Top CNN Parent Company Shareholder Tells CNN’s Kara Swisher Flat Out That Left-Leaning Bias is ‘Embedded’ at CNN

(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

Billionaire media legend John Malone held little back in criticizing CNN during a Thursday interview with Kara Swisher, who is a CNN contributor herself.

Malone is a major shareholder in CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and serves on the board as chairman emeritus.

“You’ve had some controversy around stuff you said about CNN. And I want to just go over it a little bit. Let me go backwards for a second, because in November of 2021, in the middle of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, you criticized CNN and said it should actually have journalists. You compared it unfavorably to Fox News. And now you’re criticizing them again,” Swisher said during the interview, recapping some of that criticism:

First, an interview with the New York Times. You said that when it comes to making CNN less biased to the left, Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslov has been unable to have any meaningful impact.

Malone offered his take on the difference between Fox News, CNN and MSNBC and argued they all became increasingly political to compete with each other – warning CNN has become “too political” to compete with Fox and MSNBC.

Swisher pressed back by ribbing Fox News, to which Malone replied, “Yeah, but they don’t hold themselves to be all journalism. They hold themselves to be sometimes journalism, but a Sean Hannity openly admits he’s very biased, which he is, and the various, let’s call them quasi-celebrities that have their hour here and the hour there. I mean, let’s face it, when you have a comedian, Greg Gutfeld, right, is getting a big audience, and his personal political position is very, is very right-wing, okay?”

“Uh, you know, is it entertainment or is it news? Well, I think it’s, it’s entertainment. They don’t try to be overwhelmingly factual,” Malone added.

“They try to be controversial and funny and keep an audience,” he concluded.

“So let me ask you, what do you think the public wants here? I mean, which CNN anchors are biased? Is it the evening time, which is very similar?” Swisher then asked, noting, “It tracks onto what Fox does.”

“Look, the trouble with bias is it’s almost invisible. And the person who, look, these are good people. These are people who believe they’re not biased,” Malone said, adding:

Okay? They really believe that. It’s just like an awful lot of us white folks say we’re not biased about Blacks. Okay? But it’s, it’s embedded. You grew up in a family that, that didn’t see Blacks.

As we would like to see Blacks today. So, so you have to go through a little mental exercise to understand where they’re coming from. So you get somebody, a journalist, an anchor, a promoter, a producer who’s really behind, you know, what you cover and what you don’t cover.
And that kind of point of view is difficult to suppress. I mean, if you look at the political affiliations of the journalism industry, who they contribute to, who they register to vote with, okay, you’ll find damn few professional journalists on the right. Damn few.

“There’s a lot in Newsmax. They have more stations than ever before,” Swisher added.

“And yes, there is a rising group because there is a rising economic structure that’s willing to support it. I want a news service that not only serves the public, but makes us money,” replied Malone, a libertarian who has donated to the GOP and President Donald Trump in the past.

Listen to the full interview here.