How Cable News Got Broken

I was watching CNN the other day and Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway was on again.  It was atrocious, and I found myself screaming at the television 'why did you let her on again?'  All she did was lie and distort, deflect and accuse.  She added no value to anyone's day, but yet CNN will have her on the air three or four times a week for more of the same.

Cable news got permanently broken by the Republicans in the 1990's.  Here's how they did it.

Republicans, led by the Contract with America crowd, and bolstered by the new Fox News network, a network who was clearly willing to pander to the right, started accusing all news outlets of liberal bias.  Most of them didn't have liberal bias, but the right kept screaming they did.  They created a red herring litmus test.  If the network refused to put on an opposing viewpoint, and allow the opposing viewpoint to put forward their perspective unchallenged, then the news outlet was liberal, and hence should never be trusted.

There's nothing wrong with opposing viewpoints, as long as we're not debating something which has been proven to be accepted truth.  Two people arguing over the best way to spend tax dollars is a perfectly legitimate discussion.  Someone screaming the scientific community has been lying, that the sun actually rotates around the earth, should not be given a pulpit to scream their stupidity.

Conservatives were angry their decades of arguments about cigarettes not being a health crisis had been proven to be a pack of lies.  They realized unless they can muddy the waters of fact, other issues they championed would also fall to the truth.  By demanding all cable news outlets give equal time to the opposite viewpoint, regardless of how rational or irrational they were, and by demanding the news outlets never question the insane rantings, they created a fog bank on a sunny day.

Climate Change is the ultimate victory for them.  In the early 1990's we all knew climate change was real, and that fossil fuels were the cause of our rising CO2 levels.  If the amount of scientists back then who agreed on these points were also to have agreed Hostess Twinkies prevented cancer, Hostess would have been the number one company on the planet overnight.

But Republicans, in bed with the fossil fuel industry, used their screams of 'Scarlet Letter Liberal' to force one time respectable news outlets to give equal time to bought and paid for corporate "scientists" who insisted the scientific community had made climate change up, that it was a myth, and the scientists were only in it for the 'anti-climate change money.'  That last part was hilarious, but it worked.  Here we are 25 years later and even though we're on the verge of breaking this planet to the point of mass extinction, most people in the US act like climate change is still an unproven scientific issue.

After a few decades of allowing unfettered stupidity on their airwaves, cable news not only doesn't know how to stop booking these fools, they can no longer identify who on their airwaves is wasting everyone's time.

If you really want to see how bad American cable news is, watch an interview on the BBC.  Watch how they challenge people with facts, never allowing them to slink away or to change the subject.  There's a reason very few Republicans (and no one from the Trump Administration) ever appear on the BBC.  They know they will never be held accountable on American cable news.