The “most trusted name in news” fires the most trusted name in news

While CNN’s Soledad O’Brien has not been officially fired, she has become a bit of an un-person at the network, as they’ve taken her off the morning show, but haven’t really put her anywhere else, other than in some nebulous outside producer role that may or may not turn into something substantive.And that’s a pity.
Conservatives hate Soledad. But then again, that’s what conservatives do: hate. The opinion of people who consider Fox News “news” matters little for a network that will never get Fox viewers in the first place. The kind of person who is turned on by Fox’s fact-averse freak show is never going to watch any other network, other than Glenn Beck’s. CNN isn’t vying for Fox viewers, they’re vying for MSNBC’s, and more generally, airports, bars, and other places where TVs run in the background.
They’re also vying for people like me, who would probably watch CNN during the day if I had my TV on, but I usually don’t unless there’s breaking news.  CNN just had to figure out how to get me to turn the TV on.
And passing over Soledad O’Brien isn’t it.
While I know that CNN gets a lot of flack from some on the left, I’ve always liked the network, but only just. I’ve always felt that CNN was on the verge of becoming something “more,” but never quite managed to get there. Fox, as bad as it is, is awfully good at being bad. While CNN is not nearly as good at being good.
Soledad O’Brien was one of the few people I’d turn CNN on for. It boggles the mind why anyone would choose her as the first to push aside when rearranging the deck chairs on the oldest cable news network around. Soledad is smart, pretty, Latina (mom’s from Cuba, dad from Australia), which adds some diversity to CNN’s line-up and content, and she’s one of the few media stars out there who practices actual journalism, and is willing to let an interview get heated, but not hot, in order to better get at the truth.
In the end, perhaps that’s why she was pushed aside: Soledad O’Brien wasn’t willing to play the game of asking simple questions and accepting simplistic answers, or worse, lies.
Cenk Uygur discusses the dissing of Soledad more in this video: