(NaturalNews) It was the first 24-7 live all-news network: the Cable News Network, which was aptly named. But long gone are the "glory days" of the first Gulf War, when CNN's wall-to-wall coverage of the "video game war" was on for hours and hours in millions of homes all around the globe.
Now, scores of network employees -- reporters, production personnel and even some on camera -- face extinction, as the network has steadily lost viewership and revenue for years.
Variety, which covers the entertainment and news industries, reported a recent scene, in which one of CNN's online reporters described her last day on the job:
Former CNN Capitol Hill reporter Lisa Dejardins posted a video of her final sign off from CNN on Thursday as she prepared to leave the building after being laid off.
Dejardins, a reporter for CNN.com who was not an on-air personality, compares the mass goodbye emails from laid off CNN employees to the personal ones, finding a wide discrepancy in the general tone and niceness between the two, and expresses her disappointment [in] CNN's decision to get rid of a congressional reporter given the bipartisan struggle in the Capitol.
More than 600 will get the axe
That said, the network is in the process of expanding its digital staff in the nation's capital, as the country (and news agencies) gear up for the 2016 presidential race. Recently, the network attracted Politico veteran Rachel Smolkin to become executive editor for politics, and to guide CNN's growing online coverage out of Washington, D.C. Dejardins' layoff was due to a restructuring currently underway by CNN's Washington bureau and was not part of any buyout offer.
In a recent communique to Variety, Time Warner -- which owns CNN -- confirmed that some 600 employees at the company's Turner Broadcasting unit, where CNN is actually based, were being offered buyouts as part of an effort to trim overall costs. Variety reported that it was likely that Time Warner would wait a few weeks to assess its employees' responses to the voluntary buyout offer before instituting mandatory layoffs at many Turner properties.
Other reports have said that CNN chief Jeff Zucker has informed employees during a recent news meeting that the network was simply "going to do less and have to do it with less."
"We now have a sense of what Turner is expecting from CNN," Zucker reportedly told the staff, according to Variety. "I am working with the senior management team at CNN to figure out what this means for us. This will result in changes and what we do and what we stop doing."
Reportedly, Zucker was discussing an internal memo from the head of Turner, John Martin, who recently announced "organizational changes" were on the horizon.
"Given the current focus on reducing costs and prioritizing investments to maximize company performance, Turner will also undertake additional reductions in staffing," the memo read.
The moves are all part of Martin's "Turner 2020" vision, which he says aims to turn the company around by the year 2020 -- Turner's 50th anniversary.
History of censorship and being out of touch with news consumers
But for long-time news consumers, CNN's demise should not be much of a surprise. The network has a distinct news bias that obviously has not resonated with viewers -- and not just recently, but over the long-term, as other news networks (Fox especially) have commanded millions more views (and more profits).
Also, CNN developed a nasty reputation for censorship, as Natural News has reported. Editor-in-Chief Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, reported August 14:
While CNN salivates over the news potential of an African-American teen being shot by a police officer, the network deliberately censors any news of the systematic medical abuse of African-American children by the CDC and the vaccine industry. That's the startling revelation which has now surfaced from recent events.
Adams went on to report that, following revelations that a key Centers for Disease Control scientist and whistleblower went public with an admission that the federal health agency committed scientific fraud to bury the truth about MMR vaccines causing autism, "CNN has twice censored citizen journalists who posted well-cited stories on" the network's iReport website.
