Blame CNN for the disgraceful conflict with Ryan Gidurski and Mehdi Hasan

CNN Viewers NewsNight were probably taken by surprise Abby Phillip telling them that one of her guests, Ryan Gidurski was removed from the show’s panel after he alluded to a fellow panelist Mehdi Hassan was at best a Hezbollah supporter, and at worst a real terrorist.

It was the culmination of a disgusting episode that was handled gracefully by the host and the network itself, which quickly issued a statement condemning Gidurski’s comments and announcing that he would no longer be invited to CNN. Philip’s words on camera deserve to be included here because they capture the essence of her show’s standards:

There is a line that has been crossed, and for me it is unacceptable. This is unacceptable to us on this network. We want discussion. We want people who disagree with each other to talk to each other. But when you cross the line into no politeness at all, that’s not going to happen on this show. It’s a hot time. We are in the middle of the political season. There are eight days left until the presidential election. But we can talk about what is happening in this country without resorting to the lowest of the low arguments. I want to solve this problem.

And I want to apologize to the viewers at home because we want to hear each other. We want to be able to talk to each other. And we plan to do this in the next segment.

But no matter how insightful the solution to this terrible ordeal was, it was a moment that was bound to happen for anyone who was paying attention to how NewsNight has changed dramatically since it was remade into the classic battle of cable news pundits – each eager to go viral over a party rival’s painful burn.

Dear Media Critic Brian Steinbergsummed up the writing of the script for a quick transition to the show Diversity in September, first explaining its origin story:

“NewsNight,” launched after the terrorist attack on Israel last October, initially looked like most other programs on CNN and its main competitors, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. Philip sat alone on set, always speaking directly to the audience and interviewing experts, analysts and newsmakers about the most important headlines of the day. Earlier this summer, CNN remade the program, which shares its name with a prime-time program hosted by Aaron Brown on the network in the early 2000s, and it quickly became the program’s highest-profile. The program operates on a scale that has become almost unrecognizable these days as Warner Bros. Discovery owns a risk-averse company.

But It’s become something of an ideological battleground of late, Steinberg observes, and the DNA is much closer to that of the show. John Stewart it was once suggested that this is CNN’s original sin, Cross-firein which battles regularly appeared between James Carville, Paul Begala, Tucker CarlsonAnd Mary Matalin (among other dignitaries).

During her famous 2004 appearance, Stewart told the show’s hosts that their regular partisan bickering was “hurting America,” which resonated so deeply that the former CNN CEO Jonathan Klein canceled the show. But Steinberg’s description of Philippe’s NewsNight program reflects the business motives behind the show’s retooling:

In recent weeks, however, the network appeared to be on the verge of channeling its inner Zucker. CNN has rehired Brian Stelter, who hosted the long-running but now-defunct media criticism program “Reliable Sources” and became a regular CNN companion under former President Jeff Zucker, who ran the network with significantly more flair during the Trump administration.

…

Can the strategy work? The audience of the updated NewsNight is growing. Of course, the program’s overall audience is small compared to its competitors, part of CNN’s broader ratings decline in recent years. “NewsNight”‘s audience remains below 1 million most nights, while Fox News’ “Gutfeld” and MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” easily surpass that mark. However, since launching in late July, the new format has seen an 82% increase in viewers aged 25 to 54 – the demographic most sought after by advertisers in news programming – compared to its performance in June. Perhaps more noticeable: in September on the 11th^th“NewsNight” had the second-highest viewership among viewers ages 25 to 54 on CNN—only Anderson Cooper’s 8 p.m. program won more.

There you have it—fighting on cable news is good for business, especially after the launch of the original NewsNight didn’t make any splash in the ratings or any of the cool moments that are the bread and butter of sites like ours.

But there’s a reason we don’t write this column about CNN This Morning with Casey Hunt– which began to regularly include panel discussions – or CNN’s internal politicsFox Five or in the minorityMSNBC Good morning Joe, or Deadline: White House—although these shows tend to take a much narrower point of view with little to no disagreement.

The problem with NewsNight isn’t the energetic conversation – all the shows I just mentioned have it. What’s different about the NewsNight format is that it encourages harsh, brash, and personal insults from one panelist to the next. The more intense the fight, the more attention the show receives, and, as a result, more viewers tune into it. Judging by the increase in viewership, it’s working from a business perspective. But let’s not be surprised when things go so far off the rails that a guest has to be removed from the show and the host has to apologize to viewers.

The writing was on the wall when Scott Jennings fired his fellow panelists during a particularly heated argumentsaying, “It’s conspiracy theory night on the Abby Phillip Show.” Or when a democratic strategist Keith Boykin shouted, “You’re a liar, Congressman!” in the Republic Byron Donalds on the rise in crime under the Biden administration. Or a guest Lee McGowan shouting: “This is madness!” at two of her fellow panelists who tried to downplay some of the former president’s remarks Donald Trump the most incendiary statements.

These are just a few examples where Socratic discourse has given way to the lesser angels of NewsNight panelists, which may have been good for the clicks, but not so good for the health of the body politic. It’s part of a larger trend at the network, which is struggling with ratings and is willing to throw everything at the wall to get people to tune in, while the network boasts some of the best techniques in the business for conducting thoughtful and informative interviews, namely: Anderson Cooper And Jake Tapper For example.

This horrific episode from Monday night was not a mistake; this was the feature that CNN programmers were looking for. If they’re not careful, it could damage a brand that’s already facing questionable criticism from a presidential candidate who could very well return to the White House.

This is an opinion. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.