The decline of American mainstream media has long been obvious, with public trust and revenues plunging. Some companies are responding with the novel idea of restoring objectivity and neutrality to coverage. For years, news organizations have essentially written off half of the country. However, as news organizations struggle to avoid even greater layoffs, staffers are fighting efforts to bring balance to their networks. That was evident last week in meetings at CNN and CBS where staffers continue to fight to retain their bias rather than their jobs.
CNN has long aired controversial hosts and guests who engaged in controversial statements on race and politics from the left. However, a meeting last week focused on the airing of one of the few conservatives who regularly appear on the network. As one staff member reportedly raised, there was outrage that Jennings is “allowed to exist” on the network. Even as CNN continues to languish in ratings, staffers want to fire one of the few remaining conservative voices on the network.
One of the key issues raised in the meeting was Jennings referring to “illegal aliens.” While CNN bars the term, it is used in federal law and federal cases, including by the United States Supreme Court.
In one exchange on Jan. 19, Jennings trades barbs with fellow panelist Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Kasky criticized Jennings for saying that ICE should be allowed to “chase down illegals” in Minnesota.
Jennings pushed back: “Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t say? I’ve never met you, brother. I can say whatever I want. They’re illegal aliens. And that’s what the law calls them. Illegal aliens. That’s what I’m going to call them.”
Staff members reportedly denounced him as a “MAGA mouthpiece” and a “firebrand Trump loyalist” who “frequently gets into verbal spats with other CNN guests.” It is a curious objection since these panels are supposed to be lively contrasts between guests.
The meeting is reminiscent of the effort at the Washington Post to get staffers to recognize the company’s declining position.
Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:
“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response from staffers was to call for the new editors to be fired. One staffer complained, “We now have four White men running three newsrooms.” The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters were up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.
The same dynamic is playing out at CBS, where Bari Weiss was brought in to turn around the network.
Weiss has been the subject of anonymous attacks since the company brought her in to reverse the decline in ratings. Like Lewis, Weiss tried to explain that the staff is “not producing a product that enough people want” and that something has to change.
According to reports, Weiss was direct and candid with the staff. She stated:
“I need to start by acknowledging that there’s been a lot of noise around me taking this job. … I get it. I also get why, in the face of all this tumult, you might feel uncertain or skeptical about me or what I’m aiming to do here. I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers.”
However, she was also clear that returning to past practices is not one of the options:
“So, here it is as plain as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here…Back then, 30 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. Some were on the left, some were on the right. But they trusted him. Through Cronkite, they inhabited a shared world with shared facts and a shared sense of reality. We can’t reverse time’s arrow. He had two competitors. We have two billion, give or take.”
She then made the same point as Lewis with a brutally honest and brilliantly blunt assessment: “What we can do is what journalists do best: look at the world as it actually is. We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves. We are not producing a product that enough people want.”
Weiss concluded with this powerful line:
“I realize that none of these ideas are revolutionary on their own. What’s different now is that the stakes are so very high. And the hour is late. And we are in a position, with the support of all of the leadership of this company, to really make the change we need.”
Any rational person would hear these words and understand that Weiss is struggling to protect these staffers from themselves; struggling to keep their jobs. Instead, the response has been glacial from journalists, who believe they should be able to continue covering stories for one another and for an ever-shrinking audience on the left.
The fact is that we need CNN and CBS. The Framers understood the importance of an independent press. These companies helped revolutionize media and could be restored if the staff stopped obstructing reform efforts.
Instead, staff members continue to furiously saw at the branch upon which they sit.
Much like Trump trying to save a country that does not want to be saved.
“The Framers understood the importance of an independent press” — How independent is CNN or CBS? I think that is the question. In terms of who owns them, they are independent. In terms of political thought, they are not.
There are no “jounalists” at CNN, WAPO or CBS. Only propagandists for the DNC and loony left. To them, facts are racist.
To remove Scott Jennings from CNN is like removing the flush lever from a toilet.
“The decline of American mainstream media has long been obvious”
– Professor Turley
_____________________
The MSM is NOT journalism or news reporting; it is communist brainwashing, propaganda, and indoctrination that is designed to diminish America and to promote the “dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. hired help),” which was long ago subsumed by the self-styled, ostensibly elite, and superior universal intelligentsia, which is conducted in concert with the communist teachers’ union public school system.
Now you understand the existential imperative that is the absolute “manifest tenor” of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, 1789.
The truth of the matter is that the powers in Washington and the Media have broken the American Backbone.
They have squandered what; opportunity, fortune and time we have had. Mindless Waste is all what remains.
May the lord take me now
Both companies need to hire new people and fire the deadwood who won’t and can’t change. There’s no time to waste trying to talk reason to the unreasonable. They don’t believe in rational discussion and debate but are locked into rigid ideological positions. Just fire them.
