The New York Times covered the CNN-Licht story today.
reader comments:
E. Bennett
Hong Kong
A troubled tenure, but the nail in the coffin must have been the Trump town hall, which was a disgrace. Instead of acknowledging it, the harm it had done, and the genuine pain and outrage that viewers experienced, Licht dug in and arrogantly defended it. The inability to admit a mistake is a fatal, though all too common, flaw in -- and a hallmark of -- bad leaders everywhere.
Didier
Earth
A "town hall" should be made up of townspeople, not packed with a candidate's supporters. That's a "rally," not a "town hall." That Mr. Licht doesn't know the difference is why he is out of a job.
EB
San Diego, California
How about returning to the integrity of the Walter Cronkite era of television? Devoid of shouting and "gotcha" gimmickry, it made the news somewhat bearable to watch.
Jim Walsh
Nahant, Massachusetts
When I had a home office many years ago I would tune in to CNN when I went to the kitchen for coffee or lunch. While that network and others like it have their uses, I eventually found Wolf Blitzer's reporting on our recent wars to be a form of cheerleading.
In our household we rely on the NYTimes, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post for news coverage, and certain podcasts for commentary. We watch the PBS NewsHour every evening but only as a visual supplement to our knowledge of the world gained from written sources. And even their hosts can become overly breathless in reporting and reacting to news.
I miss the restraint of now legendary news anchors like Lehrer, McNeil, Cronkite, Jennings, Huntley and Brinkley.
Long-time NYT reader
New York
CNN needs to revive the spirit of true journalism - meticulous fact checking and in-depth analysis by seasoned experts. News business is not show business and shouldn't be, for the sake of the public good.
Jane
Toronto, Ontario Canada
Perhaps the time for "sides" is over. You choose "one-sided," you get FOX. You choose "both-sides" you get CNN.
Forget success or failure, you don't get actual NEWS. Actual useful, accurate information.
What's the story?
How many legitimate, objective sides / points of view / protagonists / victims / winners / losers / outcomes does it have? Tell those stories to the best of your ability without a desire to strike a balance. The world is unbalanced; it has always been unbalanced.
The last thing news agencies should be doing is messing around with reality for the purpose of presenting their PRODUCT, their organization, in such a way as to profit from the prejudices, preferences, ignorance, cynicism or mendacity of their audience or their owners.
Mike R
South Florida
This is what happens when you put someone without deep & rational editorial experience in charge of something like CNN. Look at NPR or ProPublica - they have no problem doing well-researched, fact-based journalism on a vastly smaller & mostly donated budget.
The mixing of Wall Street expectations and journalism leads to going for eyeballs & ad revenues vs. telling it straight - the reason the First Amendment protects the press - not corporate profits. You'd think Fox's recent woes would have made that lesson old news.
_____________________________
"To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful."
~ Edward R. Murrow
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