The firings of Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson doesn't mean the end of hyperpartisan cable news networks

Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$ds_changed in eval() (line 16 of /var/www/7/modules/php/php.module(80) : eval()'d code).
Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$ss_search_api_url in eval() (line 20 of /var/www/7/modules/php/php.module(80) : eval()'d code).
Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$tm_title in eval() (line 20 of /var/www/7/modules/php/php.module(80) : eval()'d code).

“I am happy to know someone like him no longer has the platform he had built,” she exclaimed.

Metadata

Provider:

URL:

Retrieved on:

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Information

Tags:

Geotags:

Summary

Key Points:

“I am happy to know someone like him no longer has the platform he had built,” she exclaimed.
Similarly, CNN anchor Don Lemon’s ouster on April 23, 2023 – the same day as Carlson’s – generated an equal amount of celebration from conservatives.
In this age of hyperpartisan news programming, both Carlson and Lemon proved talented at providing perspectives that confirmed their audience’s view of the world.

The internet, smartphones and social media further fragmented audiences.
As journalists and media scholars have noted, the solution for many media companies in the 1990s was to target their programming to a single demographic instead of trying to attract a larger, general audience.
Scholars and journalists note that in order to attract a targeted demographic, cable news media relied on hyperpartisan reporting that framed news stories as liberal versus conservative.

Whether it was accurate or not, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” provided far-right ideological content that drew an average of 3 million nightly viewers, and Carlson became the highest-rated personality in cable news media.
Whether he actually believed any of those falsehoods remains unknown.
At the time, nearly 70% of Tucker’s target audience believed that the election was stolen.
As a result, despite knowing the 2020 election was not stolen, Carlson continued to report the exact opposite of what he knew to be false.

In stark contrast to Carlson, Lemon positioned himself as CNN’s chief liberal scolder of the Trump era.
An April 2023 report from Variety appeared to spell the end for Lemon on CNN.
According to the report, Lemon was accused of threatening several female co-workers because they were hired for positions he felt he deserved.

At CNN, audience size for the show on which Lemon was co-host was shrinking for quite some time -– much like that for the network in general.
Furthermore, since 2021, major companies such as Disney, Papa John’s, Poshmark and T-Mobile had refused to advertise on Carlson’s program.
For cable news personalities, partisanship – not journalism – can be a job requirement.