“Succession” – For Real

PARIS – Like so many others, I followed a pulse-pounding TV drama: backbiting jackals fought for control of a bedrock American news network they intended to pervert for political clout and power trips. Meantime, I also watched the finale of “Succession.”

After that town-hall “interview” last month, Robert Reich posed the key question: “Why in hell did CNN give Donald Trump a full hour of prime-time television before an audience of ardent supporters who applauded every lie and laughed at every sexist insult?”

Because “optics” muscles aside substance. News costs a lot to gather so replacing it with smoke and circus boosts profit. CNN is only one flagrant example of why Americans are largely blind to an overheated world in which despots and oligarchs are fast quashing their cherished values.

Ted Turner’s CNN began with a barebones Atlanta studio in 1980, at first so quirky it was dubbed Chicken Noodle News. But its correspondents ranged the world for courageous, rock-solid reporting. Today, smeared with corporate sleaze, it is chicken something-else.

As I was finishing this report, a news flash forced a redo: David Zaslav, the “content” mogul who swallowed CNN a year ago, fired Chris Licht, the new CEO he had tasked with reshaping it. What comes next is anyone’s guess. Mine is that it will be ugly.

CNN still provides some compelling coverage. But any news organization’s authority depends on credibility and day-to-day standards. Its worst blunts its best. Even at Fox “News,” a travesty to truth, a few good reporters play piano in a whorehouse.

Branders claim preposterously that “more people get their news from CNN than any other news source.” Sadly, a close look at Turner’s legacy today reflects how U.S. news media so often mislead – and why it is essential to find reliable sources elsewhere.

In 2016, CNN was largely why American voters let a self-obsessed sociopath into the White House to run roughshod over a functioning world order. CEO Jeff Zucker saw Trump spike up ratings; cameras rolled for hours at minor rallies. Bullshit bluster was labeled “breaking news.”

Zucker backed off two months before the election. But he had already created a Frankenstein’s monster. After Trump took office, CNN’s tough coverage, factual but with attitude, rankled big-money conservatives, whose fortunes soared with his tax cuts and regulatory giveaways.

In 2022, David Zaslav added the network to his megalo-media octopus, Warner Bros. Discovery. John Malone, his biggest shareholder, mouthed encouraging platitudes: CNN should return to its original mission of sticking to straight reporting. The problem was his kicker: “like Fox News.”

During the town hall, Kaitlan Collins tried gamely, and politely, to hold Trump to account. As Van Jones put it later, “She was like a matador against a bull!” Trump gored her, blasting away with bald lies. The audience howled approval when at the end he called her a nasty person.

Backlash was immediate. “You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again,” Anderson Cooper told viewers on his show a day later. But Trump is the leading Republican contender, he said, and ignoring him won’t make him go away.

Christiane Amanpour spoke at the Columbia University graduation, condemning the politized format with understated subtlety that spoke volumes. She had gone to see Licht and other suits to read the riot act in private. Her public message: Stay with us and expect better.

Amanpour praised Collins for trying to do her job. “I would have dropped the mic at ‘nasty person,’ but then that’s me,” she said. It should be all of us, news purveyors and consumers alike.

Democracy can’t function without disinterested journalists who keep watch on elected civil servants sworn to act in the national interest – in particular, presidents. Trump has consistently singled out CNN in his “enemy of the people” campaign to discredit factual reporting.

Licht apologized to the staff, promising to do better. But, like ships, global enterprises with countless moving parts don’t shift course quickly. CNN is sclerotic with a few highly promoted and lavishly paid stars who’ve been off the road for too long.

In the next town hall, Jake Tapper tossed softballs at Nikki Haley, smiling indulgently as he let mangled truth go unchallenged. In the few words on “foreign affairs,” she blamed Joe Biden, not Trump, for the Afghanistan debacle and said Taiwan should defend itself against China.

I thought back to Tapper’s cringeworthy but much-touted February interview in Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu refused to take questions on illegal settlements or his attack on the courts, two overriding issues that threaten calamitous showdowns in the unholy land.

Zaslav appointed David Leavy as CNN’s “chief operating officer,” a company man whose earlier focus has been entertainment aimed at a low common denominator of viewers who tune out a turbulent world. That was June 1. A week later, Zaslav fired Licht and is seeking a new CEO.

As all this played out, The Atlantic dropped a 15,000-word bomb. Tim Alberta, who spent months with Licht for a profile, cited sources describing Zaslav as “a control freak, a micromanager, a relentless operator who helicoptered over his embattled CNN leader.”

Alberta wrote: “Zaslav’s constant meddling in editorial decisions struck network veterans as odd and inappropriate; even stranger was his apparent marionetting of Licht.” Zavlav had promised an on-the-record interview. But, typical of business executives who now run news organizations that ask people for comment, he changed his mind.

On CNBC, Zaslav echoed Logan Roy in “Succession,” saying he was committed to first-rate journalism despite slashing the staff and cutting editorial budgets. He boasted that his 110 TV shows earned $50 million in the first quarter of 2023. CNN is a crown jewel, he said, and he wanted to return it to its roots. I tried to imagine Turner’s reaction to that.

