CNN Goes Bankrupt

The media giant CNN has filed for bankruptcy as of April 1, 
2021. Many analysts have pinned the bankruptcy on the Trump 
Administration’s loss and the introduction of a relatively 
charismatic president. CNN’s parent company, AT&T, suffered a 
fatal blow as a result of the news.

CNN announced the news after consistently losing viewership on 
both their broadcast channel and website. The losses from its 
two main sources resulted in its bankruptcy. According to a Pew 
Research study, “CNN lost 85 percent of its broadcast viewership 
as well as 78 percent of its web viewers after Nov 11.”

Executives at the company attempted to combat the declining 
viewership through numerous strategies, but they were unable to 
bring back viewership to its original numbers. CNN’s own 
analysts attempted to wrangle with the issue, but attempts 
proved to be futile.

“We tried to take a 360 degree view around us and tried a 
variety of strategies, ranging from publishing positive stories 
to publishing more negative ones than others, but we ended right 
back where we were,” Anderson Cooper, host of Anderson Cooper 
360 said.

Many employees credited the bankruptcy to difficulty with 
procuring media content regarding the presidency.

“It became very hard to find good Trump quotes after the 
election, and there’s obviously nothing wrong with Biden, so 
this transfer of power really hurt our newspaper,” Barry Jones, 
an opinion columnist for the newspaper, said.

CNN did attempt to reach out to the U.S. government in the hopes 
of getting a bailout so that they would be able to keep their 
employees working until after the pandemic. However at the time 
the Trump Administration dismissed it as “fake news.”

Investors were disappointed with the newspaper, and, following 
the results of the election, sold much of their holdings in the 
company, resulting in the stock’s meltdown.

“I just didn’t feel that CNN had much left to give,” Ronald 
Biggums, an investor for Bank of America, said. “I took a look 
at the front page showing the smiling face of Joe Biden as 
compared to Trump’s frown just made me lose all hope.”

CNN had to lay off their staff, which consisted of around 4,000 
employees worldwide. Notable employees included Cooper and Dr. 
Gupta who were a large part of CNN’s broadcast team.

“I’ve covered plenty of breaking headlines during my time at 
CNN; however this situation really caught me off guard,” Wolf 
Blitzer, one of CNN’s key anchors, said. “My heart goes out to 
the employees who lost their jobs due to this situation.”

Ultimately CNN was dealt a fatal blow, but its writing style and 
stories will continue to inspire. The editors at CNN left one 
final Tweet to mark the end of four decades of journalism.

“Everything was clearly RIGGED against us,” CNN said. “The other 
big newspapers all had a CONSPIRACY brewing to take us out of 
business. Even our very own super skilled reporters said so. 
This is a DISGRACE for the journalism industry. SHAME.”

https://www.statesmanshs.org/5283/sloth/cnn-goes-bankrupt/