CNN will cut down on 'Breaking News' stories but it's hard to break old habits

Greg P. | 1:41 PM on June 07, 2022

The new head of CNN ordered the network to cut down on the number of times it uses “Breaking News” to describe a story, that, to be honest, is a good thing:

Bye-bye, "breaking news" banners.

A month into his tenure as the new leader of CNN, Chris Licht is changing the news network from the Jeff Zucker days, encouraging less hype and more nuance. Some at the network are skeptical. https://t.co/BZhOE135Z5

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 5, 2022

From the New York Times:

CNN’s ubiquitous “Breaking News” banner is gone, now reserved for instances of truly urgent events. Snarky on-screen captions — “Angry Trump Turns Briefing Into Propaganda Session,” for instance — are discouraged. Political shows are trying to book more conservative voices, and producers have been urged to ignore Twitter backlash from the far right and the far left.

A month into his tenure as the new leader of CNN, Chris Licht is starting to leave his mark on the 24-hour news network he inherited in May from its prominent former president, Jeff Zucker. So far, the Licht Doctrine is a change from the Zucker days: less hype, more nuance and a redoubled effort to reach viewers of all stripes.

Licht has never run a network, however, so maybe him thinking this will fundamentally change anything should be a warning sign of how things will go in the future:

Running a network is a new challenge for Mr. Licht, a 50-year-old lifelong producer who has never led an organization as big as CNN. (His last employer, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” had a staff of about 200 people; CNN has roughly 4,000.) Some CNN journalists say they wonder if he can navigate a sprawling, unwieldy global news network past what has been a no good, very bad year.

Case in point? Last night while I was watching CNN, the network just substituted different phrases for “Breaking News.” Like “First on CNN”: