CNN’s Rough Week: Lies, Meltdowns, Ratings Collapse, New Lawsuit

CNN’s determined quest to remain the “least trusted ‘news’ network” progressed splendidly this week with the heartening news that Matt Drudge predicts Jeff Zucker, CNN Worldwide president, will be ‘out either way’ at CNN. This is in reference to the $84.5 billion deal between AT&T and CNN parent company Time Warner.

Multiple sources have reported that the Department of Justice told AT&T that Time Warner must sell CNN in order for the acquisition to be approved. Direct sources in the DOJ told Fox News however; that the parties offered to divest CNN and the Antitrust Division of DOJ rejected the offer.

Either way, according to Drudge, Zucker is on his way out. And it won’t be the first time. Remember when Zucker was CEO of NBC back in 2010 when Comcast acquired the network? Zucker either stepped down, or was fired, depending on who is telling the story.

Credibility Crisis at CNN

As the rabidly anti-Trump Zucker leads the persistent downward plunge of CNN’s credibility, Drudge cites… ‘abysmal primetime ratings and a feud with President Trump that is personal and ridiculous…’

Responding to the Drudge comments, CNN was quick to point out that they are in fact “…pacing to have their second highest year in primetime since 2008…” This is true if you compare CNN performance against, well… its own performance, although their October 2017 ratings are a devastating 52% lower than their October 2016 period.

When you actually compare CNN with other competitors like Fox News and MSNBC, they are being thoroughly trounced.

In fact, until they dove headlong into the bottom dwellers pool of fake news, CNN was enjoying second place, usually beating out MSNBC. Alas. CNN has lost second place to scary MSNBC, along with over half of its 2016 October viewers.

This march to the bottom of the believability pile has recently experienced one of its most productive weeks.

With the earnestly superior “Facts First” initiative, the viewer, apparently a sniveling dolt, is bombarded by the image of an apple, while CNN smugly tells us that others will say it is a BANANA. But it’s an APPLE. Get it? News viewers are all idiots and we need the gracious guidance of CNN to assist in our fruit identification.

Jake Tapper’s Ratings Plunge Continues

Then we have Jake Tapper condescendingly waxing poetic as he interprets “Allahu Akbar” as “God is good” — a ‘phrase that can be said under beautiful circumstances’.

Others interpret the phrase as ‘Allah is greatest’ as shouted by the New York truck terrorist just weeks ago (eight killed, 11 injured). Mr. Tapper torpedoed most of his credibility himself on the air during the final days of the 2016 election where he hilariously and repeatedly said ‘we’ then had to correct to ‘Hillary Clinton’ as is ‘We will need this state, um, Hillary Clinton will need this state…”

Uneven and Misleading Reporting on Terrorism

In June, the London bridge terrorists shouted a more clear ‘this is for Allah’ as they plowed over, and then stabbed their way through citizens and tourists alike (seven killed, 48 injured).

Recalling that horrendous attack, you may remember the obviously fake ‘Muslim protest against ISIS’ CNN evidently orchestrated, positioned and pronounced to be ‘ a wonderful scene’ by the reporter- all of which was being filmed for your viewing pleasure. Not the first time the network has been caught peddling fake news.

CNN did deny ‘staging the scene for malicious purposes.’ , which is not quite the same as denying that the scene was staged.

Over-the-Top Trump Bashing

Then of course, we have the Trump-hating, cleverly edited video of the ‘koi pond fish feeding incident’ where a snickering CNN reporter implied that President Trump was incapable of feeding fish. Unfortunately for CNN, viewers quickly saw from ‘real news reports’ that the president was merely doing the same thing his host Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did.

Finally, there is the curious case of the Anthony Scaramucci smear. In June, CNN had to retract a fictional hit job written by CNN’s Thomas Frank, edited by Eric Lichtblau and approved by Lex Haris, executive director of investigative reporting at CNN. All three men had to resign. Scaramucci graciously accepted CNN’s retraction/apology, and decided not to sue the network.

A recent poll revealed that two thirds of Americans believe the mainstream media is dishonest and creates fake news. CNN’s bad week highlights just a few of the reasons why the media is rapidly losing credibility with viewers.

~ Conservative Zone