CNN once the most trusted name in news is now crumbling into the ground with CNN recording a 90 decline in viewership in just one year this was highlighted back in January on January 3rd 2021 CNN recorded 2. 7 million viewers for the week on January 3rd 2022 this number was 548 000 and in this last week of June 20th 2022 CNN recorded their lowest ratings in 22 years averaging a tiny 56 000 viewers causing CNN to lay off its CEO Jeff Zucker this is in conjunction with CNN's catastrophic failure with CNN plus a subscription model sets rival Netflix with over 300 million dollars in funding going on to gain only a measly 10 000 subscribers causing the service to be shot down in just three weeks it's clear to everyone that CNN is seeing its final days and for most this won't be a surprise but then what caused CNN to go from being the most trusted name in news with a first class reputation and millions of viewers to now scraping the barrel for views with a god lawful reputation well in this video we're going to go over the certain actions CNN took which ended up destroying the company entirely and it was started back with the CNN founder Ted Turner although Ted Turner may be a massive name in the TV industry today this wasn't always the case Ted wasn't always destined to control the mainstream media because simply put Ted's path in life didn't always seem to be on the right track back in his early 20s he was expelled from his university after he brought a goat back to his dorm room and when he returned to his home in the south in the late 60s Ted began a simple life working for his father billboard business however after working on this company for several years this small company would become a Million Dollar Empire there was now put in his first position of real leadership and more for a few years he carried on the success of the business he would soon realize that this really wasn't his passion yes he did have the money but he wasn't following his intuition he wanted something greater and so instead he would invest in several small radio stations followed by a struggling Atlanta Cable TV station by doing this Ted had no idea that he would change his life forever because this was where Ted first learned the power of 24 7 broadcasting because among the low-cost shows his TV station were broadcast the one that really brought in the business was the 3am comedy news program where China would once joke that he had a 100 share in the time slots it was so popular at this time and yet no one was broadcasting or competing and so Ted would continue to grow the channel by doing this he realized the power of early morning broadcasts there was no competition and yet night workers students and people with weird sleep schedules would all tune into the show with this little time slot being wildly successful however Turner's real gold mine would come four years later when new satellite technology enabled him to broadcast not just to Atlanta but to the whole us this skyrocketed A small collection of channels into a growing meteor Empire paying cable subscribers went up to 2 million and Ted's personal net worth broke 100 million dollars during this time he even bought both the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks Ted had only just been given the rights to broadcast their games but now he earned them entirely and then two years later the colonel that would become CNN had been born and lizard de Ted know that this was his path to power and billions before CNN was even invented Ted would have to go into talks and negotiations with his fellow media executives found a 24 7 News Network this sort of thing had never been done before there was no one to copy from but with the success of his burgeoning Empire and the success of his 3am comedy news program and Ted would take a huge gamble this project would cost up to 20 million dollars just to start and this didn't even include the running costs on top of this other broadcasting Executives told him a successful 24 7 news station would not be possible no one would watch it there were serious doubts from all investors that there was any market for an around-the-clock news station it just seemed that such a channel would never be profitable and yet despite all the Skeptics Turner had seemingly full confidence in his idea and stated that CNN would be the greatest achievement in the history of Journalism and whilst this certainly isn't the case Now CNN would undoubtedly make major advancements in journalism and change the way news was televised forever and on June 1st 1980 CNM was broadcasted for the first time but the issues for CNN would quickly Mount up the first one being budgetary issues compared to other media Giants at the time like CBS NBC and ABC CNN's funding was substantially less they were running on extremely tight margins because investors still believe that there was no profit to be made with this and then added on to this was CNN's Financial constraints which were exacerbated by the network operating 24 7 which meant even more attention had to be paid to their budget due to the increased workload relative to other outlets and so for the next 15 years CNN would always struggle on this reduced budget only being kept Afraid by their Innovative coverage advertising deals and dodgy investors at the time larger