@newsweek
♪During CNN’s News Night With Abby Phillip, Scott Jennings snapped at Adam Mockler during a heated exchange over the Iran war, telling him, “Get your f*cking hand out of my face,” before Phillip stepped in to cool tensions.
While I no longer work — full time — in cable TV, I still follow the ups (and mostly) downs of the industry. It was my life for many years. I still have lots of friends in that world. And old habits die hard.
A few days ago, I came across this headline: “CNN Gets Massive Ratings Boost as Fox News Takes Big Hit.”
Intrigued, I clicked on the story. And came across this (bolding is mine):
The cable news ratings for the month of August are in, and it’s good news for CNN, the only network to buck the trend and finish with higher numbers in the coveted Adults 25-54 demographic.
According to[AdWeek], citing Nielsen big data + panel, CNN averaged 624,000 total viewers and 109,000 demo viewers in primetime for the month of August. While this was down 5 percent in total viewers from the prior month, it was up 7 percent in the key demo…
…One big reason for CNN’s ratings boost was[CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip], which landed as the network’s top performer with 725,000 total viewers and 152,000 demo viewers.
Which made me profoundly depressed. Not because CNN is doing well but because of the reason CNN is doing so well: The success of “CNN NewsNight With Abby Phillip.”
Before I explain, let me say something really important: I know Abby very casually. I have absolutely NOTHING against her. I think she is a good journalist and a gifted broadcaster. And, I think she does her level best in the show to keep it from getting too off the rails too often. The problem isn’t her, it’s the conceit of the show.
I also — and you can choose to believe this or not — have NOTHING against CNN. Yes, they laid me off! Yes, it sucked! But that was years ago. And, candidly, I am happier in my work in the independent creator space than I ever was working in legacy media. The layoff was a blessing in disguise. I realize that now.
And, finally, yes, I am aware that writing something like this makes me a bit of the turd in the punchbowl in Washington media circles. Plenty of people may agree with my sentiments — in fact, I know they do because as I have mulled this piece for the last few months they have told me they feel the same way — but they don’t want to say it. Because saying it isn’t how things are done— or whatever. But I don’t say this lightly: I think what is happening in shows like “NewsNight” is actively bad for our democracy. So, I decided to say/write it.
Ok, with those caveats out of the way, let’s proceed.
If you have never seen “NewsNight” — it runs at 10 pm eastern on CNN — let me fill you in on it. The ENTIRE conceit of the show is to put on people who are diametrically opposed politically and, well, watch them fight.
(Sidebar: My disappointment in this format is born of a real belief that CNN is trying to be fair to both sides. I don’t have the same sort of hopes/expectations for Fox or MSNOW, which are clearly doing fan service full time.)
While Phillip is the host — she navigates between spectacles and occasionally weighs in herself — the real star of the show is conservative commentator Scott Jennings.
Jennings, a longtime Kentucky political operative, has rose to fame (and, among liberals, infamy) for his role on the show — where he unapologetically skewers the liberal guests. (Note: I know Scott to say “hello.” I don’t have either a personal friendship with or any sort of animus toward him.)
In one recent episode, Jennings ♪threatened Adam Mockler of the :
While Jennings is the straw that stirs the drink, the entire show — whether or not Jennings is on it — focuses on one thing: Political combat. It is literally just people shouting at each other most of the time.
Let me be clear: I am not at all opposed to airing political differences in conversation. Especially on TV.
But let me also say this: The performative aspect of the “NewsNight” is what I can’t stand.
I am not saying that the guests booked on “NewsNight” don’t have genuine policy and political disagreements. What I am suggesting is that they are GROSSLY inflating their disagreements — and the tenor and volume with which they disagree — because it makes for (and I hate this phrase) “good TV.”
It reminds me of the “▶Let Them Fight!” meme from the Godzilla movie:
The entire point of the show is NOT to have a thoughtful debate on the news of the day. It is to put piranhas in a bowl and watch them tear each other apart.
Those fights can then be chopped up for social media sharing. Partisans weaponize them — “Look at Scott own the libs!!”, “Watch Abby smack down Scott!” — as part of the online outrage machine. That generates buzz around the show. More people watch. Ratings. The End.
I get it!
What depresses me is not that CNN has created a show aimed at watching partisans fight. CNN — like every other cable network — is not in great shape. The job of the executives is to get people to watch — RATINGS — and they have clearly found something with this format.
What depresses me is that people watch. LOTS of people. Scroll to the top of this post again; “NewsNight” averages 725,000 viewers every night, including 152,000 in the coveted 25-54 demographic.
That’s a lot of people!
Especially because NO ONE is tuning into that show to get smarter (or anything close to it) about politics and policy. You are tuning in to watch the rhetorical sparring. To watch someone get “dunked” on. Or “owned.”
Which is odd to me. Because any time I talk to ANYONE about the current state of our political dialogue, they invariably tell me that we need less shouting. That we need to learn to disagree without being disagreeable. That to truly move beyond this broken moment in our politics, we have to stop demonizing the other side and believing that anyone who disagrees with us is, at best, a moron, and, at worst, evil.
And it’s not just anecdotal. Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans think our political discourse is out of control — and want it tamped down.
And yet, the “LET THEM FIGHT” show is currently the highest-rated thing going for CNN!
What gives? I think the answer lies in one of my pet topics: The difference between who we want to be and who we actually are.
Who we want to be are the sort of people who spend our free time reading Foreign Affairs or the New York Review of Books (or, at a minimum, a long piece on coal-fired plants in the New York Times).
Who are ARE is the 725,000 people watching performative political fighting on cable TV from 10 pm to 11 pm every weeknight.
By the way, who we ALSO are are the sort of people who have made the “Real Housewives,” Kim Kardashian and a slew of other famous-for-being-famous folks very, very rich.
And the sort of people who would elect a reality TV star president of the United States not once but twice.
This is all bad for democracy. Really bad. The more we fetishize the fights over where we disagree, the further we drift from the MANY things on which we all agree. The more we lose our sense of our common humanity. The easier it becomes to hate and vilify the people with whom we disagree.
And when you hate people, treating them in inhuman ways gets a LOT easier.
I am not laying all of this solely at the feet of a single show on CNN. “NewsNight” is an effect of our awful political moment, not the cause. But in pursuit of ratings and relevance, shows like that one are actively making our already-bad political climate even more degraded.
And the worse part? We are complicit in it. We love the bloodsport. Bread and circuses, baby.
