 I've long maintained that CNN has always been trash, and as bad as it's always been, it's about to get a lot worse. In fact, it's already getting worse because they're shamelessly trying to shift to the right in order to pander to Donald Trump supporters, all while claiming that this current move is them just trying to be more impartial and objective. Hmm, we'll see about that. So I'll give you a couple of examples. But first of all, just ask yourself why they're doing this. I think that should be obvious. CNN is a news organization, perhaps aesthetically, but this is a business first and foremost, so they are going to do what makes them the most money. And the way that they get more money is to attract more eyeballs to the screen. So if they are perceived to be a Democrat partisan outlet, well, then that's going to turn off Republicans. So in order to cast the widest net and get the best advertisers, the most advertising dollars you have to get the most eyeballs. So that's what they're trying to do. So let's look at their behavior as of late. As you all know, back in August, the network announced that they canceled reliable sources with liberal host Brian Stelter and then out of the blue, John Howard announced on September 2nd that that was his last day at CNN conspicuously after calling Donald Trump a demagogue in a segment where he was objectively speaking the truth about Donald Trump in response to a speech that Biden gave about Trump and the Republicans attacks on democracy. Let's watch. Of course, it was a political speech. We're talking in a midterm re-election year. The issues that he's talking about are inherently political. But I think it's also important to say that the core point he made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true. Now, that's something that's not easy for us as journalists to say. We're brought up to believe there's two different political parties with different points of view, and we don't take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that's not what we're talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue. Many, many Republicans are rallying behind his lies about the 2020 election and other things as well, and a significant portion or a sufficient portion of the constituency that they're leading attacked the Capitol on January 6th violently by offering pardons or suggesting pardons for those people who violently attacked the Capitol, which you've been pointing out numerous times this morning. Donald Trump made Joe Biden's point for him. Now, he made a good distinction there between objectivity and neutrality. Objectivity is simply the objective facts about reality, whereas neutrality is trying to play it safe. Fry the line right down the middle. So if Republicans say one thing, Democrats say the other thing, then the truth is going to be somewhere in the middle, or at least that's where you position yourself if you want to be neutral. And you can understand why that's an issue, because if Republicans say that climate change isn't real, but Democrats say it is real, then you have to pretend as if this non-debatable issue is debatable. And that's bad. That's a problem. But, you know, it is the case that the Hollywood reporter states that he actually found out last month, according to an anonymous source that he was going to leave. So maybe he's not leaving for calling Trump a demagogue. Maybe him leaving is just a coincidence. Perhaps him making that claim about Donald Trump, which was objectively true, is just him feeling emboldened because what do you have to lose since you're leaving anyway? Or maybe he's leaving because he said things like that frequently. But either way, sure, let's claim that that's a coincidence for argument's sake. CNN has done other things that are extremely questionable, which further prove that they are trying to pander to the right. But before we get to that, let's talk about the changes that they're making. As ABC News reports, the news network now under the Warner Discovery corporate banner and led since spring by CNN worldwide chairman Chris Litched is trying to inject more balance into its programming and become less radioactive to Republicans. How and whether that can be accomplished remains a mystery since Litch took over morning anchor Breonna Keller's occasional takedowns of Fox coverage have disappeared. Although Litch hasn't commented publicly on Stelter's exit, the media reporters criticism of Fox News was a regular feature of reliable sources. It received little notice at the time, but cable news executive John Malone, now a member of the Warner Discovery Board of Directors, said in a CNBC interview last November that I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism it started with and actually have journalists which would be unique and refreshing. Similarly, Warner Discovery president and CEO David Zaslob said at a company town hall in April that CNN should set itself apart from a cable news industry that is dominated by advocacy networks. CNN needs to be about reporting truth and facts. He said, quote, if we get that, we can have a civilized society. It said Zaslob will point to Litched and without it, if it all becomes advocacy, we don't have a civilized society. Now we'll come back to Breonna Keller here in a moment because they point out how all of a sudden she's not doing these takedowns of Fox News, but that doesn't sound bad at face value, right? But these corporate executives are not talking about prioritizing truth and reality and truth and objectivity seriously. Like they're not taking that seriously. What they're referring to here is neutrality. They don't want to make it seem as if they favored Democrats more than Republicans. But the problem is you can't do that while remaining objective. For example, for Trump to claim that the election was stolen. Well, to say, oh, well, maybe, you know, some some people say it's stolen. Some people say it's not. But who cares what some people say? What are the facts and the facts remain that Trump is a liar and the election was not stolen. So in order to be neutral in this instance, you have to you have to pay lip service to absurd ideas. And they're not just trying to be impartial. They're actually pandering to Trump supporters case in point. The new CNN CEO, Chris Lich, wants anchors to stop calling Trump's election lies the big lie, because apparently that particular term is associated with Democratic Party partisan framing. Even though I don't think that that's necessarily true. Most people colloquially refer to his election lies as the big lie. So even though it's a little bit subtle here, this primes people to think about the big lie as just another lie from an obviously dishonest president and not a lie that stands out