(In a speech and a piece in the Washington Post in April, Marty Baron, the paper’s former editor, hit some of the same notes, calling for a return to traditional journalistic objectivity, which prompted pushback. Chris Licht, the CNN boss, has signaled over and over again that he thinks the network is most effective when it sticks to the middle of the road. Not a wildly controversial statement, but enough-when combined with the recent sacking of Don Lemon-to signal an important shift in tone at CNN, and maybe even a commercial opportunity to tack against MSNBC, its biggest rival. Republicans are on the air on CNN, Democrats are on the air. We need to hear both voices,” Zaslav told CNBC. Listen to David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company, defending the decision to put Trump on in prime time. CNN also has made clear that it will use the Trump forum as evidence of its new nonpartisan bona fides. He may even enjoy the irony of appearing on CNN, a network he has long derided and threatened and undercut, as payback to Fox News, which seems to have strayed from its usual obedience and is in the middle of a meltdown following the Dominion Voting Systems verdict.īut CNN believes it needs Trump, too, and not just to jump-start a presidential-election season that proved lucrative for television in the past two cycles, though there is that. Trump, clearly, relishes the attention and the legitimacy he’ll get from being treated as a serious candidate only weeks after he was arrested and indicted in a New York courtroom. What’s not said, at least not enough, is that Trump will be on CNN on Wednesday night because Trump and the national media-still, despite everything we have learned-are convinced they desperately need each other. It swings back and forth between those who say he’s newsworthy and warrants the scrutiny and those who say he shouldn’t be platformed, given his dangerous record of lies and incitement. Trump is among the most circular of our industry. The question of how, or whether, to cover the candidacy of Donald J. Welcome to the central question of political journalism in 2024.
Do you give Donald Trump airtime or ignore him? Fact-check him in real time or let him discredit himself? Pick apart his most noxious ideas or hope they go away?
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