNN. But the really frightening metrics for people who treasure fact-based journalism are the trendlines: Fox’s number was up 40% from a year earlier, while MSNBC’s was down 33% and CNN’s was off 14%.

Beyond cable TV, CNN is trying to build its digital revenue by charging heavy users of its website $3.99 per month. The verdict is still out on how much that will help. But CNN clearly needs to find ways to shore up its finances. Just two weeks ago, it announced it was laying off 6% of its staff, about 210 employees.

To me, it’s clear that Trump-friendly coverage of the MAGA’s assault on democracy is neither a smart marketing tactic nor a legitimate journalistic approach. It’s a recipe for disaster for both CNN and our country.

Indeed, the shoddy treatment of Jim Acosta tells us that CNN is failing.

As a Bluesky poster named Sundae Gurl put it, “The difference between CNN and the Titanic is the Titanic went down with all its anchors.”

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