from all of his other lies. A lie that's so devastating to democracy that it could actually end democracy in the United States. I mean, just that small change by saying we'll call it Trump's election lies instead of the big lie that does make a difference. And since the big lie is a little bit more divisive, well, again, they want to attract right wingers. So the way that they do that is by pandering to them. But I've got some more examples to you and let's get to Breonna Keller because now she is making it very clear that she's falling in line. So last week, she clutched her pearls over Biden's speech because of the optics of him criticizing fascist Republicans while two Marines stood in the background. I mean, give me a break, right? Now, she went on to do a five minute segment criticizing Biden over the optics of that with the Chiron that read Biden faces criticism over Marines in backdrop of speech while not mentioning that she's the one who was the loudest in criticizing him for this. But as others on Twitter pointed out, she didn't call out the optics when Trump accused members of the squad of hating America with, you guessed it, two Marines standing beside him. So Breonna has very clearly fallen in line in order to keep her job. Furthermore, they're now running these hysterical articles over Hunter Biden's laptop, just like Fox News. And then there's headlines like this, quote, when wokeness comes to Middle Earth, why some say diverse casting ruins the new Lord of the Rings series. Now, this article, if you read it, tries to both sides the story by portraying the people opposed to diverse casting as good faith arguer, simply opposed to the wokenification of classic stories rather than the racist fuckheads that they are. But if you were to actually call out this obvious racism for what it is, well, then you're turning off a lot of Republicans who they want to appeal to because, again, they want more money. And it seems to be working because they're now seemingly getting approval from Daddy Trump. He tweeted on social media that Fox News is apparently pushing the Democratic Party's agenda now. That's hilariously stupid, adding that if low rating CNN ever went conservative, they would be an absolute goldmine and I would help them do so. And he's right about that. Hence the reason why they're doing this. They're smart. This new CEO at CNN, these new executives know that if you simply appeal to one party or centrists, there's less eyeballs there, less revenue as a result. So again, the way that you can cast the largest net and get the most money is by pandering to Republicans now. But the problem is that in trying to be neutral and sit right between Democrats and Republicans, it is impossible for you to prioritize truth and object to reality because Republicans have lost their fucking minds. They're claiming that the election was stolen, that vaccines don't work. I mean, how many lies are they going to say that will force CNN now to take this neutral stance? Well, you know, some people say that the vaccines are poisonous, but scientists say that the vaccines are safe and effective when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines. I mean, to do this, it's inherently right wing because to pay lip service to their lies under the guise of being neutral, you simply can't be an impartial objective news organization. So even if they like to portray themselves as a news organization, always remember that first and foremost, CNN is a business with a fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value. So they're going to do what pads their pockets. And this new CEO, even though the last one was shitty, is just trying to do what brings in the most amount of revenue. And that is to become more right wing. And if they go straight up Fox News, well, that could be even more lucrative for them. So we don't necessarily know where they're going to go with this fully. We should not believe them when they say they're just trying to be more impartial and nonpartisan. No, that's not what they're trying to do. And this is really only the beginning. And we've seen how ridiculous they look, the ridiculous articles, the ridiculous both sides that they're trying to do. So I mean, if you haven't already been boycotting CNN, you probably should now because what they're doing here is trying to be Fox News light. And that's damaging to the country. OK, I'm not saying that they have to be the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party like MSNBC effectively is. But what I am saying is that they do not have a right to claim that they're being impartial and objective if they're paying lip service to lie spread by the Republican Party. If you want to be neutral, claim that you're neutral, right? If you're going to position yourself right in between Democrats and Republicans on every single issue, I mean, that's fine. But you have to own it. You don't get to pretend as if being neutral is comparable to being objective, because those are two very, very different things. But that's what CNN is doing. And it's because that's what they believe is going to bring in the big bucks. But hopefully this just leads to them imploding because Republicans already distrust CNN. So I don't know if they're going to be won back by this move. But what I do know is that CNN is going to lose a lot of loyal viewers who are liberal, who tune into CNN. So we'll just have to wait and see either way, fuck CNN. They've always been trash. But with this new CEO, they're even more trash than before, which is almost impressive because this network has never done a good job. I mean, I want to single out some reporters who do objective reporting. But when it comes to like the commentator side, you know, that they're always disproportionately arguing in favor of corporate America and their interests, they always have a pro corporate bias, which is inherently right wing, which may shock people. But I mean, think about why this is, again, it goes back to their values and what they do. They are not a news organization first and foremost. This is a business. So they're not going to talk about how single payer health care saves lives when that could potentially, you know, outrage some of their insurance industry donors. They're not going to talk about all of the labor violations or at least not frequently that Amazon is doing because then Amazon might not want to advertise on CNN. So they're going to go for what makes the money. That's just the easiest explanation here. So if you're wondering why they're worse than before, well, it's because they're prioritizing the business side of things more than before, as if they weren't already doing that. But obviously it's worse now than it was before. So yeah, we'll leave that there.