Why does corporate wokeness persist? One answer is that the personal cost for trying to get rid of it is too high. It’s easier for most executives to embrace it than it is to fight it. As Discovery is discovering.
The attempt to turn around CNN was taken on by Chris Licht, according to him, convinced that, he “could make CNN a news channel that people trusted, as opposed to one that monetized partisan combat.”
Somehow he’s confused as why he’s so hated for trying to upend a reliable, albeit faltering, model.
“The uninformed vitriol, especially from the left, has been stunning,” Mr. Licht said in one of several interviews with The New York Times spanning his nearly eight-month tenure. “Which proves my point: so much of what passes for news is name-calling, half-truths and desperation.”
Well, who did he think was going to hate him?
Conservatives already hate CNN, but they also have nothing invested in it. Leftists do. A spurned partner is going to be much more obsessive than a pre-existing enemy.
At their first meeting, Mr. Zaslav argued that running CNN would be “a great opportunity to build the No. 1 news brand in the world,” and “the most trusted brand in news where people go every day and in a crisis for the best version of the truth.”
And more than that: “This is important for America. It’s important for a functioning society.”
Someone should have asked whether there’s even such a concept of a “trusted brand of news”. This seems to be a kind of warmed-over nostalgia for Cronkite sand castles. The Left has largely discarded any such notion as anything except agitprop. Liberals trying to rebuild it will need more to work with than that.
Objective journalism is a big ask in a culture where such a thing is outright forbidden at the journalism school level and where major percentages of the younger generation doesn’t even know the concept.
Licht keeps saying that he wants to have on people with different perspectives. That’s not really a trusted brand of news, but it’s openness. And Licht’s version of CNN is better than Zucker’s tabloid resistance version. Even if that’s about as low a bar as anything could be. But any kind of cable news network model is doomed. And the Left will be more than happy to blame CNN’s troubles on a refusal to go hard leftward.
I was shocked the first time I was personally subjected to vitriol from the left, must have been around 1968 in high school. Seen a lot of it since then. False accusations are one of their specialties.
The fiction that Cronkite was anything other than a leftist hack needs to end. Anyone remember his ‘the war is lost’ comment?
one of the worst hacks at that
“…where people go every day and in a crisis for the best version of the truth.”
Truth does not have “versions.”
Facts are true. If it is not true, then it is not a fact.
But you’re a Christian and Christianity rests on faith, on unverifiable “facts”. Why did Christians persecute and kill each other over the Christian “facts”? Why did Jews persecute Jews over Jewish “facts”? Muslims persecute and kill Muslims over Muslim “facts”?
Real facts are the demonstrable, verifiable, facts of reality. Facts based on reason, logic, and the evidence of the natural senses. “But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible.” – Ayn Rand
You apparently put your faith in flawed human beings such as Ayn Rand and her objectivist philosophy while other put their faith in the Creator and sustainer of the universe.
I don’t put my faith in Ayn Rand. I have confidence that my reasoning mind can establish the facts of reality. Objectivism does not revolve around Rand but centers on reason and reality.
After presenting the truths about life, man’s nature, and man’s relation to existence, that the Buddha discovered for himself and by himself, the Buddha told his followers the following, “Don’t blindly believe what I say. Don’t believe me because others convince you of my words. Don’t believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts. Go and find out for yourselves if what I say is actually the truth”.
The same is true of Ayn Rand and her philosophy.
The monotheistic religions are the opposite. They demand and command obedience to the authority of another person, another consciousness, natural or supernatural, apart from or in contradiction to the facts of reality.
Which historical facts are demonstrable?
Thanks Una, excellent point. Theoretically history seems to be mainly probabilities.
I always look for that when reading history. How difficult it is to ascertain what really happened, how clever the arguments of good historians are when trying to give a good picture of the truth.
Thanks AA. It’s not even clear historians are particularly concerned with what really happened in some cases. Can you imagine what sort of historian THX would make?