Absolutely. Fire them. Circulate old journalism guides of the WHO WHAT WHERE WHY WHEN variety. Stupid woke opinions? Save it for the opinion page.
Clinton contempt votes will hit the House floor next Wednesday
Several Democrats broke with their party last week to advance the resolutions against Bill and Hillary Clinton.
House GOP leaders are planning votes next Wednesday on a pair of contempt of Congress resolutions against former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private planning.
The Rules Committee will meet at 4 p.m. Monday to consider the resolutions for the floor. …
By: Meredith Lee Hill – Politico ~ 01/29/2026
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/01/29/congress/bill-hillary-clinton-contempt-of-congress-vote-00755863
House panel moves to consider criminal referrals for the Clintons
A contempt of Congress conviction carries up to a year in jail and a maximum $100,000 fine
The House Rules Committee, the final gatekeeper before most legislation gets a chamber-wide vote, is slated to consider a pair of contempt of Congress resolutions targeting the Clintons at 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
By: Elizabeth Elkind – Fox News ~ February 2, 2026
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-panel-moves-consider-criminal-referrals-clintons
Tickler Watch: Wednesday February 4th 2026
The House plan to hold full floor votes on holding the Clintons in contempt of Congress.
“The House plan to hold full floor votes on holding the Clintons in contempt of Congress.”
So we get more political theater, with a cr@pload of posturing, even though ultimately the Clintons are almost certainly going to skate. Lovely.
Realize that many of the so-called “journalists” at CBS and WAPO are of the generation that received participation trophies. They learned that one was awarded a trophy for just being there regardless whether their team won or lost, and regardless of how they performed as an individual. Competitiveness to strive to win, and the superior excellence and work required to do so, was discouraged and frowned upon, an attitude supported by most parents, mostly because they did not want to deal with a sore loser child crying on the way home. So now we have journalists who value their participation and believe it should be rewarded more that the results of their work and who are crying when their work is criticized. Coaches Bari Weiss and Robert Lewis each need a new team.
Appeals court dismisses DOJ misconduct complaint against federal judge
Judge James Boasberg faced misconduct allegations over comments about Trump administration triggering ‘constitutional crisis’
A federal appeals court dismissed a Justice Department misconduct complaint against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, according to court documents revealed this week.
By: Anders Hagstrom – Fox News ~ February 2, 2026
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/appeals-court-dismisses-doj-misconduct-complaint-against-federal-judge
Misconduct complaint dismissed against judge who handled El Salvador prison deportation case
The complaint against U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg was dismissed on Dec. 19 by Jeffrey S. Sutton, chief judge of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals but the order only came to light this weekend. …
In the dismissal order, Sutton said the Justice Department never provided a listed attachment to provide proof of what Boasberg said or the context of the alleged statement at the closed-door conference. …
“A recycling of unadorned allegations with no reference to a source does not corroborate them. And a repetition of uncorroborated statements rarely supplies a basis for a valid misconduct complaint,” said Sutton, who was appointed by President George W. Bush to the appeals court circuit that covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
By: Carolyn Van Houten – AP News ~ February 1, 2026
https://apnews.com/article/boasberg-salvador-venezuela-judge-trump-misconduct-complaint-5a3f70937959f552f4f42e549c85c3c6
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court, the juristocracy, which usurps and exercises both legislative and executive power high-criminally with impunity.
Seems that the solution is pretty easy. Convert ‘staffers’ into ‘former staffers’.
Stepping back, this is a systems problem, not a partisan one.
In a constitutional republic, journalism has a clear purpose. The output is truthful, fact-based, non-ideological information that allows citizens to form their own judgments and exercise self-government. That output standard is fixed.
The inputs journalists work with are inherently variable. Incomplete information, conflicting sources, uncertainty, and time pressure have always existed. That variability is precisely why a process exists.
Every newsroom runs an internal process that transforms messy inputs into a repeatable output. Over time, that output is observable and measurable. Accuracy, correction behavior, separation of fact from opinion, transparency, and framing consistency are not ideological metrics. They are quality metrics.
When an outlet consistently fails to meet the output standard, the diagnosis is straightforward. Either the process is broken, or it is designed to produce something other than objective journalism. Persistent outcomes usually tell us which.
This is not about left versus right, or which outlet one prefers. It is about whether journalism is willing to define its purpose, accept measurement, and be accountable to the public it exists to serve.
A fair question, then, is why anyone would object to this framework.
Defining purpose, setting output standards, and measuring whether processes meet those standards is how every serious profession maintains trust and quality. Journalism should not be uniquely exempt.
If the goal truly is to inform the public with objective truth, measurement and accountability should be welcomed, not resisted. Resistance raises a legitimate question about whether the system’s actual purpose aligns with its stated one.
