The following editorial originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Two of the loosest cannons in America’s cable news fleet were unceremoniously rolled overboard last week, and the country will be better for it.
Though unrelated, the sudden, simultaneous firings of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon from, respectively, Fox News and CNN appear to share some themes: Both hosts had quasi-journalistic perches from which they routinely disseminated ideologically strident opinion (and, in Carlson’s case, dangerous disinformation) — and in both cases, their own undisciplined mouths got them in trouble with their bosses. It’s too early to tell if their firings represent a movement in cable news away from the ramparts of the culture wars and back toward balanced reporting, but it’s an encouraging sign.
Debating opinions is the whole point of editorial pages like this one, while televised news shows are in theory supposed to be primarily about offering the latest news — or at least they once were. But cable talking heads like Carlson and Lemon have for years pioneered a kind of hybrid position, somewhere between traditional news anchor and openly opinionated commentator, presenting elements of both. The competition between their networks often caused them to ratchet up the outrage in the quest for ratings.
In these hotly partisan times, Americans sort themselves in all kinds of ways, including what kind of ideological spin they want on their news. The straight-up-the-middle Walter Cronkite model can still be found on the legacy network newscasts, but many cable news personalities are fully engaged participants in today’s ideological skirmishes.
