Whenever there is a change in leadership, there is bound to be some handwringing about the future. Dan Abrams, founder of Mediaite and host of Dan Abrams Live thinks maybe some people at CNN aren’t worried enough after watching Brian Stelter’s response to John Malone saying the network leans left.
“Anytime a new boss comes in, and the company isn’t performing well, the key employees should be concerned,” Abrams said on his News Nation show.
John Malone is a media executive who sits on the board of directors of Discovery Media, which recently purchased CNN as part of its acquisition of WarnerMedia. In December, he made headlines by saying that once the acquisition is complete, he wants to see CNN return to “non-partisan journalism.”
Stelter didn’t call out Malone by name, but bit back at those that criticize CNN for leaning more left under Jeff Zucker’s leadership by saying “They’re not watching CNN. They’re watching complaints about CNN on other channels that don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s the truth.”
Dan Abrams did acknowledge that CNN has a strong news operation but added that pretending nothing on CNN comes with opinion is dishonest.
“And look, you can make a solid argument that their ratings would be worse if they were just doing newscasts all day. But to say otherwise about their content is just dishonest, and that’s the bigger problem for me. Just own it. MSNBC and Fox are a bit more intellectually honest about what they do.”
He went on to say that Stelter is either “incredibly brave or incredibly reckless.” Then he added “Reminder: Jeff Zucker is no longer the boss at CNN. And John Malone is soon to be the critical shareholder of CNN.”
