Chris Licht’s failure at CNN is a bad sign for the news industry

CNN’s now ex-CEO Chris Licht took over CNN just more than a year ago. He promised to restore professional standards and return the once-proud channel to its more centrist, straightforward reporting roots. It turns out that was an insurmountable challenge — certainly not achievable within the 13 months he had at the helm.

Licht’s failure is bad not only for CNN, which is now likely to remain saddled with historically bad ratings, but for the journalism industry as a whole. He was run out of town by the various forces that no longer see a value in information-based, serious, nonpartisan journalism, including the social media mobs who decried Licht’s strategy to reach a wider range of viewers than just the left-of-center audience CNN had catered to for years. Joining the war on Licht were CNN employees themselves, who savaged their boss in a recent magazine report.

CNN staffers expressed uneasiness with Licht’s management style, for sure, but odds are the disgruntled could have tolerated Licht’s managerial quirkiness if only he were still encouraging agenda-driven journalism. The CNN establishment is awash in the culture of advocacy journalism, and even the tough-minded Licht was no match for that mindset of reporting crusaderism.

CNN took a decided drift to the left during the nine-year rein of Licht’s predecessor, Jeff Zucker. During that time, CNN prided itself in leading the Trump resistance. But while CNN wandered into partisan journalism, its ratings struggled, along with its image. Licht was brought on to turn direction from the ideologically driven Zucker. He made it clear what he intended to do. When CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, announced Licht’s departure, it was obvious the corporate bigshots just didn’t have the backbone to let Licht complete CNN’s reinvention.

In retrospect, Licht’s decisions during his abbreviated stay at the top of CNN were solid. The elimination of streaming service CNN+ made sense; it was expensive and had gained no traction. Getting rid of the polarizing Don Lemon was also a good move, given the anchor’s tendency to make bombastic pronouncements. Terminating the likes of contributors Jeffrey Toobin and Brian Stelter also signaled CNN’s move to less politically charged content, not to mention they had their own controversies and were hardly ratings generators.

Licht took the most heat for having CNN host a live town hall with former President Trump. Left-of-center viewers, not to mention the roster of CNN employees, went berserk. One could argue giving Trump a prime-time venue was a misstep, but engaging the former president for an interview and covering his current candidacy is understandable. Viewers don’t have to like Trump, but he remains a former president and is currently a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2024. In that sense, he remains newsworthy.

Licht’s departure from CNN was perhaps inevitable. Any time a news organization is the subject of news instead of reporting news, it is losing. And CNN made lots of news during Licht’s short tenure. At least Licht made people aware that CNN was still in existence, a fact that seemed to have escaped many Americans — right-of-center and independent voters haven’t watched CNN for years.

Various studies and polls show Americans want journalism outlets to be fair and unbiased. A wide majority of Americans blame the media for contributing to the nation’s polarization. And most news consumers believe journalistic bias is getting worse. Licht was listening to these disenfranchised citizens and trying to create a lane in the broader news industry for these people. He got the gate before he could see his vision implemented. Licht now knows, as does the citizenry, that nonpartisan, professional standards in journalism can’t be forced into a wayward news outlet in barely a year’s time.

CNN, meanwhile, will continue to be a ratings bottom feeder. The outlet has little credibility with viewers who want fair and straightforward news, not to mention right-leaning and most independent viewers. CNN has also now burned its bridges with its previous left-leaning audience.

Licht was basically running an experiment to see if the journalism standards of old could be reinserted into the newfangled journalism landscape of partisanship. That he failed is not just a problem for CNN. The nation is also worse off for this failed experiment in that it demonstrates how difficult it will be to ever reinvent the news culture that is currently failing the citizenry.

Jeffrey M. McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant. Follow him on Twitter @Prof_McCall.