networks often derided CNN referring to it as the quote chicken noodle Network because of its comparatively smaller Financial footprint however this would all change in 1996 when Time Warner brought the entirety of Turner's media Empire which included CNN this injection of funds put CNN in direct competition with other large networks but there was a catch CNN would find itself at the most its new shareholders and as the company that bought them continue to rapidly grow so too did CNN's obligations to tow the party line for their shareholders being part of this huge conglomerate meant that there were lots of powerful people to please and this ended up reflecting negatively on the network introducing a lot of bias into their reports but the results of this would later become apparent in future years however in this time this corporate backing in 24 7 broadcasting meant that CNN was the superior choice for news coverage it had all the money and connections to find the best journalists and the best marketing this was a change of pace compared to other networks as CNN would be televising all kinds of news rather than just stories that made headlines and because of this unique approach CNN was able to make respectively sized loyal audience during the early years in fact in the first 10 years of CNN's development CNN actually had a very low fan base another way CNN differed from their competition was through their on-site reporting over confining themselves to a newsroom this would often make CNN the first or only station to catch historic events as they were unfolding the earliest example of which was their footage during the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981 where CNN would be the first station to break the story on air but even more famously was with the Challenger disaster at the time of the Challenger's launched CNN was the only Network reporting on the scene no one else in the news was reporting 24 7 coverage of this event and then once the Challenger exploded live on air CNN's ratings would go through the roof because back then there was no Fox News MSNBC or even internet for people to watch this tragedy CNN was the Public's only option the whole nation's attention was focused solely through their lands the final event that cemented CNN as a major news organization and catapulted them past their competition was their on-site reporting during the coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 CNN was the only news Outlet to get reporters inside Iraq during the initial bombing campaigns their coverage was shown across many different networks internationally which resulted in CNN receiving over 1 billion concurrent viewers around the world their overall coverage of the war was groundbreaking the American government even coined the term the CNN effect to described the world 24 7 News has on determine the real-time decisions from public officials it was clear that CNN was becoming Unstoppable Ted's Vision was coming to life these were the golden years for CNN where their anchors showcased their brilliant non-biastar throughout the tragedy live reports from Bernard Shaw John Holloman and Peter arnott captivated the world or really distinguished CNN during this period was their courage all the other American News companies had fled Baghdad when War seemed imminent but only CNN stayed their reporters camped out in a hotel from this modern space of operations these reporters risked life and limb to bring the truth to the world the footage is still available today you can hear bombs being dropped in the distance the reporters even just describe seeing explosions and fire from the hotel window just three miles away and although the reporters like the ability to send live footage in the opening hours of the war their radio style coverage was the closest viewers would get to the conflict these first hours of the war would become a landmark in CNN's rise later on in the year when the Iraqi government expelled all Western correspondence CNN was somehow the only ones allowed to stay this was because of the tireless work to build a relationship with the government meaning they had a monopoly on in-person coverage of the war and this is what CNN had been built on for 24 7 unbiased live coverage and in this time of Crisis it was exactly what the world needed and although there was a lot of propaganda fake footage and very dodgy things within the company these reporters did provide coverage they could get the viewer the closest to the conflict and because these CNM reporters were the only ones on the scene their coverage ended up being seen by billions and then there were other famous anchors that would make their name Christine amporn Wolf Blitzer to name a couple amnipot would build her reputation on CNN's trademark in-person coverage while splitter would keep the show running at home reporting straight from the Pentagon in the opening hours of the war Blitz has served as the essential connection between the people and the reporters all these reporters were going to play pivotal roles in CNN's future although it wasn't always perfect this more pure style of hard news would become CNN's ideal to strive towards generating the reputation of the most trusted name in news this reputation for truth and honesty was further solidified by CNN's willingness