This made me just sigh:
High-profile morning anchor Soledad O’Brien is on her way out at CNN as new boss Jeff Zucker moves Erin Burnett into her morning slot, Page Six has exclusively learned.
We’re told award-winning journalist O’Brien has indicated she is ready to leave after she was initially promised a plum prime-time slot, but that role has so far failed to materialize.
A source tells us: “The deal to move Erin to the morning alongside Chris Cuomo is basically done. Soledad had been told she’d get a prime-time slot, but that hasn’t yet happened, and now she is telling friends she is likely to leave.”
The source added, “Soledad is talented at producing in-depth, serious pieces of journalism, and is a tough interviewer. That doesn’t seem to fit the direction the network is going.”
Soledad has embarrassed quite a few wingnuts lately, so time to dump her and go with Wall Street fluffer Erin Burnett. That last quote really says it all, though.
sharl
Of course…
Hill Dweller
Burnett is a Wall Street shill, which is a feature in today’s media landscape.
Ben Franklin
O’Brien has been a journalist……’nuff said. Fox got rid of Palin, so this seems fair.
Violet
Ugh. I can’t stand Erin Burnett. Unwatchable.
Hunter Gathers
It seems that CNN is going Full Retard.
Mike in NC
Shocked that they’d prefer a Koch Brother stenographer!
freemark
The heads of CNN really can’t understand why their ratings keep going down.
General Stuck
Comedy Central and the Onion are about all that’s left for serious journalism. Relatively speaking.
JPL
hmmm… What about Stella?
Poopyman
@Hunter Gathers: Ted Turner wept.
sharl
John Oliver investigates investigative journalism for The Daily Show, featuring former journalist Kaj Larsen. (5m59s)
Poopyman
@JPL: Well, she has about the same credentials as a serious interviewer as Erin Burnett, so there’s that.
Rex Everything
CNN just traded a filet mignon for a Breast Filet Whopper. I guess that’s regarded as a deal these days.
Rex Everything
In a perfect world, Soledad’s departing audience would spell doom for CNN….
ranchandsyrup
Burnett is married to a Citigroup exec and served as an advisor to Trump on the Apprentice. She’s uniquely qualified for CNN’s “direction”.
Ben Franklin
The odd thing is that the Right is upset with the Journos, as are we.
I guess if no one is happy with their performance, they must be doing their jobs.
sylvan
Personnel management decided by Twitter trends.
What a fascinating modern age we live in.
freemark
She asked real questions and expected real factual answers. She obviously didn’t understand real journalism.
Marc
I hope MSNBC or some other network snaps up O’Brien. Hers was the only show on CNN I could watch (and the only alternative to Morning Joe).
Yutsano
@Marc: She had a solid body of work at CNN. I can’t imagine any news agency leaving her in the unemployment line for long. I’ll laugh myself silly if she goes to work for Al Jazeera America. That would give the new kids on the block some good decent depth and a familiar face to open up the American market with.
Bubblegum Tate
Yeah, I was wondering how long she was going to get away with pointing out that wingnuts are liars.
scav
Currently Not News?
Cowardly Noise Network?
Continuous Noise Network?
Bulworth
Our failed media experiment, indeed.
Haydnseek
Sources at CNN have confirmed that Erin Burnett will be the new “Cruise Ship Crisis” correspondent. “Her ability to justify ridiculous 24/7 coverage of what is essentially a minor story makes her perfect for the job,” said Wolf Blitzers valet. “Soledad wanted to spend more time with her family, which is why she bailed on a very lucrative, prestigious position with a major news organization during her peak earning years. We wish her the best in her future endeavors.”
Members of the mainstream media were unable to comment, as they had their heads so far up their asses that their utterances, if any, were inaudible.
General Stuck
@Poopyman:
It’s worse than that for Ted. His boy is running for congress in GA, as a gold plated tea partier under the slogan, “I ain’t my hippy dippy Dad”.
Bubblegum Tate
@sharl:
I saw that segment, and it made me really want to see Larsen’s report on Guinea-Bissau.
mouse tolliver
@Hill Dweller:
Even worse than that. She’s the First Lady of Wall Street. Her husband is a Citigroup VP. This comes through loud and clear from the way she covers financial issues.
