Well, it was nice knowing you, CNN. For over 30 years, you have been known as a 24-hour cable news network. You were the first of your kind, created from Ted Turner’s vision. And much like MTV is no longer Music Television, we can shut the door on you being a news network. For this coming Friday, CNN decides to join Fox News and go directly into becoming a conservative entertainment media outlet.
This Friday, on Piers Morgan Live, Glenn Beck will be interviewed for a full hour. And, it won’t be by Morgan. No. Instead, he will be interviewed by SE Cupp, one of the rotating hosts of Crossfire. Cupp also happens to be a contributing writer to The Blaze, which is a ‘news’ website that happens to be owned by none other than Beck. Therefore, Cupp will get a chance to interview her boss. I am sure this will be a hard-hitting affair full of tough questions and Cupp really challenging Beck on his views.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
As far as Cupp is concerned, you couldn’t find a hackier hack among conservative pundits, and that is saying something. It’s as if she took a class on how to be perceived as ‘smart’ and a ‘wonk’. First off, she uses her first two initials instead of just going by Sarah, her first name. Then, she puts on her glasses, uses some ‘big’ words and consistently takes a contrary position from any liberal, progressive or half-way intelligent person she is engaged with. How much of a contrarian is she? She wrote a book, Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity, yet describes herself as an atheist.
Anyway, while CNN has dealt with its fair share of criticism of how it covers the news and its concentrated focus on breaking coverage, sometimes at the detriment of getting the story right, it has still always been considered a true news network, for good or bad. However, with this stunt, it is readily apparent that CNN’s head Jeff Zucker is all-in with going the ‘entertainment’ route. And, since Fox News gets the ratings, why not emulate that network and push the conservative entertainment envelope. Zucker has already publicly stated that they need to focus less on news coverage and more on shows.
So, at this point, Zucker is willing to take whatever credibility CNN has as a news source and toss it away so he can tap into the conspiracy nut and shut-in market. Obviously, that has to be a super huge market, right? So, why not grab a chunk of it? Maybe next, they can give Alex Jones his own daily show? Perhaps let Michael Savage be an anchor? Maybe hire Michelle Bachmann to be a morning host? I am pretty sure that if you ran these by Zucker, he’d think they were all stellar ideas and worthy of looking into.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