to challenge the US government's narrative Peter arnott in particular would gain a controversial reputation through his reporting on American bombings some would criticize him as unpatriotic but his unflinching commitment to the truth was truly admirable all these reporters would then go into play pivotal roles in CNN's future it was through this hard style news reporting that CNN gained a massive reputation a reputation of being the most trusted name in news and whether this reputation was worthy or not it was clear the public seemed to trust CNN however this reputation would soon be destroyed by the disastrous actions in later years however for Now CNN was in his Golden Years their major successes in the Gulf War made CNN skyrocketing regular viewership and laid the groundwork for international expansion however other people were catching an eye of this people like Rupert Murdoch wanted a piece of the pie and CNN's competition was catching up media analysts like MSNBC Fox News and many others were starting to use the same journalistic model pioneered by CNN these competitors started broadcasting 24 7 and focused more on international issues but despite all this competition Siena was still the first cable channel to report on the September 11th attacks although unlike the challenge disaster and the Gulf War other news outlets were able to obtain their footage of the incident and this would start to Mark the end of CNN's golden years because with the competition CNN would have to do very controversial things to gain his viewership CNN's next Focus was on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq however this time people were beginning to lose interest in the conflict people just didn't really care about another war in a part of the world they had no interest in the public was sick of all these pointless Wars and they felt like this event had no impact in their day-to-day lives and their mixed with CNN's vicious competition from other mainstream news outlets and it seemed like CNN's Empire was beginning to crack with these Forum Wars losing viewer engagements CNN needed another medium to focus on and they eventually settled on domestic politics just as they were Pioneers before CNN was also quick to adopt to online news they launched their prototype News website CNN. com in 1995.
it quickly became one of the most popular news outlets on the internet with this online and cable TV presence now established CNN could sit back and watch his membership grow right well while their success was admirable it didn't come without compromises because even with all the ad revenue and weekly viewership this still wasn't enough for CNN to take control of the American Media rather CNN would instead take its sport behind Fox News all through the Iraq War so why wasn't CNN able to catapult Beyond Fox well fox has always had a political bias and through 2008 CNN tried to steer clear of becoming a network of pundits unfortunately with the pressure of investors and advertisers this middle of the road Style just wasn't cutting it however we shouldn't confuse this completely with CNN not having a bias I mean they've always had one key bias and that was corporatism and so in order to shed light on what their real bias is we need to look at who owned them and who still owns them on October 10th 1996 a massive media conglomerates named Time Warner acquired Turner Broadcasting systems the parent company of CNN Time Warner almost has a monopoly over American television with subsidiaries such as discover Paramount HBO TNT travel and Cartoon Network and that just names a few of the 100 plus channels and companies time owns and this was very effective at Time Warner As Time Warner and its Affiliates and investors would need certain talking points to influence public opinion a process that Noam Chomsky described as manufacturing consent Chomsky noted that all mass media caters to the financial interests of whoever owns them most importantly though is how it affects news in essence large media conglomerates like Time Warner become Gatekeepers of information for news cycles and with CNN being a profit-driven business they must do all they can to keep companies interested in advertising with them whilst also making Time Warner's investors happy and so with that Chomsky argues that quote news media caters to the political prejudices and economic desires of their advertisers with all of this becoming very apparent in 2008 when CNN would start to devote large chunks of resources to cover the American political environment around the 2008 election it was this year their part of censorship would begin to swell where they would begin to host many of the candidates and presidential debates it was also really important to add that at this exact same Time Warner media's CEO was now Jeff buks Jeff keeps a low profile generally but his political leanings are obvious with a little bit of digging Jeff has made multiple donations to the Democrats over his lifetime he's also synonymous with the coastal liberal Elite and so it seems like a weird coincidence that Justice he was appointed CEO in early 2008 this also happened to be the same time that CNN descended into blatant partisanship but weirdly in this time in which their slightly biased political coverage that led to CNN having the highest