There are few things about this that all seem to be related in some way...
1. Fox News has totally shot themselves in the foot because of what they did to Tucker Carlson.
2. CNN put up a lightweight interviewer against PDJT for this town hall and he toyed with her like cat mauling over a mouse. It was so bad, they had to enact the ‘mercy rule’ and cut it off at minute 69 of what was scheduled to be 90 minutes even though the ratings must have been through the roof.
3. CNN actually let PDJT supporters into the event as audience members instead of stacking it with a bunch of hardcore leftists. This is way out of character for them based on what they’ve done in recent years...
4. Then they had Byron Donalds on the post town hall event panel to discuss it...and they even let him talk. They had to have known in advance just how good Donalds was and that he had endorsed PDJT.
There were a few other related issues too such as the ‘focus group’ segment but regardless, these all seem to be related.... Last August, John Malone said he wants to ‘remake CNN’, change the culture and get them back to reporting news instead of being fake news propogandists. Even though he fired Jeff Zucker and Brian Stelter and brought in Chris Licht, for the most part any moves that actually affected what viewers saw (as far as CNN bias) has been incredibly slow and one was left wondering if it would ever happen or they had been paid off well enough to change their mind.
Here’s the question.. is Malone watching the massive decline of Fox, the potential (and almost certain) rise of Tucker in whatever form that he arises with, the huge increase in Newsmax viewers and too many other ‘conservative’ outlets to mention? And is his thinking that what is before him now is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get CNN ratings out of the toilet and essentially increase viewership by say 10 fold overnight with almost zero effort? One wonders......
CNN, Fox, any media outlet you care to mention, only one thing matters- profits; ratings.
Journos were/are *so* conflicted because as much as most of them hate Trump, he is *entertaining* and gets good ratings.
IT is interesting how much is going on right now. IMHO corporate cable ‘news’ media is a dinosaur, experiencing the last death throes of an irrelevant medium.
That said, this was an opportunity CNN had handed to them on a plate - Fox News losing viewers while PDJT gives them an opportunity to regain some relevance.
And they blew it.
It was astonishingly bad for them. They just look childish....but that’s who they are. They couldn’t do anything outside of what they are.
Also a genius move by PDJT, either they became more balanced and objective, which helps him, or they continue with the tired craziness and make themselves even more irrelevant, which helps him.
I have to hand it to him, many thought this would be a mistake.