Jeff Zucker has completely destroyed any shred of credibility CNN ever had as an objective news organisation. Alan Dershowitz: How CNN misled its viewers In our hyperpartisan world, in which so many people watch only media that will give them news with which they agree, CNN viewers understandably expected the Mueller report to find overwhelming evidence that President Trump colluded, conspired with and is beholden to Russia. After all, that is what they have been hearing for many months. Pundit after pundit, commentator after commentator, host after host already had made up their minds: President Trump was guilty and should be indicted, impeached or removed under the 25th Amendment. To be sure, CNN presented the occasional dissenting view, but it was almost always from right-wing Republicans who viewers could easily discount. During the first several months of the investigation, CNN viewers also heard my more nuanced, more centrist views. As a liberal Democrat who strongly supported Hillary Clinton, I had some credibility when I raised questions about the certainty with which other CNN guests had declared Trump guilty. I introduced constitutional analysis regarding the allegations of obstruction of justice, arguing that — regardless of Trump’s intentions — he could not be charged with obstruction based exclusively on exercising his constitutional authority under Article II. This includes the power to fire any member of the executive branch. Viewers enjoyed my feisty debates with legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and asked for more. Host Anderson Cooper enjoyed sparring with me, as did hosts Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon. CNN viewers benefited from evaluating my viewpoints against those of other guests and hosts. But then, suddenly, I was banned from CNN. Over the past half year or so, I have never once been asked to appear on a CNN program. Initially I wondered why, and I asked some of my friends at the network. They were evasive and studiously avoided any direct answer to my question. Then I received off-the-record information that an order had come from the very top: CNN executive Jeff Zucker didn’t want me on CNN any more. My centrist, nuanced perspective was anathema to CNN’s emerging brand as the anti-Trump network. I continued to be invited on other networks, including NBC, ABC, MSNBC and Fox. But not CNN. Being perceived as a Trump legal defender, even though I publicly disagreed with many of his policies, was a cardinal sin for a liberal Democrat. It would confuse CNN’s viewers at a time when one had to be either for or against Trump. It was as if I were a Red Sox fan on the Yankee network. Today, everyone has to pick a team — Trump or anti-Trump — and picking the side of the Constitution and civil liberties just doesn’t do it. As my mother said to me when I defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill., back in the ’70s: “You’re either for the Nazis or the Jews.” When I tried to explain that I was for the First Amendment, not the Nazis, my mother replied: “I’m your mother. Don’t give me that legal stuff. You should be for the Jews.” My mother, smart as she was, didn’t go to college. The CNN brass did. They should know better, but for them the bottom line is what counts. And the bottom line grew bigger when CNN began to be seen as the anti-Trump network. The brass didn’t want their viewers’ minds to be confused by the law or the facts. Trump was guilty; that’s all they needed to know. This simplistic perspective insults the intelligence and open-mindedness of many CNN viewers who email me, saying that they miss my contrarian views. But the CNN brass apparentlyprefer the absolute certainty of, say, attorney Michael Avenatti — “I guarantee Trump will notserve out his term” — to my calibrated legal analysis. Well, my calibrated views turned out to be largely right, while CNN’s wishful thinking turned out to be largely wrong. That isn’t because I’m smarter than the CNN execs. It’s because I don’t allow my political preferences to substitute for objective legal analysis. Jeff Zucker has said that he is “entirely comfortable” with CNN’s coverage. Of course he and his company’s shareholders are comfortable: Their one-sided coverage earned the network lots of money. But they shouldn’t be comfortable with the quality of their on-air performance. They should review the footage and require those who were demonstrably wrong to listen to how badly they misled their viewers. John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, has acknowledged that he may have based his mistaken assessments and predictions on “bad information,” but what he failed to say was that he and CNN were often the source of this bad information that led viewers to have false expectations. So let’s hope that CNN, and other media that got it wrong, will reassess their approach to divisive, controversial issues. Their viewers are entitled to hear contrary views, even those that make them uncomfortable. Jeff Zucker should be uncomfortable, rather than smug, about what his network did — and didn’t do. It did not well serve its viewers, or the American public. Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School. His new book is “The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump.” You can follow him on Twitter @AlanDersh. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436059-alan-dershowitz-how-cnn-misled-its-viewers
LOL, defender of murderer OJ is whining about misleading it's audience - what' next - a lecture on not running fake universities by Dotard?
He wrote a whole book on the topic of impeaching trump since last November? The editing process alone takes 1 month or two. I cannot believe how fast these talking heads put out useless books.
Zucker was right about one thing, they have no interest in investigating anything. However he was wrong calling his people journalists. No journalist worth a nickel would ever write or report a story without doing a thorough investigation. He and his group of thugs are political activists posing as political commentators.
Zucker's ludicrous justification that they are not investigators means that all that nonsense about professional journalistic standards, etc was also bullshit. CNN is essentially TMZ now. And since they are now entertainment rather than news, why should we be giving performance space to their actors like Jim Acosta?
Dershowitz is on the inside now , so it's natural he changes his tunes accordingly , the guy was also embroiled in some sexual scandal , right ? Trump brings in Alan Dershowitz to help with Jared Kushner’s flailing Middle East peace plan President Donald Trump in 2017 put son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of concocting a plan to bring peace to the Middle East, despite the fact that he had no experience in international diplomacy. After two years, Kushner still hasn’t released anything like the comprehensive peace plan that Trump promised — and now the administration has resorted to bringing in Trump-defending lawyer Alan Dershowitz to help out. The Daily Beast reports that Dershowitz has discussed the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians with multiple administration officials ranging from Kushner to special envoy Jason Greenblatt to Ambassador David Friedman. Among other things, Dershowitz says that he has advised the administration to formally recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, despite the international norm against recognizing claims of territories that were seized during wars. “I compared the Golan Heights to a captured battleship,” he said. “I said, ‘You don’t give back a battleship you’ve captured in a defensive war.” Despite being asked for his advice, however, Dershowitz says he still doesn’t have a sense of what is in Kushner’s peace plan. “It changes all the time,” he said. “I’m not privy to the specifics, the current specifics, but mostly it’s been one-way conversations—that is, they ask for my advice. They don’t tell me their secrets. They just ask me for my advice, and I give it to them.”
Only recently he was not pro-Trump.. Dershowitz: It's Been Harder For Me To Get On "Anti-Trump Networks" Like CNN Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said he is no longer invited by "anti-Trump network" CNN in an interview with on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal.' DERSHOWITZ: More and more I'm getting called on only by people who misunderstand and think I'm pro-Trump. I'm not pro-Trump, but it's been harder for me to get on anti-Trump networks, not that I'm craving to be on television all the time... I used to be, for example, on CNN more often than on FOX. I was a regular, not paid, just a person who was on all the time debating with [Jeffrey] Toobin, debating with others. I haven't been on CNN, now, since the summer. FOX calls me all the time.