WereBear
Once again, something that would fit in perfectly at the Onion. Only, we’re living it.
AxelFoley
CNN stay failing.
kc
It doesn’t matter how many right-wing shills CNN puts on the air, the wingnuts will never trust the network. Never.
So it might as well practice some journalism, right? I guess not.
Ruckus
As we all know a real journalist would question the dogma and that can’t happen.
Once upon a time being a journalist would have been considered a good career, now it’s only a well paying one, and only when you make it to the upper reaches. There seems to be no requirement to ask the “hard” questions, in fact that seems like a detriment.
So the hard question becomes, “How does a democracy work without a functioning press?” And the answer is obvious, Not at all.
MikeJ
Somebody at CNN is going to need this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burn_centers_in_the_United_States
JWL
She not only poses intelligent questions to professional liars, but does it with a look on her face that her children must have dreaded seeing when they were little kids trying to pull the wool over her eyes.
cathyx
The source added, “Soledad is talented at producing in-depth, serious pieces of journalism, and is a tough interviewer. That doesn’t seem to fit the direction the network is going.”
This says it all. They don’t want a journalist.
kc
@General Stuck:
Teddy (that is what he calls himself) Turner is running for Tim Scott’s seat in SC. One of his GOP opponents is Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford.
And yeah, Teddy seems like a douchebag. Remember when Ted said he shouldn’t have had all those kids? He was right.
Yutsano
@JWL: That made me check teh Wiki. Yup, four kidlets (including twin boys!) and I learned she’s half Aussie. No wonder she’s so frickin’ awesome.
Ruckus
@Haydnseek:
Members of the mainstream media were unable to comment, as they had their heads so far up their asses that their utterances, if any, were inaudible.
That’s not very nice. True, but not very nice.
General Stuck
@kc:
Thanks, so it was SC. I been wrong about everything today,. Colesque.
donovong
I couldn’t watch O’Brien’s show due to the presence of Will Cain and Margaret Hoover, permanent residents of Wingnuttia. Hell, Cain is promoted as a member of The Blaze, for fuck sake.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@mouse tolliver:
The subtitle to this story is: Do Randroids dream of electric sheeple?
MattF
I guess that since Erick ibn Erick left, CNN has felt a need to balance Wolf Blitzer with someone on the right.
jamus4
fvck this, we want cat updates!
pseudonymous in nc
“Now on CNN, Erin Burnett with her regular segment: ‘Wall Street Bankers: Great Americans or Greatest Americans?'”
kc
@jamus4:
And we want them now!
Redshift
@mouse tolliver: That reminds me — I stopped by my father-in-law’s place to drop off some stuff about a week ago, and he was watching some “news” show on PBS. They were talking to some guy from a financial firm for financial news. He was assuring them that the sequester was no big deal for the economy, but it was good we’d dealt with the “fiscal cliff,” because the “giant tax increases” that would have hit would have definitely pushed us into recession.
It occurred to me I should have made a note of the name of his firm, so I could avoid ever taking advice from people who are that idiotic, but they probably don’t deal with peons like me anyway.
Hoodie
I’d say this is part of CNN still looking for a market. They’re going more into straight corporate whoremongering than deeper down the right-wing rabbit hole. Soledad didn’t fit that plan because she does “in-depth, serious pieces of journalism.” which invariably have something to do with corporate malfeasance in collusion with bought and paid for pols. Maybe CNN figures that Fox has the wingnuts (the stupid and or angry), MSNBC has the liberals and they will go for the corrupt. Maybe they could get better ratings than Morning Schmoe and give MSNBC a reason to ditch that POS.
geg6
If MSNBC has a brain among their upper management, they’ll snap Soledad up right away. She’s better than anyone they currently have on the roster.
And this was bound to happen as soon as Jeff Zucker brought his FAIL to CNN. This was the guy that took the Today Show from happy talk morning ratings power house to sad also ran against Good Morning to the Clinton Aide Freaked Out by Blow Jobs. He fired that nice inoffensive decades-long news reader, Ann Curry, and pissed off all the retired people who watch morning dreck. NBC’s ratings have improved exponentially since they fired Zucker as president of the network. Hopefully, he sucks even worse at CNN and I’d say this move indicates that he plans to outdo himself.
maya
This move should make Tweety happy. He had/s a See Alice size erection for Erin IIRC.