ratings of the Year averaging over 1 million viewers an increase of almost half compared to their previous year this coverage then lead CNN and having the highest ratings of the Year averaging over 1 million viewers an increase to almost half compared to their previous year but their partisanship was nothing like what we see today in fact CNM was still on the trend of being at The Cutting Edge of news instead of hosting a standard debate like other outlets they instead partnered with YouTube to pitch presidential questions from the public this Innovative move would become the future of debates despite this it was still clear that something had changed in CNN's reporting the reporters hadn't changed but the content had and studies related to show that Obama would receive nearly 70 more favorable coverage from the media whilst John McCain would only get around 40 percent this bias was across the board but CNN was doubtlessly one of the biggest perpetrators of course the buyers wouldn't be as obvious as it would be later compared to the cultural war of today the 2008 election was nothing and in this time CNN's hit pieces were much more subdued where they would only portray the Republican nominee John McCain as out of touch rather than accusing him of criminality conspiracies and being a Russian agent however it was also noticeable in this period how the reporter's turns had now become much for one-sided the bias coverage was initially rewarded with increased ratings which created this vicious cycle the more controversial the stories the more controversial the opinions the more people that would tune in and so CNN would slowly start to abuse the trust they had built up from years of unbiased reporting trading it all in for the quick hits of views their new policy of sensationalizing every political story was popular at first but over the coming decade people would quickly come to resent it and this wasn't just with the political stuff this was through everything for example the term breaking news used to mean a huge amount in CNN this would refer to things like the Challenger disaster the first Gulf War none 11. it used to be reserved for only the most important stories as they unfolded however now it's completely overused the point of losing all its meaning completely if everything is breaking news then none of it is and this is why politics works so well for CNN because they could sensationalize every little story and this is why after 2008 CNN would seem to only broadcast entirely political content this was at the cost of their innovative of groundbreaking unbiased reporting however back then this was still tamed even though it was Sensational even though it was political it was still bearable to watch and trusted by almost everyone in the public although nobody could have predicted just how many things would change during the presidential election in 2016. it's getting hotter and harder to find unbiased news sources which is why I want to tell you about today's sponsor ground news the world's first news comparison platform you see while CNN's bias is the biggest example of a new source gone wrong this sort of thing has been happening throughout the media landscape with this 24 7 News cycle and political bias everywhere public trust and news has hit an all-time low it's because of this bias throughout media Landscapes that it's very important to cross-reference and use multiple sources instead of only one source especially when it comes to news outlets like CNN which is why ground news is so helpful they let you swipe between headlines to see how the same story is Being Framed by left Center and right you can also go to CNN's news profile to view their political bias rating their ownership information and their factuality score and ground news is great because these big news companies like CNN are incentivized to report on stories that are listed emotion like anger and fear and also by extracting Nuance from issues but with ground user's blind spot feature they show blind spots that are underreported by either the right or left now blind spots are when news from the other side of the political Spectrum were often report on the issues but way less however if a story has 75 percent of its coverage from rylaning sources and 25 from left-leaning sources CNN is often not in that 25 percent thus highlighting their reporting bias so if you're looking for a better way to stay informed about current events around the world check out ground news by visiting ground dot news forward slash moon this will also help out our Channel a ton too but with that said let's get back to the video on June 16 2015 Donald Trump formally announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election this announcement sent a ripple through the country especially within the media industrial complex and from here the political landscape would never be the same again before 2016 CNN was the go-to news network to keep up to date on what was going on in the world and more particularly it was the go-to place for the average American to keep up to date with the election cycle but with this election something had changed Trump was now labeled by the media as an outsider with Trump posing himself as anti-corporate anti-big farmer and anti-establishment he was trying to drive all of the media