Malone’s CNN Groans
On Tuesday morning, John Malone—the Liberty Media boss, cable kingpin, and one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s most powerful shareholders—popped up on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Malone, dressed in a shirt and tie, was perched on a brown leather chair as he Zoomed in from his home to promote his new book, “Born to Be Wired.” The first few minutes were standard fare covering how the book came together, what compelled him to write it, etcetera.
But once the obligatory promotional part of the interview was out of the way, the conversation grew much more interesting. Conservative co-host Joe Kernen criticized the state of the news media as being biased against Donald Trump, and pressed Malone for his take, especially on CNN, which he had infamously skewered years ago.
“Do you think CNN has changed to the point where you’d like, where you’re seeing actual journalism now?” Kernen asked. “Do you see it across mainstream media anywhere?”
“No,” Malone flatly replied, before delivering a somewhat rambling comment about how the journalism profession is rife with liberals and (again) praising Rupert Murdoch for how Fox News is operated. Malone did allow for the fact that CNN “has great journalists,” but he lamented that those who work in the news industry “tend to be progressives personally” and “it’s impossible to separate that sort of personal opinion structure from the way they cover the news.”
Of course, it wasn’t the first time Malone has jabbed CNN in recent days. In an interview with The New York Times’ Ben Mullin published on Friday, Malone said the network is “a shadow of what its founder had envisioned,” described its employees as “left of center” who “express their opinions too much in their news,” and complained that WBD chief executive David Zaslav had been “unable to have a meaningful impact” on the editorial nature of the organization. “They can’t help themselves,” Malone told Mullin. “And so what you’ve got is a left-leaning, anti-Trump news service.”
Suffice to say, the insults have not played well over in Hudson Yards, according to conversations I had with several staffers on Tuesday…
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Axios’ in the Age of A.I.: Axios is projecting confidence that it will emerge as a media winner in the age of A.I. On Tuesday, chief executive Jim VandeHei told staff in a memo that he sees “an increasingly bright present and future” for the “smart brevity”-driven outlet. Several trends, he argued in the memo obtained by Status, point to a surge in demand for “distinct journalism produced by people with true expertise and insight”—a value he said “will only rise in the years ahead—and Axios will be a big beneficiary.” VandeHei acknowledged that outside the outlet, individual reporters with specialized knowledge are “profiting well as individual operators on Substack, Beehiiv, and YouTube.” But he stressed that Axios already houses a deep bench of such experts, journalists whose analysis and reporting he believes readers will actively seek out as the information landscape becomes more saturated with a “surge in crap content.”
► One interesting stat from VandeHei: “Almost 90% of Axios now uses ChatGPT for work. OpenAI told us we are among the most engaged partners they have.”
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