Posted on 07/10/2017 6:41:32 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
Trumps War on the Big Boss of Fake News How CNN took on President Trump and lost. July 10, 2017 Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.
When CNN brought in Jeff Zucker, it wasnt for his journalistic acumen. Zucker was best known for his work on the Today Show. After billions in losses at NBC, his new Comcast bosses wanted him gone.
CNN and Zucker were perfect for each other. Both were sinking ships looking for an easy way out.
Zuckers plan for CNN was simple. Get out of the news business.
Or as he put it, news is how you define it. Fake, real; its all a matter of definition. And Zucker was going to broaden the definition of what news is. And the definition was reality shows.
CNN was going to edge away from the news business under its new boss of fake reality television.
Zuckers plan made sense at the time. MSNBC had the lefty demographic locked up and FOX News spoke to the right. CNN wasnt going to compete with them. And it wasnt going to do vanilla reporting. Instead it would jump into the reality dogpile. Food shows. Edgy documentaries. More shows and less newscasts. If there had to be news, Zucker wanted it to have an an attitude and a take.
Before President Trump called out CNN as fake news, its new boss had already turned it into fake news.
But that was a different world. Obama was in the White House. Hillary was going to succeed him. Nothing interesting was going to happen in the world of politics. CNN could just focus on infotainment.
And then Trump emerged and everything changed. Suddenly CNN was going to have to do news again and Zucker, the gimmick guy who had bet big on reality shows on NBC and then on CNN, was completely out of his depth. He understood entertainment, but he didnt have the faintest clue about journalism.
In the summer of 16, he had ridiculed BuzzFeed as not being a real news organization. That gave BuzzFeed a whole lot in common with CNN. By October, he had hired on Andrew Kaczynski and his BuzzFeed team of trolls. And its that team of trolls that is now at the center of CNNs latest scandal.
CNN had already lost 3 reporters from its investigative unit over a fake news Trump-Russia hit piece. Instead of enmeshing President Trump in scandals, its investigative unit is deeply enmeshed in scandal.
Zucker was not a journalism guy, but he understood numbers. He lived and died by them. His philosophy at CNN was to stay on anything that its viewers were watching whether it was a missing Malaysian plane or Trump. CNNs old strategy of flooding the zone with meaningless non-coverage of a breaking event was merged with Zuckers own preference for reality television to create a constant coverage circus.
Hiring a ton of reporters from across the spectrum, from a New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner to the BuzzFeed trolls, would flood the zone with Trump scandals. CNN would have the most Trump scandals and the most viewers. It was a great strategy for manufacturing a whole bunch of fake news scandals.
And things that dont even qualify as fake news. Like wondering whether Trump is afraid of stairs. The Stairophobia segment appeared on New Day, Zuckers own baby. Or the accusation that Trump eats too much ice cream.
Thats how Zucker reinvented CNN and went to war with the President of the United States. But he hadnt grasped that reporting on real people is different than asking reality show contestants to attack each other on camera in scripted segments. This time his reality show really was real. And he isnt ready.
Jeff Zucker had come to CNN to exploit a brand that was associated in most peoples minds with the news. Thats the same reason President Trump has been hammering CNN. Destroying the credibility of CNN will damage the mainstream media. And the media has been happy to line up and lionize Zucker.
Its quite a comeback for the NBC boss who used to be best known for his spat with Conan OBrien. But the scandals show that Zucker doesnt actually know how to handle a news media operation.
And history may be about to repeat itself.
AT&T wants to buy Time Warner. And some AT&T execs arent happy with Zuckers mismanagement of CNN. Thats a familiar story. The last time a major telecom giant bought a company that Zucker was running, they dumped him. Had Comcast succeeded in buying Time Warner, the big boss of fake news would already have been unemployed.
Zucker was hired because CNNs business model was failing. But his new model is also a wreck. CNN has moved into MSNBCs loud left-wing space while Maddows old home lurches a little to the center. His old bet on reality television no longer looks all that smart. Instead CNN is the new MSNBC where talking heads with attitude give their left-wing take on the news. And theres a reason MSNBC let CNN do it.
MSNBC wants more than Maddow & Co. But thats exactly the model that Zucker is replicating.
MSNBC would rather take CNNs old position than appeal exclusively to Bernie Sanders fans. The New York Times and the Washington Post were financially desperate enough to climb into that hole. CNN didnt need to reduce its audience to people who believe President Trump will soon be removed from office. It made that choice because Zuckers lack of vision trapped the news network in a dead end.
President Trump used CNNs need and greed for attention against it. He often wins by getting his enemies to give in to their worst instincts. And thats what Jeff Zucker has been doing. CNN is profiting in the short term, but losing in the long term as its brand becomes a political toxic waste dump.
The Zuckering of CNN was easily foreseen.
Jeff Zuckers lack of vision manifested itself in the mismanagement of NBC and CNN in the same way. The former Today Show producer had a talent for gimmicks and a weakness when it came to the big picture. His plans all came down to doubling down on a dubious gimmick that was working without considering the long term cost. Thats how fake reality television turned into fake news.
Now Zucker has trashed CNN the way that he wrecked NBC.
President Trump and Jeff Zucker have a history. Zucker thought that he had picked his target, but it was really a case of Trump picking CNN. Trump understood that Zuckers weakness as an executive lay in taking the easy road to success without thinking ahead. And hes using that weakness to destroy CNN. And to inflict serious collateral damage on the mainstream media through the attacks on CNN.
CNN couldnt resist going to war against Trump. Not when the ratings were so good. And now that the war is going badly, its too late to disengage. Like the rest of the media, CNN assumed that it made the rules. Now its discovering that no one else has to abide by its rules.
Jeff Zucker has complained that President Trump is bullying CNN. Thats not the battle cry of a winner. Its the big boss of fake news starting to figure out that he bit off more in this fight than he can chew.
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
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Trumps War on the Big Boss of Fake News How CNN took on President Trump and lost. July 10, 2017 Daniel Greenfield
Trump as top gun pilot shoots down CNN commie pilots.
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Jacob Schwartz was the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats. He has been accused of possessing over 3,000 images of children being molested and abused.
https://medium.com/@Cernovich/jacob-schwartz-robby-mook-cnn-1e9cc968c320
Interesting article but it must have been written in haste.
I am adding Matt Drudge to the “ FAKE NEWS” Tabloid these days too!! I am getting more and more dissatisfied with Matt going along and “ going along” with the FAKE news !!!!
I have boycotted DRUDGE ... encourage others to do so. He is putting FAKE out there too.....just read what he puts in RED.....it is all ANTI-TRUMP.
Quoting Turner from its own site just prior to a Piers Morgan interview, "Launching on June 1st, 1980, Turner worried less about Nielsen numbers, and more about his network's philosophy and reputation: ' Even if the ratings weren't the greatest. If - you had the most prestige and you were the network that everybody turned to in times of a crisis, that was the most important position in the news business to hold.'"
"Philosophy"? "Reputation"?
Excellent! Short and to the point.
cnn: Fake news from Operation Tailwind to today.
"Trump wins by allowing his enemies to give into their worst instincts"... VERY insightful...
“the Big Boss of Fake News”
I think there are bigger bosses.
Trump also has studied Alinksy rules.....
As in Zuckers and CNN's case......Rule 13.....”Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
” Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”
Speaking of which...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut0TaegQ-kw
Just realized..isn't “20-20 hindsight” perfect....
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