NewsNation Rewinds to a Better News Era

After the long holiday weekend, the cable news talking heads returned to their flashy sets. One led with an impassioned speech about the horrors of the October 7 attack on Israel and the tragedy of the hostages killed this weekend — and didn’t immediately pivot to score a partisan point. That encapsulates upstart network NewsNation’s approach.

When Nexstar, the parent of the longtime pillar of extended basic cable WGN Superstation, said it would convert the channel into a new news network “for all Americans,” the spiel sounded familiar. For many years, that was what Fox News claimed to be: a “fair and balanced” network.

One can quibble with whether Rupert Murdoch’s media juggernaut was ever genuinely fair and balanced. In many ways, it hewed closer to the goal than it was given credit. So if I say NewsNation takes me back a few decades to my first stint as a Fox News skeptic turned reluctant Fox News viewer, that’s a compliment.

I came to watch the older network in an unusual way only a genuine political junkie could appreciate. I always follow the primaries of both parties with great interest. The primaries themselves, not hosts’ preferred outcomes, that is. In 2008, CNN had gone all in for then-Sen. Obama in the Democratic Primary. I wanted to hear analysis and reporting that conveyed what was happening, not what they were willing into existence. That took me to Fox News.

(Yes, President Obama did win that nomination eventually, but the way CNN reported at the time, one would think Secretary Clinton’s campaign was as hapless as the current Democratic nominee’s 2020 campaign was.)

CNN is as much a mess as ever sixteen years later, but Fox News has declined measurably. Consider the Rorschach test that is the single interview Vice President Harris has taken part in thus far. The CNN panel tasked with analyzing it had the difficult decision of whether to be merely happily relieved or head-over-heels ecstatic about it.

A multiverse jump to Fox News presented a different dilemma: what color should President Trump’s new shades for the Oval Office be? I jest only slightly. The post-interview commentators all but suggested Harris’s performance was verging on the utterly disastrous appearance that ended President Biden’s reelection campaign.

Both networks presented unhelpfully over-simplistic pictures. Unlike Fox’s more even-handed approach in 2008 — “we like this guy, but here’s the state of the race” — in 2024, you’d think the networks were competing for the prize of “Best Propaganda Producer.”

They forgot a little thing that matters: what did that interview — or anything else going on — really impact? How did people who aren’t already true believers one way or the other receive it?

MSNBC may have been the first network to toss unapologetically the tattered facade of objectivity, but the others found that likewise fashionable. In the moment, Nexstar’s pushback effort with NewsNation is downright retro.

This summer’s Republican and Democratic conventions are a perfect case study. Fox focused on in-booth interviews with people who praised Trump. CNN and MSNBC played the same game for the other team. If you listen to a network that picks your side and then cleans up wherever that side is contradictory or muddled, how do you even know if your side is successfully communicating anything?

NewsNation showed far more of the actual convention floors and their actual speeches, with analysis from both sides of the aisle. To be sure, the other networks’ coverage felt more “cohesive” — it was directed to what makes good TV of one’s particular partisan flavor.

But, hearing from a variety of big and small name speakers on NewsNation gave me a better sense of what the conventions were actually communicating. Hearing NewsNation commentary thereafter, where the personalities weren’t focused on carrying any candidate’s water, but noting actual strengths and weaknesses, was likewise informative.

When I switched to Fox years ago, the “fair and balanced” banner still waved. Editorially rightward, but staffed with a superb news department with serious journalists such as Bill Sammon, Chris Wallace and Chris Stirewalt.

The talking head lineup revealed the editorial stance, but with independence, not cheerleading. Flagship host Bill O’Reilly was unmistakably right-leaning, sure, but criticized both sides of the aisle as a matter of course. Overtly partisan Sean Hannity was paired with liberal counterpart Alan Colmes. Mainstream representatives of both parties served as the supporting cast.

Fox was corrective to a media that almost always thinks and votes progressively, not as an outright mirror to its opponents.

One can have an upfront leaning and still care about impeccable sourcing and fair reporting — the Wall Street Journal comes to mind. At some point, though, Fox News gave that up. Arguably a small part of that spirit was still there in 2020, but the network’s fateful — albeit ultimately accurate — call of the 2020 election for President Biden, bled viewers. The detestable cure was to hemorrhage the newsroom and seek to say what the network believed viewers wanted to hear, whether the facts traveled along or not.

Records from Fox News that came out in the libel suits against the network make it clear this is not hyperbole. Personalities said one thing in private and reported the opposite on screen. Maintaining editorial integrity isn’t as popular as being a campaign outlet for your viewers’ preferred side.

O’Reilly gave way to Tucker Carlson. Carlson himself went from the mainstream Republican of his CNN youth to a conspiracist who would make Alex Jones proud. Laura Ingram inherited the seat previously occupied by the more independent Megyn Kelly and Greta van Susteren. Rinse and repeat across the board.

Had the network stayed the course of “right-leaning but aiming for balanced reporting,” I doubt we’d see NewsNation emerge. Fox’s ceding to its farther right competitors, such as OAN and Newsmax, left a vacuum for something new that was neither that nor lockstep with the left-leaning remainder.

I’d like to think there’s a good chunk of us that want that vacuum filled. MSNBC and today’s Fox News allegedly represent what our world of bifurcated ideological silos want. NewsNation bets on enough people wanting to hear something more nuanced.

Their lineup reflects this. Leland Vittert comes across as a younger O’Reilly. Blunt and center-right, but not a cheerleader for either side. He glories in viewer mail that regularly accuses him of bias… against both sides.

Dan Abrams’s takes may hew a dash to the left, just as Vittert is ever-so-slightly right, but likewise is independent in coverage. Politicians from both sides get skewered and thoughtful questions get asked in place of the leading softballs for friends and daggers for foes.

Chris Cuomo is the counterintuitive member of the primetime lineup. A part of a well-known Democratic political family and one who lost his CNN gig for good reason when he moonlighted helping his politician brother. Nonetheless, his redemption tour of a program is with merit: he is an astute critic of both sides of the aisle with the added cynicism of one who has been on the inside.

His heart tugging monologue on the death of the hostages in Israel is the one I referred to in the lede. While the commentary did intersect with American politics, his was not the voice of a Democratic operative. Cuomo criticized pro-Hamas protesters and both political parties for politicizing a human tragedy.

To be sure, my description of NewsNation makes it clear it isn’t aiming for the golden era of national journalism that sought to be free of all opinion. Like every network, talking heads are the pillars of its primetime. But, personalities that want to find common ground and dismiss the easy answers of partisan camps move our political discourse ahead. Opinion itself isn’t the problem.

I hope that reflects something we all can appreciate. At the very least, if there’s breaking news and I turn on NewsNation, I spend less time thinking “Is this what they think I want to hear?” and more thinking, “Oh, here are thoughtful voices giving reasonable takes on the issue I’m watching to find out more about.”

Will it last? My hope others want balanced coverage is tempered by the realization that social media often demonstrates we like our ideological silos. But for now, I’m happy to tune into NewsNation when I want a dose of television news and, if you’ve yearned for something that aspires to tell you more “what’s going on” and less “what itching ears want to hear,” you should do the same.