In the inevitable collapse of CNN’s ratings could be seen years ahead of time by anyone with a modicum of historical understanding. “But pity the warrior who slays all his foes.” CNN set themselves up as the ideological foil to the Trump presidency and leveraged all of their most valuable commodity it the fight: their credibility. That credibility was finally annihilated this year in an expose by Project Veritas.
Chomsky accurately described the establishment media “as effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship and without overt coercion.” @tomzellerjr https://t.co/fOSxNfgmKo
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) December 1, 2020
A Collapse of Credibility, A Surrender to Propaganda
In 2021 what was once under Ted Turner, “the most trusted name in news” surrendered that high ground in order to endear themselves to the political left and warp themselves into a weapon to be wielded against the President.
Brandon Morse of RedState wrote,
“CNN had turned itself into a sideshow by making its network all about one thing, and now that the one thing is gone there’s not much reason to tune in anymore. Many of CNN’s viewers were feeding on the fear and rage it cooked up over Trump and now that Joe Biden has taken the White House, many of its viewers are going to go back to figurative sleep thinking all is well and they don’t have to worry anymore.”
The Daily Wire has confirmed what Morse, and Joe Cunningham at Redstate among many others including Tim Pool have predicted: the “Trump Bubble” has burst and CNN is going down. According to the Daily Wire story, “CNN’s ratings fell by roughly 44% the first full week after Trump was out of office. Another left-wing network, MSNBC, suffered a similar fate though the channel’s plunge was not quite as severe as CNN’s. Fox News, on the other hand, stayed relatively steady throughout the month of January.”
BreakingReports provided the numbers,
“CNN “topped cable networks” with roughly 2.8 million viewers per day between January 4th and January 10th, with 4.2 million viewers in primetime. During that same time period, MSNBC had approximately 2.3 million viewers per day and 3.8 million in prime time. Fox News, however, had just 1.7 million per day and 3.2 million in primetime. Yahoo Finance reported that “Newsmax, a smaller rival that has been promoted by President Trump, said it saw record ratings in primetime of 443,000 for the week. Its total day ratings averaged 294,000.”
Authors Note: In my formative years (2002), the film “Live From Baghdad” was released about CNN producer Robert Wiener (Michael Keaton), his colleague Ingrid Formanek (Helena Bonham Carter) and their crew covering the run-up to and dramatic climax of the Gulf War from the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad. The heroic depiction of Wiener, Formanek, Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett lionized CNN in my eyes and solidified my ambitions to become a journalist. Watching CNN and the mainstream media’s rapid fall from grace and collapse is among the saddest, most heart-breaking betrayals of the American people I’ve ever seen.