Xecky Gilchrist
Forget it, Jake, it’s cable news.
raven
@kc: Check out Jane and Tom’s son:
geg6
@maya:
Meh, he gets that for any half-attractive woman who is on his show. I’ve seen him drool over both Joy Ann Reid and Jan Schakowsky (sp?). That’s quite a range of women there.
quannlace
O’Brien was one of the few reasons to tune in. Congrats, CNN. How many more feet do you have to shoot yourself through?
Bullsmith
It’s not news. It’s propaganda. Soledad was getting the whole basic concept wrong.
sylvan
@geg6:
Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes are at least as good.
In a perfect world they would have the morning show instead of the intern killer and his pet concern troll.
Xantar
@geg6:
Not to mention Zucker was the guy who thought it would be a great idea to make Jay Leno into a prime time show five nights a week and screw over Conan O’Brien in the process. His career at NBC is quite amazing to behold because every time he demonstrably caused their ratings to tank, he got a promotion. I’m convinced at this point that he has green balloon pictures of everyone in Hollywood. There’s no other way to explain why anybody would think he has any credibility as a network executive.
raven
@geg6: If a man said some dumb shit like that motherfuckers would be havin a stroke.
FlipYrWhig
@Hoodie: It sounds like they’re trying to compete with, not Fox, but CNBC. Which, whenever I’ve seen it (one of the TVs at the senior-heavy town gym is always on it), has been just odious in every respect.
Chris
@Hoodie:
How many Wall Street bankers and lawyers are there to pander to?
Forum Transmitted Disease
The wingers stare at me as though I’m mad when I call CNN the “Conservative News Network”.
And they still will, even if Rush Limbaugh himself were to take over the prime-time slot. They will never accept that CNN is anything but the liberal-brainwashing creation of the guy that stuck his dick in Hanoi Jane and picked up her hippieism like it was syphilis.
Elizabelle
That’s appalling news.
I wonder where Soledad will land, and hope it’s an excellent forum for her.
Geez, maybe Comedy Central SHOULD recruit some actual, hard-hitting journalists and put out an online daily current events/news show aimed at the TDS/Colbert audience.
Not necessarily cable TV, and not 24/7, but maybe a few hours of intelligent journalism, handled with humor where possible and gravity where required.
Pundit free, and where Nobel prize winners (Krugman, etc) can appear without being assailed by 3rd rate Gingrich era congresscritters.
Produce interesting segments that viewers can email around and blog about. Would have links so readers/viewers could follow up on the original reporting and explore more.
Maybe Ted Turner could fund it.
Maybe dinner will fall from the sky, fully cooked. Gotta go.
El Cid
It doesn’t fit where the network has been, either.
handsmile
I’m astounded by the praise for Soledad O’Brien that’s been expressed by a number of commenters here. I can only imagine those who do must rarely watch her hosting of the CNN morning program “Starting Point” or its predecessor “American Morning.”
Watching it every weekday morning (surfing between CNN, MSNBC, BBC America, and Al-Jazeera), I have never once seen any example of “in-depth, serious pieces of journalism” from O’Brien and this claim of being a “tough interviewer” is simply ridiculous. While her questions may occasionally discomfit some GOP congressman or conservative spokesmodel, O’Brien is every bit as much of a reliable enabler and apologist for right-wing policies and positions as anyone on that travesty of a news network. To be marginally more competent than hacks like Joe Scarborough or the Fox Friends should not merit much commendation. To assert she has more journalistic integrity than Erin Burnett is to say absolutely nothing at all.
The following is a link to a segment from Burnett’s very first show as host of CNN’s “Outfront.” Everything one needs to know about Ms. Burnett as a journalist and as a human being is on display here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–pvo3yV8Y8
different-church-lady
At some point we’re going to have to somehow address the “junkie” component of cable news viewership (and perhaps even of the political internets). This race to the bottom is happening, I think, partially because those who are “hooked” on cable news cannot look away from the train wreck. Most people don’t want it to be horrible, but the very horribleness is part of what keeps the hook in.
