Liberal Blind Spot Kills CNN

Almost two weeks ago, ratings came out for the cable networks. MSNBC came in 26th in prime time, behind such luminaries as the Cartoon Network and the Food Channel. It just edged out BET. CNN didn’t make it into the top 30. When looking at the entire day, CNN came in 29th, losing to the vaunted Cartoon and Food Networks. MSNBC didn’t make the list. So news stinks right? Well, not really. FOX News was 2nd and 4th on the two lists. FOX had about three times the number of viewer as either MSNBC or CNN.

It took about a week for these numbers to start making it into the news cycle. And now, suddenly, we’re treated to all kinds of stories asking what is wrong with CNN and offering advice on how to fix CNN.

So what is wrong with CNN? Well, according to the liberal journalists being interviewed, CNN made a mistake when it decided to change its editorial policy and become a station without bias. Stop laughing, I’m serious. . . they did do that. CNN made a decision some time ago that they would try to chart the middle ground between FOX and MSNBC. While some might suggest that the middle ground between those two would be lunatics in bikinis spewing gibberish, CNN saw it differently. CNN decided that the middle ground was news, presented in all its unbiased glory.

Now, before we go further, let me say that I applaud CNN for that. I am a big proponent of someone finally presenting news again rather than opinion masquerading as news. And there have been times in the past three or four months where I almost felt that CNN had pulled off a fairly balanced presentation. But note my qualifier, “almost.” And that’s the problem. Liberals live in such a bubble that they don’t even know when they are spewing liberalism. It’s a blind spot. And CNN, staffed by former Clinton operatives, has a huge one.

The liberals who are opining about saving CNN don’t get this either. They say that obviously CNN’s foray into unbiased news was a failure because audiences no longer want “fair” journalism. Instead, we’re assured, they want “opinion journalism.” Thus, they advise CNN to pick a side (the liberal side) and start spewing. As usual, the lefties are wrong.

The real problem with CNN’s plan was that it never achieved a true middle of the road, and, consequently, no one believed their sudden conversion. They didn’t change their anchors, they haven’t stopped attacking Republicans more heavily and less fairly than Democrats, and they haven’t stopped bringing on the same hard-left jerkoffs they’ve been using for their “analysis” for years. Moreover, their assumptions remain distinctly liberal: government is the provider of solutions, spending is good, taxing is good, and liberal shibboleths remain unquestioned.

Why should anyone believe that the same people who venomously savaged the right for decades have suddenly become fair when nothing has changed at their station except the concept?

If you want to know why CNN’s ratings went down, just think about it. They spent 20+ years driving away any viewer who wasn’t several steps left of center. When FOX appeared, despite it ridiculousness, all of these people ran for the doors and never looked back. That’s about 60% of the American public, which coincidentally is exactly how the ratings break down if you compare FOX's ratings to the combined ratings of CNN and MSNBC.

Of the 40% of the market left for CNN after FOX arrived, about 40% of those were lunatic fringe, who just want their “news” to validate their opinions. So when CNN decided to go “fair,” it lost those people to MSNBC, which has no qualms about warping its “news” to fit its far-left agenda. That left only 24% of the market at CNN. (By the way, the real losers are the three networks ABC, CBS and NBC, who are bleeding viewers.)

What CNN was hoping was that people would come back to it from FOX once they realized that CNN was no longer biased. CNN hoped it would be the 60% and FOX and MSNBC the twenty percenters. But why should people go back? They were burned for 20 years by CNN before FOX came along. And since CNN does nothing more these days than read AP wire stories, which is all FOX does (though FOX has hookerish "attorneys" add their opinions to each story), why should a rational conservative switch from the right-leaning hookers on FOX to the depressed leftists in “centrist” drag on CNN? Yeah, I said “drag” Anderson Cooper. . . who studied at the University of Hanoi (and, yes, that’s true, I didn’t make that up).

If CNN wants to recapture some of the FOX audience, it’s going to have to dump its leftist journalists and find people who are not associated with the Democratic party to run the place. Stop hiring journalists who are married to prominent Democrats and who appear at Democratic fund raisers. It also needs to start providing more that just AP stories. For example, a couple of exposés on Obama and Pelosi would go a long way to winning people back. Until it does that, nobody’s coming back.

But CNN’s liberal blind spot keeps it from seeing this, because, from a liberal’s perspective, CNN's liberal-lite is already "fair." So I guess, all that's left to say is. . .

R.I.P.

CNN


Update: We have received an interesting video that discusses the ratings war, and it anyone is interested, you can check it out here: Video.