CNN Will Need To Clean House To Cover Trump Fairly During Second Term | Bobby Burack

In the weeks before the first presidential debate last June—the debate that ended the political career of Joe Biden—CNN CEO Mark Thompson reportedly told co-moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash to keep it straight. Thompson wanted to avoid the network looking slanted in favor of the Democrat Party, a reputation the channel carried for much of the past eight years. 

To their credit, Tapper and Bash kept it straight. Trump admitted so afterward during a rally. "I shouldn’t knock CNN because I actually thought they treated me very fairly last night. Very professional, both of them. Jake and Dana, they treated me very fairly," Trump said to a Virginia crowd.

According to the Status newsletter--led by former CNN employee Oliver Darcy--Thompson ordered a similar edict of his journalists ahead of Trump's inauguration on Monday. Darcy says Thompson told more than 100 journalists and on-air talent they ought to avoid "pre-judging" Trump and to avoid "expressing any outrage of their own" during the inauguration.

During the meeting, Thompson "made it clear that he did not want the coverage to "relitigate the past." The meeting included hosts Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper, per the report.

Ultimately, Thompson asked his employees to be "open-minded" during Trump's second term.

We are skeptical.

Moderators and CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash during a commercial break of the CNN Republican Presidential Primary Debate in Sheslow Auditorium at Drake University on January 10, 2024 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

For background, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is Thompson's boss. Zaslav is who installed Thompson's predecessor, Chris Licht, who publicly touted that he was tasked with restoring CNN's credibility as a news organization. 

Licht tried. He quickly fired the most notorious anti-Trump chumps in the building, including Brian Stelter and John Harwood, and demoted Don Lemom from primetime to morning television. Licht eventually fired Lemon after widespread accusations of workplace toxicity.

However, Licht lasted only 13 months. 

While his ousting is mostly blamed on conducting a town hall with Trump and participating in a voluminous Atlantic profile (never invite a reporter to the gym with you), Licht's tenure was doomed from the start. 

Beginning on day one, leaks poured out of headquarters. Nearly every week, anonymous employees tried to sabotage Licht through the press. Highlights include a report from the Wall Street Journal detailing how Tapper, Cooper, and Erin Burnett were voicing frustrations inside the building about Licht's leadership.

The frustrations among CNN personalities are no different from the slew of reporters currently exiting the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times over plans to hire more moderate and conservative journalists. 

The media elite do not want to work in the same locker rooms as moderates and conservatives. In their minds, they have a moral obligation to save democracy from Trump and the MAGA Nazis. Put simply, most legacy journalists and anchors don't want to cover Trump fairly.

Therefore, Thompson faces the same hurdle as Licht. His employees want to remain loyal footsoldiers for the American left. 

How would Darcy know what Thomspon tells employees during private meetings? Quite obviously, his former colleagues have told him. They are arming Darcy (and other reporters) with bent information to make Thompson look like a wannabe ally of Donald Trump.

Hence, Darcy's report last week that Thompson might relocate chief Trump antagonist Jim Acosta to the graveyard shift from midnight to 2 am.

Darcy's sources know what happens when liberal viewers think a network they turn to for affirmation treats Trump like something other than a fascist. See MSNBC's "Morning Joe" – the show is still bleeding viewers after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski disclosed a post-election trip to Mar-a-Lago.

Ultimately, Licht's ruptured tenure demonstrated that the only way to fix CNN is to clean house. The cancer runs that deep. The hosts, anchors, reporters, and producers are all corrupted by a pretentious mind virus that sees Trump and his supporters as a true enemy of the state.

Then again, Thompson might have to clean the house anyway. Last week, documents revealed during an ongoing defamation trial showed that CNN's revenue has dropped by $400 million in the last three years.

At this rate, CNN might not be able to afford to employ propagandists for much longer. Those cost money.