i don’t think there is any true journalism these days. most people want to hear what they want to hear, and it pays to give them what they want to hear.
Right-wingers who don’t want to hear facts they don’t like can watch Fox News or one of the extra-Trumpy alternatives. The closest left-wing counterpart is Democracy Now! but that’s only 60 minutes, five days a week.
Any leftist can tell you that CNN’s not biased toward our point of view. Right-wingers think that all professional journalism is biased toward the left because unbiased reporting filters out the lies and distortions they hear from Fox et al.
…though it appears to have been awkward phrasing to describe the company’s portfolio, rather than political leanings.
I don’t don’t think the article adequately explains what the left vs. right side of the portfolio means, but apparently it wasn’t political. The first paragraph acknowledges this but they still go with the misleading headline.
The CNN vs. Fox News issues are kind of a distillation of the faults of the left vs. right in general. Both had ethical faults, but one was and continues to be asymmetrically worse. Zucker and Chris Cuomo apparently acted as advisors behind-the-scenes to NY Governor Cuomo, with Chris Cuomo refraining from reporting on the air about the harassment case. CNN fired Chris Cuomo for this. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch and several Fox personalities routinely advised and strategized with Trump, stumped for him at his rallies and then broadcast their messaging related to these strategy sessions to their audiences nightly. Not a hint of concern or accountability for this journalistic conflict of interest coming out of Fox. Doing the both-sides thing about this and other areas is lazy and disingenuous.
And if you don’t want the “mainstream” press to appear to be biased against you, don’t stake out positions based on demonstrable falsehoods. Are news organizations biased when they factually report that there is no evidence that the election was “stolen”? Or that vaccinations work? Or that there was a violent insurrection attempt at the Capitol? Media should be biased towards facts. If anything, constant criticism from the right has led the media to give too much credence to the right as they continue to radicalize.
Nevertheless, the far Right will make use of this unfortunate utterance to “prove” that CNN is politically biased. For CNN, it’s something that’ll be used against them for some time to come. Damage control won’t help; Fox and others will blare this remark over and over, fully out of context.