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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEric Boehlert: Zucker's CNN legacy -- selling drama over news
https://pressrun.media/p/zuckers-cnn-legacy-selling-dramaZucker's CNN legacy selling drama over news
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Eric Boehlert
snip//
CNN famously helped Trump get elected and then treated him as a reality TV star. According to a leaked phone call from the height of the Republican primary season, Zucker buttered up Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen: "You guys have had great instincts, great guts and great understanding of everything." (I guarantee you Zucker was not having similar phone calls with Hillary Clintons campaign.)
Zucker stressed how "fond" he was of Trump, wished he could talk to him "every day," and then floated the idea of giving Trump a "weekly show" on CNN during the campaign. The whole thing was inconceivable, unless you view American elections as nothing more that entertainment, and your job as the head of CNN is to secure pleasing content. (Zucker turned Trump into an Apprentice TV star a decade earlier when he oversaw NBC.)
snip//
Addicted to that drama and the Breaking News culture of the Trump years, CNN has desperately tried to recreate that frenzy under President Joe Biden, even though his administration represents the antithesis of the chaotic, criminal enterprise that Trump oversaw.
During the Afghanistan troop withdrawal, CNNs Kabul reporter famously announced the U.S. would never be able to airlift 50,000 people out of the country (it cant happen), and the network claimed the U.S. was inflicting moral injury by abandoning allies. Yet the U.S. ended up evacuating 130,000 people, in the most successful post-war operation of its kind. CNN also claimed that Bidens long-expected troop withdrawal meant the U.S. was walking away from the world stage and leaving Europe exposed. Fact: Most European troops left Afghanistan eight years ago.
On and on it went as CNN insisted on injecting hysteria into an already compelling event, all in the name of chasing ratings and selling drama over news.
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Eric Boehlert: Zucker's CNN legacy -- selling drama over news (Original Post)
babylonsister
Feb 2022
OP
dalton99a
(81,504 posts)1. The greedy soulless ghoul gave us President Trump
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)2. Clearly it was time for Zucker to go
He probably found out he was about to be fired anyway. It looks like a classic case of "You can't fire me because I quit!"