CNN's art of manipulation.

"If it bleeds it leads”, that’s been cliche in the news professions for decades at least. “Covid is gangbusters for ratings” at CNN, because it’s “fear” and fear pumps ratings. So the inevitable thought is, why aren’t those death tolls higher, we need them to be higher.

Project Veritas videoed CNN technical director Charley Chester and a colleague talking unguardedly in a noisy bar about how CNN operates, and how it bends the news to a political bias.

This second part of the story makes it plainer that Mr Chester is talking so openly because he has serious doubts about the ethics of what CNN is doing, doubts he is restrained from expressing. He says he’s glad to have a job and all that, but… at what cost to his sense of rightness, is the unstated implication. Charley Chester is not a bad man, but he feels trapped.

Will CNN fire Mr Chester? If I could advise CNN I would say, stonewall it. Don’t fire Charley and don’t comment. Just let it die. That would be the smart thing to do. But are they capable of being that smart? I doubt it. Charley Chester seems like a decent guy in a position he finds ethically uncomfortable. But the top guys at CNN are rotten to the core. They know they are destroying the integrity of news reporting because that’s exactly what they got into the profession in order to do. This “changes the world”, as Charley puts it rather ruefully.

There was a time when the news was supposed to literally be about the facts reported. The first paragraph of the story was supposed to cover, briefly as possible, the five W’s: Who, What, Where, When and Why. What happened, Who did it happen to or who did it, When did it happen or was done, Where did it happen, and Why (or How)did it happen.

To illustrate:

"Mr Arbitration (Who) crashed his car into a tree (what) at the corner of 8th Avenue and Lake Street (where) at 10:30 this morning (when). Apparently brake failure may have been the cause (why). Mr Arbitration was taken to hospital for examination but later released with minor injuries. There was no passenger. Investigations are ongoing but police say no charges are contemplated at this time."

That’s what might have been in the news in 1950. Here’s what it would be today:

“This morning notorious alt-right Trump supporter, anti-Vaxxer and Covid denier Arbitration rammed his car into a tree at the corner of 8th Ave and Lake Street. Arbitration has been released from hospital on his own recognizance. When asked if there were drugs or alcohol involved or if the crash was a suicide attempt by the notoriously mentally unstable Arbitration, police refused to comment. Charges of public endangerment are not contemplated at this time, say police. Reporters outside Arbitration's apartment building were not allowed to enter. When asked about Arbitration’s possible mental illness his neighbours refused comment.”

There is no objectivity in the news, that’s what people all say when they have to make excuses for what they have to do or be out of a job. But that’s not an objective statement, is it? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The art of trying to be as objective as you can was indeed an art, a skill, an aspiration; that was the point of the old Five W’s game, keeping your opinions out of informing the public about the real facts so that the people could draw their own conclusions.

The art of destroying as much objectivity as you can in yourself and the interviewee, the art that CNN “reporters” learn and practice, is an art too, an aspiration, a skill. There’s nothing ever cut and dried when it comes to human communication. In human communication there is no reality but what you make by aspiring and acting on that aspiration. What you want, that’s what you will make happen.

What kind of person is it that would want the public to be incapable of trying to make reasonable decisions, at the voting booth for instance, because they are swept away by confusion, fear, ignorance, entanglement in hatred, fear and bias? What kind of a person would have that aspiration? That aspiration has created a world. It’s not a democratic world, that’s for sure. It’s a world where your conclusions are prefabricated for you. Personally, I don’t like it. You young folks are welcome to it. I’m waiting on the platform, ticket in hand.