Addiction Relapse
On Chris Licht's exit from CNN, and the Trump addiction back in the corporate press
June 16, 2023
Dateline: The day Spotify employee Bill Simmons slammed former Spotify employees Harry and Meghan as “f-ing grifters.”
Watching this week…
— Trump addiction is back in the press
— Truth about Target “bomb threat” stories
— Watch how media tries to ruin RFK
— Media silence on UFO developments
— Great Moments in Glass Ceiling Journalism
How the corporate media’s Trump addiction relapse relates to Chris Licht’s CNN exit
It was the perfect piece to sum up everything wrong with the Acela media today — and explain why Chris Licht was ultimately pushed out of CNN last week by internal and external forces. Naturally, Twitter loved it.
“CNN’s Chris Licht showed the problem with anti-woke centrism,” was the headline of the Washington Post column by Perry Bacon Jr., who not too long ago was viewed as an objective journalist. What was the “problem” exactly… and what does “anti-woke centrism” even mean?
“Anti-woke centrism” is “increasingly prominent in American media and politics today, particularly among powerful White men who live on the coasts and don’t identify as Republicans or conservatives,” described Bacon Jr.. “It’s deeply flawed, and it’s pushing some important U.S. institutions to make bad decisions.”
It’s “softer than the outright opposition on the political right to ideas such as critical race theory,” you see. It’s “really about emphasizing differences with progressives, who are inaccurately cast as Twitter-obsessed college graduates who constantly use terms like Latinx and are out of touch with ordinary Democratic voters.” Inaccurately — got it.
“It is disappointing that some of the most powerful people in the country think the problem in America is that people are too critical of the police and insufficiently critical of transgender activists,” Bacon, Jr. concludes. “I can’t tell if the anti-woke don’t understand what’s actually happening in America — or if they actively oppose a more equitable country.”
Former President Donald Trump was mentioned just twice in the piece, but the subtext is glaring. The entire column is a “Trump” dog whistle, if you will, to borrow the parlance of the kind of crowd who cheers this nonsense.
And that’s what’s key about what happened at CNN with Licht, and, more broadly, in the corporate press today. Sure, the Atlantic profile was the final straw for Licht, and the Trump town hall reaction was loud and hysterical. But the writing was on the wall much earlier — November 16, 2022. The day Donald Trump announced he’d be running for a second term.
As I wrote about in my book “Uncovered,” many forces in the press became addicted to Trump during his presidency. They developed a sadomasochistic relationship with him, and his entire being. They loved, and loathed, him. Personally, professionally. It was deep, and complicated, and in some ways, out of their control — it was an addiction.
They had withdrawals, and tried to get their fix with January 6, or Ron DeSantis. But nothing was as satisfying as the real thing. Enter Trump 2024, and the addiction relapse was on — and all the media’s worst habits during the Trump Era were exacerbated again. (As I’ve written many times, I saw this as a neutral observer — I’ve never voted for Trump and am unlikely to do so in the future.)
Take this week, and “Trump Indictment, the Sequel.” There was Jake Tapper getting annoyed at the control room for daring to show Donald Trump’s Miami restaurant stop after his arraignment.
“Turn off the spectacle, we need to get back to the spectacle of talking about the arrest wall-to-wall!”
Tapper also assured viewers the network would not air Trump’s “potentially dangerous” speech Tuesday night. Meanwhile anti-journalism media reporter Oliver Darcy was re-empowered after Licht’s exit to embrace his worst instincts too, tweeting about Tucker Carlson being a “right-wing extremist” similar to Alex Jones.
Of course, remember — this is exactly what Donald Trump wants. If any reporter bothered to read “The Art of the Deal,” the playbook is all there. “I like to be accommodating,” Trump said at one point in his 1987 book, describing the press. “As long as they want to shoot, I’ll shovel.” And later: "“Most reporters, I find, have very little interest in exploring the substance of a detailed proposal for a development. They look instead for the sensational angle.” (Trump’s lead comms guy loved the coverage Tuesday: “We did some positive things…just in terms of taking up all the oxygen in the environment… we want all the eyeballs.”)
If I could summarize my advice on how to fix the problems in the corporate media today, it would be this: Whatever Jay Rosen tells you to do, do the opposite. Rosen is a journalism professor at NYU, and prolific tweeter (red flag #1 right there). There isn’t a specific example to point to — you can literally take any of his tweets and it would illustrate the point. He’s the epitome of an “information minimalist” — a crusading anti-speech activist in the newly-aligned media environment that distrusts the public, and therefore demands the media censor and omit various points of view it deems too dangerous to allow publicly. He wants the journalists of tomorrow to be as proficient in covering up the news as they are in covering the news. He is the gatekeeper of the gatekeepers, in an emerging media ecosystem that allows the American audiences to interact without gatekeepers altogether — and he, like so many in the old guard, are panicked.
