After years of calling CNN “fake news,” Donald Trump has agreed to appear on the network for a town hall. His campaign says it wants to hit reset on its relationship with the channel now that it’s under new management.
Bollocks. Licht has steadily and systematically moving CNN towards ‘the new center’ since he arrived. This will be a total softball.
Meanwhile … who really cares? CNN peaks at around half a million for its biggest star (Anderson Cooper).
It's taken a while - but slowly what Licht is doing is emerging and being written about more broadly. Ok - maybe 'The Atlantic' doesn’t quality as 'broadly', but it's The Grauniad reporting.
‘Extra Trumpy’: Atlantic profile of CNN chief Licht details town hall disaster.
On which topic …
“It wouldn’t be fair to say a trained seal could do a better job running CNN than Chris Licht. It’s just that, after reading this piece, it feels like we should give the trained seal a shot.”
💬 Bill Grueskin
(Bill is a Columbia Journalism School professor.)