CNN Goes Bankrupt

[Sherwin Wilson]

The 2020 election took its toll on the media giant.

The media giant CNN has filed for bankruptcy as of April 1, 2021. Many
analysts have pinned the bankruptcy on the Trump Administration’s loss and
the introduction of a relatively charismatic president. CNN’s parent
company, AT&T, suffered a fatal blow as a result of the news.

CNN announced the news after consistently losing viewership on both their
broadcast channel and website. The losses from its two main sources
resulted in its bankruptcy. According to a Pew Research study, “CNN lost
85 percent of its broadcast viewership as well as 78 percent of its web
viewers after Nov 11.”

Executives at the company attempted to combat the declining viewership
through numerous strategies, but they were unable to bring back viewership
to its original numbers. CNN’s own analysts attempted to wrangle with the
issue, but attempts proved to be futile.

“We tried to take a 360 degree view around us and tried a variety of
strategies, ranging from publishing positive stories to publishing more
negative ones than others, but we ended right back where we were,”
Anderson Cooper, host of Anderson Cooper 360 said.

Many employees credited the bankruptcy to difficulty with procuring media
content regarding the presidency.

“It became very hard to find good Trump quotes after the election, and
there’s obviously nothing wrong with Biden, so this transfer of power
really hurt our newspaper,” Barry Jones, an opinion columnist for the
newspaper, said.

CNN did attempt to reach out to the U.S. government in the hopes of
getting a bailout so that they would be able to keep their employees
working until after the pandemic. However at the time the Trump
Administration dismissed it as “fake news.”

Investors were disappointed with the newspaper, and, following the results
of the election, sold much of their holdings in the company, resulting in
the stock’s meltdown.

“I just didn’t feel that CNN had much left to give,” Ronald Biggums, an
investor for Bank of America, said. “I took a look at the front page
showing the smiling face of Joe Biden as compared to Trump’s frown just
made me lose all hope.”

CNN had to lay off their staff, which consisted of around 4,000 employees
worldwide. Notable employees included Cooper and Dr. Gupta who were a
large part of CNN’s broadcast team.

“I’ve covered plenty of breaking headlines during my time at CNN; however
this situation really caught me off guard,” Wolf Blitzer, one of CNN’s key
anchors, said. “My heart goes out to the employees who lost their jobs due
to this situation.”

Ultimately CNN was dealt a fatal blow, but its writing style and stories
will continue to inspire. The editors at CNN left one final Tweet to mark
the end of four decades of journalism.

“Everything was clearly RIGGED against us,” CNN said. “The other big
newspapers all had a CONSPIRACY brewing to take us out of business. Even
our very own super skilled reporters said so. This is a DISGRACE for the
journalism industry. SHAME.”

https://www.statesmanshs.org/5283/sloth/cnn-goes-bankrupt/