against him but of all the media against Trump CNN's investors wanted him gone in the early part of his presidential run the coverage wasn't explicitly negative but it wasn't neutral either because the media in public thought that he just didn't stand a chance it was inconceivable but over time this would start to change Trump has done to gather huge crowds of supporters he was starting to win votes across the country Trump memes were proliferating the internet and in the debate he was now son to beat Rivals like Ted Cruz you've called women you don't like dogs no it wasn't it became apparent that Trump was somehow connecting with the US population and from that moment it was apparent that the election would be like no other with Trump's wild statements the funny speeches the Ridiculousness of the debates and all the controversies surrounding this made the public hooked on the election and CNN was there to capitalize on it in fact by focusing so much on the election 2015 became a record year for CNN bringing in millions of viewers every day we're talking about even more views and money than they'd seen at the peak of the Gulf War and that momentum would only continue into 2016.
as the year continued to progress Trump's chances of winning became Higher and Higher and with this CNN became more and more vicious against the Trump campaign the unbiased nature that defines CNM was starting to crack it was clear that the people pulling CNN strings were becoming threatened by Trump and this is when CNN's partisanship became very apparent to the public especially in contrast to how much they supported Clinton from the minute she stole the nomination from Bernie to the day of the election Clinton was framed as a reliable experienced candidate never mind the fact that she was a woman however for most of the public Clinton was really just a boring career politician no one really liked her she didn't have the wide supports of Bernie Sanders or the personality of Donald Trump so then why was she forced upon the American people as the best choice by CNN well to answer this we just have to follow the money according to federally released election data for the Clinton campaign she received tens of millions of dollars from billionaires hedge funds and Wall Streets and with that it was clear who owned Hillary Clinton the same people that owned CNN which is why when Trump won the nominee when the chances of him actually winning the presidency skyrocketed CNN would continue to release new scandals with every poll on CNN making clear that Trump had no chance of winning at all and as this election continued it was clear that CNN was becoming very partisan and these suspicions were confirmed in October 2016. moments just before one of the key presidential debates with Wikileaks publishing leaked emails showing once and through all that CNN had a very liberal bias in fact the CNN contributor had passed the debate questions to Hillary Clinton's campaign ahead of time in response to this CNN anchor Chris Cuomo wouldn't apologize for these actions but instead said that anyone who downloaded these stolen emails was a criminal it's illegal to possess uh these stolen documents it's different for the media so everything you learn about this you're learning from us but the damage was done CNN had been caught red-handed however because these sorts of instances were rare this shadiness didn't actually hurt CNN as 2016 was another record year in viewership for the company which is why Shannon would never reflect on becoming two partisan in fact they were motivated to double down on this their investors wanted it the advertisers wanted it and seemingly the viewers wanted it however behind the surface it was becoming clear how CNN was poisoned by external interests and I'm not some massive Trumper here or anything but however you feel about Trump he was the man that would slowly take down CNN's credibility because while the whole network was so caught up in trying to take him down they failed to pay attention to their founding principles or while continually giving Trump Free Press and this by is also meant that through CNN's hyper focus on Trump this would then come at the giant cost of the hard news they had made their name on and because of this CNN would slowly decline all through Trump's presidency CNN's reputation was taking a beating this became apparent in 2017. when CNN would continue reports on Trump being a secret Russian agent an agent trying to overturn U.
S democracy they would continue to push this making it a mainstream story an almost established fact about Trump and because of CNN's reach and Legacy reputation this story was never really questioned however later in the year these stories would start to be questioned after project veritos released a video showing leaked footage of CNN producer John benefit in the footage captured without bonifield knowing he admitted that CNN's coverage on the Russia investigation was quote mostly [ __ ] in response CNN would say that while the footage was real it was acquired through deception just like the Wikileaks emails however two days later project Veritas would then release more footage showing CNN anchor van Jones saying that quote the Russia thing was just an nothing burger and then CNN would be hit by another blue after footage was leaked with the CNN technical director Charlie Chester admitting that CNN had been engaged in negative propaganda against the Trump presidency but he would admit that CNN's Russian story was a hoax but pushed it anyway we were creating story there we didn't know anything about you know so that's that's what I think that's a problem we had nothing else to run with at that time we were like just taking shots off the bats hoping something important you know in the footage the CNN employee would also note that him and his team are specifically told by the CEO what to push on the news but again why did CNN take such a hard turn why were they doing this because by 2017 their ratings showed that people were starting to get sick of always talking about Trump I mean when you compare CNN's modern anchors like Brian stelter with CNN's award-winning coverage of the Gulf War questions start to be raised remember CNN is owned by Time Warner a mere deal conglomerate that has its own agenda and of course CNN's primary revenue stream comes from adverts so what those parties want is what CNN parrots which might have been why a Harvard study found that on 93 of the first 100 days of Trump's presidency CNN broadcasted negative coverage of Trump's presidency it was non-stop partisan ship it was because of these constant boring barrages against Trump and with CNN constantly turning to Identity politics reviews that their viewership would now begin to drop and this wasn't just with Trump their attacks would come at anyone going against the establishment's wishes I mean after alienating the center and the right with their constant hit pieces and absurd claims CNN would then go into alienate lots of the left as well this was because of their commitment to a certain brand of corporate liberalism the kind championed by their investors and their ESG ratings other parts of the left were vilified in the same way as Trump Bernie Sanders's campaign was particularly targeted because his politics went against the corporate interests of CNN CNN would then be flagrantly biased against him in the 2020 Democratic primary debates on-screen Graphics would clearly favor his opponents one of these read quotes Saunders proposal would double federal spending over a decade how will he avoid bankrupting the country things like this would come in place manufacturing consent against Bernie's campaign from the outset and this is just one of the ways that Siena would shoot themselves in the foot because if CNN was losing the right the center and the left he was even the demographic anymore CNN's average viewership went from 1. 3 million to 980 000 viewers in just two years but this was nothing compared to when Trump would leave office but CNN's viewership looking like this all because CNN chose to milk identity politics rather than produce unbiased news reporting they had trampled on their core principles for a quick buck and by looking for the easiest way to gain views and please investors they had lost the reputation that was Central to their success and that's why in the last year or so CNN has now been scraping the barrel for views insulting and degrading independent voices that weren't owned by The Establishment like that Infamous time when CNN's in-house medical advisor tried to smear Joe Rogan for taking horse dewormer which ended up backfiring even more against CNN's credibility with most people in this controversy Ashley dressing Joe Rogan over CNN CNN are clearly rattled by The Joe Rogan treatments for Coronavirus why do they keep this story alive why do they refuse used to apologize for their potentially libelous framing of Joe Rogan's individual autonomous personal actions and at the same time this has fueled their biggest competitor Fox to capitalize on CNN's failings with Fox of all media companies Now setting themselves up as the anti-establishment news agency gone was the stuffy warmongering better Riley n was the ex-cnn host Tucker Carlson and unlike CNN Fox would be directly right-wing and they wouldn't try to hide their over bias people know what they're getting with Fox they knew the sort of opinions and narrative they would talk about and amazingly to Fox's credit of all the media companies they're the one that actually starts to question stories on big Tech China Jeff Bezos and big Pharma and with that fox has seen a bit of a Renaissance which is really saying something here because Fox is also a poison use Network run by the Devil Himself Rupert Murdoch I mean a fox of all companies is now seen as the resistance this shines a light on how badly CNN has fallen I mean let's just look at the statistics in the key demographic of people aged 25 5-54 fox now has three times as many viewers for the day than CNN becoming the most watched News Network overall snatching the mantle from CNN completely and it's only getting much much worse for CNN the consequence of their partisan ship and decline in quality became very apparent when they tried to introduce CNN plus CNN plus was meant to be a paid subscription service that would show to them against the dropping ratings for its additional media this new streaming service was given 300 million dollars in funding and was expected to gain 2 million subscribers in its opening year however after releasing the numbers were just ten thousand and me see 0.
