What do you call it when three big leftist TV anchors bite the dust within the span of a few days?
A good start.
First it was Norah O’Donnell at CBS, then Jim Acosta at CNN and now it’s Chuck Todd at NBC.
Who says all the news is bad?
Their loss of prime pulpits is America’s gain.
Despite their different networks and roles, the common denominator is that they all believed they were too important to merely deliver the news.
Citing the facts in an honest and fair fashion was beneath them.
They oozed contempt for the working and middle classes and saw themselves as members of a ruling elite.
They told viewers how to think about everything and created narratives that reinforced their prejudices, especially when it involved Donald Trump.
For eight years, all stories involving him ended the same way: Trump is bad, wrong and often evil. Everything else is detail.
They were often out of touch with the nation and reality.
On many big stories, from the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax to the origins of COVID-19 and Joe Biden’s health and family corruption, they spread state propaganda and misinformation.
Because they were standard-issue Democrats in disguise, their fall from grace is something to cheer as Trump begins his second term.
Yet the vast majority of TV news continues to tilt so far left that three evictions must be just the first step if there is to be meaningful change.
The next step should include the networks imposing something of an informal fairness doctrine on their news programs.
Let viewers draw their own conclusions instead of being force-fed progressive mush.
Advocates and partisans should be limited to separate segments or programs and clearly identified as such.
Changing tides
Short of that, it’s still possible the departures of O’Donnell, Acosta and Todd, along with related events at the major networks, are signs that more fairness is coming to a television screen near you.
To be clear, I’m under no illusion that we are entering a new golden age of TV news.
Walter Cronkite is not coming back, and Trump Derangement Syndrome is contagious and deeply ingrained atin nearly all the legacy media outlets.
Yet a few rays of sunshine are emerging mostly because network bosses know they are paying a price for allowing their newsrooms to be dominated by radicals whose politics and values are estranged from those of most Americans.
Just as in 2016, Trump’s second victory proved that the media still doesn’t understand the national mood and his appeal.
Although he ran primarily on fixing border security and the economy, he also pledged to free government, academia and other sectors of contemporary culture from far-left dominance.
The size of his movement, at home and abroad, means he and his supporters can no longer be dismissed as temporary aberrations.
Woke was the aberration, and it’s now dead.
That’s clear to network bosses, but there is also another factor that suddenly looms large in their decisions about coverage.
They and their corporate owners desperately want to avoid confrontations with Trump and his administration because that could be very, very bad for business.
Much as tech wizards, banks and others business sectors are making their peace with the new sheriff in town, networks are trying to do something similar.
Trump’s leverage
In some cases, that means settling lawsuits Trump brought against them about their coverage.
ABC recently settled a defamation suit Trump filed by admitting error and paying $16 million to him for his legal fees and a presidential library.
The settlement came after the election and just days before depositions in a case sparked by rabid Democrat anchor George Stephanopoulos.
He had falsely claimed repeatedly that Trump was found liable for rape in a New York civil case.
Although defamation is difficult to prove by any public figure, let alone the most famous person in the world, ABC’s parent, Disney, did not want to tangle with the new president and his regulatory agencies.
It demanded the network make a deal even as Stephanopoulos objected.
CBS also has business reasons to tone down the anti-Trump fervor infecting its top programs. Network bosses fully supported O’Donnell’s snide, scolding tones of all things Republican — until she was moved out of the anchor chair days after Trump took office.
Even her final show dripped with partisanship as Oprah Winfrey, a top supporter of Kamala Harris, led a cringe-inducing tribute to her.
O’Donnell’s ratings have long been in the toilet, but her partisan tilt was the final straw after Trump’s victory.
The network’s corporate owner, Paramount Global, needs Federal Communications Commission approval for a planned merger with Skydance Media.
Concerns about the merger almost certainly explain why CBS suddenly entered into settlement talks with Trump about a lawsuit he filed against “60 Minutes” over how it handled a campaign interview with Harris.
Previously the network insisted it did nothing wrong, even though it showed Harris giving one answer in a promo and a different answer to the same question on the program.
Despite calls to explain the discrepancy, network officials stonewalled by refusing to release full video footage and transcript, which is why Trump sued even though success was a longshot.
Yet here we are, with Trump in the White House, settlement talks underway and his new head of the FCC demanding the same transcript and footage of the Harris interview.
This time the network complied after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr reportedly told Paramount that evidence of political bias would factor into the decision about whether to approve the merger, which would involve transferring broadcast licenses.
Fairing better
Corporate ownership is also a big issue at NBC, which showed Todd the exit.
Parent company Comcast wants to sell its cable assets, including MSNBC, which will require regulatory approval by the administration.
MSNBC’s anti-Trumpism is so disturbingly hateful that it often sounds like a fever swamp from another planet.
Comcast hasn’t made any effort to bring it back to Earth, but given that its audience has declined sharply and the regulation thicket ahead, that seems inevitable.
The business issues at CNN are different in that it faces a financial squeeze as it continues a long slide into oblivion.
Its decline contrasts starkly with Trump’s standing, as he is enjoying the highest public approval marks of his career.
As a result, the nonstop barrage against him from Acosta and others is proving to be a dead end with viewers, most of whom, even those who didn’t vote for Trump, desperately want to see America succeed at a time of national and international turmoil.
Across the TV news business, it would be ideal if the bosses suddenly saw the light about America’s need for honest, nonpartisan journalism and made changes in their approach.
But we can at least be hopeful that the networks will move closer to where they should be, even if it’s only because they fear Trump and want to protect the bottom line.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
