The results of Adweek’s ratings for May measured just how far from grace CNN has fallen. Adweek, the weekly advertising trade journal, said “CNN stumbled in prime time relative to recent months and years, finishing a distant third place behind Fox News and MSNBC in the relevant categories, and dropping out of the top 15 basic cable networks in total prime time viewers altogether.”
Founded by Ted Turner in 1980 as the first 24-hour news channel, CNN has in the past sported several slogans to describe itself: “The most trusted name in news” and “The world’s news leader,” among others. The network’s spin on the bad news was classic: “All of CNN prime time programs had their third best May ratings on record among total viewers this month.”
This is like saying that the Bad News Bears baseball team had a good season.
John Nolte of Breitbart has another slogan for the far-left CNN: “far-last place,” explaining that “CNN has lost almost all of its viewers, all of its moral authority, and every bit of trust it once had … over the past six years … CNN got every major national story exactly wrong.”
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Those stories included calling George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch coordinator who shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense in February 2012, a white racist killer; claiming that Michael Brown had his hands up and was standing still or running away when he was shot by Officer Darren Wilson; claiming that Donald Trump couldn’t win the presidency in 2016; claiming that Brett Kavanaugh was a serial rapist while in college; covering the faux confrontation between young people from Covington High School and “Native American” Nathan Phillips in such a biased way that one of the students, Nick Sandmann, is suing CNN for $275 million. Sandmann is claiming that CNN “elevated false, heinous accusations of racist conduct” against him and failed to adhere to “well-established journalistic standards and ethics” in doing so.
And finally, CNN claimed repeatedly that Donald Trump colluded with Russia in order to win his election in 2016. It’s likely that Adweek’s results for May reflected CNN’s readership/viewership’s disgust when the Mueller report revealed no such collusion and that CNN was consistently and intentionally repeating a lie.
Founded by Ted Turner in 1980, CNN was tainted with the views of its founder, who called himself “a socialist at heart.” His hatred of Fox News caused him publicly to compare its owner, Rupert Murdock, to Adolf Hitler, calling him a “warmonger” over his coverage of the 2003 Iraq war.
Turner went over the top in support of global warming in 2008, claiming that most of humanity would shortly be extinct because of it. On PBS’ Charlie Rose, Turner said “We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten — not ten, but thirty or forty years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”
Turner is openly hostile to Christianity, divorcing his wife Jane Fonda (his third wife) upon learning that she had become a Christian. In 2001, Turner discovered a few of his employees at CNN had attended an Ash Wednesday service and arrived at the office with the cross of ashes on their foreheads. Turner exploded “What are you? A bunch of Jesus freaks? You ought to be working for Fox!”
His outburst caused Catholic League president William Donohue to issue this statement:
Ted Turner is a recidivist. Like all repeat offenders, Turner evinces an animus against a particular portion of the population. For him, it is Christians whom he despises. That is why he is on record for a) branding Christianity a religion “for losers” b) labeling pro-life Christians as “Bozos” c) insulting the Pope with one of his cheap jokes at a pro-abortion meeting and d) blasting Christianity for being “very intolerant.”
Now he’s back, this time slamming those who wear ashes on Ash Wednesday.
CNN has sowed the wind for decades and now it is reaping the whirlwind. If one looks at the founder and then at his offspring, he can see that the CNN apple hasn’t fallen far from the Turner tree.
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
