The crisis of the CNN news network continues. After just thirteen months of controversial mandate, the CEO of the company, Chris Licht, has resigned. His departure closes a year of long chaos, characterized by an attempt to turn the editorial line towards positions closer to Donald Trump and an attempt to take prominence from the stars of the network that has resulted in a collapse of the audience, a war between journalists and managers, and a series of dismissals or departures of some of the most popular faces of the influential television network.

The chaos at CNN coincides with the collapse of the audience on Fox News after the successful lawsuit of the electoral software company Dominion, which has forced that company to pay 787.5 million dollars (734 million euros) in compensation for defamation, and the dismissal of its star commentator, Tucker Carlson, possibly for a series of racist text messages that were in danger of coming to light. Carlson has continued to have a media presence thanks to Twitter.

On Wednesday, in a 10-minute video on Elon Musk's social network, the commentator turned even more to the far right, calling Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski a "sweaty rat, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, and a friend of BlackRock," referring to the world's largest investment fund manager. Carlson also expressed doubts that al Qaeda caused the Sept. 11 attacks, saying the U.S. military is in possession of flying saucer fragments and holds the corpses of the aliens who manned them.

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Media.

Blow to the billionaire empire of lies: why the fake news business is exhausted

  • Writing: RODRIGO TERRASA Madrid
  • Writing: ILLUSTRATIONS: JOSETXU L. PIÑEIRO

Blow to the billionaire empire of lies: why the fake news business is exhausted

Leaders.

The decline of Rupert Murdoch's empire: lawsuits, weddings and three children fighting for a millionaire succession

  • Editor: PABLO SCARPELLINI Los Angeles
  • Writing: ILLUSTRATION: JOSETXU L. PIÑEIRO

The decline of Rupert Murdoch's empire: lawsuits, weddings and three children fighting for a millionaire succession

So it's not just CNN that's in crisis. The whole model of U.S. news cable television is. In April, Fox News recorded a 37% drop in viewership from the same month a year earlier, to 1.42 million daily viewers; CNN, with a 25% plunge, was an almost testimonial 494,000. The traditionally leftist MSNBC was the only one to rise, achieving, with a 14% increase, 1.16 million viewers.

The trigger for Licht's departure has been a devastating profile of him by journalist Tim Alberta in The Atlantic magazine. The publication of the report – in which Licht, paradoxically, had collaborated by giving Alberta full access to his day to day life and granting him numerous interviews – was the death knell of the executive, who conveyed the impression of having very clear his plans for CNN, but without having any idea how to implement them. On Wednesday of last week, David Zaslav, the CEO of the parent company of CNN owner Warner Brothers Discovery, appointed his right-hand man David Leavy as CNN's chief operating officer, with the mission of taking charge of the day-to-day management of the channel. That meant, in practice, that Licht was left with one foot out. Today he already has both.

In reality, Licht's management was compromised from the beginning by the situation of the audiovisual world in the United States, where large traditional companies are losing ground day by day to the giants of Silicon Valley. The owner of CNN, Warner Media, was bought for 85,400 million dollars (79,700 million euros) in 2016 by the telephone company AT&T, which wanted to build a large streaming operation to compete with Netflix. The result of the merger was a disaster, and in 2022 AT&T spun off Warner Media and merged it with Discovery Communications. Thus was born Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), which in practice is controlled by Discovery.

But the mess didn't end there. In the middle of the merger, CNN CEO Jeff Zucker was fired for failing to disclose to the company's board that he had had a sexual relationship with the network's chief marketing officer, Allison Gollust. Zucker had been one of the creators of Donald Trump's public figure, both in the period in which he directed the largest television in the US, NBC Universal, when he oversaw The Apprentice, the reality show that made the then businessman and future politician famous, and during the 2016 campaign, when CNN gave massive coverage, in general very favorable, to the then candidate, to turn against him as soon as he won the elections. Zucker also turned CNN, following in the wake of Fox News, into a network of stars, with names like Don Lemon, Jim Acosta, Chris Cuomo, Kaitlan Collins, Chris Cilizza, or Michael Smerconish.

Licht arrived with the goal of replacing Zucker, moving the chain to the center — or, at least, making it more favorable to Trump — and eliminating some of the Zucker-era egos. Today, from the list of stars above, only Acosta, Collins, and Smerconish follow. The chain has experienced a rotation of names and spaces for its grill that has left the audience cross-eyed. And his attempt to move politically has been a disaster. The town hall – an interview with the public – that CNN did with Donald Trump last month, in which the audience was exclusively made up of Trumpistas, was a disaster of audience. That was how it became clear that this turn to the center did not make commercial sense.

Another thing is that now things are going to be fixed. Discovery has no experience in the realm of political reporting, and Zaslav insists CNN needs to be more neutral. But the 2023 audiences don't want that. The Fox News audience has defected after the disappearance of the neo-fascist proclamations of Carlson, the main proponent in the US of the 'replacement theory' popularized in France by the ultra candidate Eric Zemour, who maintains that there is a plan to replace white males, first, and then all whites. And CNN's misses Lemon's endless enumerations of racial grievances, or the fights — sometimes bordering on violence — between Acosta and the staff of Trump's Casa Banca (White House). Everything seems to indicate that the only one that resists is MSNBC, because it remains faithful to its audience, generally located to the left of Biden. It may be the end of this business model, characterized by very small audiences but with enormous influence and profitability, at the hands of the Internet, whether on YouTube (with The Young Turks on the left), podcasts (with Joe Rogan on Trump's side and Rachel Maddow on the opposite) or television (where OANN and Newsmax approach Fox News in audience with a much more radical message).

After all, Carlson's pro-Russian and anti-Jewish conspiratorial tirades had more than 60 million views on Twitter last night. And, although that social network is worth only a third of what Elon Musk paid for it, the richest businessman in the world, with a net worth of 205,000 million dollars, has more than enough resources to continue throwing money into that black hole for all eternity.

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