Cheap Seats 2017Melt Down - 07/12
By Rich Trzupek
If there are words to accurately describe the wholesale media meltdown that occurred at CNN last week, I am not in possession of them. I am in no sense inclined to pound my fist in the air and declare victory, I am rather moved to gaze upon this train wreck of journalism with widened eyes and wonder: “what the hell?!”
As an organization, CNN does not approve of the Trump administration and believes that the Donald should not have been elected to the highest office in the land. I’m pretty sure that the majority of employees at CNN wish he would go away, but failing that will do and have done everything in their power to marginalize the Trump administration.
I’m OK with that, although many of my conservative brethren would not agree. Media outlets have their own points-of-view and those points-of-view influence their coverage of the news. That applies to the ultra-libs at MSNBC and the conservative/libertarian crowd at Fox. Journalists, with a few blessed exceptions, are not about telling us what’s going on, they’re about delivering their version of what’s going on that advances their preferred agenda.
President Trump, has used social media – primarily Twitter – to push back against the journalistic establishment, fueling a firestorm of epic proportions that separates those who believe the legacy media are the pure-hearted guardians of truth and those who believe they are largely ignorant shills for the far left.
There is so much unhinged behavior one could point to over the last couple of weeks to show that the wheels have completely come off the rails at CNN that I would need to ask my publisher for acres of column space in order to explain it all. Instead, let’s just focus on the latest bit of CNN insanity.
The Prez re-Tweeted a goofy gif in which the Donald body-slammed and beat on WWE CEO Vince McMahon, but in the gif McMahon’s head was electronically replaced with CNN’s logo.
Horror of horrors! For some CNN reporters, this obscure gif was a threat against freedom of speech and a free press of Hitlerian proportions. CNN reporter Chris Cuomo didn’t actually admit to pooping his pants, but I’m willing to bet that his dry-cleaning bill increased substantially.
Whatever. What happened next defies sanity. CNN deployed an investigated team to find the author of the gif that so offended them. They tracked him or her down. Yay! Duly intimidated, the offender pulled the offensive gif off of the interwebs, along with a bunch of other content that has been described as significantly more offensive and, in some cases, racist.
So far, kinda so good, but the epilogue of this story is chilling. CNN said that it was not releasing the name of the person who made fun of the network, but essentially reserved the “right” to do so in the future if the miscreant behaved badly in the future.
CNN surely realizes that releasing the fellow’s name would put this fellow, whom-ever he his, in the line of fire from the craziest elements of the far left. And before you scream “hypocrite” at me, those goofs at CNN were never in any physical danger from the gif, and they are public figures in any case. Having people pissed off at you is part of the job when you’re a public figure. Outing a private citizen who has an expectation of privacy is completely different thing.
At best, CNN’s threat is morally reprehensible. At worst it sounds an awful lot like blackmail to me.
I suggest CNN change their name. They can keep the initials, but instead of standing for “Cable News Network”, they should go with “Certified Nazi Nit-wits. It would be much more apropos.
e-mail: rich@examinerpublications.com
www.threedonia.com
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