Kirk's Murder Exposes the Broken Corporate News Model [View all]

Julie Roginsky

The murder of Charlie Kirk and the manhunt and arrest of his alleged killer should be the death knell for corporate media. Reliable independent journalism and analysis, where corporate overlords and clicks do not dictate content, is the future.

I don’t say this with any glee. I have spent more than two decades on cable television, first as a contributor at CNBC and Fox News. These days, I spend a lot of time at MSNBC and CNN. And I am here to tell you that they are not cut out for this moment — not because they do not have talented journalists but because their model is broken beyond repair.

Let’s begin with Tuesday night, even before Kirk’s awful assassination, when Russian drones invaded Polish airspace, deliberately targeting a NATO member-state. Both CNN and MSNBC were in wall-to-wall Epstein coverage. It wasn’t even that there was any breaking news coverage on that topic on Tuesday night — just more commentary from the usual suspects calling for the release of the Epstein files.

For CNN, in particular, this is an unpardonable sin. The network is one of the most resourced news organizations in the world, with bureaus all over the globe. Its CNN International counterpart noticed that the Kremlin was provoking NATO and covered the story. But here at home, American viewers were largely unaware of what was happening. When Olga Lautman and I decided to go live here on Substack at 9:30 PM to share the news that Russia was effectively provoking Poland into a conflict that could eventually drag in NATO, subscribers who tuned in were shocked. They had not heard this from the corporate media they were watching or reading that night.

Why? Because corporate media cares about ratings first, second and third. A salacious sex scandal — no matter how meritorious — will always trump a conflict in a far off land. God forbid they give equal time to both.

https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/kirks-murder-exposes-the-broken-model