CNN and MSNBC have completely gone off the early afternoon rails

| 1:25 pm EDT July 8, 2022
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Right around 1pm eastern time today, I made the mistake of turning on my television. I say “mistake” because there’s already enough actual bad news going on, and whenever I tune in to MSNBC or CNN in the middle of the day, I’m confronted with an additional layer of imaginary bad news that’s being invented for the sake of ratings.

Nationwide average gas prices have been steadily and significantly falling for more than three weeks. President Biden said he’d find a way to get oil company price gouging under control, and now we’re seeing clear evidence that his plan is beginning to work. So I was naively expecting the media to be accurately reporting this.

Instead, when I first turned on CNN today, the chyron across the bottom of the screen said “Gas prices, mortgage rates dip after record spikes.” Oh come on. That’s not anybody’s definition of honest reporting. Then I flipped over to MSNBC and the chryon said “Biden under pressure” even as the host began talking about “spiking gas prices.”

These two networks are both still trying to chase ratings by pushing the narrative that gas prices are rising, even though gas prices have been steadily falling for nearly a month. CNN is dishonestly mischaracterizing this new prevailing trend as a mere “dip” while pretending the overall trend of rising gas prices is intact when it isn’t. MSNBC is characterizing things even more dishonestly.

Given the number of major stories that are going on right now – President Biden’s newly signed executive orders today aimed at helping to restore women’s reproductive rights, the death of Shinzo Abe, today’s testimony by Pat Cipollone – you’d think CNN and MSNBC wouldn’t have to run dishonest segments about gas prices in order to have something to talk about. These two networks have long been a vast wasteland during the middle of the day, but they’re both getting far, far worse of late.