Dear Mr. Zucker,
Normally, my writing is ever so slightly snarky and sarcastic. I like to make people laugh, cry and burn their own houses down, all with the same sentence. However, I will try, in this letter, to be both serious and sincere. (Please know I will most definitely fail.) Although I know you will never actually read this or, if you do, you will not take it seriously, I do truly wish you can make changes and return CNN to the trusted news organization it once was.
I was 9 when CNN first launched. I, of course, did not watch it then, but I do remember my father watching every night. My first true memory was in 1986 during the Challenger disaster. I was sick that day and I stayed home from school. I watched the launch live. I don’t think I moved from CNN for two days. It was around the same time that I began to seriously get interested into news and politics. While my mother loved NBC’s Tom Brokaw, I always thought Bernard Shaw was the smartest man on TV. Well, except for Alex Trebek. I watched the 1988 election returns on CNN. I have watched CNN on election night for every election since …well, until 2012…but I’ll get to that later. It was the first Gulf War though that cemented my obsession with CNN. I remember watching Peter Arnett and Wolf Blitzer and being amazed by how close to everything they seemed. Plus, you had a dude named Wolf who looked like a damned werewolf. How cool was CNN? And then you went the final step towards greatness, you got Darth Vader to announce “This is CNN” 13,000 times a day! I honestly do not remember watching any of the network nighttime news from that point forward. I still don’t. I even remember when MSNBC first tried to compete. That was adorable! They sucked then and they have only gotten worse. Fox News started right around then too. I didn’t even know they existed for another decade. CNN was the undisputed king of news and I was a loyal follower.
Jeff, whenever any major event happened anywhere in the world, I would head straight to CNN. You had the best coverage and seemed to have a reporter in every city and small village on the planet. You always had a bit of a slant, but I just accepted that as a necessary evil of any news program. I never thought it had a major impact on the quality of your coverage. Fox came along with an obvious and admitted bias and did very well. Shortly thereafter, MSNBC decided to compete by admitting their bias and did not do so well. See my previous statement about them still sucking. CNN seemed to play the middle ground. You still proclaimed to do straight news despite your increasingly obvious bias. While your programming quality seemed to decline, I still turned to CNN during any major world event.
I first started to turn away from CNN in 2012. I watched the election night returns with my beloved wife and a few friends of mixed political persuasion. We played a little game wherein we watched CNN, Fox News and MSNBC in 15-minute intervals. Jeff, I was shocked. I had always relied on CNN to be my news network during elections but what I witnessed made me sick. If it weren’t for the remnants of Obama love glistening on Chris Mathews’ lips, I would have said CNN was worse than MSNBC in their liberal bias. Fox News, even with their obvious right bias, was far more honest and balanced than anyone on CNN. My eyes were opened, and it made me sad. It reminded me of the moment I realized my big brother, whom I always worshipped as a child, was actually a moron. The good news though was that while I was stuck with my brother, I could always turn CNN off.
Over the next 4 years I watched CNN decline far more than I ever thought possible. I don’t know if you saw Fox News dominate both in rating and earnings and decided to try to be their counterpoint instead of MSNBC or you just hired a bunch of really shitty excuses for talent. But Jeff, CNN is no longer a news network. You lost your way. You have lost what made CNN great. In a recent survey, 69% of people said CNN was trustworthy. That same survey ranked the most trustworthy news channels as BBC, Fox News and PBS, in that order with CNN almost 20 points behind. Aside from the inherent humor in the number 69, I cannot think of a more damning repudiation of what CNN has become.
With the exception of maybe John King, I cannot think of a single straight news person CNN has left. Even Wolf, once one of the most trusted people in news, has gone off the damn rails! Wolf! That one hurts. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind editorial shows with which I disagree. I like to watch some of those because it tests my own convictions. The problem is that most of your hosts are simply unlikable. Anderson Cooper used to be tolerable, but he seems to have grown an ego not commensurate with his talent. Don Lemon is just plain stupid. Seriously Jeff, he’s not smart enough to host the Puppy Bowl. Chris Cuomo always looks like a little rich boy forced to sleep on 250 thread count sheets in a Motel 6. Change his name to Chris Jones and he might barely have the talent to be a fry-cook at White Castle. Brian Stelter … well … he’s that dude that you just want to punch in the face. Ok, I realize that’s not a good critique and has nothing to do with his talent, but seriously he might be the most punchable person on TV. I get that several of them are hosts and are not expected to be fair straight journalists, but CNN truly loses it when it comes to Abilio Acosta. He is supposed to be a journalist. He is supposed to do straight news. Jeff, he is a douche of epic proportions! And I don’t think I am being hyperbolic here. He is such a douche that even Massengil could not use him as a spokesperson because he would give douche a bad name. He has done nothing for the past two years but share his opinion and whine that other people have noticed his extreme douchiness. If you think he has talent, give him his own opinion show and see if any sentient being on the planet would watch, but please, for the love of all things journalistic, remove him from the White House. It should be easy. I’m pretty sure he is a douche of the disposable variety.
I told you I would fail at trying to avoid sarcasm and snark. Back to being serious and sincere (although I am sincere about Abilio’s douchiness). Jeff, you can save CNN with a few simple steps. 1) Admit that CNN has lost its way and commit to returning to your roots; 2) Fire Don Lemon and replace him with someone right leaning to add some balance to your editorial shows. (Don probably won’t notice because he is dumber than a taco); 3) Take advantage of Abilio’s douche nature and dispose of him. (But, not in a toilet. My plumber told me that’s bad for the plumbing.) Replace him with an actual journalist.
If you take those three steps, I promise you will get this formally loyal viewer back and probably a million more.
With respect (despite my snark),
Whiggy