When CNN went live, I was editing the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Soon after, it poached Peter Arnett from the Associated Press, where he had done Pulitzer-winning work in Vietnam. I returned to AP, replacing him as the agency’s globe-roaming special correspondent.

At first, old news hands had problems adjusting to TV. In Beirut, former colleagues chided Arnett for doing a set-up. He dressed reporters in t-shirts that mocked the multiple short-lived ceasefires and filmed them emerging from the Commodore Hotel.

But Arnett caught on fast. In 2003, after Bernard Shaw delivered that memorable line – “The skies are illuminated over Baghdad” – he refused his bosses’ order to evacuate. Arnett confounded censors with careful reporting that allowed viewers to see what he couldn’t say.

CNN was still finding its stride as the first Gulf War loomed in 1989. My wife called me in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, at 3 a.m. one morning. “Are you OK?” she asked, frantic. “CNN,” I muttered, and punched the TV remote. Saddam Hussein had threatened to rain down scuds, and she thought an onslaught had begun.

I opened the curtains onto a garden where networks had set up satellite uplinks. Morton Dean of CBS was calmly shuffling notes. Next to him, CNN’s Charles Jaco gesticulated into the camera, describing imminent mayhem. He wore a full chemical suit and steel helmet. Off camera, guys in shorts and flipflops wore t-shirts reading, “J.T.F.C.” Just the fucking crew.

CNN shined when the war started. Amanpour was in a small press pool on the aircraft carrier that launched the first attack on Kuwait. She would have had the scoop, but the U.S. command decided to embargo her report. Later, back in Dhahran, she was still pissed.

We heard that plummy Anglo-Persian voice before she burst into AP’s workspace, excoriating officers who treated the press corps like military PR flacks. She is still at it, smacking down attempts to muzzle Fourth Estate watchdogs. Now that includes the new owners of CNN.

In its early days, CNN hired people for their skills and experience, not good hair or sex appeal. Anchors weren’t overpaid stars but rather what BBC calls presenters, solid journalists who knew the broader context and asked smart, probing questions.

“Diversity” was built in. Shaw, the on-camera cornerstone, was black. Something-Americans and not-Americans were sprinkled in the mix. No one made a deal of it. The point was talent, not tokens. Gender was not an issue. Producers and “cameramen” were often women. Males who overstepped boundaries were lucky to escape with verbal abuse.

Beginning with Bosnia, Amanpour was unofficial den mother to much of the international press corps. Her instincts were remarkable. She’d charge fearlessly up the road but kept an ear cocked to hear the penny drop: when to strategically retreat — or run like hell.

She and her usual crew made it fun. Cynde Strand, one stalwart sidekick, just posted photo of a CNN anniversary on Facebook with the old gang snuggling up to cardboard cutout of Turner. I added a comment:

“I was so happy whenever I found you and the crew… Always a laugh, potluck drinkables, and a firm grasp of the situation at hand. Real pros who always took the story seriously but never yourselves.”

As it happens, Amanpour came to Paris this week with some tennis buddies for the Roland Garros final, and they dropped by my floating home. I posted a Facebook happy snap, with a brief caption that brought some telling response.

One friend objected to my saying we had shared a lot of shitholes. I wrote back: “Shitholes, in non-Trump parlance, means remote places where hard-working people struggle to stay at home under the thumb of despots and egomaniacs. Like Trump.” Americans need a CNN to reflect that reality.

Later in the thread, a CNN veteran said the network no longer needed to atone because it had just revealed an important element in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. The point isn’t atonement, I replied, “but rather stopping bosses from turning a vital news source into political propaganda for rightwing investors and a Zaslav ego flight.”

There is still much to praise. CNN has a bench of old pros along with new ones. But it is different now, with a star system, odd sounding titles that lead to pecking orders which can skew coverage of important stories.

For instance, I was cheered to see CNN hire Sam Kiley, a gutsy, perceptive ex-London Times reporter I’ve admired since we covered Africa decades ago. But it was only until the Ukraine war that editors realized his ability to stay close to the action with deeply human sensitivity.

When Afghanistan collapsed, Kiley got to Kabul airport from Dubai, quickly assessing how the evacuation was taking shape. He was given only brief minutes of airtime before CNN went back to one of those panels of regulars guessing about what might be happening.

After the first chaotic day, U.S. aircraft flew 125,000 people to safety from a single runway, a stunning military feat that involved coordination with the Taliban. But CNN’s chief correspondent, Clarissa Ward, outside the perimeter with no sources, reported a humiliating debacle. Joe Biden’s popularity still suffers from the misreported story.

CNN used to keep correspondents and crews at their posts long enough to develop sources and to learn cultural nuances that explain why distant societies respond to events the way they do. Now familiar faces bounce in and out when stories erupt, often relying on unsung stringers or fixers for what they report.

During Christiane’s visit, I asked if she could sum up the main difference between TV journalism in early days and now. She could – in eloquent terms — and I cursed myself for having decided to bring only a corkscrew and not a tape recorder to capture her quote.

But the essence was simple enough. Correspondents used to have cameras and microphones pointed at the people they were covering, not at themselves.