Ousted CNN boss Chris Licht has blasted the traditional media – including his old colleagues – as untrustworthy in a scathing speech about his former industry.
Licht, 53, was fired from CNN in June 2023 and has yet to reenter the media field following his dramatic removal.
The former CEO sat around the table on Tuesday Yahoo Finance to discuss how he believes traditional media – including CNN, although he did not name the company directly – have lost their way with the American people.
“The facts are that people have lost trust in traditional media,” he told Yahoo Finance host Seana Smith.
‘I’m not saying that, that’s a demonstrable fact that hasn’t happened in the last six months. That’s been happening for a long time and people are dropping out.’
Even the company’s election night coverage saw a huge decline in viewership, with numbers falling below MSNBC for the time since the company launched, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
On Tuesday, Chris Licht spoke with Yahoo Finance to discuss the current industry and how he thinks traditional media – including CNN, although he didn’t name the company directly – have lost people
‘The facts are that people have lost confidence in traditional media. I’m not saying that, that’s a demonstrable fact that hasn’t happened in the last six months. That’s something that’s been happening for a long time and people are tuning in,” he said
CNN drew 5.1 million viewers, while MSNBC had 6.01 million viewers. Meanwhile, Fox News led with 10.32 million, according to THR.
During CNN’s prime time shows in 2022, it averaged 828,000 viewers, down significantly from 2020, where it saw about 1.8 million viewers, according to the paper. Pew Research Center.
MSNBC saw slightly lower numbers than CNN, while Fox News crushed them both with an average of 2.1 million viewers in 2022 and 3.1 million in 2020.
Licht, who started in local news, believes traditional media must find a way to “reconnect with people and become relevant in their lives again.”
He acknowledges that viewership has weakened due to a “low-trust society” between consumers and the media and between fact and fiction.
“There are trusted sources of information and there is also trusted opinion, and I think those two worlds should be very separate,” he told Yahoo Finance.
“I think part of the problem is that they’ve kind of intermingled and you know media organizations are going to go out of their way to say, ‘No, No, no, this is our news gathering and this is our opinion,” but in the world people do not make the distinction that I have discovered.
“SoI have to figure out how to do that restore trust and that these are the facts and then let people have their say.”
Licht, who started in local news, believes traditional media must find a way to “reconnect with people and become relevant in their lives again.”
He went on to say that readers and viewers should be “armed with what the actual facts are,” rather than being told what to think or having the truth distorted in many ways.
‘We used to have one set of facts and then you could have thirty discussions around that set of facts. Now you have thirty sets of facts and a thousand discussions surrounding those sets of facts. And that has to change, otherwise we are in big trouble as a society,” he said.
He and Smith also discussed the rise of fake news — a term coined by newly elected President Donald Trump that began during his first presidency.
While Licht believes it is “bigger than just a Trump presidency,” his advice to his former colleagues was to “wave at the pitches being thrown.”
“Don’t say, ‘Well, this means this and that means that’s going to happen.’ Say, “He did this,” and then let’s discuss what that means. Not, “Well, this is what this is going to mean,” because the media often gets into trouble when they predict things.
“I would say that – as an observer – there have been a lot of exaggerations around what a Trump presidency will mean and what the end of democracy means.”
CNN’s declining numbers have left staff “scared and frustrated” about impending layoffs.
Stars like Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer have reportedly been denied raises on their multi-million dollar salaries as the biggest names on the network fear for their futures.
Screen favorite Chris Wallace also left the network earlier this week, although he insisted he did so on his own terms. Other employees are concerned that more layoffs will follow after the company laid off 100 employees earlier this year
Screen favorite Chris Wallace also left the network earlier this week, although he insisted he did so on his own terms.
A longtime CNN employee told it Fox News that after news of the redundancies spread, staff across the company are feeling ‘very sad and deeply frustrated’.
“Feelings that permeate throughout the organization among those who have been here for a long time and feel a deep personal connection to helping build the organization,” the anonymous employee added.
News of the cuts and layoffs at CNN first spread after an explosive report from Puck News, which warned that network executives are about to take drastic action to save the company’s flagging reputation.
While there is no mention of who might be on the chopping block, there are fears the cuts could affect everyone from low-level staff to the likes of Anderson Cooper and his $20 million-a-year salary.
“Over the next several months, I am told, CNN will implement another round of layoffs that will impact hundreds of employees across the organization,” reporter Dylan Byers wrote Friday, referring to CNN’s recent layoff of 100 people during the summer.
The new round of layoffs will, say the insiders, be more focused on the production side of the business, but on-screen ‘talent’ will also be affected.