Well stated.
I think this is not journalism but opinionism masking as journalism. I believe the problem is much as you have stated and now the pendulum is swinging back, there is a doubling down because most cannot admit even to themselves they are not being honest.
I think that is exactly right Quiet Man. When opinion and advocacy are layered over reporting but presented as journalism, the system still produces an output, just not the one people think they are getting. From a systems perspective, the doubling down makes sense. When identity and status become tied to the output, admitting error feels existential rather than corrective. That is how systems resist change even as trust erodes. The pendulum does not swing because people are punished. It swings because reality asserts itself through outcomes. Over time, credibility follows those willing to align process with truth rather than protect narratives.
. “Advocacy journalism ” is simply Advertisement. It runs on persuasion and persuasion of this kind runs on emotion and not reason. There is objective persuasion that is rigorous and proves the point by using fact and reason.
The View is a democrat advertisement based in emotional name calling. It’s a political campaign ad and should be charged as such. The same holds true for the breathless emotionalism of MSM.
I like your consumer formation! Yes, advertising pretty girls and Ford mustangs worked!
It sells.
One additional systems element that inevitably comes up is the formation of the consumer. No information system operates in isolation from its audience. Citizens bring varying levels of education, critical thinking, and civic formation to what they consume. That matters, but it does not absolve the producer of responsibility for meeting an objective output standard.
This connects directly to a deeper systems issue. In a healthy constitutional republic, journalism and citizen formation are distinct but complementary systems. Journalism informs. Citizens form themselves through judgment, debate, and civic responsibility.
Increasingly, however, journalism appears to view itself not as an informer but as the system that forms the citizen. That role shift explains much of the resistance to objective standards. Once journalism sees itself as responsible for shaping outcomes rather than supplying facts, advocacy becomes justified and objectivity becomes optional.
Reasserting objective journalism standards removes that power. It restores journalism to its proper role as an information system and returns the responsibility for judgment and formation to the citizen, where it belongs.
Blaming audiences for poor journalism, or blaming journalism for unformed citizens, misses the point. Both are interacting parts of the same system, and a constitutional republic only functions when each stays within its proper role and aligns around truth.
. Formation of consumers,Olly, is a fine observation. Are advertisements also forming consumers?
. Is Don Lemon actually a producer of a crime program, drama? He’s written himself into the script as the press. Paid actors, homeless people commit a crime while Lemon videos and reports by interview? Staged journalism may be a new genre?
The J6 committee hired script writers and filmography much the same. We’re watching a movie in real time produced by government and the people are actors and re-actors. Actual murder is scripted.
The people are losing interest as consumer formation dwindles. Too much pain and zero pleasure will do that.
As a citizen I do have civil rights and expect peace and tranquility. That’s reasonable.
Thank you for – consumer formation.
Those are fair questions, and they actually help clarify an important distinction. Advertising absolutely forms consumers. That is its explicit purpose. Journalism, in a constitutional republic, was not designed to do that. It was designed to inform citizens so they could exercise judgment.
When I talk about citizen formation, I mean voluntary, self-directed development of civic judgment. What I criticize in modern media is involuntary audience formation through narrative and emotional manipulation. Those are not the same thing.
Journalism’s role in citizen formation is to provide information, not formation itself./b> The act of formation belongs to the citizen, not the press.
Where the concern arises is when journalism adopts the techniques of advertising, entertainment, or dramatization. Once reporting relies on staging, scripting, narrative arcs, or emotional manipulation, the system has crossed from information into formation. At that point, it begins to resemble theater more than journalism.
From a systems perspective, that shift is measurable. The focus moves from facts and verification to engagement, emotion, and storyline. Viewers become participants in a narrative rather than citizens evaluating information.
It is also true that people eventually disengage when the system produces pain, outrage, or fear without resolution or agency. That is not a failure of the citizen. It is a predictable outcome of a system optimized for emotional reinforcement rather than understanding.
A healthy republic depends on role clarity. Journalism informs. Advertising persuades. Entertainment dramatizes. Citizens judge and act. When those roles blur, trust erodes and civic peace becomes harder to sustain.
OLLY,
“A fair question, then, is why anyone would object to this framework.”
I would say the answer is, that framework undermines a narrative. An agenda. MSM used to be the only game in town. They had a captive audience. They could shape what their audience saw, heard, and had to be exposed to. As I have stated here on the good professor’s blog before, I used to listen to NPR from Morning Edition to All Things Considered. Even out in the fields. They had their bias, but you could easily ignore it and still get the news. To include driveway moments. Then 2016 happened and they went all in on advocacy journalism and it was down hill from there.