It’s as if a major railroad said, “Wow, look at all the people who turn out to gawk at train wrecks! We should stage these things on a regular basis.” Cable news is wretched because the executives have become convinced that wretchedness is the appeal. And they’re not entirely wrong about it.
liberal
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
LOL. Clever.
liberal
My favorite thing on Ted Turner: “Ted Turner Sends Self Back In Time To Prevent AOL Time Warner Merger”
different-church-lady
@handsmile: [insert boilerplate reference to the Overton Window here]
liberal
@handsmile:
Point taken.
It’s like calling Burnett a Wall St shill, when in fact most prominent MSM journalists are Wall St shills. She’s just shill-ier.
bemused
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Rightwingers always seem to be surprised when liberals say they have no use for the “librul” media as though we revere it as they do Fox. You’d think that would confuse them just a little.
different-church-lady
@Rex Everything:
Forum Transmitted Disease
@different-church-lady: It’s serious. My elderly mother figured out how to circumvent the channel block I’d put on Fox, which is a pretty impressive feat by any standards. She would not be denied. It is an addiction, one I don’t get because I don’t watch TV in pretty much any form save for ripped nature documentaries from the BBC – every time I’m around it I find it gets weirder and weirder, less comprehensible if you will.
Something’s got the viewers hooked but good. I don’t know what it is.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris:
A lot. Currying their favor is the raison d’etre for CNBC.
bemused
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Oh my, that’s amazing, um, how elderly is your mother? Is it possible someone helped her?
Eric U.
I remember when CNN had to fill time with 3 Stooges reruns.
Oh, wait…
sylvan
@handsmile:
I never watch CNN, but from what I gather wingnuts hate her with the intensity of a thousand suns.
Anti-Soledad posts reliably climb up the Memorandum ladder.
I think her name has a lot to do with it.
handsmile
@different-church-lady:
For some time now, I’ve been a great fan of Al-Jazeera’s news programming and documentaries, the latter of which are usually to be found on its website:
http://www.aljazeera.com/
Living in the NYC media market, I’m fortunate to have access to the network 24/7. With its recent acquisition of Current TV and the imminent establishment of “Al-Jazeera America,” I’m cautiously optimistic about the prospects of moving that Overton window for many more cable news viewers in the US.
That Fox News earlier today denounced Al-Jazeera for its “real anti-American bias” with a nefarious potential to awaken Muslim sleeper cells in this country only underscores my optimism and respect for the network.
Seanly
@sylvan:
I like Maddow & a lot of what she says, but she repeats everything 6 fuggin’ times before she makes her point. Just say things once & then make your point. It’s the verbal equivalent of when my little brother would have the X-fighter crashing, then draw his arm back then forward again a few times before making the final crash noises.
Also, IIRC O’Brien is an actual journalist while Maddow is a poli sci PhD. To my mind there wouldn’t be much overlap in role or audience.
Eric U.
when I was in Doha on the occasion of Daddy Bush’s gulf war, the locals were (illegally?) broadcasting CNN International. CNN International was pretty good at the time, not sure about now. The guy that started Al-Jazeera was left in charge when his dad wimped out and left for France.
I always thought a news channel that was actually a news channel would sell pretty well. The issue is that it would naturally have a left-wing bias if it left out the right-wing propaganda.
handsmile
@sylvan:
It might possibly have something to do with her mixed-racial parentage as well. You’ll recall there’s another prominent contemporary American with a mixed-racial heritage for whom the wingnuts profess similar sentiments.
Ben Franklin
@FlipYrWhig:
Iran has the right idea. they’re gonna hang their own Banksters.
http://www.beaconequity.com/four-iranian-bankers-sentenced-to-hang-iran-leads-america-2012-08-01/
The Sailor
The original news reports of the change in management seemed to indicate that CNN decided they couldn’t be Fox New Lite, it didn’t pay enough.
This change seems to indicate they want to race Fox News to the bottom.
p.s. I don’t watch any news shows, I read about them.
geg6
@sylvan:
I’ll agree about Chris Hayes. Not such a huge fan of Maddow. She’s fine and all, but she just doesn’t excite me. I usually skip her show, as I do most of the MSNBC primetime lineup. I watch Chris Hayes’ weekend shows, Reverend Al every now and again because I find him entertaining, and I watch Tweety fairly regularly, like with Reverend Al, mainly for entertainment purposes. And to see what the Village is saying. He’s the least offensive media outlet for Village gossip.
sylvan
@Seanly:
Everything? Six times? Are you sure?
