Why departing CEO Chris Licht’s 'flawed anti-woke centrism' was bad for CNN: columnist
On Wednesday morning, June 7, CNN's Kate Bolduan made a bombshell announcement: CEO/Chairman Chris Licht "is leaving the network," and "for now," a new "leadership team" will "take Licht's place."
Licht held that position for a little over a year, declaring that he wanted to purge CNN of what he viewed as too much liberal bias. And he had more than his share of critics, who attacked Licht's leadership as change for the sake of change and saw him as being much too rigid and dogmatic in his centrism.
Licht, for example, reportedly disliked the term "the Big Lie" — which has been used to describe former President Donald Trump's false, thoroughly debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. While Licht considered "The Big Lie" a "Democratic talking point," his critics countered that the term was simply accurate, factual reporting — as Trump's claim of widespread voter fraud had zero basis in fact.
Liberal Washington Post opinion writer Perry Bacon, Jr. discusses Licht's departure in his June 7 column, arguing that his tumultuous months at CNN underscore the problems with "anti-woke centrism."
"Licht's comments embody an anti-woke centrism that is increasingly prominent in American media and politics today, particularly among powerful white men who live on the coasts and don't identify as Republicans or conservatives," Bacon explains. "It's deeply flawed, and it's pushing some important U.S. institutions to make bad decisions."
The Post columnist continues, "By anti-woke, what I mean is skepticism of progressive causes and ideas, especially on issues of gender, race and sexuality. The term 'woke' is vague and imprecise."
Bacon isn't saying that centrists shouldn't have a voice in the media or politics. And he draws a distinction between Licht's centrism and President Joe Biden's centrism, noting that Biden "opposes some left-wing causes but doesn't spend a lot of time deriding people who support them."
Bacon observes, "Anti-woke centrism is really about emphasizing differences with progressives, who are inaccurately cast as Twitter-obsessed college graduates who constantly use terms like Latinx and are out of touch with ordinary Democratic voters…. Licht and Elon Musk, who has expressed similar sentiments, control two hugely important media platforms. Their views matter. That they have become consumed by this anti-wokeism has meant that great journalists were fired at CNN for being too anti-Trump and that Twitter's verification system was disabled, it seemed, because Musk felt it gave too much prominence to left-wing people."