And Rosen is what Licht was up against — the Rosen philosophy that sadly permeates not just much of CNN, but much of the entire legacy media apparatus. At the same time, perhaps the philosophy would have been easier to overcome and correct had Trump truly exited the political and cultural stage. But he’s back, and so is the Trump addiction.
The only consolation for those of us who believed in Licht’s vision of removing coastal lefty talking points from news coverage (his initial clean-up included stopping the hosts from using terms like “The Big Lie” which was literally started by the Biden team) is that the Discovery execs are still in charge. David Zaslav, John Malone — they don’t have the same disdain for half the country that many in the corporate press do. They have found success for decades programming content that America likes to watch. “Naked and Afraid” or “90 Day Fiance.” Besides sports, and Yellowstone, these are the kinds of shows that vast quantities of Americans still enjoy sitting down and watching.
That vision for CNN is not going away, even with Licht gone, and the Trump addiction relapse back in full force. And that’s good for everyone who cares about a better media ecosystem, that serves the people, and not just the powerful.
Target is getting “bomb threats,” but the media wants to bury the actual story
“Target stores see more bomb threats over Pride merchandise,” was the Washington Post headline, linked in a viral tweet that noted there were at least five stores evacuated.
“The incidents tie into the backlash over the retail chain’s Pride Month merchandise,” the article stated in the lede paragraph, and revealing in the second paragraph how these five new threats “mirror those made in recent weeks in three other states.”
A cursory look at this article would lead any reader to think these threats are coming from those who oppose the Pride merchandise that became a flashpoint at the end of May, related to “tuck-friendly” bathing suits and other clothes for adults and kids. But it would require you to get to paragraph eight before the first explanation about where these threats were coming from was revealed. The threats to stores in three states included a message “which accused Target of betraying the LGBTQ+ community.” A few paragraphs down we read the threat to another store as claiming Target “betrayed the LGBTQ+ community” and “are pathetic cowards who bowed to the wishes of far right extremists who want to exterminate us.”
Yes, these bomb threats are coming from people mad that Target reduced its Pride displays in response to the initial backlash. It’s a complete reversal from what the reader would be led to understand.
And The Washington Post was hardly alone in this clearly purposeful faulty framing. “Target stores in at least five states receive bomb threats over Pride items,” was The Hill’s headline, leading the audience to assume the threats were over the items themselves and not the absence of the items. “Target Stores Receive Bomb Threats Amid Pride Backlash,” was Newsweek’s narrative push, which seems even less accurate. There is a backlash against Pride, and the bomb threats Target is receiving bomb threats — but the two aren’t actually directly related. Unless the “backlash” being referenced is the backlash to the Pride pullback from Target. It’s all very confusing, but instructive.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the Target bomb threats,” and maybe you, like me, assumed they were from the anti-LGBT crowd. Or perhaps you’ve missed the story entirely. As we close out June’s second week, there’s no doubt the bomb threats would be a much larger story if they were, in fact, coming from those who are mad at Target for selling the certain merchandise in the first place, rather than deemphasizing it.
What’s behind the corporate media silence on the bombshell UAP / UFO news?
Readers of this newsletter will know I’m fascinated by UAP (UFO) stories — and the intersection with the media. Last week was undoubtedly the most newsworthy for the UAP/UFO story since 2017. Last Monday, a massive and shocking report in The Debrief, a small technology and science website, broke news that a longtime intel officer and now whistleblower named David Grusch had come forward with details on a “craft retrieval” program related to “non-human intelligence” or NHI. Grusch later appeared in a NewsNation exclusive interview — in which he noted that this program would sometimes “encounter dead pilots” in these non-human craft. Meanwhile journalist Michael Shellenberger furthered the reporting on his Substack on Thursday with an article citing several military and intel contractors that the U.S. was in possession of at least a dozen “alien spacecraft.” And then for good measure the Daily Mail had an exclusive report about how individuals who entered these downed crafts experienced “distorted space and time” (like how an object appeared to be 30 feet long from the outside but was as big as a football stadium once it was entered).
I talked to several experts, including one of the reporters on the Debrief story. As one told me, “If true, this changes the world.” Of course — “if true” is the key phrase. So should the media be putting a lot more resources toward telling this story —and what motivations are behind the decision-making in how it’s getting covered, or as we’ve seen this week, mostly not?
