Jeff McCall - Media Studies Professor, DePauw University Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Six, twenty three, our time here in Houston's Morning News. Right,
let's start with this before we bring on our guest,
Jeff McCall, Menia studies professor to Paul University. This is
yesterday on CNN. We got to be got it up here,
go No, it's not going all right, I'll have the
fair phrase. Basically, they said Trump is on a roll.

(00:21):
So I'm not sure which host it was who said it.
I'm pretty sure I know which hosts didn't say it,
because some of the people who particularly hate Donald Trump
are never going to say anything nice about him. But
I'm guessing Jeff becall that any hosted CNN who has
something positive to say about Donald Trump is an immediate

(00:43):
pariah in the newsroom.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, at the CNN newsroom, that's for sure. The CNN hierarchy,
of course, is quite an activist organization. CNN has been
driven for a number of years by ideology. The CNN
host who complimented Trump is named Michael Smert Khannish, who
does a weekend show actually, and he is known for
being a little bit more straightforward and trying to go

(01:07):
where the facts lead than some of the other CNN hosts.
But This is pretty much just at CNN. One host
on one day saying that Trump is on a roll,
and I think the CNN of old is the CNN
of today, and that they're really interested more in trying
to push agendas than they are in covering news. And

(01:28):
the sad thing is in the greater media landscape, I
think it's sad that CNN used to be a reputable
news organization and their activism has really well, it's ruined
their reputation as a news gathering organization, but it's cost
them hundreds of thousands of viewers. But that doesn't seem
to matter apparently to the leaders at CNN, because I

(01:50):
think they're more interested in pushing agendas than they are
covering the news. And the other thing about the CNN
audience is that it's very small. I mean, in the
evening in prime time, CNN often gets less than a
half a million viewers. And you contrast that to even MSNBC,
which gets over a million, into Fox News, which in

(02:11):
primetime will get three and a half or four million.
So CNN has cost itself hundreds of thousands of viewers
by going on this activist kick. And the other thing
about their audience is that it's an old audience demographically,
so a lot of the people who watch CNN are
basically leftover hippies from the seventies, and that's not a

(02:32):
very attractive audience for advertisers. So CNN corporately is losing
lots of money because their audience is small and it's
not a desirable audience. But that doesn't matter to them,
to the corporate big shots, and CNN is a subsidiary
of Warner Media, and they're leaving lots of money on
the table, and the financial ramifications you would think might

(02:56):
cause them to sit back and think, hey, maybe we
need to turn this organization around and try to do
real news one of these days.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
But it hasn't much, much to your surprise, I think,
and much to my surprise. Let me quickly ask you too,
about this other story involving CNN. What they were running
a news story yesterday about this ice app that can
locate where ice agents are to quote unquote give you
a heads up that ice is coming, which could potentially
put these ice agents in jeopardy. Attorney General Pam Bondi
is talking about a potential lawsuit against c and N

(03:24):
for doing this story.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, it's totally irresponsible journalism. And I know you know
that ice raids are news around the country, but the
question is whether or not we're trying to report about
what the function of the ice raids are and whether
they're effective, as opposed to whether we are trying to
tell people how to avoid ice agents. And really, this

(03:47):
is this kind of gets back to my point earlier
that they're more interested in activism. And you know, we
would never think of a major news organization going on
the air and providing safe cracking classes to burglars who
want to steal people's money. But here we have CNN
trying to take the sides of people who are in

(04:08):
the country illegally. And again, ICE is going after the
worst first, as we know, so really they're trying to
help protect the people who are threats to the very
neighborhoods in which they're living. And I would say at
a certain point they should be more interested in the
people who are living safe and active lives, and they
should be on the people who are trying to victimize

(04:30):
those people.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Well, you would think, but none of this really makes
much sense, does it. Thank you? Jeff as always been
a studies professor at De Paul University, Jeff McCall. It's
six twenty seven