The Purge

(All y’all - just another author’s note. I’m contemplating beginning to provide premium content only for paid subscribers. I’d prefer to avoid that, but I need a bit more remuneration for my time on this little endeavor. The premium material would be a regular release of chapters in my memoir, “When Horses Could Fly: A Memoir of the American Dream.” The story is actually about my parents and their American dream in post war U.S. I’ve been working on it for years but I think it will provide a perfect antidote to “Hillbilly Elegy.” Other premium content will be “Motorcycle Diaries” from trips past, present, and future, and various short stories, fiction and non-fiction, which I have written, and will write. Also, I am probably going to begin reading my pieces into a podcast format since a number of folks have said they are more likely to listen to this work on their phone while commuting rather than while sitting and reading on their screens. In the meantime, please subscribe if you aren’t, and share, if you will. Please let me know your thoughts on any of the above in the comments section at the end of this piece. - JM)

“The news is what we say it is.” – David Brinkley, NBC News Anchor

The money changers were coming to our temple, and I was doomed. The TV station group where I worked had begun to fancy its large chain of outlets as a network, and executives wanted to standardize salaries and stabilize costs. Employees like reporters, often delivering unique insights and understanding of their broadcast communities, were about to be turned into assets on a balance sheet. I was among the first to be called into the new executive’s office.

On the three-hour drive to Houston from Austin, I was resigned to what I knew was about to be indelicately communicated to me. I had spent two decades working as a TV reporter for two reputable newsrooms in the Bayou City and had covered stories ranging from presidential campaigns to troubling natural and human disasters and the biggest social and economic and cultural issues of my time. My greatest joy in the craft, though, was telling longer form stories about the people and the state of Texas. While I often had to fight to get those pieces on the air, the editors generally left me to my devices.

Several of my friends had been urging me to transition to public relations or freelance writing or a corporate communications job, convinced I’d make more money and find the work at least a bit fulfilling. The argument was that I had reached the point in life where I needed to be contemplating a bigger retirement fund and securing my family’s financial future. I was being paid well, though, and had worked hard and negotiated just as diligently for my salary, and I was hesitant, though, as age 50 approached, about walking off from a job that I mostly loved and was relatively lucrative.

As I stepped into the corner office, I asked myself why I had not listened to their counsel. What else might I have achieved if I had used my energy and intellect differently in another industry that promoted and rewarded people based on performance more than the subjective tastes of how someone looked and sounded? Why had I not taken off for New York City, gotten a cold-water flat, and banged on a manual typewriter until I sold a book and launched a publishing career? Surely, I could have climbed a corporate ladder to the point where I might be the guy sitting behind the big desk.

But I loved to travel and tell stories, the kind that gave people an emotional response or agitated them about an issue of importance in their lives. In retrospect, though, I was often taking chances that weren’t exactly prohibitive risks, and I was doing it for a very small audience in Houston. If a story was good, and promoted to draw viewers, the station might make a little extra money on advertising revenues because I was a part of contributing to improved ratings. I wondered, though, with the five stations in the city if more than 100 or 200 thousand people saw my work on any evening. There was also the matter of sticking my neck out on stories to help make a few more ad dollars for a local outlet feeding a corporate structure that didn’t care about any dangers beyond what reduced the bottom line.

“We do love your stories,” the suit said, the implicit “but” unspoken and coming around fairly soon.

“Well, thanks, I hope it’s obvious I love doing them.”

“It is, but we have to take some new approaches around here and in the corporation.”

“Which means?”

“We just can’t keep paying you what you are making.”

“But I thought you just said I was earning it.”

“You are very good at what you do, and it’s valuable to the company, but we can’t afford to pay for it what we presently are.”

“You want to pay me less for what you say is demonstrably good work?”

“Here’s what we are offering to renew you.”

He tugged at his tie and slid a few sheets of paper across his desk in my direction. I went straight to the salary page and saw a number that was 45 percent less than my current income, raised my eyes to his stony face, and slid it back.

“I can’t afford to do this anymore than you apparently can’t afford to pay me what you said I was worth,” I said.

“We really don’t want you to leave,” he said, and sounded slightly honest.

“Oh, I can tell, based on your offer that’s quite sincere.”

“TV news, even in Houston, isn’t what it used to be as a business. The internet is evolving fast and already starting to drain our revenues. We have to reconfigure our costs.”

“Well, I’m not too interested in being reconfigured.”

“You might be misinterpreting things regarding your value, you know?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I drop everything every time I get called. Move fast and always deliver under any circumstances, and always have, you know that.”

“I’m not denying your performance. Nobody is. But you have to understand, I can get three people for what I am paying you.”

“I do understand that. But I thought you wanted reliability and reputation.”

“The audience won’t really know. Yes, you’ve been here a while, but do you think viewers are sophisticated enough to know the difference between your work and someone with less talent and experience? They won’t. If you decide not to take this, your absence will be felt around here, but I’m pretty certain it won’t make a tick of difference in our audience.”

