So, who’ll be left?

I’m only half-joking. The one anchor I can think of who seems never to offer personal opinions in his political coverage is Wolf Blitzer. And ol’ Wolf just turned 74.

He can’t anchor 12 hours a day.

This diktat from new CNN boss Chris Licht is presumably less a threat to fire anyone than a nudge to staff to try harder to present a simulacrum of objectivity on the air after years of embracing their “Resistance” identity. It *can* be done. For instance, Carl Cameron covered politics for Fox News for more than 20 years, yet I was surprised after he left to learn that he was very much not a conservative. Still, there are some CNN personalities whose shtick is so bound up in left-wing grandstanding and Fox-scolding that it’s hard to imagine them straightening up and flying right.

Maybe Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter can be moved over to CNN+.

CNN’s new boss, Chris Licht, is evaluating whether personalities and programming that grew polarizing during the Trump era can adapt to the network’s new priority to be less partisan.

Why it matters: If talent cannot adjust to a less partisan tone and strategy, they could be ousted, three sources familiar with the matter tell Axios…

For on-air talent, that includes engaging in respectful interviews that don’t feel like PR stunts. For producers and bookers, that includes making programming decisions that are focused on nuance, not noise…

To conservative critics, some on-air personalities, like Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter, have become the face of the network’s liberal shift.

The Cameron example makes me wonder: Once you know which way an anchor leans politically, is there a way to stuff the genie back into the bottle by having him or her feign objectivity? If Cameron had started out delivering occasional liberal stemwinders during his campaign coverage and then suddenly pivoted to just-the-facts reporting, would the viewers have accepted that? Or would the truth about his political leanings have forever colored how they received his reports?

I ask because there’s been a school of thought in righty media for decades that it’d be better for the liberal media to cop to their biases than to try to obscure them with faux-neutrality. They’re entitled to their point of view; as human beings, having a point of view is inescapable for them. What’s galling is when they present their POV as an “objective” accounting of events instead of acknowledging their political leanings.

Well, that’s basically what CNN did under Jeff Zucker. There aren’t any illusions about where, say, Don Lemon stands on things. Would it be an improvement if Lemon now goes back to biting his lip and trying to play it down the middle? That is, have we decided that pretend objectivity is better than honest bias after all if it forces anchors to behave more evenhandedly on the air?

I think Licht’s broader instincts are sound in trying to steer CNN away from what we might call “Zuckerism,” and doing what little he can to submerge his staff’s “Resistance” sympathies is part of that. Less hype, more news: “I think we can be a beacon in regaining … trust by being an organization that exemplifies the best characteristics of journalism: fearlessly speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo, questioning ‘group-think, and educating viewers and readers with straightforward facts and insightful commentary, while always being respectful of differing viewpoints,” he wrote to his staff last month. A few days ago he eliminated a small but chronically annoying tic at the network, its habit of announcing every news development as “breaking news.” That’s Zuckerism in a nutshell, trying to grab eyeballs by any means necessary — alarming alerts, snarky chyrons, opinionated “news” anchors. Licht wants a different direction:

Under Mr. Zucker, a micromanager who dictated headlines and whispered in anchors’ ears during interviews, the network developed an “Audience of One” culture. “What Jeff Wants” was the mantra, and that often meant spectacle and drama. Mr. Licht is now tearing up that playbook with a management style notably different from his predecessor…

Mr. Licht is intent on dialing back partisanship on the air, telling advertisers last month, “At a time where extremes are dominating cable news, we will seek to go a different way.” At a recent meeting in Washington with producers and journalists, Mr. Licht said he wanted to book more Republicans and conservatives on political shows to offer a wider range of viewpoints. Internally, he praised Dana Bash’s recent interview about gun control with Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican…

“It [Zucker-era CNN] was so loud,” said Peter Hamby, a former CNN correspondent and a columnist at Puck who writes about changes in cable news. “They found a new outrage every single day. It made it difficult for audiences to separate what was really an emergency and what was a ratings ploy.”

Can Licht change the network’s identity without cleaning house, though? If CNN retains largely the same staff as it had during the Zucker years, it’ll be a long time before conservative audiences are willing to consider them a just-the-facts outlet that’s meaningfully distinct from MSNBC. There’s too much Jeff Zucker pee left in the pool for anyone to want to swim in it.

Maybe a few strategic terminations would send enough of a signal to pique the curiosity of viewers who avoided CNN during the Trump years due to bias to give it a second chance. Ditch Acosta, exile Stelter to HBO Max with Chris Wallace, and some cable-news watchers will think, “Hmmm, maybe things really are different.” And the rest of CNN’s on-air line-up might receive the firings as “a whiff of grapeshot” that convinces them to tone things down.

Exit question: How about CNN staff whose biggest claim to fame is getting caught punching the clown on a Zoom call? Are their jobs in jeopardy too?