My “Rabbit Hole” deep dive column is available for paid subscribers in full, but an extended free preview is here:
2024 story to watch — massive media panic over RFK Jr.'s Democratic primary run is coming
Elon Musk is a total MAGA-adjacent lunatic, the corporate press tells us. But the last eccentric guy who ran Twitter, Jack Dorsey? He was a good guy — had his head on straight. And then… Jack Dorsey went out and endorsed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. last week.
The press has been so preoccupied with Donald Trump they haven’t been able to fully process this monumental development. But don’t let that stop you from seeing where this is headed. Remember when the Biden administration put RFK Jr. on their “disinformation dozen” list and the Acela Media just happily obliged with spreading this narrative? Now this guy is running to unseat Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee — and polling at 20%.
The New York Times fired its first big attack on RFK last week, by targeting his wife — the beloved “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines. “Is she normalizing his often dangerous ideas?” it asked.
What a sentence. RFK’s ideas, you see, are dangerous — apparently this news outlet believes ideas are dangerous. Occasionally dangerous? No. Often dangerous. Is this actress who we like when she’s joking with Larry David…normalizing these dangerous ideas?!
In the end, the profile itself was fair, and her answers were nuanced but supportive. “If Bobby is standing up and saying, ‘Well, are we sure that they’re safe and every vaccine has been tested properly?’ That doesn’t seem too much to ask,” she said when pressed on the vaccine element. “That seems like the right question to be asking.”
But the framing of this story is not lost on anyone. ‘This person is dangerous, because he has dangerous ideas. This actress you like is going to help make this dangerous person more palatable.’ It’s panic. And as RFK rises in the polls, and if no other formal challenger to Biden jumps in, expect the “disinformation” rhetoric to ramp up.
WATCH IT… I’ll have a lot more to write about the LIV Golf - PGA Tour bombshell story, but in the meantime, we got PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan giving a completely pathetic answer to a question about the hypocrisy of slamming the Saudis before and now gladly taking their money (and then this week there’s news Monahan is taking a leave of absence while recovering from a mysterious “medical situation”).
HEAR IT… I found a new podcast while searching for some people to talk about the new HBO series “The Idol,” which I’m intrigued about although not sure I’m fully up for watching - Popcast from the New York Times (co-hosted by my former intern Joe Coscarelli!) has a great discussion about it, and is now in the weekly rotation.
READ IT… And staying with the New York Times, a great piece from Lydia Polgreen on the lack of options for news consumers who don’t want to pay for news. Yes, the business model is shifting, and subscriptions are a way of the future — this great column is behind the NYT paywall, naturally — but there needs to be space for media businesses that are based around free content too, for the sake of the country.
QUICK HITS
When is a chyron not just a chyron? Could probably spend 500 words writing about Fox News referring to Biden as a “wannabe dictator” in a brief chyron on Tuesday night, before issuing a statement saying it was a mistake.
Great Semafor deep dive on how Warner lobbied former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (through former CNN exec Allison Gollust) to open movie theaters.
Former CNN’er Chris Cillizza writing on his Substack about “breaking up with outrage porn”? Much better and more introspective than you’d think, admitting he used “Twitter as an assignment editor.”
A rare mildly critical corporate media piece about Nikole Hannah-Jones, from NPR, on how her internships for young journalists were having funding issues.
Important read from The Intercept on what exactly we know about the FBI and the Bidens, reviewing all the allegations — doing what most in the press refuse to do.
The Atlantic’s Elaina Plott goes deep on Lara Logan, who has been basically banned by both Fox News and Newsmax.
Alarming story that should be everywhere — we now know our own government intel agencies buy the personal data of Americans.
⏪ REWIND // FAST FORWARD: Tucker on Twitter Edition ⏩
⏪ Fox News has sent a cease and desist letter to Tucker Carlson regarding his “Tucker on Twitter” episodes, arguing they are a breach of his contract that keeps his content under the Fox News umbrella through 2024.
⏩ While Tucker makes a First Amendment argument in response, he has continued posting, episode 3 earlier this week and episode 4 last night, which takes direct aim at Fox News in a clear escalation of the war.
MORE TK…
We’re learning more about what happened with the Nord Stream pipeline bombing thanks to reporting in The Washington Post, and it’s becoming increasingly clear it was a) the Ukrainians, and b) the Biden administration lied to the American public. The implications should be big — because the corporate press bought the line that it was Russia themselves who were behind the attack, and they furthered the administration’s talking points. Will there be accountability as the truth starts coming out?
GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM
Finally! A Black…woman… Democrat… has broken the glass ceiling at the… Congressional Baseball Game. So I guess there has been a Black woman Republican to play in this random game? Anyway, CNN is on it.
Thanks for reading. Back soon…
—Steve