CNN’s Noisy ‘NewsNight’ Shows Why Staking Out the Middle Is So Hard for Media

The squabbling panel show lives most robustly in social media, but its “Crossfire”-like partisan talk often feels more like verbal wrestling than enlightened debate

Abby Phillip (center) is the host of "CNN NewsNight."

While it’s difficult to distill the challenges CNN faces down to a single hour, “NewsNight” encapsulates the inherent puzzle that the network and other legacy media must solve, and the elusive quest to find a toehold in that shrinking space known as the political middle.

“Americans with different perspectives aren’t talking to each other, but here they do,” host Abby Phillip says, by way of introducing the nightly program.

But do they, really?

“NewsNight” is one of those shows that consistently pops up in social media feeds, thanks to viral moments (and people who eagerly distribute them) that get sprayed across X and other platforms.

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