Regardless of his blunt desk-side manner, I knew he was right, and it was my cue to make the changes I had delayed. When the local media writer mentioned my departure in a roundup of developments in the business, my editor called me to share the fact they got a just few dozen phone calls inquiring about my status.

“But there were several messages on the answering machine wanting to know two things,” he said. “If your hair was real and whether you were gay.”

The ignominious postscript to my career in local TV news is only remotely akin to the treatment being received by departing CNN talents, but many of the same cultural and economic dynamics are at work. The people who write the checks for the cable network are designing a business they believe will be more profitable in a digital landscape. There is no denying, however, the transition in the editorial content, which is subtle in places and purposefully blatant in others. If anyone thinks this is simply an attempt to do a better job of covering the news, they ought to consider paying a bit closer attention. CNN’s new ownership, Warner Bros Discovery, has looked across the street and noticed the money being made by Murdoch and FOX with ratings that tower over Ted Turner’s legacy project.

CNN’s transition is as much about politics, though, as business considerations. John Malone, who is the board chairman of Discovery, the new owner of CNN, is a billionaire donor to Donald Trump. Malone gave $250,000 to the twice-impeached former president’s inaugural committee, and put money into the Save America PAC, which was dedicated to overturning the 2020 election results. His personal and corporate contributions were $1 million. Malone built his Liberty Media communications empire using strong arm tactics to pressure communities and government regulators.

His cable industry holding company, TCI, was written about in the Rocky Mountain News, which claimed, “Regulators, independent cable industry consultants, consumer groups and lawyers representing cities for years have complained that TCI employs a ruthless policy designed to muffle critics, smother competition and saddle local governments with huge legal bills.” The newspaper’s media critic, John Accola, in his 1994 article, described Malone as a “predator with the compassion of a great white shark.” The NAACP and League of United Latin American Citizens has called Malone’s TCI “the worst discriminator in the telecommunications industry,” and he reportedly joked about shooting the head of the Federal Communications Industry. Accola described a memo Malone sent instructing his cable operators to raise rates and “blame it on re-regulation and the government.”

Even in the run-up to Discovery’s acquisition of CNN, Malone was anything but circumspect in what he wanted to happen at the network. In an interview with CNBC, he praised FOX News by saying “they followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news (whatever that might mean), I mean some actual journalism embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.” He must not watch FOX. The only thing embedded in their opinions are commercials. The network consistently turns away from any story that might be critical or negatively impact conservative politics or its leadership. They managed to ignore the entirety of the January 6th hearings about the attack on the capitol and frequently allowed guests and hosts to say on the air that it appeared the terrorists were really members of Antifa masquerading as Trump supporters. Meanwhile, their audience was treated to follow ups on Benghazi and Hillary’s emails.

But this is the network model Malone praises, and Licht will institute at CNN.

Malone’s politics are more clearly reflected in another organization where he sits on the board as a director emeritus. The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., is a libertarian think tank that has a history of taking large amounts of money from the tobacco industry and promoting the privatization of Social Security and the Postal System along with various other U.S. government agencies and programs. Rupert Murdoch, FOX founder, was a former board member and contributor to Cato’s attempts to rewire American governance. Cato, in one of its most egregious right-wing rants, was against the government’s response to the pandemic and helping people financially, and in fact, insisted, on its blog, Washington’s emergency financial and vaccine assistance was harmful.

“The pandemic and much of the policy reaction to it has been incredibly destructive. Even if measured GDP does exceed pre‐​pandemic expectations this year, we should not fall for a broken windows fallacy. By restricting our liberties, constraining our market choices, and worsening our health, a broader conception of economic welfare suggests this experience has made us much, much worse off.”

Which means it was Joe Biden’s fault, not the viruses.

CNN’s transition to journalistic hospice is being managed by Chris Licht, a former producer at NBC, who was hired by executive David Zaslav, a close confederate of Malone who works as CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. Although Malone denies any involvement in staffing and editorial direction of CNN, he mentored Zaslav and made him wealthy, and they are said to talk constantly. Zaslav ran Morning Joe for MSNBC, CBS Morning News, and Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The two men are close enough that one mutual friend says Malone would not have to explain what he wanted Zaslav to do at the cable news network, he’d just know what will please the boss. Zaslav’s calculated transformation began when he hired Licht to be CEO of CNN, and Licht began to tear the house down to rebuild in a conservative image.

The new sheriff understood his job and got right to work. Liberal lawyer analyst Jeffrey Toobin was out the door, tossed or walked, no one can say, and then Brian Stelter, who had a seven-figure contract for his program Reliable Sources, was also invited to leave. Stelter’s recurrent weekly take downs of FOX News, of course, we are told had nothing to do with his departure, and we’ll never know since to keep their paychecks flowing during unemployment, on-air talent signs non-disclosure agreements. Stelter’s analyses of FOX caused much angst in conservative circles, which makes it unsurprising he was the first person targeted by Licht. The latest body cast on the pile is John Harwood, whose work is consistently strong and has a body of achievements for national media like the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, and who is not afraid to describe lies as lies. This would, organically, make him a frequent critic of Trump. Harwood does not believe stating facts is being unfair; neither do other sane and rational people.