That sounds more like Al Sharpton.
sylvan
@geg6:
Fair enough. My favorite thing about Chris Hayes is that I usually learn something I didn’t already know from blogs.
greenergood
Please, Soledad O’Brien, dress up like the BBC Director General, take BBC World News America’s Katty Kay out to dinner and tell her she’s fired. Kay has become toe-curlingly media-gooey and useless – Soledad could flourish in her place.
Rex Everything
@different-church-lady: In a perfect world CNN would exist for me to poop on.
JustRuss
@sylvan:
Wingnuts hate the Irish?
sylvan
@JustRuss:
It’s a family tradition.
Mork from Ork
I just wanted to fix that quote for you:
mai naem
I wish MSNBC would pick up Soledad but I have to wonder if they have the money. I would love them to have one more show in the evening instead of all the repeats. I wouldn’t mind if she took over the pathetic Cycle. Toure, SE Cupp and Crystal Ball are pathetic. Steve K. is the only one I can stand on that show. Does Tamron Hall need her show being that she’s on the Today show so much. I find Ed Schultz annoying but I get that he attracts his own audience.
Arclite
O’Brien has talent and charisma. Maybe PBS will pick her up and add her to the News Hour, or give her her own show. Oh, wait, nope. I forgot, she can’t work at PBS. She has charisma.
Arclite
@mai naem:
That’s a great idea, actually. Cut out an hour of Morning Joe and give her a slot. Between Rachel and Soledad, MSNBC could have some really solid programming.
tatateeta
I never watch CNN. Don’t have cable and CNN doesn’t do it for me. But I have seen many clips of Ms. O’Brien on the internet and like what I have seen. I hope she lands on her feet and wish her luck.
tatateeta
@Rex Everything: @scav:
Cretinous Nebbish Network?
waynski
@sylvan: joescar is a dipshit, but he didnt kill his intern. Stop it.
Villago Delenda Est
@waynski:
Are you sure?
The investigation of her death was perfunctory, at best.
And then suddenly JoeScar resigns from Congress.
What a coinkydink!
gopher2b
Erin does have a certain…..she does great research??……she went to Harvard?? …..okay….I would like to bang her all weekend during a getaway to Paris.
YellowJournalism
In other pundit news, I noticed the other day that Sarah Palin was replaced by another pretty face: Scott Brown. Herman Cain is now also an official Fox News contributor or whatever they call it now, but at least old Herman provides the laughs by saying crazy shit.
Patricia Kayden
Hopefully O’Brien will go to MSNBC and become a commentator. I don’t watch CNN, but she appears to be a good journalist. CNN’s loss.
NorthLeft12
@Ben Franklin: I hope this was an attempt at sarcasm. There are in fact some real journalists hard at work among the hacks, shills, pundits, and just plain incompetents that currently populate the news media.
Unfortunately, it seems that their contributions and efforts go unrewarded while those that hew to the corporate line seem to prosper. Go figure.
El Cid
Gone are the glory days when CNN could excite a nation by allowing us to watch In Real Time the totally awsum smart bomb blowing up of targets in Gulf War 1 without all that attention to the massive dumb-bombing of troops and cities, and its courageous repression of Peter Arnett when he reported openly that Our Holy Military might have intentionally bombed a civilian bomb shelter.
Many Americans first learned about the post-Vietnam clean and exciting precision nature of the new fun warfare from that innovative, saturation-campaign coverage.
Yes, yes, we don’t want to sully that proud legacy.
toned
@liberal:
I second that -pure genius.
toned
I DVR Rachel because I could never,never endure that many commercials, ad I do hit the skip forward button[30 sec] to avoid the ENDLESS reiterations.
I yell at the TV quite often “get to the point,” “We GET it” ok already , etc.,.
To be fair I suspect it is related to doing radio for so long -you have to keep the audience on subject with reiteration, but on tv it is not so necessary