(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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Florida Lawmaker Admits Republicans “Hate Homosexuals” on House Floor [1]

['Tori Otten', 'Prem Thakker']

Date: 2023-05-02

here's CNN's promo for next week's Trump town hall 😬 pic.twitter.com/26GbrXRvfs — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2023

It is no secret that CNN has been on a lurch toward disinterested and lazy journalism, at least on the television side of things, mainly since the ascendance of new network President Chris Licht. He has discouraged reporters from calling Trump’s monumental lies about the 2020 election “the Big Lie.” He has sought to make CNN focus on “straight-news reporting” (as if there is some objective meter that determines what constitutes “straight news” and there is no editorial decision-making as to what does and doesn’t get covered beneath that umbrella, and how any of it is covered). CNN higher-ups have overall reportedly expressed an interest in shifting to the right.

And Licht is only one piece of the puzzle. CNN’s new owner, Warner Brothers Discovery Inc., is headed by David Zaslav, who seems to measure the success of the network’s shift mainly by how many Republicans it gets on air. Zaslav is also very close with Warner Brothers’ leading shareholder, John Malone, a self-described “libertarian” who once held 32 percent of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and also donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration. Malone has echoed desires for CNN to “evolve back,” suggesting Fox as a role model network, by having “‘news’ news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”

That formulation tells you all of what the CNN higher-ups mean by wanting to shift to “straight-news” or “objective” analysis—patently right-wing and power-serving programming that platforms the type of conspiratorial lies that may lead to a $787.5 million lawsuit.

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[1] Url: https://newrepublic.com/post/172377/florida-lawmaker-admits-republicans-hate-homosexuals

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