CNN host Brian Stelter looked stunned when a guest on his show called out the liberal network for pushing partisan news.
During a segment on his show “Reliable Sources,” Yale assistant professor Joshua Kalla conducted a study that paid Fox News viewers to watch CNN.
Stelter’s goal was to have Kalla slam Fox News and conservatives, but the segment took a turn when Kalla’s research found that CNN and many other mainstream media outlets also engage in what he called “partisan coverage filtering.”
Below is a transcript of the exchange:
STELTER: “So, Josh, you all call this partisan coverage filtering. And basically, you’re proving what we’ve sensed for a while which is that Fox viewers are in the dark about bad news for the GOP.”
KALLA: “That’s right. Fox and CNN cover different issues, and Fox News predominantly covers issues that make the GOP look good and make Democrats look bad. And on the flip side, CNN engages in this partisan coverage filtering as well that we find. For example, during this time, the Abraham accords were signed and these were the agreements where Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain signed a major peace agreement. And we see that Fox News covered this really major accomplishment about 15 times more than CNN did. So, we established both networks are really engaging in this partisan coverage filtering. It’s not about one side, it’s about the media writ large.”
STELTER: “I think you’re engaging on both-sidesism there, Josh?”
KALLA: “Not trying to lay out a moral equivalency, it’s not about what an objective standard is, it’s really about how all networks do engage in this. And in order for viewers to get a realistic picture of the world, we need viewers to see all types of information. And unfortunately, what we find in this study is that the viewers don’t want to engage in watching all sides. So, as David mentioned, we see that viewers, we pay them for four weeks to watch CNN, but then after those payments stopped, they go back to watching Fox News. So, even though we try to incentivize viewers to watch both Fox and CNN, they don’t want to engage in that hard work, they want to really just watch the side that makes them feel good. And this is why the media has such an important responsibility to cover both sides, to hold both parties accountable.”
WATCH:
CNN is undergoing a major shake-up of programming and personalities amid its tanking ratings.
Warner Bros. Discovery has begun laying off staffers less than a month after pulling the plug on CNN’s failed streaming service.
In addition to that bad news, Chris Wallace’s now-defunct CNN+ show is reportedly headed to HBO Max.
After investing $300 million in the failed streaming service, CNN+ shut down within weeks of its launch date.
The new owners are reportedly not happy with the Chris Wallace-led streaming service, suspended all external marketing spending for CNN+, and laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer.
The new owners at Discovery have replaced CNN CFO Brad Ferrer with Neil Chugani, Discovery’s current CFO for streaming and international.
Sources say corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery executives are planning to dramatically shift the network’s primetime shows back to hard news and away from partisan politics.
The new bosses are aiming to spend money in order to get the cable news side back to straight news reporting.
They are essentially abandoning the streaming service, which leaves Wallace holding the bag and potentially without a show to host.
CNN executives initially wanted to have 2 million subscribers for the streaming service in the first year, but only managed to get around 150,000 subscribers.
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