CNN Brought on Its Decline and Fall

CNN was always liberal, but I think it was much better in the 1990s.

CNN's new Chairman and CEO, Chris Licht, released a memo calling CNN the "greatest and most respected news organization in the world." He admitted, "Sadly too many people have lost trust in the news media."

I don't think Licht will succeed in restoring trust in CNN's brand until he admits that CNN deserved to lose it. To his credit, Licht got rid of Brian Stelter, John Harwood and Jeffrey Toobin.

In January 2002, Fox News surpassed CNN in total viewers. For the past 20 years, Fox News has maintained this dominance.

In 2008, Fox News ($1.08 billion) surpassed CNN ($1.03 billion) in annual revenue. By 2020, the annual revenues at Fox News ($2.89 billion) was more than CNN ($1.67 billion) and MSNBC combined ($1.05 billion) combined.*

The only area where CNN maintains a lead over Fox News is its website. In the second quarter of 2022, CNN had 122 million unique visitors monthly compared to 82 million for Fox News.

In June 2022, Fox News Digital narrowly beat CNN.com in total views and total minutes.

My favorite program on CNN was "The Capital Gang." By the time, I started watching that show in 1998, it was three liberals (Al Hunt, Mark Shields and Margaret Carlson) versus two conservatives (Robert Novak and Kate O'Beirne).

I always learned something from each of them even when I disagreed with them.

When I started to write columns, I tried to use "The Capital Gang's" approach to journalism. You must give the audience some useful eye-opening facts that they cannot find elsewhere.

If you didn't watch CNN twenty years ago, you would be shocked by the difference. Along with "The Capital Gang" and "Crossfire," I loved watching the interviews on "Larry King Live."

Over the years, CNN became more partisan. The most egregious example of partisanship in recent years by CNN, and the rest of the liberal media, was the cover-up over the Hunter Biden laptop.

Mark Zuckerberg admitted to Joe Rogan that that the "distribution on Facebook was decreased." According to Zuckerberg, the FBI approached Facebook to be vigilant about Russian disinformation.

In 2020, Facebook had the power to hide information from millions of Americans. I don't think these predominantly liberal Big Tech companies are ever going to be fair with conservatives.

That is why it should be the policy of the Republican Party to break up these Big Tech companies.

Last month, CNN fired Brian Stelter. Like many liberal journalists, he denied Hunter Biden's laptop was real during the final days of the 2020 election.

In 2020, I wrote that the Hunter Biden emails were real — and I wasn't the only one. At the time, liberal Democrat Krystal Ball and populist conservative Saagar Enjeti had a good debate about this issue on their podcast.

Enjeti argued that the central question of this issue was the authenticity of those emails. Instead of denying it, Joe Biden insulted the journalist who asked him that question.

Ball pointed out that if the media found information that was damaging to the Trump campaign, they would not have hesitated to put it out there.

CNN didn't always hire partisans like Brian Stelter. For years, Bernard Shaw worked at CNN. In 1988, this journalist put the final nail in coffin of the Michael Dukakis campaign.

Bernard Shaw said, "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"

According to Gallup, 79% of the Americans supported the death penalty in 1988. To his credit, Gov. Dukakis stood by his principles and stated his opposition to the death penalty.

In September 2012, pollster Pat Caddell explained how media bias was a threat to our democracy.

"We have a First Amendment for one reason. We have a First Amendment not because the Founding Fathers liked the press — they hated the press — but they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press. That was the job — so there was an implicit bargain in the First Amendment, the press being the only institution, at that time, which was in our process of which there was no checks and balances.

"We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances. The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect the people from the government and the power by telling — somehow allowing — people to have the truth."

*All annual revenue estimates were rounded to the nearest hundredth.

Robert Zapesochny is a researcher and writer whose work focuses on foreign affairs, national security and presidential history. He has been published in numerous outlets, including The American Spectator, the Washington Times, and The American Conservative. When he's not writing, Robert works for a medical research company in New York. Read Robert Zapesochny's Reports — More Here.