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Dan Rather asked this question today and it seems to be resonating with a lot of people. His comment has 34k likes so far.

The replies are full of messages like this one:

There’s even a #CNNIsTheNewFox hashtag circulating. The cause of the immediate outburst isn’t very clear but my best guess is that Rather was reacting to this bit of news from John Harwood:

Harwood apparently had time on his contract so as Dylan Byers put it, “he was pushed.”

NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen called it a “public sacrifice” and connected it to Brian Stelter’s firing.

And here’s where things get a little more complicated/conspiratorial. You may recall that when Stelter was canned there was lots of speculation about why. I engaged in some of that speculation myself. There were basically two different theories for why CNN agreed to pay off Stelter’s contract to get rid of him. The first was that new boss Chris Licht wanted to change the tone at CNN and get away from the constant attacks on Fox News that had become the core of Stelter’s brand. The alternative theory was that Licht’s decisions were being guided by an invisible hand:

The media correspondent frequently took strong positions against the misinformation of the Trump administration and got into on-air scuffles with Fox News, which he frequently called out for inaccurate and misleading reporting…

Those exchanges got the attention of John Malone, a Warner Bros. Discovery board member who owned in 2021 more than 93% of Discovery’s Class B shares and remains a major stakeholder in the company post-merger. In late 2021, Malone made waves with a CNBC interview when he said CNN should return to nonpartisan journalism once under Discovery’s control. “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone sniped at the time.

Stelter called out Malone in February, accusing the billionaire of criticizing CNN without actually watching it and creating an atmosphere of anxiety in the newsroom. “Malone’s comments stoked fears that Discovery might stifle CNN journalists and steer away from calling out indecency and injustice,” Stelter wrote in his widely read media newsletter at the time.

Two senior Warner Bros Discovery executives denied that Stelter’s ouster was influenced in any way by Malone, calling the decision to cancel “Reliable Sources” entirely Licht’s.

The idea that John Malone is behind this hasn’t evaporated despite the denials. Last week Vox published a story titled “Why billionaire John Malone’s shadow looms over CNN.” There’s still no proof Malone was involved in Stelter’s firing and people who know him have denied it but the idea that this is perhaps all a libertarian/conservative plot persists.

In any case, John Harwood decided to go out with a bang, using one of his last CNN appearances to reinforce the message of Biden’s speech last night.

And people are (wrongly) assuming that John Malone is targeting anyone who speaks up.

But Dan Froomkin from Presswatch says Harwood’s departure was decided a month ago, so today’s statement about Biden’s speech had nothing to do with his departure.

Even if you step back from all of this it doesn’t make very much sense. It’s all just a muddle of left-wing conspiratorial finger-pointing. A lot of people feel that CNN is abandoning the progressive cause and are blaming that on John Malone or Chris Licht and it all filtered up to the point that Dan Rather is asking in a semi-panic: “What is going on at CNN?”

The truth is that CNN’s ratings are pretty bad and Chris Licht is trying to move the network back to the center to help their credibility and their ratings. I don’t know if it will work but I’m confident that CNN is not turning into Fox News no matter what some folks are saying.

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