Your question isn’t worthy of a respectful reply.
The next step is for you to become a Holocaust denier.
the next step is for you to realise what sort of zealot you are
Thanks Una, I got a laugh out of your question about what kind of historian our friend would make 🙂
You have faith that your body will digest your food for you but you have no idea how it came to know how to do that. You have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow and you won’t be annihilated by an asteroid or the moon falling out of the sky.
You have come to have faith that everything works according to a certain pattern and plan, but you have no idea how that came to be.
You can have faith that you won’t suddenly die for no reason unless you take a toxic “medicine” with horrific side effects which are often prescribed by so called medical professionals today.
Read the history of the medical profession. It hasn’t changed from the old days.
Remember what Joe Biden said. “We believe in truth not facts”.
That really puts an exclamation point on his “leadership”.
Democrat “truth” is whatever puts money and power into their filthy hands.
Biden told us that they believe in “truth”, not facts. Apparently Democratic words have undergone changes in definition. “Their democracy” is nothing like what we have formerly considered democracy to resemble. Social Justice appears identical to the old Democratic lynch mobs where you need not be troubled with having to PROVE someone is guilty before destroying them. “Racist” only aplies to the white race. on’t get me started on “vaccine”….
Who ws it that said “If you control language, you control thought & if you control thought, you control the people”?
It remains a pigs ear.
Leftism IS subjectivism. Leftism rests on the foundation of the denial that reason is an absolute. Where, ultimately, does this subjectivism gather its strident self-rightousness? From the philosopher of unreason.
“I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” ― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
“Why does corporate wokeness persist? The personal cost for trying to get rid of it is too high.”
The personal cost of NOT getting rid of it is the death and destruction of the freedom and liberty on which your life, your happiness, your fortune, and the life, happiness, and fortune of those you love depend.
“The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.” – “Altruism As Appeasement”, Ayn Rand
Anyone seeing a siliarity to the Left’s reaction to Mr. Musk freeing up Twitter. The Left considered both entities its sandboxes and hates the idea of everyone being able to use them. They’re emotionally whiney little children.
yup, it’s another great example
and then people wonder why most corporate execs find it easier to bow and surrender
Cable and print news are destined to become dinosaurs just like shopping malls. People have started getting the news the ‘want’ to hear from social media rather than a TV channel or a printed paper. It is easier, and fills the need that new generations demand.
indeed, cable news is on its last wave before the whole thing comes crashing down
demographics make it inevitable and the whole cable bundling model is already dying off as people cut the cord
I have my Samsung and hundreds of free channels and that’s all I need. I even pirate the WiFi. Who needs cable or network TV?
I’ve been watching “1923” with Harrison Ford while my girlfriend snoozes between bouts. I didn’t pay a penny for it. It’s pretty good.
Thanks Jeff, now you’ve got me thinking what kind of movies Hollywood would make about 1923 🙂
1923 was actually a pretty modern era, by my standards 🙂
Lots of industrialization going on, the roaring 20s, hyperinflation in Germany, with 500 million mark notes, WW1 recently finished, etc. I used to watch newsreels from around that period, like the old seaplanes that were the ultimate in long distance passenger service for rich travellers.
My Dad was born in 1924, they used to save newspapers from the day a kid was born. 1924 was during Prohibition, the headline of his birthday, San Francisco Chronicle, in huge letters, was “NEW HIGHERUPS CAUGHT IN RUM GRAFT” 🙂
Half Moon Bay was actually a big smuggling port, bringing in Rum from Canada, etc.
I was thinking that invalids with nothing else to do but watch TV may be their “base”.
Then I was thinking about people who never get out of the house but get their view of the world from TV.
I guess the fool was expecting the truth from CNN created by Red Ted Turner as part of the Globalists Brainwashing and leftists propaganda
nostalgia for the bad old days instead of the current much worse days
that’s liberalism
Yeah, Biden America. Ain’t it great?