I want to express a contrarian view regarding Jim Acosta’s departure from CNN. As you may know, Costa announced this morning that he’s leaving after CEO Mark Thompson told him he was being moved off his 10 a.m. program, which draws good ratings. Costa decided to leave after rejecting Thompson’s offer to be moved from midnight to 2 a.m.
This is widely being portrayed as another example of a media outlet doing Donald Trump’s bidding. Costa is not one of Trump’s favorites, to put it mildly; his White House press credentials were briefly revoked following a confrontation between him and Trump in 2018, and he has used his morning show to speak truth to power. That’s something we need more of.
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Acosta’s admirers have been erupting in outrage on social media. Political commentator Chris Cillizza did not offer a benign interpretation, writing, “Acosta’s removal … is rightly understood as a piece of a broader movement of the legacy media to accommodate Trump — or at least take a far-less adversarial tack in covering his second term.”
Media writer Oliver Darcy, who first broke the news that Acosta might be leaving, wrote that the “move … conspicuously coincided with Donald Trump’s return to power.”
“Just Jack,” who has nearly 435,000 followers on Bluesky, added, “Jim Acosta is leaving CNN. He will not capitulate to his oligarch bosses. He will not kiss the Trump ring.”
Now, I don’t have any insight into what went on behind the scenes at CNN, but I don’t think this is as bad as it sounds. As Darcy observes, Acosta’s midnight special would have run in prime time, from 9 to 11 p.m., on the West Coast, which is traditionally underserved by network television.
About 50 million Americans live in that time zone, which includes major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland and Seattle. Moreover, CNN was reportedly willing to pay for Acosta to move to Los Angeles.
I can also understand why Thompson might want to move away from an opinionated show in the morning and replace it with straight news. The 10 a.m.-to-noon slot will now be anchored by Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown.
Could this be an example of CNN caving in to Trump? Yes, it could. As I said, I have no insight into what’s going on behind the scenes. But more news and less opinion in the morning coupled with a capable host like Acosta anchoring during prime time on the West Coast does not strike me as unreasonable. In fact, it seems like it could have been a pretty smart move.
But Acosta said no, leave us to wonder what’s next. In his sign-off, he said he’ll be announcing something soon. MSNBC is a possibility, although its lineup seems to be getting pretty crowded. Maybe he’ll do something completely unexpected.
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Wouldn’t that 12-2am slot have been a brand new show? Currently CNN starts repeating the 8pm show at Midnight. So I’m curious, if this was a plan to really expand their live programming or if it was a way to hide away Acosta. I will be curious to see if they do start running new live programming at midnight.
I suspect that a lot of Acosta’s reaction could have been shaped by how CNN presented the option to him. If it led with, “we want to better serve West Coast audiences by going where no one else has now and presenting a prime-time-in-the-Pacific-zone news and opinion show that would rival or exceed in quality anything we or our competitors are now giving prime-time audiences in that zone,” that would be one thing. If it led with, “We’re moving you to midnight,” that would be something else. And to state the obvious, I have no more insight than you as to what CNN was really thinking or what actually happened.