In what appears to be a desperate publicity blitz to prop up a flailing cable news network, earlier this week CNN anchor Jake Tapper yukked it up with fellow Trump-hating Leftist Seth Myers on “Late Night.” Then on Wednesday, CNN chief Jeff Zucker sat down with Fox News-hating journalist Gabriel Sherman. Both Tapper and Zucker are obviously afraid to make their case outside of a safe space. Moreover, both have now been caught spinning furiously with something less than the truth.
Tapper went out to reassure the world that “every word” of his sleazy Trump attack from last week was true (it wasn’t), and now Zucker, despite all polling evidence to the contrary, is out there defensively claiming, “I think our credibility is higher than ever[.]”
And just who are these people who believe CNN’s credibility is “higher than ever”?
It is certainly not among a little group I like to call … CNN VIEWERS.
Good heavens, among those who actually punish themselves by watching CNN, a recent poll shows that only 33% “trust the political news they are getting.”
That bears repeating…
Only 1/3rd of CNN’s own viewers trust CNN.
That means 2/3rds of CNN’s very own viewers do not trust the once Most Trusted Name In News.
CNN not only comes in last place in this poll, Fox News enjoys a trust rating of 50%. Worse, MSNBC — you know, the Brian Williams network — has a trust rating of 43%, a full 10 points higher than CNN.
Hold on. I’m just getting to the best part…
This is a poll taken of Likely Voters. So not only is CNN the least trusted name in cable news (and by a wide margin), it is the least trusted among those who vote; among those CNN would like to influence most.
Moreover, a lot has happened to CNN in the two weeks since that January 3 poll, and all of it has almost certainly further damaged whatever might remain of the left-wing network’s credibility.
The phony Russian dossier filled with wild and salacious claims about President-elect Donald Trump is, without question, the worst thing to happen to the media-at-large since Rathergate, and it was CNN that led that Fake News charge.
On Tuesday, Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro reported on yet-another CNN Fake News story, this one about Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s choice as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The incoming Trump Administration has already called for a retraction.
During Trump’s January 10 press conference, CNN’s White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, heckled and shouted down both the incoming president and NPR’s Mara Liasson. What a spectacle that was.
Just two weeks ago, CNN anchor Don Lemon defended four adults who kidnapped and tortured a mentally disabled man for up to 48 hours. These four black racists aired at least a half-hour of their torture on Facebook Live, where they can be seen and heard taunting the helpless white man with racial slurs, beating him, forcing him to drink toilet water, and threatening him with murder (luckily he escaped).
On Wednesday, just 48 hours before Trump is sworn in, CNN appeared to openly daydream about what catastrophes would have to befall Trump (including assassination) in order to keep their precious Obama in power.
Earlier this week, CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill (who once used his CNN perch to openly call for riots in Baltimore) trashed black people willing to work with Trump as “mediocre negroes.” This is coming from the same network currently facing a class action racial discrimination suit.
To say CNN’s credibility is in a death spiral would be to say that CNN has some residual credibility, and I am just not sure that’s true anymore. If only 33% of your own viewers trust you, it means you are a laughingstock across all ideological lines.
As far as the network’s ratings, something else Zucker bragged on, CNN can proudly state that they are currently in a fierce battle with MSNBC for … last place.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC