Last November saw Donald Trump, Jr. joking with Elon Musk about buying MSNBC.
“Hey @elonmusk I have the funniest idea ever!!!”
With the attached tweet from Wall Street Mav, stating;
Comcast is putting MSNBC up for sale.
CNN just announced massive layoffs coming.
Maybe the new owners will figure out that lying non-stop to your audience is a lousy business model.
Elon responded in jest, “How much does it cost?”
As I wrote at the time, MSNBC is a dumpster fire. Do not buy MSNBC, more affectionately dubbed MSDNC. There are no redeemable qualities to the MSNBC outlet.
CNN, however would be an outstanding prospect of consideration for Elon, or some other MAGA-adjacent investor.
Warner Bros Discovery recently announced that it is splitting HBO Max and CNN into two different entities.
CNN is on the ropes, even before its disastrous “low confidence Top Secret” reporting on the Iranian nuclear facility bombings. Its viewership has taken a dive since the election.
I suggest that Elon (or someone in the MAGA orbit) buy CNN.
Here are a couple of reasons why.
One: It is global. CNN has a presence across the globe — in Europe, in Asia, in South America, in Russia, and elsewhere. Its reach is tens of multiples greater than MSNBC. As an parallel, Elon could have purchased Telegraph, or Gettr, Gab, or even Truth. None of those outlets would have made the impact that Twitter (now X) now has.
CNN has (or had, and could have) the same reach and impact as X.
Two: CNN, for all its warts (leftists), has a fairly robust news operation. It is (was once) at the forefront of reporting on natural disasters, business and the economy, and international conflicts (wars).
Elon’s purchase of Twitter was transformative, and although social media and podcasts have taken a huge share of “legacy media’s” eyeballs, there is still a place for real journalism, distributed via the television airwaves.
CNN provides the best option for re-making broadcast news in Elon’s image (freedom of speech and the pursuit of objective truth).
Broadcast news is made up of jackals. A positive thing happens, and the (ahem) “news” presents it as a negative thing. The administration spends days or weeks trying to counter the lies being perpetrated about the positive thing that happened. The “news” prints and presents the correction on page 7, or for a couple minutes mid-day, by some schlock nobody.
The people deserve an outlet that presents the truth. A la X.
Elon, someone, please buy CNN. Make Broadcast News Great Again.
Image: Elon Musk. Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.