If there was ever a sign that the establishment media landscape is in a state of complete and total upheaval, this is it.
CNN, not exactly a ratings powerhouse, is apparently a house divided after the network opted to air former President Donald Trump’s first town hall on Wednesday.
Despite all of the tangibly positive benefits of hosting Trump for his inaugural town hall, like a massive bump in ratings and social media cachet (though, CNN may not love that last one), audio recordings obtained by the New York Post paint a picture of a news network in utter disarray.
“You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them,” CNN CEO Chris Licht told agitated employees, according to audio acquired by the Post.
Licht added that CNN “[m]ade a lot of news” and stressed “that is our job.”
The CNN head honcho also apparently defended Kaitlan Collins, the CNN reporter and host who moderated the town hall, after all a wide range of complaints about her interactions with Trump. (If you’re a conservative, Collins was an abrasive, interrupting presence. If you’re a leftist, Collins was the one being abused.)
“Kaitlan is in a no-win situation,” an unnamed CNN staffer told The Washington Post. “I can’t believe anyone thought this was a good idea.”
A different, unnamed CNN staffer called the entire town hall a “[t]otal debacle.”
CNN’s own media reporter, Oliver Darcy, took to his newsletter to call out his employers for facing pressure “both internally and externally over the event.”
If you needed any further proof that the Trump town hall has shaken the core of CNN, look no further than the bizarre, apologetic-yet-patronizing monologue from CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
“Many of you are upset that someone who attempted to destroy our democracy was invited to sit on a stage in front of a crowd of Republican voters to answer questions and predictably continued to spew lie after lie after lie,” Cooper said to begin his show on Thursday.
“And I get it, it was disturbing.”
Cooper added: “Now, many of you think CNN shouldn’t have given him any platform to speak. And I understand the anger about that, giving him the audience, the time — I get that.”
Ironically, while CNN grapples with the fallout from its Trump-based ratings surge, the network that used to be the apple of the former president’s eye, Fox News, is still in the midst of grappling with its Tucker Carlson-based ratings crash.
The other “Big Three” establishment media network, MSNBC, still employs Jenn Psaki and Joy Reid, so they have their own deep, troubling issues to deal with, no matter how much they’ve benefited from the chaos surrounding the other two networks.
If you’re at all fascinated by the media landscape, it’s hard to think of a more tumultuous time than this for the big, established networks.
Fox News is hemorrhaging viewers after the unceremonious ouster of Carlson. MSNBC is still a vile, leftist cesspool.
And CNN, which actually did something … good? Or at the very least, bipartisan … is coming apart at the seams because political neutrality is apparently a bad thing in 2023.
What a time to be alive in the world of establishment media.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.