Fire Chris Cuomo. Why?

I have seen the calls for Chris Cuomo to be fired from CNN for talking with his brother Andrew. For actually giving Andrew some advice, good or bad we don’t know. The reasoning is journalists shouldn’t be giving advice to politicians. Well it may be unfortunate but reality is if we fired every journalist who ever gave their opinions to the politicians they know and cover there wouldn’t be many left. In the spirit of openness I knew Mario Cuomo, having worked for him in his losing campaign for Mayor against Ed Koch. That was the first time I met Andrew Cuomo; he was nineteen and an arrogant kid. I have never met Chris.

Margaret Sullivan in her Washington Post column ‘Albany’s newspaper has covered Gov. Cuomo’s sexual misconduct admirably. Chris Cuomo and CNN have blown it’ suggests CNN has to fire Cuomo. I don’t think they blew it I think she is the one who blew it. Suggesting real journalists in a newspaper reporting on a story are in any way analogous to CNN, whose anchors/pundits aren’t really journalists or reporters, rather they are mostly entertainers. Sullivan should know better than to compare the two. Yet we can leave that discussion alone for now.

Chris Cuomo is an incredibly intelligent and talented guy who trained as a lawyer. He may have practiced journalism before but today he is much more entertainer than journalist. He got really famous for wearing tight t-shirts over a buff body when covering a hurricane. He is witty and acerbic. This isn’t an ad-homonym attack on Cuomo since I rarely watch cable channels for the news. Anyone who thinks FOX reports the news should stop reading now.

Cuomo is just better at what he does than many of the other anchors on cable news networks all of whom are entertainers. No one could successfully produce twenty-four hours of ‘news’ and expect people to watch if they weren’t entertaining their audience.

Real journalists are supposed to give us the news/facts without inserting their own opinion or slanting the story. There isn’t an anchor/personality on FOX, MSNBC, CNN or other so-called cable news networks whose personal views aren’t known and those views are infused in every show and story they do. Then to make matters worse they invite a trove of panelists too give us their personal views of a story; often having no relationship to the facts.

So I would question why CNN would fire Cuomo or ask him to resign because he happens to be the brother of a Governor who has done something very wrong. CNN might want to ask Chris to stop talking about his brother and not invite him back on the show. But then I would bet most of Chris Cuomo’s viewers would want to see them together and have Chris question his brother on how he could claim “he didn’t know what the line was that shouldn’t be crossed” when it came to harassment of women in his office. CNN of course is looking at the fact as reported ‘Cuomo Prime Time’, is the most watched program on their network.

In my opinion the only time you can trust what you are hearing or seeing as news or fact on a cable channel is when they cover something live. Even then they make an effort to screw it up by trying to explain to you what you just saw as if you are an imbecile and didn’t see it for yourself. They then add spice by having a few panelists to interpret it in a myriad of different ways. You know in advance how each panelist will see it as they are brought on with the goal of having them argue with each other to entertain the viewer and keep you watching. Sort of like watching “The View” but at least that show is clearly labeled entertainment. You know when Whoopi Goldberg and Meghan McCain argue it’s for your enjoyment. Thankfully they are getting rid of McCain as she wasn’t bright enough to keep up her side of the argument. The point being cable news can be better compared to ‘The View’ than to the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times or even the Albany Times Union.

Now as I admitted I don’t watch cable news on a regular basis and haven’t for years except for live events. However I did occasionally watch Cuomo and his brother spar during the pandemic; it was kind of entertaining during really difficult times.