In January I wondered if 2020 was going to be lit, but I never thought it would involve a pandemic.

Still, now that the crisis is slowly fading away (too slowly), it’s time to take stock of its impact on one industry: the media.

Things were already gathering pace in 2019:

The media industry continued to execute cuts in December and November as Gannett, Highsnobiety, and the CBC reduced headcounts. The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media… Buzzfeed experienced layoffs this year. An attempt to relaunch Gawker failed. HuffPost laid off 13 in its video department. ThinkProgress shut down in September….

NBCUniversal laid off 70 employees in two rounds in August and September. In August, E! announced that as part of its decision to move it’s “E! News” show from LA to New York, it would be laying off 20 to 25 LA employees, Variety reports. In September, NBCUniversal announced that it would be laying off 45 more employees from E!, Oxygen, Bravo, and other properties, according to MediaPost….

CNN also let go about 100 employees in the spring as part of a “corporate restructuring” effort.

And this was while the rest of the US economy was booming. Then Chinese Lung Rot hit. First up was this story in February, Newspaper Publisher McClatchy Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy:

McClatchy Co., the second-largest U.S. newspaper group by circulation, filed for bankruptcy protection, a move that comes as the nation’s newspaper industry is struggling to cope with a sharp decline in print advertising and the challenges of building a robust digital business.

Of course we also had our own little meltdowns here in NZ, with the withdrawal of German media group Bauer Media from the country, whoich instantly wiped out old-timers like The Listener, NZ Woman’s Weekly, and a host of others.

And you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh at news like this, New California Law Just Got Hundreds Of Writers Fired:

On Monday, Vox Media-owned SB Nation announced that it was cutting more than 200 freelance writers as a direct result of California’s new law targeting independent contractors.

That’s the same AB5 law that has shut down Uber and Lyft in the supposed Kingdom of entrepreneurship. Suffice to say these idiots who reflexively support Democrats, even when they get screwed by said Democrats, are mystified about many things, Washington Post Writer Can’t Figure Out Why Trump Supporters Won’t Talk To Her:

I’ll offer a more basic answer: because these outlets, and many others like them, offer such blatantly critical and condescending perspectives on conservative Americans and their values. This is palpable even in Dvorak’s article, which rather than attempting empathy for conservative women who don’t equate feminism with pro-choice politics, simply belittles them. 

And of course there’s been four years of Russian Collusion, with CNN leading the way.

The funny thing is that CNN, and the rest of these clowns, need Trump more than he needs them. They’re almost the only oxygen they have left, as recent Fox News demolition job on CNN revealed.

CNN’s troubles started on Tuesday, when Fox News host Tucker Carlson played a tape exposing CNN President Jeff Zucker appearing to offer a quid pro quo to then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016, the New York Post reported.

Zucker told Trump lawyer Michael Cohen that he wanted Trump, whom he called “the boss,” to host a weekly show. He also touted the importance of having CNN on Trump’s side in the presidential election.

Yes! That Michael Cohen! Got that? The network that demonises Trump 24/7 was perfectly willing to cooperate with him to a great extent. And what Zucker said next captures the farce even more perfectly:

“I’m very conscious of not putting too much in email, as you’re a lawyer, as you understand,.. And, you know, as fond as I am of the boss, he also has a tendency, like, you know, if I call him or I email him, he then is capable of going out at his next rally and saying that we just talked and I can’t have that, if you know what I’m saying.”

Sure Jeff, we know exactly what you’re saying. You need Trump for ratings and you actually quite like the guy personally after years of working with him – but there is no way you want that on record when you’re hanging with all your Lefty mates. That would mean shunning on an Amish scale.

Carlson followed up a couple of days later with another recorded phonemail, this time between CNN talking head Chris Cuomo (brother of NY Governor Andrew Granny Killer Cuomo) coaching Cohen for an interview of him that would be done by …. Chris Cuomo:

“I think the way this conversation goes is almost exactly the way we’re having it right now. Which is, where I say, ‘This looks shady,’ and you say, ‘It looks shady to you because you’re coming in with a specific intention,’” Carlson said, quoting Cuomo.

Cuomo instructed Cohen on how to dodge questions about a shell corporation he had allegedly used to make the Daniels payments.

That’s what CNN viewers would have seen in this “combative” and “tough” interview. There was another hit on CNN later that week when word got out that CNN host Jake Tapper had tried to pressure a U.S. Army veteran not to run against Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) – and then denied it.

All of this feeds nicely into another recent story about an MSNBC producer, Ariana Pekary, who recently resigned because she apparently couldn’t control her gag reflex any longer:

“We are a cancer and there is no cure,” a successful and insightful TV veteran said to me. “But if you could find a cure, it would change the world.”

As it is, this cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others . . . all because it pumps up the ratings.

I wonder if she heard the echoes of the past:

“Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit
public suicide. Admittedly an act of madness. Well, I’ll tell you what
happened: I just ran out of bullshit.”

Symbolically one of the great American journalists died early this year, Jim Lehrer, whom I used to watch religiously on the PBS Newshour in the 1990’s. These were his Rules of Journalism., but you might as well be reading a Babylonian text.

Instead in 2020 we’re left with this:

“Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamn amusement park!. Televisión is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business...

… But, man, you’re never gonna get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear, we lie like hell.. We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear…

You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here, you’re beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal! You do! Why, you do whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the reality, WE are the illusion!”