There has been a lot of talk about CNN’s lurch to the center following the shakeup in top leadership. Chris Licht, who took over the network in April, has made some significant changes to CNN’s lineup.

Conservatives cheered when he dumped John Harwood and Brian Stelter, and there have been hints that even minor criticisms of President Biden are welcome. Licht denies that he is trying to move the network to the center or right. Instead he insists he is just moving the network back to its roots as a news organization, not an opinion-driven one.

We can hope. But in a short trip to the network’s website I was not surprised to see that its politics section seems guided by the same  Left-wing instincts that drove its opinion programming.

We shouldn’t be surprised given Licht’s resumé:

Chris Licht came over after stints at CBS where he oversaw the Colbert “Late Show.” And he had also been at CBS News, and before that, MSNBC. He’s promising in this incarnation at CNN that he’s going to make the channel less opinion driven, less perhaps focused on Donald Trump as the one true story that they really rode during the Trump era. This has been a passion of Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Discovery’s biggest investor, John Malone. Let’s not forget that they just took over Time Warner and CNN recently.

Licht says he’s not going to pull any punches, doesn’t mean that they’re going to stop reporting. If anything, he wants to really focus more on news than opinion. He made the rounds with Republicans as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill and at the Biden White House, making this case about how he sees CNN. And he also promises, without specifying, he says CNN’s got to be more entertaining and better TV. And over time, that’s going to improve ratings, too.

NPR did a breakdown of happenings at CNN last month and gave an analysis of what was likely to happen given Licht’s prior work:

Licht … dispensed with the services of media critic and host Brian Stelter. He killed the show “Reliable Sources.” They say they’re reformulating how they’re going to cover the media.

And I think there are a lot of questions about the morning shows. Licht had real success creating “Morning Joe” over at MSNBC, creating what is now “CBS Mornings” as a reformulated show there. And there are questions about what that’s going to look like. Of late, Brianna Keilar, who had been known for doing these long videos kind of breaking down and eviscerating Donald Trump’s falsehoods and lies, you know, recently has spent a lot of time lately going after President Biden for his address last week in Philadelphia, in which he termed the MAGA wing of the Republican Party a threat to American democracy.

So what did I find when I visited CNN’s website? A lot of the same old same old, but more presented as news and analysis. Their political page is seemingly dedicated to covering Donald Trump and “fact checking” Republicans. They toss in a small bit of criticism for Democrats, but by and large it remains a Democrat propaganda machine.

From their October 3rd, 2022 webpage:

As you can see in their political analysis section, out of 7 stories 4 focus on Donald Trump in some way, two on Republicans in an unflattering light, and one on CRT in a flattering light. This is hardly a massive shift to the right, and is hardly likely to be a massive draw for Independent or Republican voters.

In their fact check section 5 out of 6 “fact checks” are focused on promoting the message that Republicans are liars, with one throwaway about a Biden misstatement, ensuring you know that it was the White House who corrected the error. Democrats, apparently, are always on the up and up when they communicate with the public.

Remarkable, if true. I always thought that you were an idiot if you trusted any politician without checking the facts first, and the safety of your wallet second.

And the analysis featured at the bottom of the page? 100% Republicans, and 100% spin for the Democrats.

Since none of us is likely to be a big CNN watcher, and we aren’t even subjected to it in airports any more, it would have been easy to accept the spin that CNN was cleaning up its act. Unfortunately that isn’t the case, at least not yet.

I have no doubt that Licht’s mission is to get the profit machine at CNN back on track, and he surely would tack to the center if that achieved the goal. But so far the only evidence for that rests on his dumping some deadwood from the lineup rather than a fundamental improvement in the way that they cover the news.

And that really shouldn’t surprise us. After all his background is The Colbert Report, CBS News, and MSNBC. How big a rightward shift could you expect from a guy with this background?

CNN clearly has been trying to change the narrative about its political coverage to recapture viewers, but until they change the content they will be stuck in the ratings slump.