Fox News Says CNN Is Reverting ‘Back’ to Partisan Coverage: ‘The Inmates Are Running the Asylum Again’

AP Photo/Ric Feld | Alex Tai / Sipa via AP Images

Since the exit of CNN’s former CEO Chris Licht, Fox News is saying the network has returned to left-leaning news coverage.

In a column on FoxNews.com, Brian Flood and David Rutz observe what they call “a return to the earlier Jeff Zucker-era of liberal opinion programing that famously tarnished CNN’s once-nonpartisan reputation,” especially in the coverage of former president Donald Trump. They quote Fox News contributor Joe Concha, who said:

“The inmates are running the asylum again over at CNN in the post-Licht era. And the piousness is so thick you can cut a knife with it. … CNN gets to be the resistance network again. The inmates are happy. They’re also insufferable in their hypocrisy.”

The “inmates,” according to the article, are CNN staffers including on-camera personalities such as Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper, both of whom had less than flattering words about the Trump town hall that Licht organized. Licht was widely criticized for the choice to give Trump this kind of platform to spread misinformation, and it was one factor that led to his departure from the network.

About a month later, after Trump’s arraignment, CNN host Jake Tapper explained that the cabler wouldn’t air Trump’s post-indictment speech in Bedminster, N.J. because doing so would be considered “dangerous.”

Fox News was the only cable network to air Trump’s speech, during which time they showed President Joe Biden side-by-side with a chyron calling Biden a “wannabe dictator.”

The article also mentions the coverage of Trump’s indictment on 37 federal charges and the courtroom appearance the former president made for his arrest and arraignment. DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall said:

“The Trump legal troubles give the entrenched CNN activists the chance to again operationalize their ideological approach to news. With Licht out of the way, there is apparently nobody around who can advocate for a balanced, measured approach to news coverage.”

Curtis Houck, managing editor of the conservative media watchdog Newsbusters, went so as far as to say, “an aura of divisiveness is back like a teenager who put on too much body spray for a school dance.”

Also quoted was Grabien Media founder Tom Elliott, who said that now that Licht was gone, CNN was “returning to its 24/7 [Trump Derangement Syndrome] programming.”