Thank you, Donald!
That, I’m sure, is the sentiment at CNN these days.
On Wednesday, President-elect Trump held his first press conference, and it was all that the folks in the cheap seats had hoped it would be. There was anger. There were tirades. He went on about Nazis, the Ruskies and fake news. And he shouted down CNN’s insistent White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, who kept trying to get in a question.
Trump was especially peeved because CNN broke a story a day earlier that an ex-British spy had compiled a report on alleged efforts by Russia to compromise the president-elect. CNN said it was news because intelligence officials included a synopsis of it in briefing reports for the president-elect.
CNN’s report then gave Buzzfeed the green light to publish that dossier in all its filthy, and unproven, details. CNN steered clear of the dirt.
“No! Not you. No! Your organization is terrible,” Trump growled as Acosta kept shouting for recognition.
"Quiet. Don't be rude. Don't be rude," Trump continued, pointing a finger. "No, I'm not going to give you a question."
And for the next couple of days that is all anyone remembers. Not Trump’s wall or his dismantling of Obamacare, but the president-elect shouting down CNN.
That exchange was perfect marketing for CNN, which is the Avis of cable news to Fox News’ Hertz.
There seems to be a perfect turnabout here. For a year, candidate Trump benefited from free publicity repeatedly afforded him from the news networks.
Now a news network can benefit from free publicity afforded it from the president-elect.
It’s a symbiotic relationship akin to the birds that eat flies off the backs of water buffalo in Africa.
So now that Atlanta-based CNN has everyone’s attention, what will they do with it? Is it time to go rogue and outfox Fox News, but from the other side of the aisle? Do they go all deep investigative? Or do they try doing a little of both, as the network has, and keep plodding along in a distant second place?
Trump has been the tide that has lifted all media boats, especially Fox’s.
According to Forbes, Fox News got a 36 percent bump over 2015 in prime-time ratings, averaging 2.4 million nightly viewers.
“Fox News’ surge was even more impressive since it beat the prime-time averages posted by rival networks CNN (1.27 million) and MSNBC (1.09 million) combined,” Forbes wrote. CNN’s prime-time ratings went up 79 percent over the previous year and MSNBC jumped by 89 percent.
The problem for CNN is that when big news drops off, so do viewers.
I called a couple of CNN alum to see what path the network should take during the Trump years. First, I talked with Tom Johnson, a University of Georgia grad who started working for President Lyndon Baines Johnson, then moved to newspapers and ultimately became president of CNN during the 1990s. He quips, “We were still ahead of Fox when I left” in 2001.
Then I called Frank Sesno, who was CNN’s White House correspondent during the Ronald Reagan years and Washington bureau chief when Bill Clinton got impeached.
Johnson contends that CNN is “catching a good bit of unfair flak.” He said its report dwelled on the fact that intelligence types had obtained the dossier and had presented it to President-elect Trump and President Barack Obama. It did not go into the dirt.
“They are not making a distinction between what CNN reported and what Buzzfeed did,” he said.
CNN has a much wider and deeper news team than Fox News but gets its butt kicked nightly in the ratings by Fox’s personalities — its O’Reillys and Hannitys.
When asked if CNN should tilt (further) left, Johnson responded, “No, I hope not. CNN through the years has attempted to be fair, to not present news with ideological bias.
“It is so needed in this world, with all the fake news, with all the information that is not fact-checked, that CNN remains fair,” he said.
But no matter CNN’s news chops, it does skew more liberal.
In 2007, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University published a study that said 41 percent of the stories CNN ran about Republicans were negative and just 14 percent were positive. Fox News, the study indicated, was a bit more "fair and balanced" — 37 percent negative for Dems and 24 percent positive. (Although that does not take into account Sean Hannity's bloviating.)
Another Shorenstein report last year looking at coverage of the conventions found that both CNN and Fox beat the snot out of The Donald. Just 16 percent of CNN’s stories were positive and, perhaps surprisingly, only 33 percent of Fox’s put Trump in a good light.
CNN was positive for Hillary Clinton 59 percent of the time during the Democrat’s run to become America’s first female president, and Fox was positive in 40 percent of its coverage.
I caught Sesno as he returned from New York to his home in Washington, D.C., where he heads the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He had been peddling his book, "Ask More," about how the right questions can open up all kinds of doors in life.
“Seems kind of relevant, doesn’t it?” he said, with a laugh.
He said CNN must lace up its journalistic boots and become “insistent, determined and transparent.”
Trump, he said, did CNN a favor by calling out the network. “He’s given CNN publicity that anyone (in journalism) would want — the unrelenting questioner of authority.”
But, with extra scrutiny comes added pressure. “CNN will have all eyes on it. They better be damn sure they are right and fair and accurate,” Sesno said.
And, he added, “Don’t fall into the trap of constantly being on attack. That’s the big decision CNN must make. Will they be reflexively critical of Donald Trump? Or do they dig in and do good journalism?”
Trump, his personality and his antics will probably bring better ratings for CNN, said Sesno. “It will make it a hotter place and likely a brighter place.”
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