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<i>Brian Stelter, a former media reporter for CNN and the New York Times, is the author of three books, including the forthcoming “Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a>, and the Battle for American Democracy.”</i>

The recruiters of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/06/07/chris-licht-leaves-cnn-town-hall-atlantic/" target=_blank>CNN’s new chief executive</a> should pose this question to every candidate: What should an anchor do when a guest says something untrue?

The debate over the right answer has consumed television newsrooms for the better part of a decade. There are thorny follow-up questions: What if the person lying is the president? What if he’s lying about your network? What if his lies are an assertion of power and your fact-checks only help him?

These are serious questions about the role of journalism in a fractured, feuding society. Wednesday’s sacking of Chris Licht at CNN makes them even more urgent, because he was never fully in charge of the network. His boss David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, was — and still is.

Journalists and other employees up and down the network are wondering what Zaslav wants CNN to be. Many are concerned that he will remain committed to a “both sides” vision that sounds strategically wise in the boardroom but tactically fails on live TV.

Erik Wemple: Chris Licht is out, and so is CNN’s centrist folly

I have been in touch with scores of CNN staffers in recent days because I worked with them until August, when “Reliable Sources” was canceled. The program I anchored was controversial because it was about the news media, and I perceived that Licht and Zaslav wanted to de-controversialize the CNN brand. But they never said so directly, and that’s been a big part of the problem for staffers: They don’t know what management wants.

Licht was a lot more candid with Tim Alberta, who spent the better part of a year <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-trump/674255/" target=_blank>profiling him for the Atlantic</a>. Alberta’s story — which quoted Licht disparaging CNN’s past journalism and putting his ego ahead of the network — made it impossible for Licht to remain in charge.

But mocking him for PR malpractice misses the point. I understand why Licht agreed to the profile. I shadowed him in 2011 and 2012 as he built a brand-new morning show for CBS because I was writing <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Top-Morning-Inside-Cutthroat-World-ebook/dp/B0092XN9FY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1YP9PIVB89S1&amp;keywords=top+of+the+morning+stelter&amp;qid=1686163524&amp;sprefix=top+of+the+morning+stelter%2Caps%2C208&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank">a book about A.M. TV</a>. I saw a whip-smart, savvy, occasionally profane producer at the top of his class. I thought the same person would charm CNN anchors when he arrived in the spring of 2022.

Instead, Licht alienated them. He sometimes said what he didn’t like to see on air, but not what he did like. He expressed what not to do, but said little about what <i>to</i> do.

Perry Bacon Jr.: CNN’s Chris Licht showed the problem with anti-woke centrism

And he indicated to Alberta that he did not have a thoughtful plan for the Donald Trump conundrum I posed at the outset. “How are we gonna cover Trump? That’s not something I stay up at night thinking about,” he said last fall. “It’s very simple.”

I wish it were. But it’s one of the most complicated editorial challenges for the news business in our lifetimes.

Inside the network, Licht’s actions fed speculation that he was just Zaslav’s middleman, his messenger, and regardless, the message was muddled. Zaslav spoke of a “journalism first” approach while his longtime mentor and key board member, John Malone, spoke of a “more centrist” vision. Malone, a Trump donor and Fox News fan, said he wasn’t involved in the changes at the network, but many CNN staffers suspect he was.

Over time, anchors and producers came to believe that Zaslav and Licht wanted CNN to be the Food Network but for news — inoffensive, predictable, safe to leave on in the living room all day. As one CNN anchor told me, “If you try to be all things to all people, you’re not anything to anybody.”

That sounds like a product that would appeal to everyone, CNN circa 1995, before Fox News and MSNBC launched. A product akin to Headline News, CNN’s little sister, which has been in decline for years and no longer has its own newscasts.

But there is no way to turn the clock back to 1995. Viewers no longer agree on the same set of facts, much less express interest in the same topics. CNN cannot ignore the extremist attitudes shaping our politics or claim that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Jan. 6</a>, 2021, was a protest that just got out of hand.

We live in an age that requires a muscular form of TV journalism, one that defends truth against a torrent of lies — and accepts that the truth-telling will spur backlash from some viewers.

The men and women who were, until Wednesday, Licht’s lieutenants feel like the past year’s worth of programming decisions have confused the audience. The anchors have been confused, too — will they be rewarded internally for interrupting when a guest says something bogus or will they be chastised by the boss? Will they be respected for defending democracy and plain old human decency or will they be maligned as being “opinionated?”

Talking Points Memo founder and editor Josh Marshall <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/about-that-big-cnn-article" target=_blank>framed the questions</a> this way: “Did CNN get ‘too liberal’? Or did the national political environment become so polarized and so knocked off the kilter of democratic norms that news coverage forced some level of confrontational stance?” I lived through it and it was the latter.

CNN journalists hope to hear from Zaslav about all this. They are wondering, as one on-air personality put it, if Licht’s exit represents “a real change of direction” or if Zaslav will just “find someone more competent and less obnoxious to execute the same vision.”

Good TV is not always good journalism, and good journalism is not always good TV. But at its best, CNN has been both, and it can be again.

Brian Stelter

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Brian Stelter: Chris Licht's exit shows CNN can't turn back the clock

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