Now, there are many Independent sources of news that does in fact adhere to that framework or much more so than MSM. That is why people are switching off MSM. They are willing to pay subscriptions to news sources they feel and know they can trust. Those who maintain the credibility, reliability, objectivity of traditional news will gain the trust of the American people while those who continue to resist, will not.
Upstate, I think that is largely right, and it fits the systems analysis. When a framework introduces objective standards and measurement, it removes the ability to control outcomes through narrative alone. That is uncomfortable for any institution that has grown accustomed to shaping perception rather than informing judgment.
When legacy media had a near monopoly on distribution, narrative discipline could be maintained without immediate feedback. Once competition and choice entered the system, credibility became visible through outcomes. Audience behavior became a form of measurement.
I would add one more systems observation. Citizens who have allowed media to form them, rather than inform them, will naturally resist anything that disrupts that feedback loop. When identity and worldview are reinforced by an information system, introducing objective standards feels destabilizing rather than corrective.
What we are seeing now is not a rejection of journalism itself. It is a rejection of advocacy presented as journalism. People are willing to pay for sources they believe consistently meet standards of accuracy, objectivity, and reliability.
In systems terms, trust follows performance. Outlets that align their process with the original purpose of journalism will regain credibility. Those that resist standards in order to preserve narrative control will continue to lose it.
The irony is too much…
I found this article in the “For You” section of my X feed posted by Jonathan Turley. Immediately after it is a Wall Street Apes posting talking about Nick Shirley and David Hoch discussing new Minnesota fraud evidence. Tried to attach a screenshot but this low tech comment section can’t handle that, below is a text version of it.
…and they wonder why they’re going out of business?
Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley · 5h
As news companies struggle to avoid even greater layoffs, staffers are fighting efforts to bring balance to their networks. That was evident last week in meetings at CNN and CBS where staffers continue to fight to retain their bias rather than their jobs.
jonathanturley.org
The Circular Firing Squad: Staffers at CNN and CBS Denounce Efforts to Restore Balance
The decline of American mainstream media has long been obvious, with public trust and revenues plunging. Some companies are responding with the novel idea of restoring objectivity and neutrality to…
Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes ·. 18h
Nick Shirley’s investigation partner David says he has new never before released Minnesota fraud evidence he will present in official testimony on February 4th
He explains the only way for the federal government to solve this is to go in and arrest the politicians
“The federal
Show more
Hell yeah – I say the staffers should go on strike and picket immediately to shut down operations! Oh wait a minute, that means these morons would lose pay and possibly jobs and be labelled as self-destructive half wits. Well do it any morons!! Just call mom and dad to bail you out! IDIOTS.
Dear Mr. Turley, I haven’t watched a network news program for around 30 years or so. It was one-sided for the democrats, yes, even back then. The left had the media all sewn up including NPR and PBS. It was hard to know where to find a balanced news program. So, I am thankful there are other news sources to read and listen to.
It is called a death spiral. The problem for Leftist Media is right wing audiences no longer watch TV at all. You are not getting them back no matter what you do. So trying to reform just alienates the long time leftist audience, and fails to get any new viewers. The main problem with Media profitability is the old monopolies are gone, and are not coming back. Any attempt at reform just drives someone away without getting new viewers. Doing nothing just results in a slow decline as the existing audience dies off.
“The problem for Leftist Media is right wing audiences no longer watch TV at all. ”
I’m more libertarian that right-wing, but your point is valid. The only TV programming that I have watched in several years is movies, mostly old ones.
Hate to say it, but might need to look at what the J-Schools are teaching. When I was in college, we were hammered every day that both sides of a story must be researched and reported. It was drilled into us. Based on what I see today in print/online and broadcast, that is not taught or it is completely ignored in much of the news business.
No Professor Turley we don’t need CNN and CBS! CNN will never again be the first network calling the invasion of a radical foreign country from a hotel room within that country, and sadly Walter Cronkite is no longer at CBS! These network will NEVER be what they once were, GREAT!!
Trust Walter Cronkite? We never had a choice however, today more Americans are waking up and seeking knowledge from independent and multiple sources as professional journalist should have been doing all along. A freedom loving people will seek knowledge and naturally be less woke. Common sense and natural law will rule when left alone.
“The decline of American mainstream media has long been obvious,” -JT , Obvious to Some.
Rephrase:
The decline of American mainstream media has long been the Toy-Boy of the Deep State and it has become more and more obvious.
If American Mainstream Media were serious, then NO MORE SECRETS.
!!! RELEASE THE BURN BAGS NOW !!!
!!! RELEASE THE BURN BAGS NOW !!!
!!! RELEASE THE BURN BAGS NOW !!!
!!! RELEASE IT ALL NOW !!!
Comey, Brennen, Wray, HRC … et.al.
DRAIN THE SWAMP!
You can put lipstick on a pig.