Foxified: CNN Taps Sarah Palin And Hugh Hewitt For 2016 Campaign Coverage

The decline of CNN has been in progress for several years now. It is a network that is struggling with an acute personality disorder. It wants very badly to emulate the ratings success of Fox News, but it has no idea why Fox is popular. They seem to think it has something to do with presenting a conservative slant on the news. But that is not how Fox became king of the cable news hill.

Fox succeeds by seducing the most extreme right-wing viewers with media trickery that mirrors entertainment programming, such as flashy graphics and audio, manufactured conflict, and soft porn in both their stories and anchors. But CNN’s misunderstanding of these tactics has led them to make glaring mistakes that fail to produce any positive results for their ratings or their journalistic integrity. The latest examples of this doomed strategy include the recent announcement of two conservative mouthpieces who will be featured prominently in their election programming.

Sarah Palin CNN

First we have Sarah Palin. That’s right, having been ditched by Fox News, CNN is throwing her a life preserver and bringing her aboard to provide campaign analysis on this Sunday’s “State of the Union.” It’s hard to imagine what insight they think she will bring to the discussion on presidential politics. Her own experience was fraught with embarrassing episodes that only demonstrated how woefully ill-prepared she was for public service at that level. And since then she has only succeeded in distinguishing herself as an ignorant hack with negligible comprehension of the issues that face the nation. Nevertheless, CNN has tapped her to toss her word salad ravings on their network’s signature political program.

Secondly we have Hugh Hewitt, a starkly partisan wingnut who will be featured on CNN’s Republican debate this month. CNN could have selected actual journalists to pose questions to the candidates, but instead they picked only a stalwart Republican radio talk show host (and no one from the left) who will join CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Of course, conservatives are capable of asking tough questions when they want to. However, when they do they will be insulted and dismissed by the candidates and the GOP constituents. Just ask Megyn Kelly. Hewitt himself is taking heat for an interview he did with Donald Trump that demonstrated how ignorant Trump is on foreign affairs. Typical of Trump, he is now hammering Hewitt for what he calls “gotcha” questions. [Note: To Republicans, gotcha questions are any question they are too dumb to answer] In this case, the real problem for Trump was not whether he had been ambushed, but that his answer was at first a lie, followed by obvious ignorance. Check out the first 30 seconds of this video:

Notice how Trump hesitates and stretches the word “Yeessss” when answering whether he was familiar with Quds leader, Gen. Soleimani. Then he adds “Go ahead. Give me a little…go ahead tell me.” Clearly he was lying when he said he knew who Soleimani is and he employed a childish dodge in order to get Hewitt to inform him. That was confirmed when Hewitt told him that Soleimani “runs the Quds forces,” and Trump responded by saying that “the Kurds had been horribly mistreated by us.” Hewitt immediately corrected him, but Trump continued to dissemble. Why would he bring up the Iraqi Kurds in response to a question about the Iranian Revolutionary Army (Quds)? Well, his explanation later in the day was that he misheard Hewitt and thought that Hewitt said “Kurds.” But if that were true then he was asserting that Soleimani was the Kurdish leader (who is actually Masoud Barzani), proving that he doesn’t know anything about the Quds or the Kurds. In the end, Trump’s answers are proof that his ignorance is insufficient to cover up his lies.

To make matters worse, Trump was asked a question about Soleimani by Bret Baier during the first GOP debate on Fox. His answer then also showed that he had no idea who Soleimani is. And after having been queried on that exact subject during a critical debate he never made an attempt to educate himself.

The fairness and degree of difficulty of Hewitt’s questioning notwithstanding, there is still a problem with CNN placing an overtly partisan person on the panel with no balance. Can you imagine Fox News having a GOP debate and getting Rachel Maddow to moderate? And this isn’t a first for CNN. In the 2012 election cycle they co-hosted their debate with Tea Party Express, an organization that was even snubbed for their corruption within the Tea Party community.

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What CNN is doing with both Palin and Hewitt can only degrade their teetering reputation further. If there is one thing that American media doesn’t need, it’s another Fox News. The first one is already doing a stellar job of misinforming the public and advancing the agenda of the Republican Party. What’s more, emulating Fox has done nothing for CNN’s ratings. Why should it? Viewers who are in the market for dumbed-down histrionics, Democrat bashing, and a steady diet of right-wing falsehoods, already have a proven provider.

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21 thoughts on “Foxified: CNN Taps Sarah Palin And Hugh Hewitt For 2016 Campaign Coverage

  1. “Fox succeeds by…”
    Mark has no clue why Fox News is successful , so he makes up his usual vomit diet of lies and hate to try and make himself feel important on the net. As for CNN: I am surprised they have recruited Hugh Hewitt to be a moderator. That’s still a lot classier than the debates MSNBC subjected people to. Oh well, at least they no longer have Keith “Go f### your mother” Olbermann moderating debates

    • Hahaha. “Vomit Diet” is gonna be the name of my next band.

      p.s. What makes me “feel important on the net” is knowing that I have goofballs like Scott who are so disturbed by my writing that they repeatedly come by to insult me with substanceless rants. Thank you, Scott.

    • Scott,
      Mark must be important enough on the web for you to “troll” every one of his post’s. As for “Fixed News ” being successful, there are a few reasons why you rightTards drive their ratings. First of all, you have to hear over and over, which group you need to hate. You know, just fill in the blank _________ , Muslims, blacks, unions, homosexuals, Mexicans, and women.
      Secondly, we know that perverts like yourself, enjoy sitting and watching fixed news, for the short skirt anchors. It’s not just their ratings rising is it Scott?