The most disturbing changes at CNN, though, will not be personnel related. You will need to watch closely to see the conservative virus move to infect the corpus of CNN. The art of reporting the news is not as much related to the gathering of information as to how it is framed for readers and viewers. A perfect example of this came from the early debate over armored vehicles for U.S. troops in Iraq back in 2003. They were not properly protected, and congress debated a bill to spend billions improving the armor on Humvees that carried American soldiers. Democrats mostly voted against the bill that went to the floor because it offered only partial funding while Republicans said a small bite of the apple was worth the effort. The network headlines, as I recall, went something like this: CNN: Congress Fails to Approve Armor Upgrades to Military Vehicles to Protect Troops Because of Inadequate Funding. FOX: Democrats Vote Against Spending Measure to Protect U.S. Troops in Iraq.

Misinformation and disinformation have equal amounts of subtlety and nuance. Information is hardly news without context and perspective, and a few of CNN’s early signals their employees are getting the message from Licht occurred after President Biden’s recent speech about the soul of the nation. Brianna Keilar and Jeff Zeleny both chastised the president for having two Marines standing behind him at attention. They implied he was using the office and the military for political purposes. The critique might have had some value if they had bothered to mention Trump used the White House as a setting for the Republican National Convention and had pleaded for a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to allow him to review troops and assets like Mussolini or Hitler. George W. Bush also used the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and the entire crew as a backdrop for his “Mission Accomplished” speech, which was purely political and false. A little context would have helped the credibility of Keilar and Zeleny. Instead, they sounded like pissy FOX anchors.

The other skill involved in misleading viewers on a TV broadcast is connected to guest booking. The sins of omission are deadlier than the ones of commission. Who gets on the air to be interviewed for a reaction is sometimes less revelatory than who is not given a chair in the studio, and Chris Licht will likely soon be changing the guest roster at CNN, a task he has already heartily performed at MSNBC. Keith Olbermann, whose show Countdown was on the air while Licht was working at the cable network, said the producer spent too much of his time complaining to MSNBC’s management about Olbermann attacking on the air Joe Scarborough’s conservative friends. Olbermann makes the accusation in his most recent podcast (around 31:00) and suggests Licht has come on board to conduct a purge.

“I worked with him at MSNBC,” Olbermann said, “where he decided part of his job was to dismantle the liberal parts of MSNBC. What Chris Licht wants to do is whatever john Malone and David Zaslav tell him to do. He is a corporate lackey. Worse he’s corporate henchman.”

Licht, and many other news executives, suffer from a delusion that there is objectivity in journalism, and that hackneyed phrase, “two sides to every story.” There are not two sides to any story. There might be two opinions, but there is only one set of facts. It is irresponsible to interview a man who says the sky is clear when everyone can see it is raining. The greatest difference between FOX and CNN has been the willingness, indeed, eagerness of the House of Murdoch to make things up and bring them to air for real discussions. Bill O’Reilly built an entire career on that practice, and Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have PhDs in distortion and lies and putting the rot to our democracy in the process.

Objectivity is not possible because every journalist has sensitivities and learned responses to their experiences. If you grew up in government housing because your parents could not afford a home, your reporting is likely to be thoughtful and insightful when doing a story about cuts in rent subsidies that will send families to the streets. Conversely, a background in private schools and summer camps and family vacations in Europe will probably not provide you with any understanding of the struggles of the working class. George W. Bush, in fact, once asked one of his advisors to help him deal with the underprivileged.

“I need you to explain the poor to me,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

There is zero doubt here that CNN will be a very different broadcast in the coming years. Licht is purging any voice and journalist that has stated plainly what the facts show regarding Trump. The network has been straightforward about confronting his idiocy claiming that the election was stolen and has, appropriately, referred to it as “the big lie,” which it is. Don’t they owe their viewers the facts? Licht says he wants language less inflammatory and to refer to the former president’s bullshit as “lies about the election.” In July, he hung out in Congress meeting with Republicans and conservatives to sell them on coming back on the air at CNN. Pandering to strictly conservative pols is not a good way to build the reputation of a news operation. I think based on the clues Licht is leaving, Don Lemon, Jim Acosta, and maybe even Jake Tapper ought to be sending out resumes.

CNN has not ever been guilty of practicing political zealotry. They have built a solid reputation gathering news and information, often at great risk. Political opinions and analyses have been tempered. Even in a time when the democracy is under attack by power and money and voices on the right, the editorial work of the network has been measured and circumspect, and rarely extreme.

But I am not sure I can trust them anymore.