Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav has been clear about what he wanted for the cable news network since the day he took control of CNN in 2022. Publicly and privately, he told his staff, reporters, and everyone else that he wanted to move the network from what he saw as left-leaning “advocacy” toward more “balance.” His CNN would not be anti-Trump and would be more welcoming of Republicans.
As Mr. Zaslav’s handpicked CNN boss, Chris Licht, appeared to struggle with the task in the months that followed, Mr. Zaslav backed him with the ultimate blank statement: “Reviews are damned.”
In fact, the reviews would go on be damnedas did Mr. Licht’s tenure, which ended abruptly on Wednesday after just over a year Mr. Zaslav has reached his limit.
Mr. Licht’s firing immediately raised a crucial question for the television news industry and beyond: Can an uncoordinated independent approach to news work in today’s fragmented age of on-demand media, where audiences are primed for news on their own terms? And can it work in the niche areas of cable television of all things?
In the end, Mr. Licht’s attempt seemed to satisfy no one. And the first lines of some news commentators were that he failed his mission was impossiblea dead idea from times long past.
Indeed, Mr. Licht’s short tenure does not provide an easy answer. His mission was doomed in large part by the particular form of his assignment, his own missteps, and a seemingly incomplete understanding of the network as it existed prior to his arrival.
But it has shown how difficult it can be to succeed where Mr. Light has sought. polarization is sky high, and the Americans occupy dueling information silos. Cable, a medium that has served divided interests since its inception, now competes with social media, where the most successful posts tend to generate the strongest partisanship and provocation.
Still, trying to create a media version of a shared public space is particularly difficult without a clear idea of what it means to be “balanced” or to give “both voices” an equal say – as Mr. Zaslav puts it. This is especially the case when former President Donald J. Trump, the front runner for the Republican nomination, still falsely claims he had the 2020 election “stolen.”
And several current and former CNN employees said it was precisely this clear vision that Mr. Licht and his boss, Mr. Zaslav, whose direction he was following, lacked. The definition was shaped more by what they didn’t want – everything that had happened to them under Mr. Licht’s predecessor, Jeff Zucker – than by what they really wanted.
Several of them pointed to an early top-down blunder that raised early suspicions among CNN employees — and undermined Mr. Licht — before the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia, CNN’s parent company, was even complete.
In an interview on CNBC in November 2021, a prominent Warner Bros. Discovery board member said: cable pioneer John Maloneappeared to disparage CNN and praise Fox News while discussing his own hopes for CNN under the new corporate structure.
“I think Fox News has taken an interesting path News News, I mean real journalism embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.” said Mr. Malone. “I would like to see CNN go back to the kind of journalism it started with and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.”
It was taken as a disparagement of a news organization that in reality consisted only of respected journalists. Many of them worshiped Mr. Zucker, who it was squeezed out in February 2022 after failing to report a workplace romantic relationship.
“His assertion that CNN’s thousands of journalists weren’t real was deeply offensive,” said Brian Stelter, the network’s former top media correspondent and former New York Times reporter. (Under Mr. Zucker, Mr. Stelter had become the epitome of the network’s sometimes combative defense against “fake news” attacks that Mr. Trump waged against the network, and a regular target of conservative criticism. He would become one of the first high-profile anchors Mr. Light cut.) “I think for many CNN employees, Malone was clear that CNN should be more like Fox.”
Mr. Stelter claims that by the time Mr. Zaslav took office, the network had already recalibrated itself for the post-Trump era. Many employees agreed with Mr. Licht that the network should be clear on its case, and he and others viewed the new leadership as a “blow at a straw man.”
For example, Mr. Zaslav and Mr. Licht made it clear that they wanted to reverse Republican opposition to appearing on CNN. “Republicans are back on the air” Mr. Zaslav explained at a media conference in May. “Republicans weren’t on the air.”
But the notion that including Republicans in its programming was new to the station was at odds with recent history.
Early in Mr. Trump’s rise to power, Mr. Zucker was criticized for giving Mr. Trump too much non-critical airtime and then hiring a string of strident pro-Trump analysts like Jeffrey Lord and Corey Lewandowski.
The tone certainly changed as CNN, like many others in the news media, became more aggressive in challenging Mr Trump’s false statements. He in turn insulted them as “fake news” and “enemies of the people”.
Few have been as attacked by Mr Trump as CNN. The memories of it are still fresh Fear of letter bombs at its New York offices in 2018 – part of an environment that was waning prior to the arrival of Mr. Licht and Mr. Zaslav.
Even now, Mr. Zucker’s fans at the network — and they still abound — will say that if his incarnation of CNN seemed heated and angry at times, it was in defense of the truth.
“Under the sugar regime, CNN said, ‘We may sound outraged, but we lie and stand for the truth.’ If that sounds angry, so be it,” said Frank Sesno, former bureau chief of CNN Washington and now a professor in George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.
Mr. Sesno said he, too, believes it’s the network’s duty to “soften down certain elements and take back some things” since Trump’s presidency. But he said Mr. Licht went about it the wrong way.
“What Licht was really trying and not working was that he was trying to make a sonic change, but he made it sound like a substantive change,” Mr. Sesno said.
The town hall meeting that CNN held with Mr Trump last month was not particularly unusual compared to the 2016 campaign. That, of course, was before the turmoil created by four years of the Trump administration and his electoral lies that fueled the January 6, 2021 riots.
Mr. Licht’s dealings with City Hall would help seal his fate — particularly his decision to host it in front of an ardent pro-Trump audience who cheered the former president as he lied and CNN host Kaitlan Collins, who acted as his inquisitor, attacked.
There seemed to be widespread agreement on CNN that the execution was bad. There was initially less uniformity when the town hall was held. After all, Mr. Trump was the lead candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
As Anderson asked Cooper on the show the next night, while acknowledging viewers’ disappointment, “Do you think that if you stay in your silo and only listen to people you agree with, that person will go away?”
In the days that followed, an answer seemed to come: the channel had its worst viewing week in eight years.
Even now, Mr. Zaslav seems determined to stick to his strategy. “Reviews be damned,” he might say. But history shows that no television strategy can survive eternal ratings damnation.