      • You are lying just like Mark does. The hate comes from the radical left, by and large. We have illustrated that to a t again and again. Then you embarrass yourself further by calling us all perverts. Left-wingers can’t handle the fact that the women at FNC are intelligent and beautiful and successful. You don’t like that fact? Boo-hoo-hoo. Whaah.

        • Lying about what? Roger Ailes forces them wear short skirts, and he watches the shows with no volume. If that isn’t perverted, then I don’t know what is. By the way, I never said they weren’t beautiful or successful. However, I look for news anchors to give me the facts. Your the one whom embarrasses himself, apparently you think beauty means truth, and accuracy. As far as, intelligence , anyone can read off a telepromter Spewing hate to tell you which groups to hate. . If you think fixed news is still successfull because their reporting, and not the hatred and short skirts, just google Fox News viewers uniformed. I also like how you rethuglicans use projection, you say we are the party of hate. We alow anyone in our party, you know , blacks, women, Muslims, Mexicans, unions, homosexuals,minority. It was Rush Limpballs, that said after the 2012 election “We don’t need to reach out to minority’s, we needed to get the 2 million white voters that stayed at home to go out and vote.” If that wasn’t a racist comment ? Tell me which of these groups , I named earlier you have helped to registered to vote. I have .

          • “…just google Fox News uninformed…”
            LOL! What a great strategy. use Google to pull up more left-wing hate sites to parrot the same dishonest talking point.
            “…We allow anyone in our party, blacks, women, Mexicans…”

            Ahem. Tim Scott, Dr.. Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, Suzannah Martinez, Marco Rubio – not exactly an old white male lineup, eh Goober?

            • Scott,
              If your party is so inclusive, then why Is that why Mitt Romney only received l3% of the black vote and 25% of Hispanic’s, and 40% of women. However, Romney did win one demographic white males over 50. You did list 6 minority’s in your party. It took 50 years for you to get all 6 of them. I’m impressed. I guess Forbes magazine and politifact, are left wing hate sites? I know pesky facts, they always get in the way. Don’t they propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Call me goober? Your the one who wraps himself in the confederate and Nazi flag.

    • Scott, just…….bwaaaaa haaaaa haaaaaa haaaaaa! You crack me up. My question is, When are actual intelligent conservatives — and I do believe they exist– going to admit they’re embarrassed by this stuff? Fox feeds the fears and prejudices, (and sexual fantasies to a degree), of their mostly old, white, male, wrapped to the right too tight base. As their version of events does not comport with anyone else’s, the news organizations that practice actual journalism divide up the truth seekers and leave the closed minded to Fox. Oh, and “Vomit Diet” ? Did that epithet come during a moment of hallucinogenic asphyxiation when your sphincter was tightening around your neck, due to acute cranial rectosis? Good name for a band though.

      • Fox News tells the truth. Notice how ABC, NBC, and CBS never mentioned that evil BLM chant? “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!” CNN covered that chant. MSNBC only covered it so one of the protest organizers could come on and actually claim that this evil chant was them being playful.

  2. It would be interesting for someone at CNN to ask Palin for elaboration on what she now means by “Lamestream Media.” After all, wasn’t CNN part of her moronic allegations of bias in anything but rightwing outlets?

    Also, you may want to correct the CNN/Tea Party Express date…I’m assuming it’s 2012 and not 2008 since the TEA party hadn’t come into existence until after President Obama was elected.

    • I’m pretty sure CNN won’t ask Palin a question that questions her place as a guest on CNN. (And thanks for the correction).

  3. It looks like I won’t be using CNN for campaign coverage. I’m interested in actual news and credible analysis.

  4. Greg, your wasting you time with that troll. Until he decides to pop his head out and come up for air. His statement, “Fox News tells the truth” speaks volumes . Fox has been sued for lying, banned for lying, is the laughing stock of any and all real media outlets, and simply has no journalist integrity or ethics. That is not a liberal opinion, it is fact. While, unfortunately, most mainstream media runs, at times, a close second, fox is king of the disinformation broadcasters. Scott is either a paid troll or as Mark so graciously said, “a goofball”.

    • Thanks Drawfire,
      I missed the sign earlier, that read, “don’t feed the trolls.” Scott can stay in his trailer park fantasizing about Megan Kelly and her lies.

      • “Scott is either a paid troll…”
        For crying out loud, people, come up with new material. You have been using that idiotic lie for over a decade. It makes you look even more unhinged than you already are.
        Drawfire’s spewing about “It is not liberal opinion it is a fact” is not a fact. It is a lie. The journalism that is conducted by Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, James Rosen, Gretchen Carlson and the other journalists are real. Period. Fact. End of story.

        “…wraps himself in the Nazi flag…’
        That, Greg, is the most despicable lie you have burped onto this site yet. It ranks right up there with anything Mark spews. You are lying like never before. And with that, the left wing loses another argument and pollutes the atmosphere with hatred that corrodes like the worst acid in existence.

        • Scott,
          Wow, that one must have hurt about the nazi flag. However,I noticed you left out the confederate flag you also wrap yourself with.

          • Here is what the PC police fail to grasp. The Confederate flag has been used by bands like Alabama, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and Kid Rock. You plan on calling those musicians racist? Ehh?
            For a lot of people from the south, that flag simply meant Southern heritage and Southern culture, not racism. I understand how many other people (minorities in particular) associate it with racism. With that conundrum in place, I agree with state and local governments taking that flag down. It’s not worth fighting about.
            I don’t have a Confederate flag in my possession, in case you’re wondering, because I’m not from the South.

          • The Confederate battle flag, otherwise known as the American Nazi flag???

    • All anyone has to do to prove Fox News is biased and incapable of objective news is to watch CNN International, which is a lot more cosmopolitan and objective than CNN stateside. CNN International doesn’t whitewash the American wingnuts like our domestic cable news networks do.

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